A Flower in the Mouth.There is a common thread between two otherwise disparate premieres in the Forum section of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival—Eric Baudelaire’s A Flower in the Mouth, shot in France and the Netherlands, and Dane Komljen’s Afterwater, shot in Germany. Both films benefited from the direct involvement of the Jeonju Cinema Project: an extraordinary funding and development initiative undertaken in partnership with the South Korean city’s local government and the programming team of its annual film festival. Together, these two works mark out something like a gesture of intention for the project. Baudelaire’s film is a rich, single-setting response to the demands of microbudget filmmaking and pandemic strictures both, particularly in its second half, which transposes a 1922 Luigi Pirandello play to an all-night café in Paris. Meanwhile, Komjlen’s film is a more ephemeral vision overall, composed largely...
- 7/6/2022
- MUBI
Few phenomena in Spanish film have proved so striking in recent years as the emergence last decade of a new generation of Catalan filmmakers, very often women, making resonant movies grounded in highly specific local realities.
Think Clara Simon’s “Summer 1993,” a Berlin First Feature Award winner, or Pilar Palomero’s “Schoolgirls,” which walked off with best picture at this year’s Spanish Academy Goyas.
For years, prominent Catalan auteurs – José Luis Guerín, Marc Recha, Isaki Lacuesta – have made movies straddling documentary and fiction.
Sold by Beta Cinema, “The Off-Job Men,” directed by Pompeu Fabra U. alum Neus Ballús, drinks deep from both traditions.
Its stars, Mohamed Mellali, Valero Escolar and Pep Sarrá, are real life plumbers who, in a fiction-set up created by Ballús, play employees at Instalaciones Losilla, a small handyman firm on the outskirts of Barcelona. Over six days, Moha, a Moroccan new recruit on a one-week trial,...
Think Clara Simon’s “Summer 1993,” a Berlin First Feature Award winner, or Pilar Palomero’s “Schoolgirls,” which walked off with best picture at this year’s Spanish Academy Goyas.
For years, prominent Catalan auteurs – José Luis Guerín, Marc Recha, Isaki Lacuesta – have made movies straddling documentary and fiction.
Sold by Beta Cinema, “The Off-Job Men,” directed by Pompeu Fabra U. alum Neus Ballús, drinks deep from both traditions.
Its stars, Mohamed Mellali, Valero Escolar and Pep Sarrá, are real life plumbers who, in a fiction-set up created by Ballús, play employees at Instalaciones Losilla, a small handyman firm on the outskirts of Barcelona. Over six days, Moha, a Moroccan new recruit on a one-week trial,...
- 8/8/2021
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Although it starts just days before Cannes, the Venice Arts Biennale is routinely ignored by film journalists. Perhaps it’s because of the (incorrect) presumption that the yearly film festival sweeps up the important material, or perhaps it’s the weird art/film world divide. But key film figures routinely make their presence known at the Biennale: when I first attended in 2007, José Luis Guerín represented Spain with an installation-based riff on In The City of Sylvia, while Tsai Ming-Liang screened It’s A Dream for Taiwan. Meanwhile, a figure then best-known in the art world, Steve McQueen, shared two filmed works in […]...
- 6/10/2019
- by Doug Dillaman
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Although it starts just days before Cannes, the Venice Arts Biennale is routinely ignored by film journalists. Perhaps it’s because of the (incorrect) presumption that the yearly film festival sweeps up the important material, or perhaps it’s the weird art/film world divide. But key film figures routinely make their presence known at the Biennale: when I first attended in 2007, José Luis Guerín represented Spain with an installation-based riff on In The City of Sylvia, while Tsai Ming-Liang screened It’s A Dream for Taiwan. Meanwhile, a figure then best-known in the art world, Steve McQueen, shared two filmed works in […]...
- 6/10/2019
- by Doug Dillaman
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
MoonlightDear Danny,As I type this final entry in a state of literal suspension—aboard my flight home, between a rainy Canadian morning and a muggy Californian afternoon—I begin to wonder whether my festival choices were too safe. I read your takes on experimental works with pleasure, as well as a hint of envy toward your adventurousness. My sole excursion this year into Wavelengths territory was Sergei Loznitsa’s Austerlitz, which I admired more than you. Concentration-camp tourism understandably dismays the sober director of My Joy, yet there’s a mordant edge to his unbroken views of visitors, including teeming long-shots that resemble Jacques Tati frames. People amble through these zones of unspeakable suffering as if at a particularly prosaic mall, guides barely hang on to their groups’ attention (“Folks, could you not eat in here, please?”), knowledge is shaky and selfie-sticks are ubiquitous. Still, I thought Loznitsa’s...
- 9/19/2016
- MUBI
Just like that, it’s fall already. The first round of films fresh out of Tiff and Venice and Telluride are making their ways to theaters and living rooms nationwide. And now, we enter the last third of the year, with plenty of titles to be excited about. Below, you’ll see every planned theatrical release for the month of September, separated out into films with wide runs and limited ones. (Synopses are provided by festivals and distributors.)
Each week, we’ll give you an update with more specific information on where these films are playing. In the meantime, be sure to check our calendar page, where we’ll update releases for the rest of the year. Happy watching!
Week of September 2 Wide
Morgan
Director: Luke Scott
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Boyd Holbrook, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kate Mara, Michelle Yeoh, Paul Giamatti, Rose Leslie, Toby Jones
Synopsis: A corporate troubleshooter is sent to a remote,...
Each week, we’ll give you an update with more specific information on where these films are playing. In the meantime, be sure to check our calendar page, where we’ll update releases for the rest of the year. Happy watching!
Week of September 2 Wide
Morgan
Director: Luke Scott
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Boyd Holbrook, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kate Mara, Michelle Yeoh, Paul Giamatti, Rose Leslie, Toby Jones
Synopsis: A corporate troubleshooter is sent to a remote,...
- 9/1/2016
- by Steve Greene
- Indiewire
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Metrograph
“Body of Work” presents Madonna’s more-impressive-than-you-think filmography, including the 25th-anniversary restoration of Truth or Dare. This weekend offers A League of Their Own, Desperately Seeking Susan, Shadows and Fog, and Dick Tracy.
Fantastic Mr. Fox screens on Saturday.
Film Forum
Double-billings continue with Hitchcock-Polanski, Reed-Welles, and Kelly- / Donen-Minelli.
A restoration of Howards End has begun its run.
Metrograph
“Body of Work” presents Madonna’s more-impressive-than-you-think filmography, including the 25th-anniversary restoration of Truth or Dare. This weekend offers A League of Their Own, Desperately Seeking Susan, Shadows and Fog, and Dick Tracy.
Fantastic Mr. Fox screens on Saturday.
Film Forum
Double-billings continue with Hitchcock-Polanski, Reed-Welles, and Kelly- / Donen-Minelli.
A restoration of Howards End has begun its run.
- 8/26/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Film distribution veteran Ryan Krivoshey is taking a page from the success of “An Inconvenient Truth,” advocating for global issues by betting on film as the most potent tool for spreading awareness. The Founder and President of indie distributor Grasshopper Film recently formed a new production company, Grasshopper + Marks Productions, which focuses on producing issue-based films whose stories can inspire major movements.
