Relationships mix, simmer and boil in the cauldron of domestic spaces in the films of Ramon Zürcher, who follows up his 2013 film The Strange Little Cat with this second film in what is intended to be a trilogy about "human togetherness", this time co-directed and co-written by his twin brother Silvan, stepping up from his previous producer's role.
The shifting of emotions is matched by a physical restructuring of apartments as Lisa (Liliane Amuat) prepares to move out of the place she shares with Mara (Henriette Confurius) and Markus (Ivan Georgiev) and into a new one - a place where she will live independently - the camera watching the interplay not just between the three of them but a wide ensemble cast, who come and go over the course of a couple of days.
The Zürchers have a keen eye for the tensions of the everyday and a potential for acts of.
The shifting of emotions is matched by a physical restructuring of apartments as Lisa (Liliane Amuat) prepares to move out of the place she shares with Mara (Henriette Confurius) and Markus (Ivan Georgiev) and into a new one - a place where she will live independently - the camera watching the interplay not just between the three of them but a wide ensemble cast, who come and go over the course of a couple of days.
The Zürchers have a keen eye for the tensions of the everyday and a potential for acts of.
- 3/11/2021
- by Amber Wilkinson
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
This was a busy year at Tiff, where I was a juror for Fipresci, helping to award a prize for best premiere in the Discovery section. Not only did this mean that some other films had to take a back burner—sadly, I did not see Eduardo Williams’ The Human Surge—but my writing time was a bit compromised as well. Better late than never? That is for you, Gentle Reader, to decide.Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa, Germany)So basic in the telling—a record of several days’ worth of visitors mostly to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienberg, Germany—Austerlitz is a film that in many ways exemplifies the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. What is the net effect for humanity when, faced with the drive to remember the unfathomable, we employ the grossly inadequate tools at our disposal?Austerlitz takes its name from W. G. Sebald’s final novel.
- 9/20/2016
- MUBI
Part of our continuing partnership with the online film journal cléo, which guest programs a film to watch on Mubi in the United States. In conjunction, we'll be hosting an exclusive article by one of their contributors. This month Eleni Deacon writes on Ramon Zürcher's debut feature The Strange Little Cat.Every home has its own weekend feeling. The way the breakfast-time light hits a specific patch of the kitchen floor. The sounds of siblings alternately joking then bugging each other. A sleepy quiet that sinks into the afternoon. The Strange Little Cat, Ramon Zürcher's slice-of-life debut feature, tracks a cozy Saturday at the home of a tight-knit German family. With two grown children visiting from out of town, their mother prepares for a group dinner later that night. The details of the day are routine: grocery shopping, listless cigarette breaks, a game of Connect Four. But while...
- 10/19/2015
- by Eleni Deacon
- MUBI
They’re responsible for landing some of the best in unwanted, rejected yet critically acclaimed festival winning titles all during the eleventh hour. As was the case with Ramon Zürcher’s The Strange Little Cat, Denis Côté’s career best in Vic + Flo Saw a Bear and Ben Rivers & Ben Russell’s A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, they’ve now saved a piece of Norwegian cinema from continually bumping into the wall. Winner of several awards including the Screenwriting Award for World Cinema at Sundance ’14, IndieWIRE reports that Eskil Vogt’s Blind has been picked up for release and will likely find a slot for sometime this year.
Gist: This focuses on Ellen (Ellen Dorrit Pettersen), a woman contending with the loss of vision. In trying to navigate a world without sight, she spends her days attempting to reconstruct the visual world as she once knew it. In...
Gist: This focuses on Ellen (Ellen Dorrit Pettersen), a woman contending with the loss of vision. In trying to navigate a world without sight, she spends her days attempting to reconstruct the visual world as she once knew it. In...
- 4/7/2015
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Museum of Modern Art Department of Film Curator Jytte Jensen Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
As the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art's 44th edition of New Directors/New Films is taking place, New York City and the film world has lost a champion of filmmakers. MoMA Department of Film Curator and longtime selection committee member Jytte Jensen died on Monday, due to cancer, at the age of 65.
When I spoke with Jytte before the 2014 New Directors/New Films kicked off, we had an informative discussion on Switzerland's Ramon Zürcher's family drama The Strange Little Cat, Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson's saga-infused Of Horses And Men, Jenny Slate's performance in Gillian Robespierre's Obvious Child, Jessica Oreck's The Vanquishing Of The Witch Baba Yaga, Talal Derki's Syrian documentary Return To Homs and the connection with Hubert Sauper's Sudan doc We Come As Friends...
As the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art's 44th edition of New Directors/New Films is taking place, New York City and the film world has lost a champion of filmmakers. MoMA Department of Film Curator and longtime selection committee member Jytte Jensen died on Monday, due to cancer, at the age of 65.
When I spoke with Jytte before the 2014 New Directors/New Films kicked off, we had an informative discussion on Switzerland's Ramon Zürcher's family drama The Strange Little Cat, Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson's saga-infused Of Horses And Men, Jenny Slate's performance in Gillian Robespierre's Obvious Child, Jessica Oreck's The Vanquishing Of The Witch Baba Yaga, Talal Derki's Syrian documentary Return To Homs and the connection with Hubert Sauper's Sudan doc We Come As Friends...
- 3/25/2015
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Ramon Zürcher’s student project turned festival darling debut is an odd, wholly original work that bears little resemblance to anything of recent memory. Essentially a non-narrative dinner party film about the physical beauty of our relationships with the spaces, beings and objects that make up the environments of our daily lives, Zürcher’s melancholic ballet of apartment maneuvering is strangely mesmerizing. Children are children, teens are teens, animals act as they will, objects are animated by those around, and parents reflect, fearing the years are slipping away, leading the old into the darkness and the young to pessimistic enlightenment. Born from a film school workshop presided over by slow cinema legend Béla Tarr and inspired by Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, The Strange Little Cat resembles neither, transcending the doom and gloom of his mentor and source material for something vibrantly new.
If there is a protagonist in Zürcher’s production,...
If there is a protagonist in Zürcher’s production,...
- 1/13/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
#20. The Skeleton Twins
#19. Obvious Child
#18. A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness
#17. Wild
#16. 112 Weddings
#15. The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga
#14. Tales of the Grim Sleep
#13. The Boxtrolls
#12. Enemy
#11. The Guest
#10. The Lego Movie
Despite my love of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, nothing could prepare me for the sheer joy projecting from every pixel, effortless kineticism that carries the raucous narrative, nor the surprising intellectualism that serve as the building blocks of the entire film. Writer/directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have performed a cinematic miracle in bringing a beloved inexpressive children’s toy to life with more vivacious wit than the vast majority of films release this year, animated or not.
#9. The Strange Little Cat
Ramon Zürcher’s student project turned festival darling debut is an odd, wholly original work that bears little resemblance to anything on this list. Essentially a non-narrative dinner party film about...
#19. Obvious Child
#18. A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness
#17. Wild
#16. 112 Weddings
#15. The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga
#14. Tales of the Grim Sleep
#13. The Boxtrolls
#12. Enemy
#11. The Guest
#10. The Lego Movie
Despite my love of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, nothing could prepare me for the sheer joy projecting from every pixel, effortless kineticism that carries the raucous narrative, nor the surprising intellectualism that serve as the building blocks of the entire film. Writer/directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have performed a cinematic miracle in bringing a beloved inexpressive children’s toy to life with more vivacious wit than the vast majority of films release this year, animated or not.
