There is, a critic will argue, a great deal of value in finding and discussing the worst films of the year. All the films released in a given epoch are a reflection of the trends and ideas that produced them, and scoring the bottom of the barrel for the worst filmmaking, the worst ideas, and the most misguided thinking will provide a valuable analysis of where we are as a society. Worst-of lists are important and vital and should be written with enthusiasm. They also let critics blow off steam a little bit; we don't have the luxury to skip bad movies or avoid talking about the ones we hate. It's our job.
The Golden Raspberries, or the Razzies for short, however, lost sight of that value a while back. The annual Razzies announcement is usually a snarky affair that only serves to pick on the year's least popular blockbusters,...
The Golden Raspberries, or the Razzies for short, however, lost sight of that value a while back. The annual Razzies announcement is usually a snarky affair that only serves to pick on the year's least popular blockbusters,...
- 2/15/2024
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
The Toronto Film Festival has unveiled its Wavelengths program for artist-driven experimental work that includes films by avant garde directors Denis Côté, Radu Jude, the late Chantal Akerman and Wang Bing.
There’s selections for Isiah Medina’s He Thought He Died, an experimental heist film; Angela Schanelec’s Music, a retelling of the Oedipus myth; and Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia, which stars Larissa Corriveau and will first bow at the Locarno Film Festival.
Wavelengths also booked fiction debuts with Rosine Mbakam’s Mambar Pierrette, a portrait of a Cameroonian seamstress; and Phạm Thiên Ân’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, the Vietnamese director’s hypnotic first feature about a man haunted by past memories when returning to his hometown that picked up the Caméra d’Or in Cannes.
“The increasing necessity to support artists willing to take risks, break rules and challenge the status quo — especially in our over-saturated media landscape — bears repeating,...
There’s selections for Isiah Medina’s He Thought He Died, an experimental heist film; Angela Schanelec’s Music, a retelling of the Oedipus myth; and Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia, which stars Larissa Corriveau and will first bow at the Locarno Film Festival.
Wavelengths also booked fiction debuts with Rosine Mbakam’s Mambar Pierrette, a portrait of a Cameroonian seamstress; and Phạm Thiên Ân’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, the Vietnamese director’s hypnotic first feature about a man haunted by past memories when returning to his hometown that picked up the Caméra d’Or in Cannes.
“The increasing necessity to support artists willing to take risks, break rules and challenge the status quo — especially in our over-saturated media landscape — bears repeating,...
- 8/11/2023
- by Etan Vlessing
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
A 4K uncut restoration of Chen Kaige’s 1993 Palme d’Or winner “Farewell My Concubine” is a highlight of the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) Classics strand while Jean-Luc Godard’s last film will feature in Wavelengths.
The Classics strand also includes Canadian producer-director Brigitte Berman’s Oscar-winning feature documentary “Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got” (1985), portraying the life of the clarinettist and bandleader, and, after decades of oblivion Jacques Rivette’s New Wave classic “L’amour fou” (1969), whose original celluloid elements were damaged in a fire. A 50th anniversary screening of “Touki Bouki” (1973), from Sengal’s Djibril Diop Mambéty and Ousmane Sembène’s “Xala” (1975), presented in 4K, complete the program. Classics is curated by Robyn Citizen, director of programming and platform lead, with contributions from Andréa Picard.
The Wavelengths strand has 12 feature films and 19 shorts, as well as a suite of four restored early films by...
The Classics strand also includes Canadian producer-director Brigitte Berman’s Oscar-winning feature documentary “Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got” (1985), portraying the life of the clarinettist and bandleader, and, after decades of oblivion Jacques Rivette’s New Wave classic “L’amour fou” (1969), whose original celluloid elements were damaged in a fire. A 50th anniversary screening of “Touki Bouki” (1973), from Sengal’s Djibril Diop Mambéty and Ousmane Sembène’s “Xala” (1975), presented in 4K, complete the program. Classics is curated by Robyn Citizen, director of programming and platform lead, with contributions from Andréa Picard.
The Wavelengths strand has 12 feature films and 19 shorts, as well as a suite of four restored early films by...
- 8/11/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
The Toronto International Film Festival has announced this year’s Wavelengths and Classics sidebars, the former section known for its politically charged, geographically diverse fare with a wide range of work drawn from the worlds of documentary, contemporary art, and international art-house cinema.
Wavelengths this year counts 12 feature films and 19 shorts, as well as a suite of four restored early films by the singular Chantal Akerman.
Of note in the Wavelengths short section, North American audiences will finally get to see Jean-Luc Godard’s swan song short, Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars, which played Cannes this past spring.
Another highlight in the Classics sidebar is the 4K uncut restoration of Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, the only movie from China to win the Palme d’Or. The original film had 20 minutes cut by then Miramax Boss Harvey Weinstein much to the chagrin of jury...
Wavelengths this year counts 12 feature films and 19 shorts, as well as a suite of four restored early films by the singular Chantal Akerman.
Of note in the Wavelengths short section, North American audiences will finally get to see Jean-Luc Godard’s swan song short, Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars, which played Cannes this past spring.
Another highlight in the Classics sidebar is the 4K uncut restoration of Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, the only movie from China to win the Palme d’Or. The original film had 20 minutes cut by then Miramax Boss Harvey Weinstein much to the chagrin of jury...
- 8/11/2023
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
There have been several films chronicling on African migration — specifically, undertaking the treacherous journey over the Atlantic in search of better lives — and they’re almost always male-centric and grounded in stark realism. Mati Diop’s “Atlantics” upends that tradition. The Cannes-winning feature debut harnesses fantasy to tell a haunting story about the women who are often left behind. And although Diop hasn’t directly lost loved ones at sea, the story is also a symbolic representation of her own journey as she comes to terms with her identity.
The film, which was selected as Senegal’s entry for Best International Film Oscar consideration, made history when “Atlantics” premiered at Cannes this year and won the Grand Prix. Diop became the first black woman to direct a film featured in the festival’s Competition section; Netflix acquired the title before the end of the festival, solidifying Diop’s breakthrough status.
The film, which was selected as Senegal’s entry for Best International Film Oscar consideration, made history when “Atlantics” premiered at Cannes this year and won the Grand Prix. Diop became the first black woman to direct a film featured in the festival’s Competition section; Netflix acquired the title before the end of the festival, solidifying Diop’s breakthrough status.
- 11/8/2019
- by Tambay Obenson
- Indiewire
Earlier this month, the Academy announced that 93 countries submitted films for its International Feature Film category at the 92nd Academy Awards. Ten of these came from Africa, a new record for the continent.
It remains to be seen whether any of these titles will be shortlisted in order to make the final list of five nominees. Of the 10 films, Senegal’s “Atlantics,” Mati Diop’s 2019 Cannes Grand Prix winner acquired by Netflix, probably has the strongest chance.
The last time a film representing an African country won this category was South Africa’s “Tsotsi,” by Gavin Hood, at the 78th Oscars in 2006. It’s one of just three wins from African countries, which also include Algeria’s “Z” by Costa-Gavras in 1969 and the Ivory Coast’s “Black and White in Color” (“La Victoire en chantant”) by Jean-Jacques Annaud in 1976.
In 2018, eight submissions included African first-timers Mozambique (“The Train of Salt...
It remains to be seen whether any of these titles will be shortlisted in order to make the final list of five nominees. Of the 10 films, Senegal’s “Atlantics,” Mati Diop’s 2019 Cannes Grand Prix winner acquired by Netflix, probably has the strongest chance.
The last time a film representing an African country won this category was South Africa’s “Tsotsi,” by Gavin Hood, at the 78th Oscars in 2006. It’s one of just three wins from African countries, which also include Algeria’s “Z” by Costa-Gavras in 1969 and the Ivory Coast’s “Black and White in Color” (“La Victoire en chantant”) by Jean-Jacques Annaud in 1976.
In 2018, eight submissions included African first-timers Mozambique (“The Train of Salt...
- 10/12/2019
- by Tambay Obenson
- Indiewire
The first trailer for French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop’s feature directorial debut, “Atlantics,” offers a bewitching look at the filmmaker’s already-lauded “ghost love story.” “Atlantics” premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it was awarded the Grand Prix. The film’s Cannes premiere earned Diop a spot in the history books: She became the first woman of African descent with a film screening in the 72-year-old festival’s Competition section, and has proven to be one of the biggest breakouts this year.
Netflix acquired “Atlantics” at the festival, representing the streaming giant’s ongoing push into the African continent — a still relatively untapped source of talent and content. Last week, the film was selected by Senegal as the country’s submission for Best International Feature Film Oscar consideration.
With “Atlantics,” Diop has crafted a fantastical blend of romance, socio-political commentary, and surreal dreamscape all in one, resulting in what is,...
Netflix acquired “Atlantics” at the festival, representing the streaming giant’s ongoing push into the African continent — a still relatively untapped source of talent and content. Last week, the film was selected by Senegal as the country’s submission for Best International Feature Film Oscar consideration.
With “Atlantics,” Diop has crafted a fantastical blend of romance, socio-political commentary, and surreal dreamscape all in one, resulting in what is,...
- 10/8/2019
- by Tambay Obenson
- Indiewire
Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Hyenas (1992) screens at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood) Thursday August 29th, The screening begin at 7:30. Facebook invite can be found Here.
Alongside fellow countryman Ousmane Sembène, director Djibril Diop Mambéty put Senegalese films on the world cinema map in the 1960s and beyond. Perhaps best known for his 1973 work Touki Bouki but making great short and feature films right up until his last one (1999’s The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun), Hyenas still manages to stand out as one of his best. An adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play The Visit, in Hyenas we find the return of a woman named Linguere Ramatou to her hometown, for she has a score to settle that has haunted her since her teenage years.
In Wolof with English subtitles.
Admission is:
$7 for the general public
$6 for seniors, Webster alumni and students from other schools
$5 for...