Read More: Exclusive: Independent Film Vet Ryan Krivoshey Launches New Distribution Company
One of the most innovative aspects of this strategy is how the company plans to find those stories. Krivoshey has partnered with his wife Beata Gutman Krivoshey’s advisory film Grasshopper Global, which builds social purpose campaigns for clients ranging from Disney to the United Nations Foundation, and with Andy Marks’ brand consultancy and production company Marks Entertainment + Media. The plan is to connect companies, non-profit organizations and government agencies with filmmakers to help tell issue-driven stories,...
Read More: Exclusive: Independent Film Vet Ryan Krivoshey Launches New Distribution Company
One of the most innovative aspects of this strategy is how the company plans to find those stories. Krivoshey has partnered with his wife Beata Gutman Krivoshey’s advisory film Grasshopper Global, which builds social purpose campaigns for clients ranging from Disney to the United Nations Foundation, and with Andy Marks’ brand consultancy and production company Marks Entertainment + Media. The plan is to connect companies, non-profit organizations and government agencies with filmmakers to help tell issue-driven stories,...
- 8/3/2016
- by Graham Winfrey
- Indiewire
In hindsight, the fact that two films about Christine Chubbuck are being released within a month of one another may be less strange than the fact that it took 40 years for a movie to be made about her in the first place. Chubbuck, a reporter in Sarasota, Florida whose on-air suicide made national headlines in 1974, is the basis of both Robert Greene’s “Kate Plays Christine” and Antonio Campos’ “Christine.” Greene’s (mostly) nonfiction endeavor has just released its official trailer and poster on Vulture.
Read More: Sundance Review: ‘Kate Plays Christine’ is Like ‘Network’ With a Nonfiction Twist
In the trailer, we see as indie stalwart Kate Lyn Sheil prepares to play the reporter over the last few days of her life — an undertaking that includes interviews, rehearsals and musings on the nature of acting itself. Like “Kate Plays Christine,” Campos’ film (which stars Rebecca Hall in the title...
Read More: Sundance Review: ‘Kate Plays Christine’ is Like ‘Network’ With a Nonfiction Twist
In the trailer, we see as indie stalwart Kate Lyn Sheil prepares to play the reporter over the last few days of her life — an undertaking that includes interviews, rehearsals and musings on the nature of acting itself. Like “Kate Plays Christine,” Campos’ film (which stars Rebecca Hall in the title...
- 7/19/2016
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Grasshopper Film continues to win brownie points among cinephiles with the upcoming release of “The Academy of Muses,” a festival-circuit favorite that might otherwise have slipped through the theatrical cracks. The trailer for the latest film by José Luis Guerín, who won praise for “In the City of Sylvia,” is now available.
Read More: Locarno Review: Romantic Comedy or Philosophical Debate? Jose Luis Guerin’s ‘The Academy of Muses’ is Both
It begins with a woman recounting a myth about Cupid shooting his arrow, first at Apollo and then at Daphne, each with a different effect: Apollo is fated to fall in love with the first creature he sees, Daphne to run away from the first man she sees. The rest of the conversation-heavy trailer is complemented by a string section and pull quotes from cinephilic outlets like Fandor’s Keyframe and Mubi’s Notebook singing the film’s praises.
Read More: Exclusive: Grasshopper Film Picks Up Robert Greene’s Sundance Winner ‘Kate Plays Christine’
Like fellow Grasshopper selection “Kaili Blues,”Guerín’s film premiered at the Locarno Film Festival last summer. Grasshopper is set to release “The Academy of Muses” on September 2 at Anthology Film Archives in New York.
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Related storiesThe Business of Too Much TV & Six Other Top Longreads of the WeekExclusive: Grasshopper Film Picks Up Robert Greene's Sundance Winner 'Kate Plays Christine'Hong Sangsoo Plays With Time in Backwards 'Right Now, Wrong Then' Trailer...
Read More: Locarno Review: Romantic Comedy or Philosophical Debate? Jose Luis Guerin’s ‘The Academy of Muses’ is Both
It begins with a woman recounting a myth about Cupid shooting his arrow, first at Apollo and then at Daphne, each with a different effect: Apollo is fated to fall in love with the first creature he sees, Daphne to run away from the first man she sees. The rest of the conversation-heavy trailer is complemented by a string section and pull quotes from cinephilic outlets like Fandor’s Keyframe and Mubi’s Notebook singing the film’s praises.
Read More: Exclusive: Grasshopper Film Picks Up Robert Greene’s Sundance Winner ‘Kate Plays Christine’
Like fellow Grasshopper selection “Kaili Blues,”Guerín’s film premiered at the Locarno Film Festival last summer. Grasshopper is set to release “The Academy of Muses” on September 2 at Anthology Film Archives in New York.
Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
Related storiesThe Business of Too Much TV & Six Other Top Longreads of the WeekExclusive: Grasshopper Film Picks Up Robert Greene's Sundance Winner 'Kate Plays Christine'Hong Sangsoo Plays With Time in Backwards 'Right Now, Wrong Then' Trailer...
- 6/16/2016
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
"You taught me to be passionate. Above everything, to be literarily passionate." Hello there. Grasshopper Film has released an official Us trailer for Spanish director José Luis Guerín's newest feature film The Academy of Muses. Described as "part relationship drama, part intellectual discourse, the film centers on a philology professor — played by actual philology professor Raffaele Pinto" as he teaches a course on muses in art and literature, while romancing the women around him in his class and his life. This seems like a very thoughtful but very fascinating look at romance and relationships, and could be categorized as more experimental/artistic cinema than anything. Not for everyone, but it looks like this film has plenty to say. Here's the official Us trailer for José Luis Guerín's The Academy of Muses, from The Film Stage: After his classes, a teacher is questioned by his wife, who mistrusted the academic project is plotting her husband. The teacher's intention is to create a "school ...
- 6/15/2016
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
I saw The Academy of Muses a month ago and have considered it almost every day since then, turning over in my mind the clearly defined ideas, only-half-understood narrative directions, and documentary-narrative distinctions that mark José Luis Guerín‘s first fiction feature since 2007’s In the City of Sylvia. Those who go into it blind won’t initially find much distinction, though: there might instead be the belief they’ve entered an At Berkeley-esque documentary about European academia — until the movie slowly becomes something much more complicated, and then blossoms into full-on drama.
Grasshopper Film — recently of Fireworks Wednesday and Kaili Blues, and soon to release Right Now, Wrong Then and Don’t Blink – Robert Frank — will begin distributing The Academy of Muses stateside this September, and has let us premiere the trailer. A film with as many moving parts probably couldn’t be captured in a two-minute preview, so the strategy, it seems, is one of general mood and feeling, here communicated in the best way: through Guerín’s mixture of verbosity with light-streaked, reflection-heavy images. If what’s seen herein manages to intrigue, the full experience is certain to captivate.
See it below:
Synopsis:
A university professor teaches a class on muses in art and literature as a means of romancing his female students in this breathtaking new film from Jose Luis Guerín, director of the widely heralded In the City of Sylvia. Part relationship drama, part intellectual discourse, the film centers on a philology professor — played by actual philology professor Raffaele Pinto — and the women surrounding him: his wife and students. But as each and every player engages in debates — concerning, among other things, art, the artist’s perspective, and male-female dynamics — Guerín focuses as much attention on the slippery boundary between documentary and fiction, in turn engaging with an evolving narrative, increasingly complex character dynamics, and an endlessly vivid emotional journey.
The Academy of Muses begins a U.S. theatrical run at New York’s Anthology Film Archives on September 2.