#9. The Strange Little Cat
Ramon Zürcher’s student project turned festival darling debut is an odd, wholly original work that bears little resemblance to anything on this list. Essentially a non-narrative dinner party film about...
- 1/6/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Senses of Cinema has posted the results of its 2014 World Poll and among the many other best-of-2014 lists we've gathered today is Reverse Shot's. #1 is Richard Linklater's Boyhood, followed by Alain Guiraudie's Stranger by the Lake, Tsai Ming-liang's Stray Dogs, Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language, James Gray's The Immigrant, Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez's Manakamana, Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, Joaquim Pinto's What Now? Remind Me, Ramon Zürcher's The Strange Little Cat, Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne's Two Days, One Night and Sergei Loznitsa's Maidan. » - David Hudson...
- 1/6/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Senses of Cinema has posted the results of its 2014 World Poll and among the many other best-of-2014 lists we've gathered today is Reverse Shot's. #1 is Richard Linklater's Boyhood, followed by Alain Guiraudie's Stranger by the Lake, Tsai Ming-liang's Stray Dogs, Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language, James Gray's The Immigrant, Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez's Manakamana, Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, Joaquim Pinto's What Now? Remind Me, Ramon Zürcher's The Strange Little Cat, Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne's Two Days, One Night and Sergei Loznitsa's Maidan. » - David Hudson...
- 1/6/2015
- Keyframe
We here at Sound On Sight like to release our list as late as possible in the year. The way I look at it, the list is meant to represent what our writers have watched and championed throughout the year, and so we allow our writers until the 28th of December to submit votes for their 15 favourite films in the hope of coming up with a list that truly represents the wide spectrum of movies we cover year-round. This late in the game, it is safe to assume that just about every other website has released their top picks, but we believe our list holds value, if only because it is comprised of over 50 hardcore cinephiles worldwide. That said, since our writers are spread out across the globe, it makes it difficult for a movie like Inherent Vice (which was released in only two North American cities during 2014 itself) to crack our year-end list.
- 12/28/2014
- by Staff
- SoundOnSight
1. Frank
Those of us who care about movie posters often complain about “big head” posters from Hollywood studios, but the design for Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank is the ne plus ultra of big head posters: a poster for a film about a big head. The head in question is the papier-mâché noggin worn by Michael Fassbender’s title character, which was inspired by the nearly identical prop worn by Chris Sievey, a.k.a. Frank Sidebottom, the nasal-voiced troubadour from Timperley, Manchester, who famously covered the Sex Pistols (“Anarchy in Timperley”) and had his moment of cult fame in the 80s. The poster for Frank, designed by an as-yet uncredited designer at P+A studio (the anonymity seems apt) subverts the chief function of the big head poster by not showing us the film’s star. To me it’s a thing of beauty (my affection for Frank Sidebottom and...
Those of us who care about movie posters often complain about “big head” posters from Hollywood studios, but the design for Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank is the ne plus ultra of big head posters: a poster for a film about a big head. The head in question is the papier-mâché noggin worn by Michael Fassbender’s title character, which was inspired by the nearly identical prop worn by Chris Sievey, a.k.a. Frank Sidebottom, the nasal-voiced troubadour from Timperley, Manchester, who famously covered the Sex Pistols (“Anarchy in Timperley”) and had his moment of cult fame in the 80s. The poster for Frank, designed by an as-yet uncredited designer at P+A studio (the anonymity seems apt) subverts the chief function of the big head poster by not showing us the film’s star. To me it’s a thing of beauty (my affection for Frank Sidebottom and...
- 12/15/2014
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
From the wave of critics polls and nominations thus far into awards season, Richard Linklater's Boyhood has established itself as a consensus choice for the best film of 2014. Such degrees of praise are deserved of Linklater; over the past twenty-five years, he's steadily constructed one of the most formidable filmographies of our generation with one accomplished feature after another. But other films of 2014, like Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language and Ramon Zurcher's The Strange Little Cat, speak to the moment in altogether novel ways.>> - Kevin B. Lee...
- 12/12/2014
- Keyframe
From the wave of critics polls and nominations thus far into awards season, Richard Linklater's Boyhood has established itself as a consensus choice for the best film of 2014. Such degrees of praise are deserved of Linklater; over the past twenty-five years, he's steadily constructed one of the most formidable filmographies of our generation with one accomplished feature after another. But other films of 2014, like Jean-Luc Godard's Goodbye to Language and Ramon Zurcher's The Strange Little Cat, speak to the moment in altogether novel ways.>> - Kevin B. Lee...
- 12/12/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Today is December 1st, which means there's just twenty-four more days until Christmas, and even less than that as everyone (including us) gets set to drop their Top Ten [insert category] Of 2014. Video tributes to the year will be rolling out too, and Fandor is getting things kicked off nicely. The streaming service specializing in independent and foreign films has unveiled their supercut of the 10 Best First Feature Films Of 2014, and not surprisingly, it veers from away from Hollywood. While acclaimed Sundance indies "Obvious Child" and "Dear White People" make the grade, the list also includes international sensations like "History Of Fear," "Policeman," "The Strange Little Cat," and more. If you've been wondering what foreign movies to track down, this is a good place to start. Take a look at the full list of ten and the supercut below. Fandor’s 10 Best First Feature Films Of 2014 10. Obvious Child 9. It Felt Like Love...
- 12/1/2014
- by Kevin Jagernauth
- The Playlist
Editor's Note: I asked Team Experience to tell us what they're thankful for this year during the holiday weekend. Here's Amir in the cinematic spirit.
Amir here. As a quick browse through the comments sections on my box office columns can attest, many readers of this website think that I'm the Grinch. It's hard to blame them but the truth is that, if we move away from the dross that Hollywood offers in thousands of theaters, I enjoy quite a healthy relationship with contemporary cinema. Here, for a change of mood, is a positive, complaint-free post.
I'm thankful...
For, first and foremost, Tiff as an organization in Toronto, especially their year-around programming of older films and for the festival that doesn’t just bring great cinema to the city, but great people, too. (If not for this festival, how else could I attract Nathaniel and Nick to town for shared screenings and dinner?...
Amir here. As a quick browse through the comments sections on my box office columns can attest, many readers of this website think that I'm the Grinch. It's hard to blame them but the truth is that, if we move away from the dross that Hollywood offers in thousands of theaters, I enjoy quite a healthy relationship with contemporary cinema. Here, for a change of mood, is a positive, complaint-free post.
I'm thankful...
For, first and foremost, Tiff as an organization in Toronto, especially their year-around programming of older films and for the festival that doesn’t just bring great cinema to the city, but great people, too. (If not for this festival, how else could I attract Nathaniel and Nick to town for shared screenings and dinner?...
- 11/29/2014
- by Amir S.
- FilmExperience
Jury includes Golden Leopard-winning director Angelina Maccarone, actress jenny Schily and producer Jochen Laube.
The Berlin Film Festival has unveiled the jury that will award the fourth “Made in Germany – Perspektive Fellowship” to a young director prior to the Berlinale.
Part of the Berlinale’s Perspektive Deutsches Kino section, the fellowship supports young German filmmakers in developing a project, material and screenplay. The €15,000 fellowship is funded by watch manufacturer Glashütte Original.