Alongside fellow countryman Ousmane Sembène, director Djibril Diop Mambéty put Senegalese films on the world cinema map in the 1960s and beyond. Perhaps best known for his 1973 work Touki Bouki but making great short and feature films right up until his last one (1999’s The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun), Hyenas still manages to stand out as one of his best. An adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play The Visit, in Hyenas we find the return of a woman named Linguere Ramatou to her hometown, for she has a score to settle that has haunted her since her teenage years.
In Wolof with English subtitles.
Admission is:
$7 for the general public
$6 for seniors, Webster alumni and students from other schools
$5 for...
- 8/25/2019
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Variety is teaming with Unifrance, an agency that promotes French cinema around the world, to focus attention on four emerging talents in the French movie industry as part of Unifrance’s “New Faces of French Cinema” program. Here Variety profiles the rising filmmakers: Justine Triet, Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec, Hafsia Herzi and Mati Diop.
Mati Diop
Born to a family of musicians and filmmakers, raised in France, and trained at the Le Fresnoy National Studio of Contemporary Arts, Diop has already built an impressive track record on the international circuit.
She’s taken her short- and medium-length films to festivals in Marseille, Venice and Montreal, collecting prizes left, right and center, and has starred in acclaimed works from directors including Claire Denis and Antonio Campos.
This year she’ll make history as the first black female filmmaker to compete for the Palme d’Or with her feature debut, “Atlantics.” She said she...
Mati Diop
Born to a family of musicians and filmmakers, raised in France, and trained at the Le Fresnoy National Studio of Contemporary Arts, Diop has already built an impressive track record on the international circuit.
She’s taken her short- and medium-length films to festivals in Marseille, Venice and Montreal, collecting prizes left, right and center, and has starred in acclaimed works from directors including Claire Denis and Antonio Campos.
This year she’ll make history as the first black female filmmaker to compete for the Palme d’Or with her feature debut, “Atlantics.” She said she...
- 5/19/2019
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
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.
Quad Cinema
“Fighting Mad: German Genre Films from the Margins” breaks open a long-sealed side of the nation’s cinema. See the trailer here.
Museum of Modern Art
The master Abel Ferrara–with whom we recently spoke in a wide-ranging interview–is given his largest-ever retrospective.
Metrograph
Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki follow-up Hyenas continues screening.
Quad Cinema
“Fighting Mad: German Genre Films from the Margins” breaks open a long-sealed side of the nation’s cinema. See the trailer here.
Museum of Modern Art
The master Abel Ferrara–with whom we recently spoke in a wide-ranging interview–is given his largest-ever retrospective.
Metrograph
Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Touki Bouki follow-up Hyenas continues screening.
- 5/17/2019
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
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.
Museum of Modern Art
The master Abel Ferrara–with whom we spoke this week in a wide-ranging interview–is given his largest-ever retrospective.
Film Forum
Films by Pasolini, Hou Hsiao-hsien, John Ford, Rossellini and more screen in “Trilogies.”
King Kong vs. Godzilla plays on Saturday and Sunday.
Quad Cinema
A restoration of James Ivory’s Quartet,...
Museum of Modern Art
The master Abel Ferrara–with whom we spoke this week in a wide-ranging interview–is given his largest-ever retrospective.
Film Forum
Films by Pasolini, Hou Hsiao-hsien, John Ford, Rossellini and more screen in “Trilogies.”
King Kong vs. Godzilla plays on Saturday and Sunday.
Quad Cinema
A restoration of James Ivory’s Quartet,...
- 5/3/2019
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Ami Diakhate in Hyenas, a film by Djibril Diop Mambéty. A Metrograph Pictures release.In more ways than one, Senegal is exactly like Iceland. Everyone is connected. All the Icelandic people I have ever met somehow know each other from high school, and have had some connection to Björk, like bringing their children to the same swimming pool as hers or being a distant relative. Every Icelander also has written and published a book—or so it seems. Similarly, if you are Senegalese, every single one of your compatriots somehow is your distant cousin. If not, then you will have to spend all the time it will take to figure out how you are related, even if you have to go back several generations to find that link. This is because so much of Senegalese culture is about bonding with people like siblings, and looking out for one another, even...
- 4/26/2019
- MUBI
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.
Museum of the Moving Image
“See It Big! Action,” one of the finest genre retrospectives in recent memory, continues with screenings of The French Connection, Fury Road, and Bullitt.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit plays throughout the weekend as part of an Earth Day celebration.
A series on 21st-century Latin American cinema continues with Third World this Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
“See It Big! Action,” one of the finest genre retrospectives in recent memory, continues with screenings of The French Connection, Fury Road, and Bullitt.
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit plays throughout the weekend as part of an Earth Day celebration.
A series on 21st-century Latin American cinema continues with Third World this Sunday.
- 4/26/2019
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Mati Diop, niece of the late, great Senegalese cinema pioneer Djibril Diop Mambéty — director of African cinema classics “Touki Bouki” and “Hyènes” — makes her feature film directorial debut with “Atlantiques,” which will world premiere at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. She is the first black woman with a film in the 72-year-old festival’s Competition section, and stands to be one of the biggest breakouts at Cannes this year.
Previously titled “Fire Next Time” (although not based on James Baldwin’s famous essay collection of the same name), the film is in rare company. Currently, Diop and Malian filmmaker Ladj Ly are the only filmmakers of African descent represented in competition at Cannes this year.
Diop is the daughter of Senegalese jazz musician Wasis Diop, but cinephiles will likely be more familiar with her filmmaker uncle. She first received attention from international critics and cinema enthusiasts for her work as an...
Previously titled “Fire Next Time” (although not based on James Baldwin’s famous essay collection of the same name), the film is in rare company. Currently, Diop and Malian filmmaker Ladj Ly are the only filmmakers of African descent represented in competition at Cannes this year.
Diop is the daughter of Senegalese jazz musician Wasis Diop, but cinephiles will likely be more familiar with her filmmaker uncle. She first received attention from international critics and cinema enthusiasts for her work as an...
- 4/18/2019
- by Tambay Obenson
- Indiewire
Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty made his mark on international cinema with his very first feature, “Touki Bouki,” which picked up the International Critics Award at 1973 Cannes Film Festival. Together with “Hyenas” (1992), Mambéty’s oeuvre — which comprises of those two features and five shorts — has come to be recognized as one of the most important in the history of African film.
Both “Touki Bouki” and “Hyenas” were to be completed by a third film, as part of a trilogy on colonization and corruption, but Mambéty died in 1998 without being able to finish the triptych.
Now, “Hyenas,” the long-delayed follow-up to his canonical “Touki Bouki,” will enjoy a revival following a new restoration from the original negative, that is set for a nationwide theatrical run, starting on April 26 at the Metrograph in New York City.
Distributed by Metrograph Pictures, IndieWire has the exclusive new trailer for the film.
A fantastical and...
Both “Touki Bouki” and “Hyenas” were to be completed by a third film, as part of a trilogy on colonization and corruption, but Mambéty died in 1998 without being able to finish the triptych.
Now, “Hyenas,” the long-delayed follow-up to his canonical “Touki Bouki,” will enjoy a revival following a new restoration from the original negative, that is set for a nationwide theatrical run, starting on April 26 at the Metrograph in New York City.
Distributed by Metrograph Pictures, IndieWire has the exclusive new trailer for the film.
A fantastical and...
- 4/12/2019
- by Tambay Obenson
- Indiewire
The African Film Heritage Project has announced that it will screen restorations of four African films on their home continent for the first time as part of the 50th anniversary of the Pan African Film Festival of Ouagadougou. The Afhp is a partnership between the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (Fepaci), Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, along with its affiliate archive the Cineteca di Bologna, and Unesco. The movies in question are Med Hondo’s “Soleil Ô” (1970), Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamima’s “Chronique des années de braise” (1975), Timité Bassori’s “La Femme au couteau” (1969), and Jean-Pierre Dikongue-Pipa’s “Muna Moto” (1975).
The Afhp will also present seven African films previously restored by Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, including work by the likes of Ousmane Sembene, Djibril Diop Mambety, Shadi Abdel Salam and Ahmed El Maanouni.
“I can’t tell you how really deeply inspired and excited I am by African films; ‘Yeelen,...
The Afhp will also present seven African films previously restored by Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, including work by the likes of Ousmane Sembene, Djibril Diop Mambety, Shadi Abdel Salam and Ahmed El Maanouni.
“I can’t tell you how really deeply inspired and excited I am by African films; ‘Yeelen,...
- 2/23/2019
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Touki Bouki was a commercial flop in 1973. But the arresting image used in the couple’s latest tour has sparked new interest
The image is arresting: a man sits astride a motorcycle, the handlebars adorned with the giant skull of a zebu, its horns forming a wide skeletal embrace. His head is turned; something beyond the frame has caught his attention. Seated behind him is a woman, her hands on his shoulders, staring straight down the lens. To some, this photograph will be instantly recognisable as a homage to Touki Bouki (the title means “The Hyena’s Journey”), generally credited as the first African avant-garde film. The fact that the couple in the modern restaging are Jay- Z and Beyoncé, with the image spearheading the promotional campaign for their On the Run II world tour, has propelled this little-known but visionary Senegalese film into the spotlight some 45 years after it was made.
The image is arresting: a man sits astride a motorcycle, the handlebars adorned with the giant skull of a zebu, its horns forming a wide skeletal embrace. His head is turned; something beyond the frame has caught his attention. Seated behind him is a woman, her hands on his shoulders, staring straight down the lens. To some, this photograph will be instantly recognisable as a homage to Touki Bouki (the title means “The Hyena’s Journey”), generally credited as the first African avant-garde film. The fact that the couple in the modern restaging are Jay- Z and Beyoncé, with the image spearheading the promotional campaign for their On the Run II world tour, has propelled this little-known but visionary Senegalese film into the spotlight some 45 years after it was made.
- 6/17/2018
- by Ryan Gilbey
- The Guardian - Film News
Welcome, one and all, to another classic review from your friends here at The Film Stage Show. Today, Michael Snydel, Bill Graham and I are joined by Scout Tafoya to talk about Djibril Diop Mambéty’s classic French New Wave-inspired Senegalese film, Touki Bouki.