Grasshopper Film — recently of Fireworks Wednesday and Kaili Blues, and soon to release Right Now, Wrong Then and Don’t Blink – Robert Frank — will begin distributing The Academy of Muses stateside this September, and has let us premiere the trailer. A film with as many moving parts probably couldn’t be captured in a two-minute preview, so the strategy, it seems, is one of general mood and feeling, here communicated in the best way: through Guerín’s mixture of verbosity with light-streaked, reflection-heavy images. If what’s seen herein manages to intrigue, the full experience is certain to captivate.
See it below:
Synopsis:
A university professor teaches a class on muses in art and literature as a means of romancing his female students in this breathtaking new film from Jose Luis Guerín, director of the widely heralded In the City of Sylvia. Part relationship drama, part intellectual discourse, the film centers on a philology professor — played by actual philology professor Raffaele Pinto — and the women surrounding him: his wife and students. But as each and every player engages in debates — concerning, among other things, art, the artist’s perspective, and male-female dynamics — Guerín focuses as much attention on the slippery boundary between documentary and fiction, in turn engaging with an evolving narrative, increasingly complex character dynamics, and an endlessly vivid emotional journey.
The Academy of Muses begins a U.S. theatrical run at New York’s Anthology Film Archives on September 2.
- 6/15/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Art of the Real, a film series showcasing nonfiction work from around the world, remains and continues to be the most essential film event for serious and adventurous cinephiles. Once again, curated by venerable Dennis Lim and Racheal Rakes, Fslc is presenting the most impressive lineup yet: new works from Roberto Minervini, Ben Rivers, José Luis Guerin and Thom Andersen, among others. Tirelessly testing the boundaries of cinema, art and reality, these films assure me that cinema still is an artistic medium with much more to explore for a long time to come. This year, they are also highlighting American avant-garde giant Bruce Baillie's films, organized by Garbiñe Ortega. The selection of Baillie's films in this year's Art of the Real pays homage to his...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 4/7/2016
- Screen Anarchy
Gabriel Mascaro’s selection from Brazil-Uruguay-Holland has won the official narrative competition award as the Colombian festival came to a close on Monday.
Jurors Michel Franco, Mike Downey and Ailín Salas awarded Neon Bull (Boi Neon, pictured) the $15,000 Cine Colombia prize.
Best director went to José Luis Guerín for Spain’s La Academia De Musas.
The Fipresci Prize went to Alejandro Fernández Almendras’ recent Sundance world premiere Much Ado About Nothing (Chile).
The Cine Colombiano official competition prize and an $11,000 award was presented to Noche Herida (Colombia-Belgium) by Nicolás Rincón.
A special jury prize went to Siembra (Colombia-Germany) by Angela Osorio and Santiago Lozano, while best director was awarded to Luis Ospina for Todo Comenzó Por El Fin. Ospina’s film also won the audience award.
Top documentary honours went to El Viento Sabe Que Vuelvo A Casa (Chile) by José Luis Torres Leiva, and best director to Jorge Caballero for Paciente (Colombia). The jury prize was awarded...
Jurors Michel Franco, Mike Downey and Ailín Salas awarded Neon Bull (Boi Neon, pictured) the $15,000 Cine Colombia prize.
Best director went to José Luis Guerín for Spain’s La Academia De Musas.
The Fipresci Prize went to Alejandro Fernández Almendras’ recent Sundance world premiere Much Ado About Nothing (Chile).
The Cine Colombiano official competition prize and an $11,000 award was presented to Noche Herida (Colombia-Belgium) by Nicolás Rincón.
A special jury prize went to Siembra (Colombia-Germany) by Angela Osorio and Santiago Lozano, while best director was awarded to Luis Ospina for Todo Comenzó Por El Fin. Ospina’s film also won the audience award.
Top documentary honours went to El Viento Sabe Que Vuelvo A Casa (Chile) by José Luis Torres Leiva, and best director to Jorge Caballero for Paciente (Colombia). The jury prize was awarded...
- 3/7/2016
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
There are many reasons Cinema Guild is probably our favorite distributor, chief among them the sense that their slate consists almost entirely of titles that even the second- and third-most adventurous distributors would express hesitance about putting into the world. Make of it what you will, then, that their former distribution executive, Ryan Krivoshey, has just launched Grasshopper Film, an outlet that immediately sounds no less crucial than his old haunting ground.
Their initial press release is a murderer’s row of international voices, a few favorites of ours included. Just look at its first release: in some sense following the lead of Cinema Guild’s major unveiling of About Elly last year, they’re leading off with Asghar Farhadi‘s 2006 picture Fireworks Wednesday — previously released by Facets and less-than-easy to acquire for years — which comes to New York on March 16.
It’s expected that each year will offer eight-to-twelve...
Their initial press release is a murderer’s row of international voices, a few favorites of ours included. Just look at its first release: in some sense following the lead of Cinema Guild’s major unveiling of About Elly last year, they’re leading off with Asghar Farhadi‘s 2006 picture Fireworks Wednesday — previously released by Facets and less-than-easy to acquire for years — which comes to New York on March 16.
It’s expected that each year will offer eight-to-twelve...
- 2/15/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Les Soviets plus l’électricitéFrance’s central place within film culture may have its ups and downs when it comes to adventurous film-making, but its reputation as a hub of international film viewing holds strong. Yet beyond the central role of Cannes in the yearly festival rigmarole, and references to the riches of the Paris film-going scene and to vaguely understood state subsidies, little attention is actually paid to the wider infrastructures of a film-going culture which, after all, provided more ticket sales for Uncle Boonmee than the rest of the world combined. To say this is not to trumpet French exceptionalism far and wide: Olaf Möller has spoken lovingly of the key role of film programming on West German television in the 1970s, and Italian critics would no doubt be able to provide similar insight into the workings of Rai 3 or the myriad smaller festivals which continue to...
- 1/5/2016
- by Nathan Letoré
- MUBI
At the halfway point of December, there are, to put it lightly, many end-of-year lists hitting the web, and few publications have round-ups as consistently excellent as Film Comment‘s. (“Consistently excellent” translates to “aligns with my specific taste,” of course.) Their 20-film selection represents the year rather nicely, from the widely seen and frequently listed (e.g. Mad Max: Fury Road and Inside Out) landing among some of our limited-release favorites, including Timbuktu, The Assassin, and Jauja. As editor Gavin Smith says, “That balance, which happens to be encapsulated in the top five in micro form, feels about right for the agenda of this magazine, which, since the very beginning, has been to champion the best in cinema wherever it hails from, all creatures great and small. Since we managed to run features on 11 of these and sung the praises of another five, it’s a pleasure to close...
- 12/14/2015
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Up the steep track, under the warm dusk, we trudged with no purpose other than to reach our agreed-upon stop: a hillside café halfway between Prizren and the heavens. Below us, behind us, glittery headlights passed through Kosovo’s second city, en route to its capital, Priština. Stop-start progressions. Bad roads. I’d been overseas for eleven days, Neil for thirty. Our time in Prizren, home for fourteen editions now to the dependably curated Dokufest, had helped to barricade a week between the previous film festival and our imminent recording.From Locarno, Switzerland, news had just arrived to us of the winners awarded during the closing ceremony of that town’s 68th annual film festival. The Locarno Film Festival is never short of talking points: though some of its fare had already retreated into the ether of our minds (good riddance to the lot of it), some had proved to...