Eligible to participate were all directors who had a film in the Perspektive programme in 2014.
Press screenings of the Perspektive 2015 will kick off on Jan 19 with the presentation of this fellowship to a young talent from the 2014 edition.
The new jury members, all of whom will attend the award ceremony, are director Angelina Maccarone, actress Jenny Schily and producer Jochen Laube. Film journalist Knut Elstermann will host the occasion and invite the press in the name of the Berlinale to talk with the new fellowship holder...
The Berlin Film Festival has unveiled the jury that will award the fourth “Made in Germany – Perspektive Fellowship” to a young director prior to the Berlinale.
Part of the Berlinale’s Perspektive Deutsches Kino section, the fellowship supports young German filmmakers in developing a project, material and screenplay. The €15,000 fellowship is funded by watch manufacturer Glashütte Original.
Eligible to participate were all directors who had a film in the Perspektive programme in 2014.
Press screenings of the Perspektive 2015 will kick off on Jan 19 with the presentation of this fellowship to a young talent from the 2014 edition.
The new jury members, all of whom will attend the award ceremony, are director Angelina Maccarone, actress Jenny Schily and producer Jochen Laube. Film journalist Knut Elstermann will host the occasion and invite the press in the name of the Berlinale to talk with the new fellowship holder...
- 11/26/2014
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
The Strange Little Cat
NYC Release (Film Society of Lincoln Center) – August 1st
Distributor: Fandor
Awards & Fests: It debuted at the Berlin Film Festival in 2013, and made an impressive leap towards Cannes’ Acid section with a world fest tour that included Tiff, AFI Fest, New Directors/New Films. It picked up the Cph:pix Award for New Talent Grand and the International Cinephile Society Awards gave it the top honor in the Ics Award Best Picture Not Released in 2013 category.
What the critic’s are saying?: Our Blake Williams nails the in-house visual stratagems stating “absurdity of concomitance, the suspended intrusions of one’s personal space, and the swift hiccups in action that allow us to break from our stupor and temporarily carry on with our existence.” He provides further contextual analysis here.
NYTimes’ Ben Kenigsberg values the watchability factor of the 72 minute film — “so densely layered that you could...
NYC Release (Film Society of Lincoln Center) – August 1st
Distributor: Fandor
Awards & Fests: It debuted at the Berlin Film Festival in 2013, and made an impressive leap towards Cannes’ Acid section with a world fest tour that included Tiff, AFI Fest, New Directors/New Films. It picked up the Cph:pix Award for New Talent Grand and the International Cinephile Society Awards gave it the top honor in the Ics Award Best Picture Not Released in 2013 category.
What the critic’s are saying?: Our Blake Williams nails the in-house visual stratagems stating “absurdity of concomitance, the suspended intrusions of one’s personal space, and the swift hiccups in action that allow us to break from our stupor and temporarily carry on with our existence.” He provides further contextual analysis here.
NYTimes’ Ben Kenigsberg values the watchability factor of the 72 minute film — “so densely layered that you could...
- 8/8/2014
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Young Swiss filmmakers are calling for greater diversity in Swiss fiction production and the introduction of a new funding instrument to support up-and-coming directors.
Gathered together as the Swiss Fiction Movement (Sfm), the film-makers are holding their first public debate to air their grievances and proposals on the second day (Aug 7) of this year’s Locarno Film Festival.
In a paper described in advance as the Locarno Manifesto, the Sfm’s founders argue that the Swiss national funding system is currently concentrated on the support of large productions and that small productions “can only be made outside of the official funding landscape and with the aid of alternative financing”.
The examples of the UK’s Microwave scheme or Germany’s Das kleine Fernsehspiel are cited as successful initiatives in other countries which have been supporting and producing low-budget productions for many years.
At the same time, the filmmakers point to the ironic situation where the main prizes...
Gathered together as the Swiss Fiction Movement (Sfm), the film-makers are holding their first public debate to air their grievances and proposals on the second day (Aug 7) of this year’s Locarno Film Festival.
In a paper described in advance as the Locarno Manifesto, the Sfm’s founders argue that the Swiss national funding system is currently concentrated on the support of large productions and that small productions “can only be made outside of the official funding landscape and with the aid of alternative financing”.
The examples of the UK’s Microwave scheme or Germany’s Das kleine Fernsehspiel are cited as successful initiatives in other countries which have been supporting and producing low-budget productions for many years.
At the same time, the filmmakers point to the ironic situation where the main prizes...
- 8/7/2014
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
In a Word: Pulchritude
Buried in Cannes’ most unassuming and roundly ignored sidebar, Acid (an acronym for what translates to “The Association for the Distribution of Independent Cinema”), Ramon Zürcher’s Berlin-preemed debut The Strange Little Cat was among the most assured, original, and moving films to screen on the Croisette’s 2013 batch, a feat all the more remarkable in that the picture was made by a film student. The project is bound to carry some intrigue for anyone aware of the fact that the idea for the film originated from a seminar session conducted by Béla Tarr, yet the story behind that will have to be reserved for the film’s Q&A sessions, as the decidedly un-Tarr-esque film feels nothing like the Hungarian master’s cinema – nor that of pretty much anyone else.
Contained almost entirely in the domain of a cramped German apartment, the film could be...
Buried in Cannes’ most unassuming and roundly ignored sidebar, Acid (an acronym for what translates to “The Association for the Distribution of Independent Cinema”), Ramon Zürcher’s Berlin-preemed debut The Strange Little Cat was among the most assured, original, and moving films to screen on the Croisette’s 2013 batch, a feat all the more remarkable in that the picture was made by a film student. The project is bound to carry some intrigue for anyone aware of the fact that the idea for the film originated from a seminar session conducted by Béla Tarr, yet the story behind that will have to be reserved for the film’s Q&A sessions, as the decidedly un-Tarr-esque film feels nothing like the Hungarian master’s cinema – nor that of pretty much anyone else.
Contained almost entirely in the domain of a cramped German apartment, the film could be...
- 8/1/2014
- by Blake Williams
- IONCINEMA.com
We’re just past the halfway mark of 2014, but I already have a clear favorite for best film of the year. The Strange Little Cat is only seventy-two minutes long, but what happens within that short span amounts to some of the most brilliantly realized filmmaking in recent memory. Each passing second and every inch of the frame of this film displays remarkable attention to minute details that build into an utterly original way of looking.>>> - Kevin B. Lee...
- 8/1/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
We’re just past the halfway mark of 2014, but I already have a clear favorite for best film of the year. The Strange Little Cat is only seventy-two minutes long, but what happens within that short span amounts to some of the most brilliantly realized filmmaking in recent memory. Each passing second and every inch of the frame of this film displays remarkable attention to minute details that build into an utterly original way of looking.>>> - Kevin B. Lee...
- 8/1/2014
- Keyframe
Ramon Zürcher's ode to tension and release squeezes Jacques Tati-style preoccupations into the space of a tiny apartment. Compression and strain moves the one character apparently unbothered by any of it: the eponymous cat, an orange tabby who sleeps, paws and purrs his way around the domestic grind. In a way Ramon Zürcher positions the cat as the central figure of the film—not only the one which connects the others and stands outside their drama but also, in an important sense, the one whose perspective we’re encouraged to adopt. The Strange Little Cat has been described as the world seen through feline eyes, and that seems as good as description of what’s going on here as any: it accounts for how utterly strange even the most ordinary household objects and actions suddenly appear. Our rituals and social contracts are incomprehensible to our cats, who doubtless...