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M4A: The Film Stage Show Classic – Touki Bouki
The Film Stage is supported by Mubi, a curated online cinema streaming a selection of exceptional independent, classic, and award-winning films from around the world. Each day, Mubi hand-picks a new gem and you have one month to watch it. Try it for free at mubi.com/filmstage.
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Support The Film Stage Show on Patreon. E-mail us or follow on Twitter and Facebook with any questions or comments.
Subscribe on iTunes or see below to stream/download. Enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor.
M4A: The Film Stage Show Classic – Touki Bouki
The Film Stage is supported by Mubi, a curated online cinema streaming a selection of exceptional independent, classic, and award-winning films from around the world. Each day, Mubi hand-picks a new gem and you have one month to watch it. Try it for free at mubi.com/filmstage.
Subscribe below:
Support The Film Stage Show on Patreon. E-mail us or follow on Twitter and Facebook with any questions or comments.
- 3/26/2018
- by Brian Roan
- The Film Stage
Aaron is joined by Doug McCambridge and Jackie Carlson and they discuss female filmmakers in the collection, take the deep dive into David Lynch and Coppola’s Rumble Fish. Most importantly, Doug is ridiculed for failing to live up to his promise to get the trial.
Episode Notes
6:30 – Aaron and his TV problems
14:50 – Female Filmmakers
33:10 – David Lynch
47:00 – Rumble Fish
54:30 – Short Takes (Canoa, Mildred Pierce, David Lynch Shorts, Touki Bouki)
1:03:40 – FilmStruck
Episode Links Frameline – Desert Hearts The Agnès Varda Blu-ray Collection What Did Five Woody Woodpecker Dolls Do to Upset David Lynch? Janus Films – Fire Walk With Me Episode Credits Aaron West: Twitter | Website | Letterboxd Doug McCambridge: Twitter | Website Jackie Carlson: Instagram | Letterboxd Criterion Now: Twitter | Facebook Group Criterion Cast: Facebook | Twitter
Music for the show is from Fatboy Roberts’ Geek Remixed project.
Episode Notes
6:30 – Aaron and his TV problems
14:50 – Female Filmmakers
33:10 – David Lynch
47:00 – Rumble Fish
54:30 – Short Takes (Canoa, Mildred Pierce, David Lynch Shorts, Touki Bouki)
1:03:40 – FilmStruck
Episode Links Frameline – Desert Hearts The Agnès Varda Blu-ray Collection What Did Five Woody Woodpecker Dolls Do to Upset David Lynch? Janus Films – Fire Walk With Me Episode Credits Aaron West: Twitter | Website | Letterboxd Doug McCambridge: Twitter | Website Jackie Carlson: Instagram | Letterboxd Criterion Now: Twitter | Facebook Group Criterion Cast: Facebook | Twitter
Music for the show is from Fatboy Roberts’ Geek Remixed project.
- 6/5/2017
- by Aaron West
- CriterionCast
Each weekend we highlight the best repertory programming that New York City has to offer, and it’s about to get even better. Opening on February 19th at 7 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side is Metrograph, the city’s newest indie movie theater. Sporting two screens, they’ve announced their first slate, which includes retrospectives for Fassbinder, Wiseman, Eustache, and more, special programs such as an ode to the moviegoing experience, and new independent features that we’ve admired on the festival circuit (including Afternoon, Office 3D, and Measure of a Man).
Artistic and Programming Director Jacob Perlin says in a press release, “Jean Eustache in a Rocky t-shirt. This is the image we had in mind while making this first calendar. Great cinema is there, wherever you can find it. The dismissed film now recognized as a classic, the forgotten box-office hit newly resurrected, the high and the low,...
Artistic and Programming Director Jacob Perlin says in a press release, “Jean Eustache in a Rocky t-shirt. This is the image we had in mind while making this first calendar. Great cinema is there, wherever you can find it. The dismissed film now recognized as a classic, the forgotten box-office hit newly resurrected, the high and the low,...
- 1/20/2016
- by Jordan Raup
- 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
In what will be a special week-long theatrical run at MoMA in NYC - for which the filmmaker, Mati Diop, will be present - two of her films ("Atlantiques" (2009) and "A Thousand Suns" (2013)) will be paired, along with the seminal 1972 film, "Touki Bouki," made by her uncle, the late Senegalese auteur, Djibril Diop Mambety. The week-long (January 20–27, 2015) run is a collaboration between MoMA and UniFrance Films, whose new initiative, Young French Cinema, promotes emerging French filmmakers in North America in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. "Touki Bouki" will also be shown 3 times over the course of...
- 1/20/2015
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
In today's roundup of goings on here and there: Films by and about Giuseppe Andrews plus Djibril Diop Mambety's Touki Bouki (1973) and Mati Diop’s A Thousand Suns (2013) in New York, a John Waters exhibition and a Kenji Mizoguchi retrospective in Los Angeles, films by Dan Sallitt, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Doillon in Chicago, a Billy Wilder retrospective in Berkeley, Noir City in San Francisco, shorts in London, a Vittorio De Sica retrospective in Vienna and a documentary festival in Tokyo. » - David Hudson...
- 1/16/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
In today's roundup of goings on here and there: Films by and about Giuseppe Andrews plus Djibril Diop Mambety's Touki Bouki (1973) and Mati Diop’s A Thousand Suns (2013) in New York, a John Waters exhibition and a Kenji Mizoguchi retrospective in Los Angeles, films by Dan Sallitt, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Doillon in Chicago, a Billy Wilder retrospective in Berkeley, Noir City in San Francisco, shorts in London, a Vittorio De Sica retrospective in Vienna and a documentary festival in Tokyo. » - David Hudson...
- 1/16/2015
- Keyframe
The Housemaid
Written by Kim Ki-young
Directed by Kim Ki-young
South Korea, 1960
In 2013, the Criterion Collection released a Blu-Ray/DVD box set called ‘Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project’, featuring six films from other countries, either dating from the 1960s to the 1980s, which have been digitally restored by the efforts of Martin Scorsese and The Film Foundation. It should come as no surprise that Scorsese is a cineaste at heart and his love for foreign films, particularly those that have dropped in obscurity, shines thru these presentations. However, like with films that are re-discovered and/or re-evaluated, occasionally you’ll find some that live up to their reputation or not. For my money, the best film in the set is the 1964 Turkish melodrama Dry Summer (1964; Turkish title: Susuz Yaz), which I have already reviewed and sang praises for. The other films in the set include The Journey of the...
Written by Kim Ki-young
Directed by Kim Ki-young
South Korea, 1960
In 2013, the Criterion Collection released a Blu-Ray/DVD box set called ‘Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project’, featuring six films from other countries, either dating from the 1960s to the 1980s, which have been digitally restored by the efforts of Martin Scorsese and The Film Foundation. It should come as no surprise that Scorsese is a cineaste at heart and his love for foreign films, particularly those that have dropped in obscurity, shines thru these presentations. However, like with films that are re-discovered and/or re-evaluated, occasionally you’ll find some that live up to their reputation or not. For my money, the best film in the set is the 1964 Turkish melodrama Dry Summer (1964; Turkish title: Susuz Yaz), which I have already reviewed and sang praises for. The other films in the set include The Journey of the...
- 1/9/2015
- by Christopher Koenig
- SoundOnSight
Dry Summer
Written by Metin Erksan, Kemal Inci, and Ismet Soydan
Directed by Metin Erksan
Turkey, 1964
In 2013, the Criterion Collection released a Blu-Ray/DVD box-set entitled ‘Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project’. The box set consists of six films from various parts of the world that have received high-quality restorations, thanks to the assistance of Martin Scorsese and The Film Foundation. And yet, it has to be said that some of the films Scorsese had commissioned for restoration and home video release leave a lot to be desired: Djibril Diop Mambety’s The Journey of the Hyena (1973; Wolof title: Touki Bouki) is a Senegalese-made bore of a chore to sit thru as it imitates the horrid French New Wave works of Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard; The Wave (1936; Spanish title: Redes), an American-Mexican co-production between directors Fred Zinnemann and Emilio Gomez Muriel and photographer Paul Strand, which is a short...
Written by Metin Erksan, Kemal Inci, and Ismet Soydan
Directed by Metin Erksan
Turkey, 1964
In 2013, the Criterion Collection released a Blu-Ray/DVD box-set entitled ‘Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project’. The box set consists of six films from various parts of the world that have received high-quality restorations, thanks to the assistance of Martin Scorsese and The Film Foundation. And yet, it has to be said that some of the films Scorsese had commissioned for restoration and home video release leave a lot to be desired: Djibril Diop Mambety’s The Journey of the Hyena (1973; Wolof title: Touki Bouki) is a Senegalese-made bore of a chore to sit thru as it imitates the horrid French New Wave works of Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard; The Wave (1936; Spanish title: Redes), an American-Mexican co-production between directors Fred Zinnemann and Emilio Gomez Muriel and photographer Paul Strand, which is a short...
- 1/1/2015
- by Christopher Koenig
- SoundOnSight
In what will be a special week-long theatrical run at MoMA in NYC - for which the filmmaker, Mati Diop, will be present - two of her films ("Atlantiques" (2009) and "A Thousand Suns" (2013)) will be paired, along with the seminal 1972 film, "Touki Bouki," made by her uncle, the late Senegalese auteur, Djibril Diop Mambety. The weeklong run is a collaboration between MoMA and UniFrance Films, whose new initiative, Young French Cinema, promotes emerging French filmmakers in North America in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. "Touki Bouki" will also be shown 3 times over the course of the week-long theatrical...
- 12/4/2014
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
Mati Diop's highly acclaimed film, "A Thousand Suns" ("Mille Soleils"), which made its world premiere at the 24th annual Marseilles International Film Festival, where it also won the grand prize for the international competition, will make its Chicago premiere for one night only next month. And even more special is that the filmmaker herself, Mati Diop, will be in person for the screening, for an audience discussion and Q & A afterwards. The documentary explores the legacy of the groundbreaking classic 1972 film, "Touki Bouki," made by Ms. Diop’s, the late Senegalese auteur, Djibril Diop Mambety, which the filmmakers says...