- 9/24/2015
- by Michael Pattison
- MUBI
Below you will find our favorite films of the 68th Locarno Film Festival, as well as an index of our coverage.Daniel Kasmantop Picksi. L’Accademia delle Muse, CosmosII. Thithi, Happy Hour, Right Now, Wrong ThenIII. Deux Rémi, deux, 88:88COVERAGEDay 1: James White (Josh Mond), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel)Day 2: Infinitas (Marlen Khutsiev), I Am Twenty (Marlen Khutsiev), The Ballad of Cable Hogue (Sam Peckinpah)Day 3: Cosmos (Andrzej Żuławski), The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)Day 4: Thithi (Raam Reddy), Te prometo anarquía (Julio Hernández Cordón), Chant d'hiver (Otar Iosseliani), July Rain (Marlen Khutsiev), Year of the Dragon (Michael Cimino)Day 5: L’Accademia delle Muse (José Luis Guerín), Les idoles (Marc'o), Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah), The Killer Elite (Sam Peckinpah)Day 6: Good Morning, Night (Marco Bellocchio), No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman), Epilogue (Marlen Khutsiev)Day 7: Chevalier (Athina Rachel Tsangari...
- 9/1/2015
- by Notebook
- MUBI
The dust has settled on the Locarno Film Festival, and L’Accademia delle muse remains. Seen towards the start of the festival in the Signs of Life parallel sections, José Luis Guerín's latest film has already claimed a top spot in Mubi’s retrospective round-up of Locarno, which would make the task of praising it here redundant were it not for the need to explore in more detail the sheer exhilaration that thinking about the film continues to provoke.Daniel Kasman has already touched upon the intricate game of cat-and-mouse that the film plays with documentary form. Starting out as a chronicle upon a philology workshop exploring the figure of the muse, the film quickly (but discreetly, the move only becoming obvious in retrospect) segues into a fiction exploring the network of desires and resentments underlying the teacher’s romantic involvement with his pupils. Debates surrounding literature and reading...
- 9/1/2015
- by Nathan Letoré
- MUBI
"Spanish director José Luis Guerín is best known in the States for his pseudo-fictional love letter to women-watching In the City of Sylvia," begins Daniel Kasman in the Notebook, "but in fact is a prolific documentary filmmaker and has brought with him to Locarno the lovely and elegant pseudo-documentary L’Accademia delle Muse [The Academy of Muses]. Playful and clever as ever, Guerín has collaborated with Professor Raffaele Pinto and several actresses, perhaps students, to stage a false course in philology." We're collecting more reviews and interviews. » - David Hudson...
- 8/18/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
"Spanish director José Luis Guerín is best known in the States for his pseudo-fictional love letter to women-watching In the City of Sylvia," begins Daniel Kasman in the Notebook, "but in fact is a prolific documentary filmmaker and has brought with him to Locarno the lovely and elegant pseudo-documentary L’Accademia delle Muse [The Academy of Muses]. Playful and clever as ever, Guerín has collaborated with Professor Raffaele Pinto and several actresses, perhaps students, to stage a false course in philology." We're collecting more reviews and interviews. » - David Hudson...
- 8/18/2015
- Keyframe
Spanish director José Luis Guerín is best known in the States for his pseudo-fictional love letter to women-watching In the City of Sylvia, but in fact is a prolific documentary filmmaker and has brought with him to Locarno the lovely and elegant pseudo-documentary L’Accademia delle Muse. Playful and clever as ever, Guerín has collaborated with Professor Raffaele Pinto and several actresses, perhaps students, to stage a false course in philology. The class, populated almost entirely by women, discusses the nature, influence and meaning of muses in poetry, and what starts as seemingly a documentary on this classroom, its teacher and a few select students, subtly evolves into a drama of words and unseen actions.The issues at stake as discourse in the class—what desire means, if it has to be sexual, the difference between a woman and a muse, how a lover influences the beloved and vice versa...
- 8/10/2015
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
Hong Sang-soo's Right Now, Wrong Then.The lineup for the 2015 festival has been revealed, including new films by Hong Sang-soo, Andrzej Zulawski, Chantal Akerman, Athina Rachel Tsangari, and others, alongside retrospectives and tributes dedicated to Sam Peckinpah, Michael Cimino, Bulle Ogier, and much more.Piazza GRANDERicki and the Flash (Jonathan Demme, USA)La belle saison (Catherine Corsini, France)Le dernier passage (Pascal Magontier, France)Der staat gegen Fritz Bauer (Lars Kraume, Germany)Southpaw (Antoine Fuqua, USA)Trainwreck (Judd Apatow, USA)Jack (Elisabeth Scharang, Austria)Floride (Philippe Le Guay, France)The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, UK/USA)Erlkönig (Georges Schwizgebel, Switzerland)Guibord s'en va-t-en guerre (Philippe Falardeau, Canada)Bombay Velvet (Anurag Kashyap, India)Pastorale cilentana (Mario Martone, Italy)La vanite (Lionel Baier, Switzerland/France)The Laundryman (Lee Chung, Taiwan)Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, USA) I pugni ni tasca (Marco Bellocchio, Italy)Heliopolis (Sérgio Machado, Brazil)Amnesia (Barbet Schroeder,...
- 7/20/2015
- by Notebook
- MUBI
Among the highlights of the just-announced lineup for the 68th Locarno Film Festival: Hong Sang-soo's Right Now, Wrong Then, Andrzej Zulawski’s Cosmos, Chantal Akerman's No Home Movie, Athina Rachel Tsangari's Chevalier, Benjamín Naishtat’s El Moviemiento, Jonathan Demme's Ricki and the Flash, Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw, Anurag Kashyap's Bombay Velvet, José Luis Guerin's L’Accademia delle Muse, Nathan Silver's Riot, a Sam Peckinpah retrospective, tributes to Marco Bellocchio, Walter Murch, Bulle Ogier, Edward Norton, Michael Cimino, Alex Phillips, Andy Garcia—and more. » - David Hudson...
- 7/15/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Among the highlights of the just-announced lineup for the 68th Locarno Film Festival: Hong Sang-soo's Right Now, Wrong Then, Andrzej Zulawski’s Cosmos, Chantal Akerman's No Home Movie, Athina Rachel Tsangari's Chevalier, Benjamín Naishtat’s El Moviemiento, Jonathan Demme's Ricki and the Flash, Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw, Anurag Kashyap's Bombay Velvet, José Luis Guerin's L’Accademia delle Muse, Nathan Silver's Riot, a Sam Peckinpah retrospective, tributes to Marco Bellocchio, Walter Murch, Bulle Ogier, Edward Norton, Michael Cimino, Alex Phillips, Andy Garcia—and more. » - David Hudson...
- 7/15/2015
- Keyframe
World premieres for new films by Athina Rachel Tsangari, Hong Sangsoo, Ben Rivers; Southpaw, Trainwreck among Piazza Grande titles.
The 68th Locarno Film Festival (August 5-15) will open with Jonathan Demme’s musical comedy-drama Ricki And The Flash, in which Meryl Streep stars as a musician who tries to make things right with her family after giving up everything to pursue her dream of rock-and-roll stardom.
Written by Diablo Cody, the film gets a Piazza Grande berth alongside Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s Me And Earl And The Dying Girl, Catherine Corsini’s La Belle Saison and Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw.
Also playing is Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter. Cimino is being honoured with a Pardo D’onore Swisscom and will be taking part in an onstage conversation.