- 8/1/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Ramon Zürcher's ode to tension and release squeezes Jacques Tati-style preoccupations into the space of a tiny apartment. Compression and strain moves the one character apparently unbothered by any of it: the eponymous cat, an orange tabby who sleeps, paws and purrs his way around the domestic grind. In a way Ramon Zürcher positions the cat as the central figure of the film—not only the one which connects the others and stands outside their drama but also, in an important sense, the one whose perspective we’re encouraged to adopt. The Strange Little Cat has been described as the world seen through feline eyes, and that seems as good as description of what’s going on here as any: it accounts for how utterly strange even the most ordinary household objects and actions suddenly appear. Our rituals and social contracts are incomprehensible to our cats, who doubtless...
- 8/1/2014
- Keyframe
While cinema acts as a temporal artifice like no other medium out there, films that capture the absolute spark of a moment -- the Nowness of a breath or a look -- for all to experience at a further moment, are few and far between. Seizing the utterly uncanny and uplifting sense of life not merely observed, but experienced and felt on the most nuanced and beautiful of levels, Ramon Zürcher's debut feature (his thesis film at the dffb [Berlin School] in Germany) The Strange Little Cat is most assuredly one of these "Now Wave" films. At a succinct 72 minutes this beguiling look into one family's Saturday is, despite such a length, actually ponderous and airy by nature. Its minimalist aesthetic vividly stands at...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...
- 7/31/2014
- Screen Anarchy
For this correspondent’s money, the film to beat so far in 2014 is Swiss filmmaker Ramon Zürcher’s The Strange Little Cat (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen), a dazzlingly low-key schematic diagram of a single day’s ebb and flow in a German apartment. Zürcher cracks the space open like a dollhouse, but his exacting frames don’t create drama; rather, each individual component — a kettle, a ball, a clock, the nominal tabby, a regularly screaming child or any of the extended family members shuffling in and out of Zürcher’s rooms — invites the viewer’s attention as they often repeatedly intersect. Between narrative scenes, Zürcher stops for montages […]...
- 7/31/2014
- by Steve Macfarlane
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
For this correspondent’s money, the film to beat so far in 2014 is Swiss filmmaker Ramon Zürcher’s The Strange Little Cat (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen), a dazzlingly low-key schematic diagram of a single day’s ebb and flow in a German apartment. Zürcher cracks the space open like a dollhouse, but his exacting frames don’t create drama; rather, each individual component — a kettle, a ball, a clock, the nominal tabby, a regularly screaming child or any of the extended family members shuffling in and out of Zürcher’s rooms — invites the viewer’s attention as they often repeatedly intersect. Between narrative scenes, Zürcher stops for montages […]...
- 7/31/2014
- by Steve Macfarlane
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The words "student film" can strike terror in the bravest of hearts, but fear not The Strange Little Cat.
Made by filmmaker Ramon Zürcher while he was still attending the German Film and Television Academy, this odd little wonder captures the delicate textures and shadowy half-secrets of family life, mapping them out in a mosaic of fragmented dialogue and half-poetic, half-prosaic images.
A brother and sister (Luk Pfaff and Anjorka Strechel) have come home to their family's Berlin flat for a visit. Their much younger sister Clara (Mia Kasalo), a self-possessed elf, practices her nascent writing skills by drawing up a shopping list; an uncle (Armin Marewski) shows up to fix the washing machine; their mother (Jenny Schily) busies herself about the kitchen, re...
Made by filmmaker Ramon Zürcher while he was still attending the German Film and Television Academy, this odd little wonder captures the delicate textures and shadowy half-secrets of family life, mapping them out in a mosaic of fragmented dialogue and half-poetic, half-prosaic images.
A brother and sister (Luk Pfaff and Anjorka Strechel) have come home to their family's Berlin flat for a visit. Their much younger sister Clara (Mia Kasalo), a self-possessed elf, practices her nascent writing skills by drawing up a shopping list; an uncle (Armin Marewski) shows up to fix the washing machine; their mother (Jenny Schily) busies herself about the kitchen, re...
- 7/30/2014
- Village Voice
Just prior to its one week stint over at the FilmLinc in August, TheWrap reports that Fandor have put The Strange Little Cat in their sandbox. Ramon Zürcher’s dramedy has been a favorite of ours on the site — will receive a day & date release on August 1st.
Gist: Siblings Karin and Simon return home to visit their parents and younger sister and to help prepare dinner for their extended family. Events unfold leisurely, but with plenty of underlying and unstated tensions inevitable in a flat overstuffed with a mother, father, children, grandmother and cat. The eponymous ginger feline offers consolation and possibly the film’s point of view.
Worth Noting: The little 72 minute film that could moved from the Berlin Film Fest in 2013 to the Acid section in Cannes, then Tiff, AFI Film Fest and New Directors/New Films in 2014.
Do We Care?: Our Blake Williams found some...
Gist: Siblings Karin and Simon return home to visit their parents and younger sister and to help prepare dinner for their extended family. Events unfold leisurely, but with plenty of underlying and unstated tensions inevitable in a flat overstuffed with a mother, father, children, grandmother and cat. The eponymous ginger feline offers consolation and possibly the film’s point of view.
Worth Noting: The little 72 minute film that could moved from the Berlin Film Fest in 2013 to the Acid section in Cannes, then Tiff, AFI Film Fest and New Directors/New Films in 2014.
Do We Care?: Our Blake Williams found some...
- 7/22/2014
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Fandor, the online streaming film company run by Ted Hope, has acquired German director Ramon Zürcher's domestic dramedy “The Strange Little Cat” for a day-and-date release. The movie, which premiered at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival and later played that year at Cannes and Toronto, will get a minimum one week run at Lincoln Center in New York starting on Aug. 2nd, while it will also stream on Fandor. Also read: Ted Hope Named CEO of Fandor The film explores “deeper meaning of the trivial in this droll narrative centered on a seemingly uneventful day in the life of a Berlin family.
- 7/22/2014
- by Jordan Zakarin
- The Wrap
Ramon Zürcher director of The Strange Little Cat, with producer Silvan Zürcher on the left: "I was always fascinated very much by films of Ingmar Bergman because they deal with inner states."
Find out what Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman, the interior in Ingmar Bergman, Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany's, Hitchcock's Rear Window basket and Ernst Jandl's poems have to do with Ramon Zürcher's The Strange Little Cat (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen).
Following a press screening of Jacques Demy's Young Girls Of Rochefort, I met up with Zürcher. In the center of Demy's marvelous and innovative musical which features a pastel clad vision of Gene Kelly, are twins, played by Catherine Deneuve and her late sister Françoise Dorléac. In perfect symmetry, Ramon brought along his twin brother, producer Silvan Zürcher to the office of Criterion Collection, off Union Square, where our conversation took place, arranged by...
Find out what Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman, the interior in Ingmar Bergman, Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany's, Hitchcock's Rear Window basket and Ernst Jandl's poems have to do with Ramon Zürcher's The Strange Little Cat (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen).