- 10/22/2014
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
The 2014 Art of the Real series, running from April 11th through the 26th at New York's Film Society Lincoln Center, could not have possibly asked for a more appropriate film with which to kick off its exploratory ruminations on documentary filmmaking. Raya Martin and Mark Peranson’s La última película is, among several things, a meta-commentary on its own layered being, a jocular doomsday journey through the collapsed scaffolding of the medium itself. Largely riffing on Dennis Hopper’s 1971 acid anti-Western The Last Movie (as well as its behind-the-scenes companion piece, The American Dreamer), Martin and Peranson employ varying film formats—everything from Super 8mm to HD digital—to weave a postmodern quilt that’s forever ripping at the seams. It’s a purposely paradoxical work, caustic and vulnerable, playful and grave, a flickering montage of photographs and an upside-down tracking shot—and, in its mingling of artifice and raw materials,...
- 4/10/2014
- by Fernando F. Croce
- MUBI
Mati Diop's latest, Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns), continues to travel the international film festival circuit, and will next screen at Art of the Real 2014, Film Society Lincoln Center's new annual series of nonfiction showcase founded on the most expansive possible view of documentary film. The inaugural edition features new work from around the world alongside retrospective selections by both known and *forgotten* filmmakers. It's co-programmed by Dennis Lim and Rachael Rakes. Diop's documentary explores the legacy of the seminal 1972 film, Touki Bouki, made by her uncle, the late Senegalese auteur, Djibril Diop Mambety. In the film, Diop journeys in search of her...
- 3/26/2014
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2013—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2013 to create a unique double feature.
All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2013 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.
How...
All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2013 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.
How...
- 1/13/2014
- by Notebook
- MUBI
Redes
Written by Agustin Velásquez Chávez and Paul Strand
Directed by Emilio Gómez Muriel and Fred Zinnemann
Mexico, 1936
A River Called Titas
Written and directed by Ritwik Ghatak
Bangladesh, 1973
Touki bouki
Written and directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty
Senegal, 1973
The Criterion Collection set assembling films rediscovered through the efforts of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project is one of the company’s premier achievements. Bringing together six diverse titles from six different regions of the globe, the collection is a treasure trove for those seeking obscure, rare, and fascinating works that extend well beyond film history’s conventional canon. As stated by Criterion itself, “Each is a cinematic revelation, depicting a culture not often seen by outsiders on-screen.” The set also emphasizes, through its calling attention to the efforts of the Wcp initiative, just how necessary and beneficial film preservation and restoration can be. The films included here are only...
Written by Agustin Velásquez Chávez and Paul Strand
Directed by Emilio Gómez Muriel and Fred Zinnemann
Mexico, 1936
A River Called Titas
Written and directed by Ritwik Ghatak
Bangladesh, 1973
Touki bouki
Written and directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty
Senegal, 1973
The Criterion Collection set assembling films rediscovered through the efforts of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project is one of the company’s premier achievements. Bringing together six diverse titles from six different regions of the globe, the collection is a treasure trove for those seeking obscure, rare, and fascinating works that extend well beyond film history’s conventional canon. As stated by Criterion itself, “Each is a cinematic revelation, depicting a culture not often seen by outsiders on-screen.” The set also emphasizes, through its calling attention to the efforts of the Wcp initiative, just how necessary and beneficial film preservation and restoration can be. The films included here are only...
- 12/27/2013
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Just in time for the holidays, for that cinephile on your shopping list... Criterion's Martin Scorsese World Cinema Project blu-ray package, which was released for sale on December 10. Included are 6 films (the seminal 1972 film, Touki Bouki, made late Senegalese auteur, Djibril Diop Mambety is one of them) and 9 discs, with lots of extra features, for example: New high-definition digital restorations of all six films, undertaken by the World Cinema Project in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-raysNew introductions to the films by World Cinema Project founder Martin ScorseseNew interview programs featuring...
- 12/18/2013
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
Moviefone's Top DVD of the Week
"Fast & Furious 6"
What's It About? Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Vin Diesel, and the late Paul Walker reunite with Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Jordana Brewster, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, and future Wonder Woman Gal Gadot to put the pedal to the medal in the sixth iteration of this car-racing series. Can our favorite speed freaks outwit and outdrive a gang of drivers led by a British baddie named Shaw (Luke Evans)?
Why We're In: Besides the fact that some of the DVD earnings will be donated to the late Paul Walker's charity Reach Out Worldwide, this is the perfect guilty-pleasure action film to pop on with a bunch of friends. It's worth it for the runway scene alone.
Moviefone's Top Blu-ray of the Week
"Big" (25th Anniversary Edition)
What's It About? Before Tom Hanks saved "Mr. Banks," he won our hearts as a little...
"Fast & Furious 6"
What's It About? Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Vin Diesel, and the late Paul Walker reunite with Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Jordana Brewster, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, and future Wonder Woman Gal Gadot to put the pedal to the medal in the sixth iteration of this car-racing series. Can our favorite speed freaks outwit and outdrive a gang of drivers led by a British baddie named Shaw (Luke Evans)?
Why We're In: Besides the fact that some of the DVD earnings will be donated to the late Paul Walker's charity Reach Out Worldwide, this is the perfect guilty-pleasure action film to pop on with a bunch of friends. It's worth it for the runway scene alone.
Moviefone's Top Blu-ray of the Week
"Big" (25th Anniversary Edition)
What's It About? Before Tom Hanks saved "Mr. Banks," he won our hearts as a little...
- 12/11/2013
- by Jenni Miller
- Moviefone
The Hunt Even though it played the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, I didn't see Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt until this year and it is a contender for my year end top ten. In my review I said it's "an emotional drama" that's "every bit a thriller that will have you pounding your fists in rage, both at the situation as depicted on the screen as well as in some of Vinterberg's more frustrating storytelling decisions." It's not an all out perfect film, but it is undeniably great and worth the watch.
Fast & Furious 6 The Fast & Furious franchise continues and with it comes an extended version of Fast & Furious 6 as well as a preview of Fast & Furious 7, or at least what it was going to be depending on whether or not they move forward with the film in the same capacity as originally planned before the untimely death of Paul Walker.
Fast & Furious 6 The Fast & Furious franchise continues and with it comes an extended version of Fast & Furious 6 as well as a preview of Fast & Furious 7, or at least what it was going to be depending on whether or not they move forward with the film in the same capacity as originally planned before the untimely death of Paul Walker.
- 12/10/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Growing up in Culver City, I always saw the MGM studio near us as a place of make-believe where I could collect autographs of famous movie stars. I knew they made the movies there that I watched every weekend. But it was home, and home was a place of safe daydreams without ambitious goals associated with it.
When I became a teenager and saw Un Chien Andalou, I began to see Movie Mecca as New York and Paris, but now I see they have nothing on us.
Los Angeles this past month had so many events that I could see the world without leaving town. Just a sampling here: German Film Currents,Polish Film Festival, So. African Arts Fest, Satyajit Ray Restored, Pure and Impure: The films of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gabriel Figueroa Retrospective and The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema which this weekend showed Roberto Gavaldon’s Macario an Oscar-nominated 1959 surrealist Mexican fable. Also showing this weekend alone were A Century of Chinese Cinema at UCLA, the Cambodian documentaryA River Changes Course, Ida’s free documentary series, sci-fi Beyond Fest at the Egyptian Theater, Henri-George Couzot’s La Verite at Red Cat, not to mention Classics from the Cohen Film Colletion: The Rohauer Collection and finally, the early press screenings for the Foreign Language Submissions for the Academy Awards.
Today I write about Africa, West Africa in particular, but even more so Chad, because that is where Mahamat-Saleh Haroun and his film Grigris (Isa: Les Films du Losange, No. America: Film Movement) originate. Grigris premiered in the Cannes Film Festival this year. Haroun also wrote and directed The Screaming Man (Isa: Pyramide, No. America: Film Movement) which won The Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Grigris is playing as part of the Cameras d’Afrique Series at Lacma which I blogged about earlier Here. This showcase of world-changing films is an initiative of Loyola Marymount University Film School, Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Film Program and Film Independent.
The films offer a unique view of Africa in the comfort of our own town. This series includes the 1963 film Borom Sarret by Ousmane Sembene from Senegal, the first film directed by an African to focus on an African filmmaker’s own people. We all know the name of Ousmane Sembene, but rarely have the chance to see his films, though I will never forget the experience of seeing Black Girl in 1966 at the height of our own Civil Rights struggles. It enlightened me about the rest of the world’s own warped (i.e., colonial) view of the Africans in diaspora, a subject being revived in so many films of today.
My most current education on Africa comes from the annual course I teach about the international film business to festival directors from Africa, Asia and Latin America at the Deutsche Welle Akademie in Berlin. I learn about the problems and issues facing a diverse range of festival directors, many of whom are also filmmakers. For example, in a country with no theaters, the film festival is held in the bush and promoted via cel phones which everyone possesses. I was also made alert to the fact that many Africans themselves find European-funded films showing dusty, poverty-stricken but cute kids in torn t-shirts and running barefoot in dirty streets and men wearing the boubou and women balancing baskets on their heads condescending and imbalanced depictions of Africa today.
Mama Kéïta was present to talk about L’Absence and Gaston Kaboré was there with Buud Yam (followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker). Other program highlights included the L.A. premiere of Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns), Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1973 French New Wave–inspired Touki Bouki, Idrissa Ouédraogo’s 1990 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix winner Tilaï (The Law), and the 2013 Fespaco Golden Stallion winner Tey (Today), followed by a Q&A with director Alain Gomis and star Saul Williams.