14 of the 18 films competing in the festival’s International Competition section for the Golden Leopard Award are world premieres including Andrzej Zulawski’s Cosmos, Ben Rivers’ The Sky...
The 68th Locarno Film Festival (August 5-15) will open with Jonathan Demme’s musical comedy-drama Ricki And The Flash, in which Meryl Streep stars as a musician who tries to make things right with her family after giving up everything to pursue her dream of rock-and-roll stardom.
Written by Diablo Cody, the film gets a Piazza Grande berth alongside Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s Me And Earl And The Dying Girl, Catherine Corsini’s La Belle Saison and Antoine Fuqua’s Southpaw.
Also playing is Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter. Cimino is being honoured with a Pardo D’onore Swisscom and will be taking part in an onstage conversation.
14 of the 18 films competing in the festival’s International Competition section for the Golden Leopard Award are world premieres including Andrzej Zulawski’s Cosmos, Ben Rivers’ The Sky...
- 7/15/2015
- by sarah.cooper@screendaily.com (Sarah Cooper)
- ScreenDaily
In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerin, 2007) A city of pedestrian streets, bicycles and terrace cafés, haunted by the image of a woman (Pilar López de Ayala) that the male protagonist (Xavier Lafitte) met six years previously. A city haunted by the traces of memories that fill its corners. In this film—a sublime lesson in montage and one of the most startling studies of the cinematic frame—Strasbourg is a dance of feminine gestures and expressions seizing the man’s look. A city where wall inscriptions evoke the obsessions of Italian poets, where ghostly encounters and partings occur in public space, a city where fugitive bodies and faces become an ever-changing landscape where the hero projects his fantasies. >> - Cristina Alvarez Lopez...
- 11/28/2014
- Keyframe
In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerin, 2007) A city of pedestrian streets, bicycles and terrace cafés, haunted by the image of a woman (Pilar López de Ayala) that the male protagonist (Xavier Lafitte) met six years previously. A city haunted by the traces of memories that fill its corners. In this film—a sublime lesson in montage and one of the most startling studies of the cinematic frame—Strasbourg is a dance of feminine gestures and expressions seizing the man’s look. A city where wall inscriptions evoke the obsessions of Italian poets, where ghostly encounters and partings occur in public space, a city where fugitive bodies and faces become an ever-changing landscape where the hero projects his fantasies. >> - Cristina Alvarez Lopez...
- 11/28/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Tweets and FaceTimes: Pascale Ferran Returns with Uneven But Adventurous Realist-Fantasy
There are a number of films scattered throughout that are intent on depicting how our world communicates and operates today, viz. through web-mediated interfaces. But none of them approached this reality, however glancingly, in such an exuberantly abstract register as did Pascale Ferran in her bonkers, wholly original, yet painfully uneven new film, Bird People. It’s her first project since the now eight year-old Lady Chatterley (2006), and one can imagine that at least half of that hiatus was spent working on the film’s CGI effects alone, which are some of the most subtle but meticulous to be employed in any film yet in existence. The only problem is that so much narrative playfulness and structural innovation gets seriously bogged down by Ferran’s awkward direction and a script filled with lame dialogue — perhaps attributable to English being her second language.
There are a number of films scattered throughout that are intent on depicting how our world communicates and operates today, viz. through web-mediated interfaces. But none of them approached this reality, however glancingly, in such an exuberantly abstract register as did Pascale Ferran in her bonkers, wholly original, yet painfully uneven new film, Bird People. It’s her first project since the now eight year-old Lady Chatterley (2006), and one can imagine that at least half of that hiatus was spent working on the film’s CGI effects alone, which are some of the most subtle but meticulous to be employed in any film yet in existence. The only problem is that so much narrative playfulness and structural innovation gets seriously bogged down by Ferran’s awkward direction and a script filled with lame dialogue — perhaps attributable to English being her second language.
- 9/8/2014
- by Blake Williams
- IONCINEMA.com
It's 100 years since the first volume of À La Recherche du Temps Perdu was published, but a definitive cinematisation of Proust's epic novel has so far proved elusive
This year has been punctuated by a rash of anniversary-themed books and articles anticipating the first world war centenary, and indeed attempting snapshots of how Europe looked and felt in 1913, eerily poised on the precipice. The other centenary is similar in many ways: on 8 November 1913, Marcel Proust published the first volume of À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, his monumental novel about memory, mortality and art, the belle époque, and the leisured and aristocratic classes of Paris, a city crammed in Proust's pages with the most vivid and extraordinary personalities, destined to be swept away by the Great War.
Fourteen years ago, at Cannes, I saw Raúl Ruiz's superlative screen adaptation of the final volume: Time Regained, in which the narrator,...
This year has been punctuated by a rash of anniversary-themed books and articles anticipating the first world war centenary, and indeed attempting snapshots of how Europe looked and felt in 1913, eerily poised on the precipice. The other centenary is similar in many ways: on 8 November 1913, Marcel Proust published the first volume of À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, his monumental novel about memory, mortality and art, the belle époque, and the leisured and aristocratic classes of Paris, a city crammed in Proust's pages with the most vivid and extraordinary personalities, destined to be swept away by the Great War.
Fourteen years ago, at Cannes, I saw Raúl Ruiz's superlative screen adaptation of the final volume: Time Regained, in which the narrator,...
- 11/7/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Jem Cohen's left-of-centre treatise on art history and the pleasure of looking might just change the way you see the world
Jem Cohen's quiet, strange and compelling hybrid film uses a brief encounter between wizened souls – Johann (Bobby Sommer), a genial guard at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, and Anne (singer Mary Margaret O'Hara), a Canadian tourist – to frame an inquiry into art history and the pleasures of looking. Inspired by Brueghel's busy tableaux, Cohen is drawn to museum minutiae: a canvas's unnoticed details, yawning schoolchildren, cigarette butts gathering outside the entrance. As the relationship progresses, he ends up cataloguing Vienna itself, transforming even its banal or throwaway features into a kind of art. It sounds impossibly rarefied, but the leads map out something unforced and charming between them, and Cohen's left-of-centre perspectives, juxtapositions and sight gags really do grow on you. Like José Luis Guerín's brilliant 2007 curio In the City of Sylvia,...
Jem Cohen's quiet, strange and compelling hybrid film uses a brief encounter between wizened souls – Johann (Bobby Sommer), a genial guard at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, and Anne (singer Mary Margaret O'Hara), a Canadian tourist – to frame an inquiry into art history and the pleasures of looking. Inspired by Brueghel's busy tableaux, Cohen is drawn to museum minutiae: a canvas's unnoticed details, yawning schoolchildren, cigarette butts gathering outside the entrance. As the relationship progresses, he ends up cataloguing Vienna itself, transforming even its banal or throwaway features into a kind of art. It sounds impossibly rarefied, but the leads map out something unforced and charming between them, and Cohen's left-of-centre perspectives, juxtapositions and sight gags really do grow on you. Like José Luis Guerín's brilliant 2007 curio In the City of Sylvia,...
- 9/5/2013
- by Mike McCahill
- The Guardian - Film News
News.