Following a press screening of Jacques Demy's Young Girls Of Rochefort, I met up with Zürcher. In the center of Demy's marvelous and innovative musical which features a pastel clad vision of Gene Kelly, are twins, played by Catherine Deneuve and her late sister Françoise Dorléac. In perfect symmetry, Ramon brought along his twin brother, producer Silvan Zürcher to the office of Criterion Collection, off Union Square, where our conversation took place, arranged by...
- 7/17/2014
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Cinema Scope #58 is available now (with a good chunk of the content available online)—and features pieces by several Notebook contributors! In the Editor's Note, Mark Peranson reveals the magazine's Top Ten films of 2013:
1. L’inconnu du lac (Alain Guiraudie)
2. Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz)
3. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
4. What Now? Remind Me (Joaquim Pinto)
5. The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)
6. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
7. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
8. Story of My Death (Albert Serra)
9. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
10. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
The 19th edition of La Furia Umana is now online for your perusal.
Above: an excellent (French) making-of/look back at James Gray's debut feature, Little Odessa. For Film Comment, Giovanni Vimercati (rather venomously) reports on the Berlinale:
"People often forget the etymological roots of the word 'festival.' A film festival signifies a technically convivial,...
1. L’inconnu du lac (Alain Guiraudie)
2. Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz)
3. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
4. What Now? Remind Me (Joaquim Pinto)
5. The Strange Little Cat (Ramon Zürcher)
6. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
7. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)
8. Story of My Death (Albert Serra)
9. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
10. Computer Chess (Andrew Bujalski)
The 19th edition of La Furia Umana is now online for your perusal.
Above: an excellent (French) making-of/look back at James Gray's debut feature, Little Odessa. For Film Comment, Giovanni Vimercati (rather venomously) reports on the Berlinale:
"People often forget the etymological roots of the word 'festival.' A film festival signifies a technically convivial,...
- 4/1/2014
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
Above: an excerpt from a video interview with Ramon Zürcher, the co-director of The Strange Little Cat. Head on over to The Seventh Art to check out all the other content from the newly released Issue #19. The most surprising news item in the past week is surely the announcement that Pablo Larrain (No) will be helming a remake of Scarface. Too bewildered to offer an opinion on this, so let's wait and see what develops... Omnibus films are inherently a mixed bag but we'll be keeping our eyes out for this soccer-related project that has such names attached to it as Vincent Gallo and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Above: issue 70 of Senses of Cinema is now online, and includes an excerpt from a forthcoming English translation of Federico Fellini's 1980 book Making a Film:
"From the day I was born to the first time I set foot in Cinecittà, it seems as...
"From the day I was born to the first time I set foot in Cinecittà, it seems as...
- 3/26/2014
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
The Strange Little Cat "Formally it's so inventive and you tend to, when you talk about it initially, just talk about the form. And you miss the point of how emotionally involving and revealing it is of all the people in this kitchen" In part two of our look at this year's New Directors/New Films season in New York, I speak with longtime selection committee member MoMA Department of Film Curator Jytte Jensen on Ramon Zürcher's family drama The Strange Little Cat, Benedikt Erlingsson's saga-infused Of Horses and Men, Jenny Slate's performance in Gillian Robespierre's Obvious Child, Talal Derki's Syrian documentary Return to Homs and the connection with Hubert Sauper's Sudan doc We Come as Friends and Bertrand Tavernier's African-set Coup de Torchon.
Anne-Katrin Titze: I loved The Strange Little Cat.
Jytte Jensen: Yes, it's wonderful. It's one of the first films we invited,...
Anne-Katrin Titze: I loved The Strange Little Cat.
Jytte Jensen: Yes, it's wonderful. It's one of the first films we invited,...
- 3/20/2014
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
If ever there were a case of a film being a reflecting pool of the viewer's understanding, rather than a monolithic piece of work that we can either get wrong or right in terms of its author's intentions, "The Strange Little Cat," which plays this week during the Göteborg International Film Festival, is it. This we know, having idly followed the film's progress from its under-the-radar premiere in Berlin last year, through its Cannes bow in the equivalent of an off-off-Broadway sidebar, ultimately to a couple of end-of-year lists (especially those dedicated to films without a distribution deal). Over those months, quiet, impressive notices have collected around the film's reputation; the warmth of the praise only equalled by the complete, almost comical, disparity of the interpretation. Critics unanimously admire it, but have wildly different ideas of what "it" is. This in itself is not that unusual; there are opaque, arty films,...
- 1/27/2014
- by Jessica Kiang
- The Playlist
The International Cinephile Society has announced the nominees for the 11th Ics Awards. Abdellatif Kechiche's "Blue is the Warmest Color," the Coen Brothers' "Inside Llewyn Davis," Spike Jonze's "Her," and Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave" dominated the nominations with 7 nods each.
Winners of the 11th Ics Awards will be announced on February 23, 2014.
Here's the complete list of nominees:
Picture
. 12 Years a Slave
. Before Midnight
. Blue is the Warmest Color
. Frances Ha
. Gravity
. The Great Beauty
. Her
. Inside Llewyn Davis
. Laurence Anyways
. Spring Breakers
. The Wolf of Wall Street
Director
. Ethan Coen & Joel Coen - Inside Llewyn Davis
. Alfonso Cuarón - Gravity
. Xavier Dolan - Laurence Anyways
. Spike Jonze - Her
. Abdellatif Kechiche - Blue is the Warmest Color
. Paolo Sorrentino - The Great Beauty
Film Not In The English Language
. Beyond the Hills
. Blancanieves
. Blue is the Warmest Color
. Faust
. The Great Beauty
. The Hunt
. In the...
Winners of the 11th Ics Awards will be announced on February 23, 2014.
Here's the complete list of nominees:
Picture
. 12 Years a Slave
. Before Midnight
. Blue is the Warmest Color
. Frances Ha
. Gravity
. The Great Beauty
. Her
. Inside Llewyn Davis
. Laurence Anyways
. Spring Breakers
. The Wolf of Wall Street
Director
. Ethan Coen & Joel Coen - Inside Llewyn Davis
. Alfonso Cuarón - Gravity
. Xavier Dolan - Laurence Anyways
. Spike Jonze - Her
. Abdellatif Kechiche - Blue is the Warmest Color
. Paolo Sorrentino - The Great Beauty
Film Not In The English Language
. Beyond the Hills
. Blancanieves
. Blue is the Warmest Color
. Faust
. The Great Beauty
. The Hunt
. In the...
- 1/14/2014
- by Manny
- Manny the Movie Guy
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
Film Comment has revealed the results of its annual critics poll, and the Coen Brothers' "Inside Llewyn Davis" easily won the top spot!
Film Comment's Best Films of 2013
1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. 12 Years a Slave
3. Before Midnight
4. The Act of Killing
5. A Touch of Sin
6. Leviathan
7. Gravity
8. Computer Chess
9. Frances Ha
10. Upstream Color
Film Comment's Best Undistributed Films of 2013
1. Jealousy
2. Stray Dogs
3. What Now? Remind Me
4. Nobody's Daughter Haewon
5. Abuse of Weakness
6. Our Sunhi
7. The Strange Little Cat
8. A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness
9. Story of My Death
10. Club Sandwich...
Film Comment's Best Films of 2013
1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. 12 Years a Slave
3. Before Midnight
4. The Act of Killing
5. A Touch of Sin
6. Leviathan
7. Gravity
8. Computer Chess
9. Frances Ha
10. Upstream Color
Film Comment's Best Undistributed Films of 2013
1. Jealousy
2. Stray Dogs
3. What Now? Remind Me
4. Nobody's Daughter Haewon
5. Abuse of Weakness
6. Our Sunhi
7. The Strange Little Cat
8. A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness
9. Story of My Death
10. Club Sandwich...
- 12/16/2013
- by Manny
- Manny the Movie Guy
News.