Seeing these films gave me a feeling of wholeness, from L’Absence, the tail of a prodigal son, returning too long after he was granted an education in France by his fellow countrymen and family who had expected him to return and contribute to his own country’s wellbeing but instead stayed in France where he basically lost his soul, to Buud Yam, a classic hero’s journey by a young man seeking a healer for his sister. The audience and the filmmakers along with their films had a great opportunity to unveil an Africa about which we know too little
Planning to interview Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, I looked up Chad in Wikipedia and read it is what is called a “failed country”. My spirits dropped. But on seeing Grisgris and meeting Haroun and hearing all he had to say, my spirits soared.
Do you know for a fact that a film can change the world? I believe it can, does and is changing the world. So many of my colleagues in the film world are in film because of the same ideal.
The African directors at the series spoke of their films and their passion and they too make films to change the world. Haroun was not the only one who spoke at the African film series, but my conversation with him proved it to me. We spent a good hour discussing his films and his thoughts and development which I will try to summarize here.
It has been a long road for Haroun. When he first returned to Chad from France and made Bye Bye Africa, he was inexperienced and afraid of nothing. You see his chutzpah making Bye Bye Africa as he shoots film of everyone, offending some who believed he was stealing their spirits. He meets his past star who played a woman dying of AIDS whose life has been ruined because the people believe the film was real.
For Haroun, acting is like cooking. You do it for someone you love. Chad was such a difficult country for filming his first film, so he could make mistakes. If you fall down, you just get up and keep going. He had no doubts. It’s a question of love. You feel it; you act it. His non-professional actors do their best and their passion carries them through.
Making his second film was different. There was pressure, especially for him as an actor, to make it good. After A Screaming Man he got a call from Brad Pitt who wanted him as an actor in World War Z and who wanted the lead, but not speaking English put an end to that.
Chad is landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west. Because the French colonized it in the 1920s, it is now a “Francophone” country and has more in common with its neighbors in the West and so is considered West African.
Chad had free elections in 2008 and elected President Idriss Déby. The country defeated the Sudanese rebels there. The nation sent troops into Mali and killed Moktar Belmoktar, the Algerian terrorist behind the deadly attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria and withdrew its troops in April of this year saying they were not prepared to fight guerilla warfare. That means money that went to the military can be redirected toward peaceful endeavors. Today they are rebuilding the country which is based on an oil economy which gives it a window of rich opportunity.
Cinema in Chad changed greatly and became a new focal point for the newly elected government when Haroun won the Jury Prize in Cannes for A Screaming Man in 2010 When his debut film Bye Bye Africa (1999), showed the wreck of the country revisited by long-time French exile, he saw theaters which the long civil war and instability had destroyed. He spoke to a woman who swore she would renovate her theater, the Normandie. Bye Bye Africa was a drama but it took place in a documentary setting which looks at the poor state of cinema in the country. After Haroun won the Grand Jury Prize of Cannes, the government allocated $1 million to restore the theater which stands today as a testament to the power of film. It shows 35mm, is digitized and can use satellite transmission. It can buy Hollywood films using digital coding although film distribution rights are still difficult to negotiate. However, the distributor of Django in France arranged for Django to show day and date in Paris and Chad’s capitol city N’Djamena for a minimum guarantee. This was a major event for a country that has gone 30 years without cinema.
The government of Chad began to receive compliments for winning the Jury Prize in Cannes, which is perceived to be as important as the Olympics themselves (It is, in fact, the 2nd largest press event in the world after the Olympics). The world’s perception of Chad and its own perception of itself shifted from being one of the poorest, war-torn and corrupt nations of Africa to one of high stature culturally. And its current Prime Minister Djimrangar Dadnadji, and his government has now allocated $10 million into building a film school which should be finished by 2015. It will be one of the rare film schools in all of Africa and will be the finest in the north, east or west of the entire continent.
The film school is a part of rebuilding the country today. It is also trying to become part of the U.N. Security Council. It is the leading country in Central and West Africa. It is part of the Central African Economic Council (Ceeac).
What these changes mean for Haroun is that he can continue to use film for himself as a platform, the means to objectify and philosophize about conscience and consciousness. As Aimee Caesar was quoted in Bye Bye Africa, Africa needs to articulate its storytelling tradition in new ways and to be visible beyond its own borders. Film shows diversity. Differing points of view and discussions mean the nation can start to play a role on a grander world stage. With the building of a film school, the parliament also voted into law at tax of $.01 per telephone call to go toward artistic activities. This will make a huge difference to the next generation.
When Haroun began making movies he wanted to stop talking about the state of cinema, so he put it into his film, memorialized it and then closed the door on the subject.
You can see Haroun’s own evolution in regards to his treatment of women in Bye Bye Africa to his depiction of them in Grigris. It was not a very flattering portrayal; even in Grigris, the hero does not stand up for the woman he loves when his boss degrades her. However, the film gives a special place to the women in the village as if they were a in a classical Greek Choir. The women change the Story and the two artists’ destiny is changed because of the women.
Grigris is the portrait of a young African artist, but even with talent, the milieu is so difficult and as the eldest, he has to take care of others. This is The Responsibility that kills dreams. Grigris is a cruel portrayal of the young artist. It is a modern story, extending the tradition of oral storytelling.
Although he is not acting in it, it is still an impressionistic self-portrait, as was Bye Bye Africa which was shot in two weeks and won Best First Feature in Venice in 1999. His growth intellectually and emotionally can be measured by watching the two films.
After being selected and awarded at the 66th Festival de Cannes for the remarkable quality of its photography, the film Grigris, by Mahamat Saleh Haroun, supported by the Acp Cultures + Programme, won the Bayard d'Or for best photography at the 28th Festival International Film Francophone de Namur (Fiff) in Belgium. (Read the full list of 28th Fiff Awards : click here.)
Haroun explains that he has many women around him – his mother, his sisters, cousins. In Africa, a man’s role does not include cooking. Cooking is love. But in France he enjoys cooking. Cooking shows trust in those who partake in the making and eating of the meal. No one burns the steak when cooking for one’s mother. Food is essential to Haroun. “If you cook, you can share, you open your doors.”
He told me how he got into movies.
I was 9 years old when I saw my first movie. It was a Bollywood movie and a beautiful lady in it was smiling at the camera. I thought she was smiling at me. The love and happiness I felt watching this made me love cinema.
My dream of cinema was a big ambition. It was not to make small films. I dreamt of expressing an important philosophy of life and of my country in cinema. I did not want to stick just to tradition which is disappearing. But to the eternal which remains. Tradition is not the essential; culture is. For example, in Western society, the meaning of seat number 13 on a plane is not culture, but it is a tradition.
Haroun is leading his generation. In 1965 the civil war was raging in the North. It came to the capital in 1979 and he went to Paris to study cinema in 1981/82. His country was ruled by a dictator who is now in prison to be judged in court for the 40,000 lives taken during the 8 years of war. Reid Brady of the Human Rights Watch and Haroun are now making a documentary about this. Today Haroun travels between France and Chad 5 to 6 times a year. Interestingly, there is not yet a film festival in Chad.
When I asked what was next :
Next is about Indian fashion. Also a young artist. It is based on a true story of a young man in N’Djemena who used to watch Bollywood dvds and has seen more than 1,500 Bollywood films and speaks Hindu as a result. He gets a job at an Indian factory and translates to French and to his African language. He spends eight years there but dreams of becoming an actor in Bollywood. The story brings him to Bombay. That is a good base for a film; a film built on truth and documentary.
I am also making a film in France called A Life in France. I have lived there for 30 years. The film is from the point of view of an immigrant as I am.
Hamoud and I so enjoyed our talk that we are now looking forward to meeting again when he returns here in December! Wouldn’t it be great if his film is one of those shortlisted for the Nomination, or if it actually received the Nomination? Or if it won? How might that then change the world? We will have to wait and see.
About Lmu Sftv
Movie industry moguls helped establish Loyola Marymount University’s (Lmu) current campus on the bluffs above west Los Angeles in the 1920s. By 1964, Lmu was formally teaching film and television curriculum, and in 2001, the School of Film and Television (Sftv) was established as its own entity. Today, Sftv offers students a comprehensive education where mastering technical skills and story is equally important to educating the whole person, including the formation of character and values, meaning and purpose. Sftv offers undergraduate degrees in animation, production, screenwriting, film and television studies and recording arts; and graduate degrees in production, screenwriting and writing and producing for television. The school is one of the few film programs providing students with a completely tapeless model of production and post-production, and Sftv’s animation program is one of the few worldwide that teaches virtual cinematography. Selected alumni include John Bailey, Bob Beemer, Francie Calfo, Brian Helgeland, Francis Lawrence, Lauren Montgomery, Jack Orman, Van Partible and James Wong, among others. Get more information at sftv.lmu.edu or facebook.com/lmusftv.
About Film Independent at Lacma
Film Independent at Lacma is a film series produced by Film Independent—the nonprofit arts organization that also produces the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival—and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) with presenting sponsor The New York Times and premier sponsor Ovation. The Film Independent at Lacma Film Series is curated by Elvis Mitchell and assistant curator Bernardo Rondeau. The program features classic and contemporary narrative and documentary films; emerging auteurs; international showcases; special guest-curated programs, such as Jason Reitman's acclaimed Live Read series; and conversations with artists, filmmakers, and other special guests. For more information, go to filmindependent.org/lacma or lacma.org.
When I became a teenager and saw Un Chien Andalou, I began to see Movie Mecca as New York and Paris, but now I see they have nothing on us.
Los Angeles this past month had so many events that I could see the world without leaving town. Just a sampling here: German Film Currents,Polish Film Festival, So. African Arts Fest, Satyajit Ray Restored, Pure and Impure: The films of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gabriel Figueroa Retrospective and The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema which this weekend showed Roberto Gavaldon’s Macario an Oscar-nominated 1959 surrealist Mexican fable. Also showing this weekend alone were A Century of Chinese Cinema at UCLA, the Cambodian documentaryA River Changes Course, Ida’s free documentary series, sci-fi Beyond Fest at the Egyptian Theater, Henri-George Couzot’s La Verite at Red Cat, not to mention Classics from the Cohen Film Colletion: The Rohauer Collection and finally, the early press screenings for the Foreign Language Submissions for the Academy Awards.