Above: Cinetract 2: Revolution Is in the Eye of the Beholder, a video essay by David Phelps. The video is part of a new issue of one of our very favorite—and one of the best—film magazines in the world, La Furia Umana, which is now out. Each issue is focused on dossiers on particular directors, and this issue includes essential articles on Leo McCarey, Paul Vecchiali, Jean-Claude Rousseau and José Luis Guerín. In the McCarey dossier are pieces by our very own Daniel Kasman—on the Cary Grant & Ginger Rogers vs. the Nazis film, Once Upon a Honeymoon—and Ted Fendt on McCarey's Charley Chase comedy shorts. But don't ignore the depth and variety of articles outside this center, which include searing video pieces by Notebook regulars David Phelps—on Lang, Vertov and protest—and Gina Telaroli on Joan Bennett, Max Ophüls, The Reckless Moment and the reflections of American presidents.
Above: Cinetract 2: Revolution Is in the Eye of the Beholder, a video essay by David Phelps. The video is part of a new issue of one of our very favorite—and one of the best—film magazines in the world, La Furia Umana, which is now out. Each issue is focused on dossiers on particular directors, and this issue includes essential articles on Leo McCarey, Paul Vecchiali, Jean-Claude Rousseau and José Luis Guerín. In the McCarey dossier are pieces by our very own Daniel Kasman—on the Cary Grant & Ginger Rogers vs. the Nazis film, Once Upon a Honeymoon—and Ted Fendt on McCarey's Charley Chase comedy shorts. But don't ignore the depth and variety of articles outside this center, which include searing video pieces by Notebook regulars David Phelps—on Lang, Vertov and protest—and Gina Telaroli on Joan Bennett, Max Ophüls, The Reckless Moment and the reflections of American presidents.
- 7/4/2012
- MUBI
Fourteen films have been competing in iber.film.america, the first-ever Latin American film festival online, organized by VoD platform filmotech.com. “The aim is to bring Hispanic cinema closer to Latin American communities from both continents, America and Europe, through new distribution channels,” said festival and platform director Juan Alía. “Internet is the ideal venue for the general public to have access to these types of films, that are of great quality but have not been released either in cinemas or as DVDs.” Until April 16, the platform’s Latin American visitors will be able to see the films for free, with up to 10,000 viewings possible for each film. The selected films, produced in Latin American countries between 2009 and 2011, will vie for the Critics Award, decided on by a jury made up of five journalists and with a prize of $3,000, and for the Audience Award. Fifteen countries, from Argentina to Mexico via Spain, Nicaragua, and Colombia, are represented in a selection that includes:
Ticket to Paradise (Isa: Icaic) by Gerardo Chijona Valdés
Undertow (Isa: Greenburg Taurig) by Javier Fuentes León
Des-autorizados by Elia Schneider
García (Isa: Bogeydom Liscensing) by José Luis Rugeles
Guest (Isa: Roxbury) by José Luis Guerín
Jean Gentil (Isa: Aurora Dominicana) by Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas
The Colors of the Mountain (Isa: Urban Distribution Int.) by Carlos César Arbeláez
La mala verdad (lit. “The bad truth”) by Miguel Ángel Rocca
Half of Oscar (Isa: FiGa FIlms) by Manuel Martín Cuenca
La Yuma (Isa: All Rights Ent.) by Florence Jauguey
Medianeras by Gustavo Taretto
Norberto’s Deadline (Isa: Outsider Pictures) by Daniel Hendler
Pescador (Isa: Latinofusion) (lit. “Fisherman”) by Sebastián Cordero
Transeúnte by Eryck Rocha
iber.film.america is supported by the Icaa, the Latin American Federation of Cinema and Audiovisual Producers (Fipca), and the Cervantes Institute.
Ticket to Paradise (Isa: Icaic) by Gerardo Chijona Valdés
Undertow (Isa: Greenburg Taurig) by Javier Fuentes León
Des-autorizados by Elia Schneider
García (Isa: Bogeydom Liscensing) by José Luis Rugeles
Guest (Isa: Roxbury) by José Luis Guerín
Jean Gentil (Isa: Aurora Dominicana) by Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas
The Colors of the Mountain (Isa: Urban Distribution Int.) by Carlos César Arbeláez
La mala verdad (lit. “The bad truth”) by Miguel Ángel Rocca
Half of Oscar (Isa: FiGa FIlms) by Manuel Martín Cuenca
La Yuma (Isa: All Rights Ent.) by Florence Jauguey
Medianeras by Gustavo Taretto
Norberto’s Deadline (Isa: Outsider Pictures) by Daniel Hendler
Pescador (Isa: Latinofusion) (lit. “Fisherman”) by Sebastián Cordero
Transeúnte by Eryck Rocha
iber.film.america is supported by the Icaa, the Latin American Federation of Cinema and Audiovisual Producers (Fipca), and the Cervantes Institute.
- 5/23/2012
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Every year since 2000, the Jeonju International Film Festival has commissioned three short works for its Jeonju Digital Project and, about a month ago now, the festival announced it'd selected Raya Martin, Vimukthi Jayasundara and Ying Liang for this year's edition (you may remember the three directors' video messages). The 2011 films are still making the rounds, and in fact, when they screen tomorrow at Exit Art, two of them — Claire Denis's To the Devil and José Luis Guerín's Memories of a Morning, both 45 minutes — will be seeing their NYC premieres. The third is Jean-Marie Straub's An Heir (22 mins, image above). If you're planning on being there, you'll want to read Robert Koehler's dispatch from Locarno last summer, touching briefly on the Denis and Guerín films but really digging into the Straub.
Reading. "With the main focus on African and Asian cinema and documentary film, Camera Lucida no 7 also...
Reading. "With the main focus on African and Asian cinema and documentary film, Camera Lucida no 7 also...
- 2/28/2012
- MUBI
Chicago – One of the annual gems of the Chicago movie scene is the Siskel Film Center’s unmissable European Union Film Festival. It provides local movie buffs with the opportunity to sample some of the finest achievements in world cinema. For many of the festival selections, their EU appearance will function as their sole screening in the Windy City.
This year’s edition, running from March 2nd through the 29th, includes high profile films from world renowned filmmakers like Andrea Arnold (“Wuthering Heights”), Bruce Dumont (“Hors Satan”), Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon (“The Fairy”), Abdellatif Kechiche (“Black Venus”) and John Landis (“Burke & Hare”). Moviegoers will have the opportunity to see the latest work from some of the world’s most acclaimed and beloved actors, including Léa Seydoux (“Belle Épine”), Tahir Rahim (“Free Men”), Colm Meaney (“Parked”), Noomi Rapace (“Beyond”), Andy Serkis (“Burke & Hare”), Isabella Rossellini (“Late Bloomers”) and Ewan McGregor...
This year’s edition, running from March 2nd through the 29th, includes high profile films from world renowned filmmakers like Andrea Arnold (“Wuthering Heights”), Bruce Dumont (“Hors Satan”), Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon (“The Fairy”), Abdellatif Kechiche (“Black Venus”) and John Landis (“Burke & Hare”). Moviegoers will have the opportunity to see the latest work from some of the world’s most acclaimed and beloved actors, including Léa Seydoux (“Belle Épine”), Tahir Rahim (“Free Men”), Colm Meaney (“Parked”), Noomi Rapace (“Beyond”), Andy Serkis (“Burke & Hare”), Isabella Rossellini (“Late Bloomers”) and Ewan McGregor...
- 2/15/2012
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Two filmmakers exchange ‘letters’ in the form of filmed reflections on their personal experiences and the nature of cinema.
Updating the great tradition of the elevated correspondence between two notable men (or women) of letters to the 21st century, where a file full of clips and audio recordings can be attached to an email and played back in a matter of seconds, is such a good idea that you wonder why no one’s tried it before.