Canadian documentarian Peter Wintonick has passed away at the age of 60. Aaron Cutler has some words and links on the artist.
The Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma, also known as the Rome Film Festival, has announced its awards from a Jury chaired by James Gray. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Seventh Code was among the winners, picking up Best Director and Best Technical Contribution.
The Seventh Art's latest video mag is now online, featuring interviews with João Pedro Rodrigues and Corneliu Porumboiu, among others. What's next for Joe Dante? A horror-comedy starring Anton Yelchin titled Burying the Ex (it's the sort of cheesy title we'd only let him get away with!).
Finds.
Above: from our friend Adrian Curry's Tumblr, a French poster for The Big Sleep that auctioned off for $21,510. Check out this fun, totally bizarre interactive video for Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone". For Film Comment, Max Nelson...
Canadian documentarian Peter Wintonick has passed away at the age of 60. Aaron Cutler has some words and links on the artist.
The Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma, also known as the Rome Film Festival, has announced its awards from a Jury chaired by James Gray. Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Seventh Code was among the winners, picking up Best Director and Best Technical Contribution.
The Seventh Art's latest video mag is now online, featuring interviews with João Pedro Rodrigues and Corneliu Porumboiu, among others. What's next for Joe Dante? A horror-comedy starring Anton Yelchin titled Burying the Ex (it's the sort of cheesy title we'd only let him get away with!).
Finds.
Above: from our friend Adrian Curry's Tumblr, a French poster for The Big Sleep that auctioned off for $21,510. Check out this fun, totally bizarre interactive video for Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone". For Film Comment, Max Nelson...
- 11/20/2013
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
Stars: Jenny Schily, Mia Kasalo, Anjorka Strechel, Luk Pfaff | Written and Directed by Ramon Zürcher
Review by Scott Clark of Cinehouse
Hands down the hardest film to talk about at Toronto’s International Film Festival this year is The Strange Little Cat, a charming study into the quant and often bizarre realities of everyday family life.
Very loosely (almost unthinkably) based on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Ramon Zurcher’s first feature is an exercise in mastery on many levels. The keen and prying eye he exudes into every facet of the busy household can at points seem mundane and others alien but nearly always utterly riveting. The mechanics of household relations seem to spiral silently into a weird dance as a family convenes for a celebration. As each member pops in and out of the films’ frame we are presented odd short narratives from each in an attempt to reveal...
Review by Scott Clark of Cinehouse
Hands down the hardest film to talk about at Toronto’s International Film Festival this year is The Strange Little Cat, a charming study into the quant and often bizarre realities of everyday family life.
Very loosely (almost unthinkably) based on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Ramon Zurcher’s first feature is an exercise in mastery on many levels. The keen and prying eye he exudes into every facet of the busy household can at points seem mundane and others alien but nearly always utterly riveting. The mechanics of household relations seem to spiral silently into a weird dance as a family convenes for a celebration. As each member pops in and out of the films’ frame we are presented odd short narratives from each in an attempt to reveal...
- 10/17/2013
- by Guest
- Nerdly
The line-up of the 2nd edition of the Dharamshala International Film festival has been announced. The festival will showcase feature films, documentaries and short films.
Organised by White Crane Arts & Media; the festival will be held from October 24 – 27, 2013 in McLeod Ganj, Dharamshala.
This year, a new section ‘Art and Film’ has been introduced at the festival in collaboration with Vienna-based Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation. The section will feature art films made by international artists Sean Snyder, Wael Shawky, Marine Hugonnier, Omer Fast, Walid Raad and Rabih Mroué.
The Best of recent Indian Shorts curated by filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni will also be showcased.
Besides, Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky’s Watermark will make its world premiere at the festival.
Some of the film personalities who will attend the festival are: Jacek Borcuch (Lasting), Nishtha Jain (Gulabi Gang), Nitin Kakkar (Filmistaan), Avijit Mukul Kishore (To Let the World In), Nagraj Manjule (Fandry...
Organised by White Crane Arts & Media; the festival will be held from October 24 – 27, 2013 in McLeod Ganj, Dharamshala.
This year, a new section ‘Art and Film’ has been introduced at the festival in collaboration with Vienna-based Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Foundation. The section will feature art films made by international artists Sean Snyder, Wael Shawky, Marine Hugonnier, Omer Fast, Walid Raad and Rabih Mroué.
The Best of recent Indian Shorts curated by filmmaker Umesh Kulkarni will also be showcased.
Besides, Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky’s Watermark will make its world premiere at the festival.
Some of the film personalities who will attend the festival are: Jacek Borcuch (Lasting), Nishtha Jain (Gulabi Gang), Nitin Kakkar (Filmistaan), Avijit Mukul Kishore (To Let the World In), Nagraj Manjule (Fandry...
- 10/16/2013
- by NewsDesk
- DearCinema.com
AFI Fest 2013 presented by Audi top brass unveiled the New Auteurs and shorts sections that will screen at the festival, set to take place from November 7-14 in Hollywood.
The New Auteurs section highlights first and second-time feature film directors from around the world.
Entries include: Yeon Sang-ho’s The Fake (South Korea), Emir Baigazin’s Harmony Lessons (Kazakhstan, Germany, France), Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross’ In Bloom (Georgia, Germany, France); Mira Fornay’s My Dog Killer (Slovakia, Czech Republic); and Katrin Gebbe’s Nothing Bad Can Happen (Germany).
Rounding out the ten selections are: Agustín Toscano and Ezequiel Radusky’s The Owners (Argentina); Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant (UK); Ben Rivers and Ben Russell’s A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness (France, Estonia); Ramon Zürcher’s The Strange Little Cat (Germany); and Samuel Isamu Kishi Leopo’s We Are Mari Pepa (Mexico);
For the full list of shorts and jurors for both categories visit the...
The New Auteurs section highlights first and second-time feature film directors from around the world.
Entries include: Yeon Sang-ho’s The Fake (South Korea), Emir Baigazin’s Harmony Lessons (Kazakhstan, Germany, France), Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross’ In Bloom (Georgia, Germany, France); Mira Fornay’s My Dog Killer (Slovakia, Czech Republic); and Katrin Gebbe’s Nothing Bad Can Happen (Germany).
Rounding out the ten selections are: Agustín Toscano and Ezequiel Radusky’s The Owners (Argentina); Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant (UK); Ben Rivers and Ben Russell’s A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness (France, Estonia); Ramon Zürcher’s The Strange Little Cat (Germany); and Samuel Isamu Kishi Leopo’s We Are Mari Pepa (Mexico);
For the full list of shorts and jurors for both categories visit the...
- 10/15/2013
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
Festival’s music documentaries include Revenge of the Mekons [pictured] and Harlem Street Singer.
The 27th Leeds International Film Festival (Nov 6-21) will open with Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity.