Today I write about Africa, West Africa in particular, but even more so Chad, because that is where Mahamat-Saleh Haroun and his film Grigris (Isa: Les Films du Losange, No. America: Film Movement) originate. Grigris premiered in the Cannes Film Festival this year. Haroun also wrote and directed The Screaming Man (Isa: Pyramide, No. America: Film Movement) which won The Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Grigris is playing as part of the Cameras d’Afrique Series at Lacma which I blogged about earlier Here. This showcase of world-changing films is an initiative of Loyola Marymount University Film School, Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Film Program and Film Independent.
The films offer a unique view of Africa in the comfort of our own town. This series includes the 1963 film Borom Sarret by Ousmane Sembene from Senegal, the first film directed by an African to focus on an African filmmaker’s own people. We all know the name of Ousmane Sembene, but rarely have the chance to see his films, though I will never forget the experience of seeing Black Girl in 1966 at the height of our own Civil Rights struggles. It enlightened me about the rest of the world’s own warped (i.e., colonial) view of the Africans in diaspora, a subject being revived in so many films of today.
My most current education on Africa comes from the annual course I teach about the international film business to festival directors from Africa, Asia and Latin America at the Deutsche Welle Akademie in Berlin. I learn about the problems and issues facing a diverse range of festival directors, many of whom are also filmmakers. For example, in a country with no theaters, the film festival is held in the bush and promoted via cel phones which everyone possesses. I was also made alert to the fact that many Africans themselves find European-funded films showing dusty, poverty-stricken but cute kids in torn t-shirts and running barefoot in dirty streets and men wearing the boubou and women balancing baskets on their heads condescending and imbalanced depictions of Africa today.
Mama Kéïta was present to talk about L’Absence and Gaston Kaboré was there with Buud Yam (followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker). Other program highlights included the L.A. premiere of Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns), Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1973 French New Wave–inspired Touki Bouki, Idrissa Ouédraogo’s 1990 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix winner Tilaï (The Law), and the 2013 Fespaco Golden Stallion winner Tey (Today), followed by a Q&A with director Alain Gomis and star Saul Williams.
Seeing these films gave me a feeling of wholeness, from L’Absence, the tail of a prodigal son, returning too long after he was granted an education in France by his fellow countrymen and family who had expected him to return and contribute to his own country’s wellbeing but instead stayed in France where he basically lost his soul, to Buud Yam, a classic hero’s journey by a young man seeking a healer for his sister. The audience and the filmmakers along with their films had a great opportunity to unveil an Africa about which we know too little
Planning to interview Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, I looked up Chad in Wikipedia and read it is what is called a “failed country”. My spirits dropped. But on seeing Grisgris and meeting Haroun and hearing all he had to say, my spirits soared.
Do you know for a fact that a film can change the world? I believe it can, does and is changing the world. So many of my colleagues in the film world are in film because of the same ideal.
The African directors at the series spoke of their films and their passion and they too make films to change the world. Haroun was not the only one who spoke at the African film series, but my conversation with him proved it to me. We spent a good hour discussing his films and his thoughts and development which I will try to summarize here.
It has been a long road for Haroun. When he first returned to Chad from France and made Bye Bye Africa, he was inexperienced and afraid of nothing. You see his chutzpah making Bye Bye Africa as he shoots film of everyone, offending some who believed he was stealing their spirits. He meets his past star who played a woman dying of AIDS whose life has been ruined because the people believe the film was real.
For Haroun, acting is like cooking. You do it for someone you love. Chad was such a difficult country for filming his first film, so he could make mistakes. If you fall down, you just get up and keep going. He had no doubts. It’s a question of love. You feel it; you act it. His non-professional actors do their best and their passion carries them through.
Making his second film was different. There was pressure, especially for him as an actor, to make it good. After A Screaming Man he got a call from Brad Pitt who wanted him as an actor in World War Z and who wanted the lead, but not speaking English put an end to that.
Chad is landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west. Because the French colonized it in the 1920s, it is now a “Francophone” country and has more in common with its neighbors in the West and so is considered West African.
Chad had free elections in 2008 and elected President Idriss Déby. The country defeated the Sudanese rebels there. The nation sent troops into Mali and killed Moktar Belmoktar, the Algerian terrorist behind the deadly attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria and withdrew its troops in April of this year saying they were not prepared to fight guerilla warfare. That means money that went to the military can be redirected toward peaceful endeavors. Today they are rebuilding the country which is based on an oil economy which gives it a window of rich opportunity.
Cinema in Chad changed greatly and became a new focal point for the newly elected government when Haroun won the Jury Prize in Cannes for A Screaming Man in 2010 When his debut film Bye Bye Africa (1999), showed the wreck of the country revisited by long-time French exile, he saw theaters which the long civil war and instability had destroyed. He spoke to a woman who swore she would renovate her theater, the Normandie. Bye Bye Africa was a drama but it took place in a documentary setting which looks at the poor state of cinema in the country. After Haroun won the Grand Jury Prize of Cannes, the government allocated $1 million to restore the theater which stands today as a testament to the power of film. It shows 35mm, is digitized and can use satellite transmission. It can buy Hollywood films using digital coding although film distribution rights are still difficult to negotiate. However, the distributor of Django in France arranged for Django to show day and date in Paris and Chad’s capitol city N’Djamena for a minimum guarantee. This was a major event for a country that has gone 30 years without cinema.
The government of Chad began to receive compliments for winning the Jury Prize in Cannes, which is perceived to be as important as the Olympics themselves (It is, in fact, the 2nd largest press event in the world after the Olympics). The world’s perception of Chad and its own perception of itself shifted from being one of the poorest, war-torn and corrupt nations of Africa to one of high stature culturally. And its current Prime Minister Djimrangar Dadnadji, and his government has now allocated $10 million into building a film school which should be finished by 2015. It will be one of the rare film schools in all of Africa and will be the finest in the north, east or west of the entire continent.
The film school is a part of rebuilding the country today. It is also trying to become part of the U.N. Security Council. It is the leading country in Central and West Africa. It is part of the Central African Economic Council (Ceeac).
What these changes mean for Haroun is that he can continue to use film for himself as a platform, the means to objectify and philosophize about conscience and consciousness. As Aimee Caesar was quoted in Bye Bye Africa, Africa needs to articulate its storytelling tradition in new ways and to be visible beyond its own borders. Film shows diversity. Differing points of view and discussions mean the nation can start to play a role on a grander world stage. With the building of a film school, the parliament also voted into law at tax of $.01 per telephone call to go toward artistic activities. This will make a huge difference to the next generation.
When Haroun began making movies he wanted to stop talking about the state of cinema, so he put it into his film, memorialized it and then closed the door on the subject.
You can see Haroun’s own evolution in regards to his treatment of women in Bye Bye Africa to his depiction of them in Grigris. It was not a very flattering portrayal; even in Grigris, the hero does not stand up for the woman he loves when his boss degrades her. However, the film gives a special place to the women in the village as if they were a in a classical Greek Choir. The women change the Story and the two artists’ destiny is changed because of the women.
Grigris is the portrait of a young African artist, but even with talent, the milieu is so difficult and as the eldest, he has to take care of others. This is The Responsibility that kills dreams. Grigris is a cruel portrayal of the young artist. It is a modern story, extending the tradition of oral storytelling.
Although he is not acting in it, it is still an impressionistic self-portrait, as was Bye Bye Africa which was shot in two weeks and won Best First Feature in Venice in 1999. His growth intellectually and emotionally can be measured by watching the two films.
After being selected and awarded at the 66th Festival de Cannes for the remarkable quality of its photography, the film Grigris, by Mahamat Saleh Haroun, supported by the Acp Cultures + Programme, won the Bayard d'Or for best photography at the 28th Festival International Film Francophone de Namur (Fiff) in Belgium. (Read the full list of 28th Fiff Awards : click here.)
Haroun explains that he has many women around him – his mother, his sisters, cousins. In Africa, a man’s role does not include cooking. Cooking is love. But in France he enjoys cooking. Cooking shows trust in those who partake in the making and eating of the meal. No one burns the steak when cooking for one’s mother. Food is essential to Haroun. “If you cook, you can share, you open your doors.”
He told me how he got into movies.
I was 9 years old when I saw my first movie. It was a Bollywood movie and a beautiful lady in it was smiling at the camera. I thought she was smiling at me. The love and happiness I felt watching this made me love cinema.
My dream of cinema was a big ambition. It was not to make small films. I dreamt of expressing an important philosophy of life and of my country in cinema. I did not want to stick just to tradition which is disappearing. But to the eternal which remains. Tradition is not the essential; culture is. For example, in Western society, the meaning of seat number 13 on a plane is not culture, but it is a tradition.
Haroun is leading his generation. In 1965 the civil war was raging in the North. It came to the capital in 1979 and he went to Paris to study cinema in 1981/82. His country was ruled by a dictator who is now in prison to be judged in court for the 40,000 lives taken during the 8 years of war. Reid Brady of the Human Rights Watch and Haroun are now making a documentary about this. Today Haroun travels between France and Chad 5 to 6 times a year. Interestingly, there is not yet a film festival in Chad.
When I asked what was next :
Next is about Indian fashion. Also a young artist. It is based on a true story of a young man in N’Djemena who used to watch Bollywood dvds and has seen more than 1,500 Bollywood films and speaks Hindu as a result. He gets a job at an Indian factory and translates to French and to his African language. He spends eight years there but dreams of becoming an actor in Bollywood. The story brings him to Bombay. That is a good base for a film; a film built on truth and documentary.
I am also making a film in France called A Life in France. I have lived there for 30 years. The film is from the point of view of an immigrant as I am.
Hamoud and I so enjoyed our talk that we are now looking forward to meeting again when he returns here in December! Wouldn’t it be great if his film is one of those shortlisted for the Nomination, or if it actually received the Nomination? Or if it won? How might that then change the world? We will have to wait and see.