Jonas Mekas and José Luis Guerín’s experiment, though containing several striking images and much food for thought, provides a partial...
Updating the great tradition of the elevated correspondence between two notable men (or women) of letters to the 21st century, where a file full of clips and audio recordings can be attached to an email and played back in a matter of seconds, is such a good idea that you wonder why no one’s tried it before.
Jonas Mekas and José Luis Guerín’s experiment, though containing several striking images and much food for thought, provides a partial...
- 10/16/2011
- by Jeff Robson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Above: Un héritier (2011).
According to my best available sources, the first Jean-Marie Straub/Danièle Huillet film to appear at the Locarno film festival was their 1994 short, Lothringen! (All corrections and updates to this are welcome.) This turns out to be perfectly appropriate for the appearance of Straub in Locarno circa 2011, in which new and old work appears in three separate programs, including a revival screening of Lothringen! (sometimes known as Lorraine!) as part of a Straub shorts program. That program also includes one of Straub's newest films, Un héritier, which was commissioned by the Jeonju film festival for its annual Jeonju Digital Project and, in what's now a tradition, is here in Locarno. This edition of the project is about as strong as any recent one, with the Straub and a small masterpiece by José Luis Guerín, Memories of a Morning, which sees him in the sublime mode of En construcción,...
According to my best available sources, the first Jean-Marie Straub/Danièle Huillet film to appear at the Locarno film festival was their 1994 short, Lothringen! (All corrections and updates to this are welcome.) This turns out to be perfectly appropriate for the appearance of Straub in Locarno circa 2011, in which new and old work appears in three separate programs, including a revival screening of Lothringen! (sometimes known as Lorraine!) as part of a Straub shorts program. That program also includes one of Straub's newest films, Un héritier, which was commissioned by the Jeonju film festival for its annual Jeonju Digital Project and, in what's now a tradition, is here in Locarno. This edition of the project is about as strong as any recent one, with the Straub and a small masterpiece by José Luis Guerín, Memories of a Morning, which sees him in the sublime mode of En construcción,...
- 8/10/2011
- MUBI
After a few words about "ice cream that's supposed to taste like movies" (no, really), editor Gary Morris introduces the latest edition of one of our favorite film journals, Bright Lights:
Matt Brennan leads off this issue with a deep-sea dive into the "body politic/body politics" trope, in the process giving readers something in short supply today: hope. Lesley Chow also shows a bold optimism in mining culture for its treasures in a provocative piece on cinema experimentalists Chris Marker, Alexander Sokurov, and José Luis Guerín. Our buddy Dave Saunders reminds us of the pleasures of Buñuel in Mexico and Béla Tarrin Edinburgh in a rather enchanting piece.
If Boris Barnet is not a household word in your house, you should consider moving. The brilliant Boris is the subject of a lengthy, authoritative profile by new contributor Giuliano Vivaldi, and you'll be running to the nearest Russian cinematheque after you've read this one.
Matt Brennan leads off this issue with a deep-sea dive into the "body politic/body politics" trope, in the process giving readers something in short supply today: hope. Lesley Chow also shows a bold optimism in mining culture for its treasures in a provocative piece on cinema experimentalists Chris Marker, Alexander Sokurov, and José Luis Guerín. Our buddy Dave Saunders reminds us of the pleasures of Buñuel in Mexico and Béla Tarrin Edinburgh in a rather enchanting piece.
If Boris Barnet is not a household word in your house, you should consider moving. The brilliant Boris is the subject of a lengthy, authoritative profile by new contributor Giuliano Vivaldi, and you'll be running to the nearest Russian cinematheque after you've read this one.
- 8/10/2011
- MUBI
Similar to the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes, or the Visions and Vanguard programmes at Tiff, Venice has their own special sidebar for the more experimental folk on the cinema stage, called Orizzonti (Horizons). Last year saw some pretty heavy titles in this section, including Catherine Breillat's dream fable Sleeping Beauty, José Luis Guerín's local colour doc Guest, Hong Sang-soo's quadrant-structured Oki's Movie, and Patrick Keiller's continuation of his heady essay films with Robinson in Ruins. The full announcement for this year's edition will be dropping in the coming weeks, but today saw the unveiling of the jury, as well as their opening film, which will be Iranian filmmaker Amir Nedari's Cut. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose masterful and lethargic Syndromes and Century played in the 2006 main competition, had already been crowned jury prez some four weeks ago, but has been forced to drop out for unspecified reasons (let's hope...
- 7/13/2011
- IONCINEMA.com
Updated.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's newly restored Despair (1978) "was one of the hottest tickets in the Classics sidebar" in Cannes this year, notes Dennis Lim in his Los Angeles Times review of the new DVD out from Olive Films, which has also issued Fassbinder's I Only Want You to Love Me (1976). "The relative obscurity of Despair is surprising given its pedigree. It's based on a Vladimir Nabokov novel, adapted by Tom Stoppard, and starring the English actor Dirk Bogarde. Nabokov's story of a Russian émigré, written in the 30s, takes place in Prague. Fassbinder changed the setting to early-30s Berlin, teetering on the abyss of the Third Reich…. Despair is perhaps the most explicit elaboration of one of Fassbinder's recurring themes: the alienation of someone who not only 'stands outside himself,' as Hermann [Bogarde] puts it, but also wants to escape himself and indeed flee the trap of identity altogether.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's newly restored Despair (1978) "was one of the hottest tickets in the Classics sidebar" in Cannes this year, notes Dennis Lim in his Los Angeles Times review of the new DVD out from Olive Films, which has also issued Fassbinder's I Only Want You to Love Me (1976). "The relative obscurity of Despair is surprising given its pedigree. It's based on a Vladimir Nabokov novel, adapted by Tom Stoppard, and starring the English actor Dirk Bogarde. Nabokov's story of a Russian émigré, written in the 30s, takes place in Prague. Fassbinder changed the setting to early-30s Berlin, teetering on the abyss of the Third Reich…. Despair is perhaps the most explicit elaboration of one of Fassbinder's recurring themes: the alienation of someone who not only 'stands outside himself,' as Hermann [Bogarde] puts it, but also wants to escape himself and indeed flee the trap of identity altogether.
- 6/14/2011
- MUBI
"Margot Benacerraf, now in her 80s, only ever made one feature-length film," begins Josef Braun, "but that film remains so extraordinary, so very nearly singular, that it merits an admiration on par with many more prolific and esteemed bodies of work. After studying and gathering numerous influential allies in France and elsewhere, Benacerraf returned to her native Venezuela, specifically to an island no one had heard of, though when was discovered by the Spanish 450 years earlier it was deemed a sort of paradise on account of its abundance of one resource: salt, as valuable back then as gold. We can see the ruins of colonial fortresses erected to protect the island and its salt marshes, once the center of piracy in the Caribbean, during the prologue of Araya (1959). But historical context quickly gives way to the seeming timelessness of hard labour, to Benacerraf's lyrical approach to depicting the life of a community that was,...