The festival programme includes 163 films in 250 screenings at four main venues: Leeds Town Hall, Hyde Park Picture House, Vue Leeds at the Light and the Everyman.
The official selection includes festival hit such as Blue is the Warmest Colour, Child’s Pose, Nebraska and Stranger By The Lake; plus discovery titles including Harmony Lessons, The Strange Little Cat and the UK premiere of Finnish veteran Pirjo Honkasalo’s Concrete Night.
Leeds’ cult cinema section Fanomenon will include the UK premiere of Korea’s Cold Eyes, a Batman offering with a new documentary about Frank Miller, and the Night of the Dead and Day of the Dead series with films such as 100 Bloody Acres and Big Bad Wolves. Cult classics to screen include Deadlock, Wake in Fright, and Ikarie...
The 27th Leeds International Film Festival (Nov 6-21) will open with Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity.
The festival programme includes 163 films in 250 screenings at four main venues: Leeds Town Hall, Hyde Park Picture House, Vue Leeds at the Light and the Everyman.
The official selection includes festival hit such as Blue is the Warmest Colour, Child’s Pose, Nebraska and Stranger By The Lake; plus discovery titles including Harmony Lessons, The Strange Little Cat and the UK premiere of Finnish veteran Pirjo Honkasalo’s Concrete Night.
Leeds’ cult cinema section Fanomenon will include the UK premiere of Korea’s Cold Eyes, a Batman offering with a new documentary about Frank Miller, and the Night of the Dead and Day of the Dead series with films such as 100 Bloody Acres and Big Bad Wolves. Cult classics to screen include Deadlock, Wake in Fright, and Ikarie...
- 10/8/2013
- by wendy.mitchell@screendaily.com (Wendy Mitchell)
- ScreenDaily
Below you will find our total coverage of the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, including a round up on experimental short films, reviews, and the festival-spanning dialog between our two main critics at Tiff. More interviews will be added to the index as they are published.
Correspondences
between Fernando F. Croce and Daniel Kasman
#1
Daniel Kasman's introduction
#2
Fernando F. Croce on Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, François Ozon’s Young & Beautiful, Frank Pavich's Jodorowsky's Dune
#3
Daniel Kasman on Catherine Breillat's Abuse of Weakness, Jafar Panahi's Closed Curtain, Frederick Wiseman's At Berkeley
#4
Fernando F. Croce on Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves, Eli Roth's The Green Inferno, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, Sylvain Chomet's Atilla Marcel
#5
Daniel Kasman on David Rimmer's Variations on a Cellophane Wrapper, Luther Price's Pop Takes, Kenneth Anger's Airships, Stephen Broomer's Pepper's Ghost,...
Correspondences
between Fernando F. Croce and Daniel Kasman
#1
Daniel Kasman's introduction
#2
Fernando F. Croce on Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, François Ozon’s Young & Beautiful, Frank Pavich's Jodorowsky's Dune
#3
Daniel Kasman on Catherine Breillat's Abuse of Weakness, Jafar Panahi's Closed Curtain, Frederick Wiseman's At Berkeley
#4
Fernando F. Croce on Kelly Reichardt's Night Moves, Eli Roth's The Green Inferno, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, Sylvain Chomet's Atilla Marcel
#5
Daniel Kasman on David Rimmer's Variations on a Cellophane Wrapper, Luther Price's Pop Takes, Kenneth Anger's Airships, Stephen Broomer's Pepper's Ghost,...
- 9/30/2013
- by Notebook
- MUBI
The Strange Little Cat (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen)
Written and directed by Ramon Zürcher
Germany, 2013
A terrific chamber piece that illustrates one crisp fall Saturday afternoon in the life of one family, Ramon Zürcher’s film is a sumptuous journey of visual storytelling that fills its claustrophobic spaces with the animated pace of modern life and its quiet revelatory moments. Loosely inspired by Kafka’s novella Metamorphosis, and with comparisons made to Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman and the raucous hubbub of Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen, The Strange Little Cat is a hypnotic film that places its focus on the comings and goings of a family preparing a dinner for an ailing matriarch.
The film is peppered by family members ducking in and out of frame, almost with the fervor of actors in a stage play, as though busying themselves behind the scenes with the preparations for a final, defining performance.
Written and directed by Ramon Zürcher
Germany, 2013
A terrific chamber piece that illustrates one crisp fall Saturday afternoon in the life of one family, Ramon Zürcher’s film is a sumptuous journey of visual storytelling that fills its claustrophobic spaces with the animated pace of modern life and its quiet revelatory moments. Loosely inspired by Kafka’s novella Metamorphosis, and with comparisons made to Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman and the raucous hubbub of Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen, The Strange Little Cat is a hypnotic film that places its focus on the comings and goings of a family preparing a dinner for an ailing matriarch.
The film is peppered by family members ducking in and out of frame, almost with the fervor of actors in a stage play, as though busying themselves behind the scenes with the preparations for a final, defining performance.
- 9/23/2013
- by Gregory Ashman
- SoundOnSight
Amir here, back to finish my Tiff diary. With the bad taste of my previous roundup washed away, it's time to move on to the good stuff. And boy did we have a lot of that.
As a diligent ticket stub collector (I know some of you do that, too) it wasn't hard for me to look back at the previous editions of the festival, put the films side by side and compare this year to past festivals. Without a doubt, my 2013 lineup is the cream of the crop. So strong were the films I watched this year that my Tiff top ten can easily match the quality of any of my year-end top tens. Still, I hesitate to call this a good year for Toronto. Tiff is, by nature, impossible to classify as having a "good" or "bad" year. The festival's gargantuan program offers nearly 300 films and each person's...
As a diligent ticket stub collector (I know some of you do that, too) it wasn't hard for me to look back at the previous editions of the festival, put the films side by side and compare this year to past festivals. Without a doubt, my 2013 lineup is the cream of the crop. So strong were the films I watched this year that my Tiff top ten can easily match the quality of any of my year-end top tens. Still, I hesitate to call this a good year for Toronto. Tiff is, by nature, impossible to classify as having a "good" or "bad" year. The festival's gargantuan program offers nearly 300 films and each person's...
- 9/20/2013
- by Amir S.
- FilmExperience
International Competition films announced by Turkey’s Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival; includes Ari Folman’s The Congress and Tomasz Wasilewski’s Floating Skyscrapers.
The 50th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival (Oct 4-11) has revealed the 10 films that will make up its International Feature Film Competition.
The Competition strand aims to “discover new talent which have managed to develop a unique language and bring a different perspective to cinema in Asia, Europe, and Middle Eastern countries.”
The titles include:
36, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit (Thailand)When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism, Corneliu Porumboiu (Romania-France)Floating Skyscrapers, Tomasz Wasilewski (Poland)Youth, Tom Shoval (Israel-Germany)Coming Forth by Day, Hala Lotfy (Egypt-uae)Our Heroes Died Tonight, David Perrault (France)The Dead and The Living, Barbara Albert (Austria-Poland-Germany)The Congress, Ari Folman (Israel-Germany-Poland-France-Luxembourg)The Strange Little Cat, Ramon Zürcher (Germany)Nobody’s Home, Deniz Akçay (Turkey)...
The 50th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival (Oct 4-11) has revealed the 10 films that will make up its International Feature Film Competition.