About Lmu Sftv
Movie industry moguls helped establish Loyola Marymount University’s (Lmu) current campus on the bluffs above west Los Angeles in the 1920s. By 1964, Lmu was formally teaching film and television curriculum, and in 2001, the School of Film and Television (Sftv) was established as its own entity. Today, Sftv offers students a comprehensive education where mastering technical skills and story is equally important to educating the whole person, including the formation of character and values, meaning and purpose. Sftv offers undergraduate degrees in animation, production, screenwriting, film and television studies and recording arts; and graduate degrees in production, screenwriting and writing and producing for television. The school is one of the few film programs providing students with a completely tapeless model of production and post-production, and Sftv’s animation program is one of the few worldwide that teaches virtual cinematography. Selected alumni include John Bailey, Bob Beemer, Francie Calfo, Brian Helgeland, Francis Lawrence, Lauren Montgomery, Jack Orman, Van Partible and James Wong, among others. Get more information at sftv.lmu.edu or facebook.com/lmusftv.
About Film Independent at Lacma
Film Independent at Lacma is a film series produced by Film Independent—the nonprofit arts organization that also produces the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival—and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) with presenting sponsor The New York Times and premier sponsor Ovation. The Film Independent at Lacma Film Series is curated by Elvis Mitchell and assistant curator Bernardo Rondeau. The program features classic and contemporary narrative and documentary films; emerging auteurs; international showcases; special guest-curated programs, such as Jason Reitman's acclaimed Live Read series; and conversations with artists, filmmakers, and other special guests. For more information, go to filmindependent.org/lacma or lacma.org.
- 10/25/2013
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Dec. 10, 2013
Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $124.95
Studio: Criterion
Established by filmmaker Martin Scorsese in 2007, Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project expands the horizons of moviegoers everywhere. The mission of the Wcp is to preserve and present marginalized and infrequently screened films from regions of the world ill equipped to provide funding for major restorations. This collector’s set brings together six superb films from various countries, including Bangladesh/India (A River Called Titas), Mexico (Redes), Morocco (Trances), Senegal (Touki bouki), South Korea (The Housemaid), and Turkey (Dry Summer); each is a cinematic revelation, depicting a culture not often seen by outsiders.
Here’s a breakdown of all six:
Touki Bouki (1973)
Touki Bouki (1973, In Wolof with English subtitles)
With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In this French New Wave–influenced fantasy-drama,...
Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $124.95
Studio: Criterion
Established by filmmaker Martin Scorsese in 2007, Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project expands the horizons of moviegoers everywhere. The mission of the Wcp is to preserve and present marginalized and infrequently screened films from regions of the world ill equipped to provide funding for major restorations. This collector’s set brings together six superb films from various countries, including Bangladesh/India (A River Called Titas), Mexico (Redes), Morocco (Trances), Senegal (Touki bouki), South Korea (The Housemaid), and Turkey (Dry Summer); each is a cinematic revelation, depicting a culture not often seen by outsiders.
Here’s a breakdown of all six:
Touki Bouki (1973)
Touki Bouki (1973, In Wolof with English subtitles)
With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In this French New Wave–influenced fantasy-drama,...
- 10/24/2013
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Nenette et Boni
Written by Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau
Directed by Claire Denis
France, 1996
A more urban escapade for Denis, Nenette et Boni looks at two conflicted siblings searching for normality in one another. Boni, an over-sexualized and underachieving pizza maker lives a remarkably uneventful life, lusting over the local baker-lady and chronically masturbating. It’s only when his estranged sister Nenette shows up with a devastating secret that Boni begins to question the validity of his lifestyle and decisions.
The plot is focused on the burgeoning relationship between the siblings, but it’s undeniable that Denis shot this film with the intention of painting a picture of everyday people. Being a slice-of-life movie helps illustrate the commonality of the siblings’ issues, more or less so as to get across that everyone encounters similar problems. The film is shot well and is full of visual metaphors that do more...
Written by Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau
Directed by Claire Denis
France, 1996
A more urban escapade for Denis, Nenette et Boni looks at two conflicted siblings searching for normality in one another. Boni, an over-sexualized and underachieving pizza maker lives a remarkably uneventful life, lusting over the local baker-lady and chronically masturbating. It’s only when his estranged sister Nenette shows up with a devastating secret that Boni begins to question the validity of his lifestyle and decisions.
The plot is focused on the burgeoning relationship between the siblings, but it’s undeniable that Denis shot this film with the intention of painting a picture of everyday people. Being a slice-of-life movie helps illustrate the commonality of the siblings’ issues, more or less so as to get across that everyone encounters similar problems. The film is shot well and is full of visual metaphors that do more...
- 10/16/2013
- by Taegan J. Brown
- SoundOnSight
Mati Diop's next film, Mille soleils (A Thousand Suns), is making its La premiere at the Caméras d’Afrique: The Films of West Africa - a month-long, 21-film series by Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television, in partnership with Film Independent at Elvis Mitchell-curated Lacma, running from October 3 – October 28, 2013 . The documentary explores the legacy of the seminal 1972 film, Touki Bouki, made by her uncle, the late Senegalese auteur, Djibril Diop Mambety. In the film, Diop journeys in search of her origins through the footprints left by her uncle's film, and along the way gets to know Touki...
- 10/11/2013
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
Selection includes competition titles, a focus on Southeast Asia and a ‘Top 10’ compiled by director Rithy Panh.
The selection for the 26th Idfa (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) has been unveiled and includes 288 titles – selected from more than 3,000 submissions – of which 100 will receive their world premiere during the festival (Nov 20 – Dec 1).
There will be a strand dedicated to documentaries from Southeast Asia titled Emerging Voices from Southeast Asia.
This year’s Idfa Top 10 is compiled by Cambodian director Rithy Panh, and a retrospective of his work will be screening at the festival.
Panh, whose doc The Missing Picture won the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes in May, has selected:
Alone
Wang Bing (Hong Kong/France, 2012)Don’t Look Back
D.A. Pennebaker (USA, 1967)Farrebique - The Four Seasons
Georges Rouquier (France, 1946)The Football Incident
Joris Ivens/Marceline Loridan-Ivens (France, 1976)I Am Cuba
Mikheil Kalatozishvili (Cuba/Russia, 1964)In Vanda’s Room
Pedro Costa (Portugal, 2000)A Man Vanishes...
The selection for the 26th Idfa (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) has been unveiled and includes 288 titles – selected from more than 3,000 submissions – of which 100 will receive their world premiere during the festival (Nov 20 – Dec 1).
There will be a strand dedicated to documentaries from Southeast Asia titled Emerging Voices from Southeast Asia.
This year’s Idfa Top 10 is compiled by Cambodian director Rithy Panh, and a retrospective of his work will be screening at the festival.
Panh, whose doc The Missing Picture won the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes in May, has selected:
Alone
Wang Bing (Hong Kong/France, 2012)Don’t Look Back
D.A. Pennebaker (USA, 1967)Farrebique - The Four Seasons
Georges Rouquier (France, 1946)The Football Incident
Joris Ivens/Marceline Loridan-Ivens (France, 1976)I Am Cuba
Mikheil Kalatozishvili (Cuba/Russia, 1964)In Vanda’s Room
Pedro Costa (Portugal, 2000)A Man Vanishes...
- 10/11/2013
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
Rarely do American audiences get to experience the cinematic diversity from the African continent; however, this October thanks to Film Independent and the Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television, audiences in Los Angeles will be able to be part of a month-long series showcasing the best of modern cinema from West Africa. Curated by Film Independent and Lacma curator Ellvis Mitchell, Cameras d'Afrique: The Films of West Africa runs from October 3-28, 2013 at Lacma. The event will feature an array of 21 film, both narrative and documentary, many of which have never been screened in the U.S, most screenings will also include Q&As with the talented African filmmakers.
The event begins Thursday October 3rd with a double feature celebrating the films of Mahamat-Saleh Haroun. Bye Bye Africa, and his latest effort Grigris will be screened followed by Q&A with the director. Grigris was screened at this year's Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim, and it will see its U.S Premiere here.
The program continues on Saturday October 5th with Mama Kéïta’s L’Absence and Gaston Kaboré’s Buud Yam, each film will be followed by Q&A's with the filmmakers, and then a panel discussion moderated by the Mitchell dealing with the current state of West African cinema, the challenges, and the stories from this often unseen region of the world. Other program highlights include the L.A. premiere of Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns), Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1973 French New Wave–inspired Touki Bouki, Idrissa Ouédraogo’s 1990 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix winner Tilaï (The Law), and the 2013 Fespaco Golden Stallion winner Tey (Today), followed by a Q&A with director Alain Gomis and star Saul Williams.
“This series brings me such joy,” said film curator Elvis Mitchell. “Primarily because there's nothing more exhilarating to me than to expose people to exciting new filmmakers and films, let alone bring attention to the art of an area that deserves more attention than it's received in America. The works we're playing demonstrate that film at its best, like any other art form, is idiosyncratic and universal.”
Screenings will be held throughout October at Lacma’s Bing Theater on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Free community screenings and select Q&As moderated by Mitchell will take place on the Loyola Marymount University campus every Monday night.
“We are thrilled to be able to present Caméras d’Afrique: The Films of West Africa. Patrons will have the rare opportunity to see the latest films that have received accolades from the top European and African film festivals as well as classics from the past 50 years," said Lmu Sftv Dean Stephen Ujlaki, adding, “Connecting our students to the rich filmography of West Africa, long a Francophone region, will expose them to different forms of storytelling, inspiring their own unique visions.”