- 5/17/2011
- MUBI
"Film must provide audiences the opportunity to discover questions."--Lisandro Alonso. When I interviewed programmer Diana Sanchez at the 2010 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff), she admitted--within the parameters of curatorial taste--her fascination with the appearance of a new genre she was noticing in such films as Pedro González-Rubio's sophomore feature Alamar (To the Sea, 2009), Oscar Ruiz Navia's debut feature Crab Trap (El Vuelco del Cangrejo, 2009), and the films of Lisandro Alonso, José Luis Guerín, and Miguel Gomes; a genre that she described as "a mix of documentary and fiction with a real sense of play between these two forms." The Pacific Film Archive (Pfa) celebrates the appearance and critical popularity of this new documentary-fiction hybrid with their upcoming series...
- 3/21/2011
- Screen Anarchy
There’s very little in this world that gets me more excited than when an underground film festival adopts WordPress as a Cms for their website. Even more exciting is when the world’s oldest underground fest does it, as the Chicago Underground Film Festival has recently. Awesome looking site, guys! Gazelluloid is an experimental cinema blog that’s been around almost a year, but I just discovered it. The site posts up tons of great short films with no commentary. You should go bookmark it. There’s another brand new experimental film blog out there, too: cori e comete. However, you have to read Italian to get the full effect. The blog name translates to “choruses and comets.” There’s a new experimental and avant-garde screening space in North America: CinemaSpace at the Segal Centre in Montreal. Lots of great screenings are scheduled already. CineSpace is being run by Daïchi Saïto and Malena Szlam.
- 2/6/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
“I am not an ideologue,” José Luis Guerín says matter-of-factly. “I need characters.” Judging by the lukewarm response that has greeted his latest film, Guest, it’s a dicey stance for a director of art house cinema to take these days. Early reviewers have praised Guerín’s images but questioned the structure of the film, which often finds him wandering through Third World cities and inviting conversations about hot-button topics like immigration, colonialism, and religion. That he does so without any pretense of deep sociopolitical analysis makes Guest something of an anachronism: it’s a politically-interested film in an observational mode, more humble and curious than didactic.
In 2006, after premiering his previous film, In the City of Sylvia, Guerín decided to spend a year traveling the world by accepting every festival invitation he was offered. He carried a consumer-grade Dv camera with him wherever he went and very gradually built...
In 2006, after premiering his previous film, In the City of Sylvia, Guerín decided to spend a year traveling the world by accepting every festival invitation he was offered. He carried a consumer-grade Dv camera with him wherever he went and very gradually built...
- 12/15/2010
- MUBI
"In the year from September 2007 until September 2008, I challenged myself by accepting without any exclusions all of the film festivals and events inviting me as a guest [for my film En la ciudad de Sylvia (In the City of Sylvia, 2007)]. It made no difference whether I had any fondness for the place, nor the importance of the event: I would go to all of them; and I would try to see something at each one, leaving a trace of that fleeting visit like a quick sketch, captured in just a stroke. I arrive in an unknown city and wander about the streets, camera in hand, without any direction or preconceived idea in mind beyond the predisposition to be open to all encounters, to the latent revelation in the fortuitous. During this year of hotel rooms, I would frequently wake up to find a festival pass on the bedside table where the word Guest could be read next to the passport-sized photo identifying me.
- 10/15/2010
- Screen Anarchy
Patricio Guzmán was born in 1941 in Santiago de Chile. He studied at the Official Film School in Madrid where he specialized in documentary cinema. His work is regularly selected for and awarded prizes by international festivals. In 1973 he filmed The Battle Of Chile, a five-hour documentary about Salvador Allende's period of government and its fall. Cineaste described it as "one of the 10 best political films in the world." After the coup d'état, Guzmán was arrested and spent two weeks in the Santiago National Stadium where he was threatened with simulated executions on several occasions. He left Chile in 1973 and moved to Cuba, then Spain and France, where he made other films: In the Name of God (on liberation theology during the Chilean dictatorship), The Southern Cross (about popular religion in Latin America), Barriers of Solitude (about the historical memory of a small Mexican village), Obstinate Memory (about political amnesia...
- 10/14/2010
- MUBI
"Hitting the film festival circuit for a year with In the City of Sylvia, José Luis Guerín wanders the streets to catch glances of human bustle in a variety of locations," writes Fernando F Croce, reviewing Guest at the House Next Door. "The trouble with Guerín's evocative two-hour diary is that, attempting to convey a feeling of life continuously swarming away from the confines of festivals, it reveals a dearth of concern for specific subjects that turns the faces and places into an amorphous mass. Touching without exploring, it still showcases enough of Guerín's warm touch to make one wish more visiting filmmakers would stray from their hotel rooms, camera in hand." More from Jonathan Holland (Variety), Daniel Kasman (The Daily Notebook), Karina Longworth (Voice) and Eugenio Renzi (Independencia, 4.3).
- 9/24/2010
- MUBI
0845 Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (Tsui Hark, China)
In marked contrast to Takashi Miike’s staunchly assignment-like, termite-filled genre epic 13 Assassins, Tsui Hark shows the other side of the coin, a once-maverick, now-regular filmmaker whose flourishes are as inspired as always but whose cinema profoundly misses the hunger, the perspicacity, the preciousness, the by-any-means-necessary sense of attack energy of his youth. Fine. Detective Dee runs on its genre engine well enough nevertheless—an imprisoned Andy Lau is taken out of jail by the soon to be the first female empress of China to solve, as the title so honestly puts forth, the mystery of people spontaneously, hideously, and in great computer generated cindery detail, bursting into flames and burning to death. Tsui centers the beginning and the end on a mammoth Buddha skyscraper built in the Forbidden Palace’s backyard (circa 650 A.D.), which obtains a conceptual grandeur and abstract,...
In marked contrast to Takashi Miike’s staunchly assignment-like, termite-filled genre epic 13 Assassins, Tsui Hark shows the other side of the coin, a once-maverick, now-regular filmmaker whose flourishes are as inspired as always but whose cinema profoundly misses the hunger, the perspicacity, the preciousness, the by-any-means-necessary sense of attack energy of his youth. Fine. Detective Dee runs on its genre engine well enough nevertheless—an imprisoned Andy Lau is taken out of jail by the soon to be the first female empress of China to solve, as the title so honestly puts forth, the mystery of people spontaneously, hideously, and in great computer generated cindery detail, bursting into flames and burning to death. Tsui centers the beginning and the end on a mammoth Buddha skyscraper built in the Forbidden Palace’s backyard (circa 650 A.D.), which obtains a conceptual grandeur and abstract,...
- 9/18/2010
- MUBI
In every major city in the world there are squares much like the one in José Luis Guerín‘s Guest. Like Union Square in New York City, Yonge-Dundas Square is an area where you’ll find hippies, 9/11 “truthers,” performance artists and those allied to whatever cause is worth calling attention to at the time. Guest, following in a video diary sensibility pioneered by Jonas Mekas and stolen by American ad agencies to sell us Coca-Cola, calls attention to the fringe focusing his lens away from what we commonly associate with the film festival world.
Subjectivity is traded for formalism, as it should be in a video diary. It is impossible to achieve the realism of a Fredrick Wiseman film even in a Fredrick Wiseman film: decisions must be made. Guerin’s film is beautifully shot in black and white mini-dv, a perfect medium for self-exploration. Often times Guerin presents a...
Subjectivity is traded for formalism, as it should be in a video diary. It is impossible to achieve the realism of a Fredrick Wiseman film even in a Fredrick Wiseman film: decisions must be made. Guerin’s film is beautifully shot in black and white mini-dv, a perfect medium for self-exploration. Often times Guerin presents a...
- 9/16/2010
- by John Fink
- The Film Stage
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