The Competition strand aims to “discover new talent which have managed to develop a unique language and bring a different perspective to cinema in Asia, Europe, and Middle Eastern countries.”
The titles include:
36, Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit (Thailand)When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism, Corneliu Porumboiu (Romania-France)Floating Skyscrapers, Tomasz Wasilewski (Poland)Youth, Tom Shoval (Israel-Germany)Coming Forth by Day, Hala Lotfy (Egypt-uae)Our Heroes Died Tonight, David Perrault (France)The Dead and The Living, Barbara Albert (Austria-Poland-Germany)The Congress, Ari Folman (Israel-Germany-Poland-France-Luxembourg)The Strange Little Cat, Ramon Zürcher (Germany)Nobody’s Home, Deniz Akçay (Turkey)...
- 9/20/2013
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
Now that the dust has settled and the behemoth Tiff is in our rear-view mirror, the Ioncinema.com team are comparing notes, grading films and looking back at our personal experiences, our rapport with the films we saw and the characters that vividly remain with us. Among our favorite fest recaps, our discerning fivesome (Eric Lavallee, Jordan M. Smith, Nicholas Bell, Leora Heilbronn, Caitlin Coder) have created a Top 20 List of New Faces from the 2013 of up-and-coming actors and actresses (of all age demos) that stole some thunder in lead or supporting player roles. Here they are:
#20. Zoe Levin (Palo Alto, Beneath the Harvest Sky)
Unlike the characters of Emily and Tasha in Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto and Aron Gaudet & Gita Pullapilly’s Beneath the Harvest Sky, Zoe Levin‘s future is a a bright one. Respectively playing a teens suffering from suburban and country-setting ennui, in Palo Alto...
#20. Zoe Levin (Palo Alto, Beneath the Harvest Sky)
Unlike the characters of Emily and Tasha in Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto and Aron Gaudet & Gita Pullapilly’s Beneath the Harvest Sky, Zoe Levin‘s future is a a bright one. Respectively playing a teens suffering from suburban and country-setting ennui, in Palo Alto...
- 9/19/2013
- by IONCINEMA.com Contributing Writers
- IONCINEMA.com
Above: a publicity image from Home from Home: Chronicle of a Vision.
My dear Fern,
I'd like to tell you today about a few films I don't think you had the chance to see. How strange that with what I'd like to think are similar tastes and sensibilities, that let loose in a playground for those very things, we sometimes take such divergent paths? I suppose that's what I was getting at in my first letter to you. Are these our choices, or fate...or perhaps a bit of both? Miyazaki's wind? Towards the end of the festival, I saw you at more movies, which seems to heighten my critical faculties, being under pressure to compete against your utterly apt and evocative wordplay! I must admit, it is somewhat a relief to know that you want to write about something that I liked (the Gomes short, The Strange Little Cat,...
My dear Fern,
I'd like to tell you today about a few films I don't think you had the chance to see. How strange that with what I'd like to think are similar tastes and sensibilities, that let loose in a playground for those very things, we sometimes take such divergent paths? I suppose that's what I was getting at in my first letter to you. Are these our choices, or fate...or perhaps a bit of both? Miyazaki's wind? Towards the end of the festival, I saw you at more movies, which seems to heighten my critical faculties, being under pressure to compete against your utterly apt and evocative wordplay! I must admit, it is somewhat a relief to know that you want to write about something that I liked (the Gomes short, The Strange Little Cat,...
- 9/17/2013
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
Dear Danny,
Among other things, Tiff is a place for getting rid of aesthetic prejudices. I often drag my feet going to experimental projects—you know, from our conversations, that I’m far more of a narrative guy—and yet I always marvel at the beauties I find in them. Imagery and rhythm are self-sufficient pleasures, and the three-part Wavelengths program we saw showcased plenty of these elements. Following Un conte de Michel de Montaigne, João Pedro Rodrigues’ The King’s Body also uses a statue as a recurring image—not the smilingly contemplative Montaigne of Jean-Marie Straub’s splendid recitation, but the armored-for-battle Afonso Henriques, Portugal’s first conquering monarch. There their similarities end, however: whereas Straub gets his mysterious effects from sun-dappled tableaux punctured by darkness, the rustling of leaves and Barbara Ulrich’s reading of the text, Rodrigues envisions a different form of performance through a parade of sinewy beefcake.
Among other things, Tiff is a place for getting rid of aesthetic prejudices. I often drag my feet going to experimental projects—you know, from our conversations, that I’m far more of a narrative guy—and yet I always marvel at the beauties I find in them. Imagery and rhythm are self-sufficient pleasures, and the three-part Wavelengths program we saw showcased plenty of these elements. Following Un conte de Michel de Montaigne, João Pedro Rodrigues’ The King’s Body also uses a statue as a recurring image—not the smilingly contemplative Montaigne of Jean-Marie Straub’s splendid recitation, but the armored-for-battle Afonso Henriques, Portugal’s first conquering monarch. There their similarities end, however: whereas Straub gets his mysterious effects from sun-dappled tableaux punctured by darkness, the rustling of leaves and Barbara Ulrich’s reading of the text, Rodrigues envisions a different form of performance through a parade of sinewy beefcake.
- 9/17/2013
- by Fernando F. Croce
- MUBI
Kevin Macdonald’s How I Live Now will close the festival, which has assembled it largest programme to date.
The 33rd Cambridge Film Festival (Sept 19-29) has unveiled its 2013 line-up, comprising 150 titles from 40 countries.
As previously announced, Professor Stephen Hawking will attend the opening night gala of documentary Hawking, which will be broadcast live to more than 60 screens across the UK.
The festival will close with Kevin Macdonald’s How I Live Now, an Orwellian vision of a post-apocalyptic future starring Saoirse Ronan and George MacKay.
Alongside Hawking, other special guests to the festival will include directors Lucy Walker (The Crash Reel), Roland Klick (Deadlock), Mark Levinson (Particle Fever), Julien Temple (Oil City Confidential), Ramon Zürcher (The Strange Little Cat), Małgośka Szumowska (In The Name Of), Marzin Malaszczak (Sieniawka), Matt Hulse (Dummy Jim) and Andrew Mudge (The Forgotten Kingdom), Bob Stanley, John Pearse and actress Stephanie Stremler (Dust On Our Heart).
Strands include Young Americans, aimed at showcasing...
The 33rd Cambridge Film Festival (Sept 19-29) has unveiled its 2013 line-up, comprising 150 titles from 40 countries.
As previously announced, Professor Stephen Hawking will attend the opening night gala of documentary Hawking, which will be broadcast live to more than 60 screens across the UK.
The festival will close with Kevin Macdonald’s How I Live Now, an Orwellian vision of a post-apocalyptic future starring Saoirse Ronan and George MacKay.
Alongside Hawking, other special guests to the festival will include directors Lucy Walker (The Crash Reel), Roland Klick (Deadlock), Mark Levinson (Particle Fever), Julien Temple (Oil City Confidential), Ramon Zürcher (The Strange Little Cat), Małgośka Szumowska (In The Name Of), Marzin Malaszczak (Sieniawka), Matt Hulse (Dummy Jim) and Andrew Mudge (The Forgotten Kingdom), Bob Stanley, John Pearse and actress Stephanie Stremler (Dust On Our Heart).
Strands include Young Americans, aimed at showcasing...
- 8/21/2013
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
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