Film Independent, Lacma Film Club, and The New York Times Film Club members can purchase tickets to films for $5 Here
Lacma Members, students with valid ID, and seniors can get tickets for $7, and $10 for general public Here
To make a reservation for the community screenings at the Loyola Marymount University click Here
About Lmu Sftv
Movie industry moguls helped establish Loyola Marymount University’s (Lmu) current campus on the bluffs above west Los Angeles in the 1920s. By 1964, Lmu was formally teaching film and television curriculum, and in 2001, the School of Film and Television (Sftv) was established as its own entity. Today, Sftv offers students a comprehensive education where mastering technical skills and story is equally important to educating the whole person, including the formation of character and values, meaning and purpose. Sftv offers undergraduate degrees in animation, production, screenwriting, film and television studies and recording arts; and graduate degrees in production, screenwriting and writing and producing for television. The school is one of the few film programs providing students with a completely tapeless model of production and post-production, and Sftv’s animation program is one of the few worldwide that teaches virtual cinematography. Selected alumni include John Bailey, Bob Beemer, Francie Calfo, Brian Helgeland, Francis Lawrence, Lauren Montgomery, Jack Orman, Van Partible and James Wong, among others. Get more information at sftv.lmu.edu or facebook.com/lmusftv.
About Film Independent at Lacma
Film Independent at Lacma is a film series produced by Film Independent—the nonprofit arts organization that also produces the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival—and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) with presenting sponsor The New York Times and premier sponsor Ovation. The Film Independent at Lacma Film Series is curated by Elvis Mitchell and assistant curator Bernardo Rondeau. The program features classic and contemporary narrative and documentary films; emerging auteurs; international showcases; special guest-curated programs, such as Jason Reitman's acclaimed Live Read series; and conversations with artists, filmmakers, and other special guests. For more information, go to filmindependent.org/lacma or lacma.org.
The event begins Thursday October 3rd with a double feature celebrating the films of Mahamat-Saleh Haroun. Bye Bye Africa, and his latest effort Grigris will be screened followed by Q&A with the director. Grigris was screened at this year's Cannes Film Festival to critical acclaim, and it will see its U.S Premiere here.
The program continues on Saturday October 5th with Mama Kéïta’s L’Absence and Gaston Kaboré’s Buud Yam, each film will be followed by Q&A's with the filmmakers, and then a panel discussion moderated by the Mitchell dealing with the current state of West African cinema, the challenges, and the stories from this often unseen region of the world. Other program highlights include the L.A. premiere of Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns), Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1973 French New Wave–inspired Touki Bouki, Idrissa Ouédraogo’s 1990 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix winner Tilaï (The Law), and the 2013 Fespaco Golden Stallion winner Tey (Today), followed by a Q&A with director Alain Gomis and star Saul Williams.
“This series brings me such joy,” said film curator Elvis Mitchell. “Primarily because there's nothing more exhilarating to me than to expose people to exciting new filmmakers and films, let alone bring attention to the art of an area that deserves more attention than it's received in America. The works we're playing demonstrate that film at its best, like any other art form, is idiosyncratic and universal.”
Screenings will be held throughout October at Lacma’s Bing Theater on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Free community screenings and select Q&As moderated by Mitchell will take place on the Loyola Marymount University campus every Monday night.
“We are thrilled to be able to present Caméras d’Afrique: The Films of West Africa. Patrons will have the rare opportunity to see the latest films that have received accolades from the top European and African film festivals as well as classics from the past 50 years," said Lmu Sftv Dean Stephen Ujlaki, adding, “Connecting our students to the rich filmography of West Africa, long a Francophone region, will expose them to different forms of storytelling, inspiring their own unique visions.”
Film Independent, Lacma Film Club, and The New York Times Film Club members can purchase tickets to films for $5 Here
Lacma Members, students with valid ID, and seniors can get tickets for $7, and $10 for general public Here
To make a reservation for the community screenings at the Loyola Marymount University click Here
About Lmu Sftv
Movie industry moguls helped establish Loyola Marymount University’s (Lmu) current campus on the bluffs above west Los Angeles in the 1920s. By 1964, Lmu was formally teaching film and television curriculum, and in 2001, the School of Film and Television (Sftv) was established as its own entity. Today, Sftv offers students a comprehensive education where mastering technical skills and story is equally important to educating the whole person, including the formation of character and values, meaning and purpose. Sftv offers undergraduate degrees in animation, production, screenwriting, film and television studies and recording arts; and graduate degrees in production, screenwriting and writing and producing for television. The school is one of the few film programs providing students with a completely tapeless model of production and post-production, and Sftv’s animation program is one of the few worldwide that teaches virtual cinematography. Selected alumni include John Bailey, Bob Beemer, Francie Calfo, Brian Helgeland, Francis Lawrence, Lauren Montgomery, Jack Orman, Van Partible and James Wong, among others. Get more information at sftv.lmu.edu or facebook.com/lmusftv.
About Film Independent at Lacma
Film Independent at Lacma is a film series produced by Film Independent—the nonprofit arts organization that also produces the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival—and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) with presenting sponsor The New York Times and premier sponsor Ovation. The Film Independent at Lacma Film Series is curated by Elvis Mitchell and assistant curator Bernardo Rondeau. The program features classic and contemporary narrative and documentary films; emerging auteurs; international showcases; special guest-curated programs, such as Jason Reitman's acclaimed Live Read series; and conversations with artists, filmmakers, and other special guests. For more information, go to filmindependent.org/lacma or lacma.org.
- 10/1/2013
- by Carlos Aguilar
- Sydney's Buzz
The Criterion Collection has announced that its December releases are set to include Martin Scorsese's "World Cinema Project," a box set containing six handpicked films from around the world that the famed director considers "precious to me"; Robert Altman's "Nashville"; Italian filmmaker Elio Petri's "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion"; and a Blu-ray edition of the classic documentary "Grey Gardens." Scorsese's "World Cinema Project" set includes the digitally restored films "Touki Bouki" (Senegal), "Redes" (Mexico), "A River Called Titas" (Bangladesh/India), "Dry Summer" (Turkey), "Trances" (Morocco) and "The Housemaid" (South Korea). A landmark 1970s American tragic comedy and musical about the interconnected lives of 24 characters, Criterion's "Nashville" release will, in addition to dual Blu-ray and DVD formats, include a new documentary about the making of the film and archival interviews and audio commentary from Altman. From filmmaking provocateur Petri,...
- 9/19/2013
- by Ramzi De Coster
- Indiewire
Mati Diop's next film, Mille soleils (A Thousand Suns), made its world premiere at the 24th edition of the International Film Festival - Marseille, over the weekend, where it won the grand prize for the international competition. The documentary explores the legacy of the seminal 1972 film, Touki Bouki, made by her uncle, the late Senegalese auteur, Djibril Diop Mambety. In the film, Diop journeys in search of her origins through the footprints left by her uncle's film, and along the way gets to know Touki Bouki's two main actors, thirty five years later. As I said before, color me definitely intrigued. Based on his own story and script, Djibril Diop Mambéty...
- 7/12/2013
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
Courtesy of the African Women In Cinema blog, Mati Diop's next film, Mille soleils (A Thousand Suns), will make its world premiere at the 24th edition of the International Film Festival - Marseille, which runs from July 2-8, 2013. The documentary explores the legacy the seminal 1972 film, Touki Bouki, made by her uncle, the late Senegalese auteur, Djibril Diop Mambety. In the film, Diop journeys in search of her origins through the footprints left by film, and along the way gets to know Touki Bouki's two main actors, thirty five years later. Color me definitely intrigued Based on his own story and script, Djibril Diop Mambéty reportedly made Touki Bouki with a...
- 6/14/2013
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
Director Djibril Diop Mambéty´s film “Touki Bouki” (1973) is a fascinating exploration into the mind of a man battling African traditions against European modernity. What he garners from European´s experimental cinema techniques of that time, along with underlying themes of Western civilization´s corruption and aversion for African culture, he juxtaposes with an oral storytelling tradition reminiscent of a true African foltktale — a man risking it all to leave home for a better life. Mambéty brilliantly fuses these compounded concepts through a pair of young lovers living in Dakar.
Mory (Magaye Niang ) and Anta (Mareme Niang) share little in common with their surroundings. They ride around town on Mory's motorbike, decorated with a symbolic cow´s skull, sharing a dream of escaping to Paris. They imagine their lives filled with luxury and to one day return to Dakar to be adored instead of scorned. When just such an opportunity unfolds,...
Mory (Magaye Niang ) and Anta (Mareme Niang) share little in common with their surroundings. They ride around town on Mory's motorbike, decorated with a symbolic cow´s skull, sharing a dream of escaping to Paris. They imagine their lives filled with luxury and to one day return to Dakar to be adored instead of scorned. When just such an opportunity unfolds,...
- 11/4/2010
- Moving Pictures Magazine
As Scorsese's new film, Shutter Island, opens, our critic picks the great man's 10 best scenes
Mean Streets (1973) 'What's a mook?'
Scorsese's uncanny ear for dialogue was evident from his first masterpiece, Mean Streets, which is set in the heart of Little Italy among debt collectors and small-time hoods. Characters were called by names such as Johnny Boy, Joey Clams and Giovanni Cappa. In one classic pool-hall scene, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and David Proval start a fight - over the jukebox sounds of Please Mr Postman - after a barman calls one of them "a mook".
Goodfellas (1990) Tracking shot entrance to the Copacabana
Ray Liotta's Henry Hill takes new girlfriend Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to dinner. They enter the Copa via the back door, go through the kitchen and are led onto the dancefloor and to the best table in the house. In one unbroken three-and-a-half minutes' shot,...
Mean Streets (1973) 'What's a mook?'
Scorsese's uncanny ear for dialogue was evident from his first masterpiece, Mean Streets, which is set in the heart of Little Italy among debt collectors and small-time hoods. Characters were called by names such as Johnny Boy, Joey Clams and Giovanni Cappa. In one classic pool-hall scene, Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel and David Proval start a fight - over the jukebox sounds of Please Mr Postman - after a barman calls one of them "a mook".
Goodfellas (1990) Tracking shot entrance to the Copacabana
Ray Liotta's Henry Hill takes new girlfriend Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to dinner. They enter the Copa via the back door, go through the kitchen and are led onto the dancefloor and to the best table in the house. In one unbroken three-and-a-half minutes' shot,...
- 3/7/2010
- by Jason Solomons
- The Guardian - Film News
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