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5 years ago
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A truly original work from Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson, Woman at War is a whimsical action film about a middle-aged eco-terrorist fighting local industrialization. Starring the wonderful Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir as Halla, an upbeat choir director who secretly dismantles power lines in her spare time, Woman at War is also a musical of sorts, with both an Icelandic combo and a Ukrainian vocal trio punctuating the action. It’s doubtful that the issue of environmental conservation has ever been handled in such a delightful manner.
Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
When we first meet Halla, she’s busily cutting down power lines that mar the gorgeous, almost otherworldly-seeming Icelandic countryside, as musicians playing percussive tuba, organ and drums look on. When she tries to escape a surveillance helicopter, Halla comes upon a gruff but sympathetic local farmer (Jóhann Sigurðarson), who agrees to help her. Apparently this is not the first time she’s sabotaged the power project.
Later, when Halla shows up for choir practice, one of its members takes her aside and begs her to stop her activities. Baldvin (Jörundur Ragnarsson), the only one who knows her secret mission, is a government minister who initially supported her, but now thinks she’s gone too far. Not only has China gotten cold feet about doing business in Iceland, but, the U.S. has launched a satellite to monitor the area. Meanwhile a young Spanish-speaking foreigner (Juan Camillo Roman Estrada) is t[...]
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5 years ago
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Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment
There have been many worthwhile films about the World World II Holocaust and its survivors. Though it seems as though every angle has been covered, The Invisibles, a riveting docudrama by German filmmaker Claus Ráfle, is an unusually compelling new addition to the genre.
Goebbels declared Berlin free of Jews in 1943 (the city originally numbered 160,000); however, out of the 7000 who resisted deportation and remained, 1500 were left by the war’s end. The Invisibles follows four young Berliners, as they individually defy the Nazi mandate to evacuate via deportation, choosing instead to wait out the war as veritable fugitives in their own city.
Cioma Schönhaus, Hanni Lévy, Ruth Arndt and Eugen Friede are skillfully portrayed by actors in their youth and appear as themselves discussing their experiences decades later. Ráfle smoothly weaves their individual stories together, creating a movie that plays like a spy thriller as the protagonists face mounting danger from Nazis and, ironically, Allied bombs and invasion, while finding help from various heroic resistors.
Though their plights are obviously similar, the four had different experiences marked by a shared characteristic: a sort of youthful fearlessness and resourcefulness, combined with a fierce will to survive.
Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment
In 1942 Schönhaus (Max Mauff), a somewhat cocky, 20-year-old art student, is separated from his parents [...]
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5 years ago
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Since 1998, the Animation Show of Shows has selected the best animated shorts from around the world. According to founder and curator Ron Diamond, the 15 films chosen for the 20th annual edition “really illuminate human strengths and foibles, and the bonds that unite us across cultures and generations.” Though these films and their animators come from various backgrounds and countries, the themes represented are truly relatable across the board.
Ranging from 70 seconds to 15 minutes, the works range from darkly funny to deeply moving, representing an impressive array of visual styles and moods. Running a little over an hour and a half, the entire program is a treat from start to finish.
Some highlights include:
Grands Canons, from French multimedia artist Alain Biet, is a dizzying visual presentation of thousands of hand-dawn everyday objects, presented at various speeds and in myriad permutations, accompanied by jaunty, propulsive music. Clearly a labor of love, it ultimately becomes mesmerizing.
Barry, from filmmaker and Cal Arts animation student Anchi Shen, is a humorous, simply drawn story about a goat with a Harvard degree applying for an oncologist position at a hospital. He's first relegated to custodial work until he saves the day in the OR. Though his fellow physicians cheer him on, he’s fired from the staff because “Goats are never doctors.” A clever take on stereotyping.
The visually intriguing Love Me, Fear Me from Romanian filmmaker Veronica S[...]
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5 years ago
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Now in its 9th edition, DOC NYC—America’s largest documentary film festival—runs from November 8 through 15. More than 300 films and events are included in a variety of categories, including American Perspectives, Behind the Scenes, Fight the Power, International Perspectives, Portraits, Jock Docs, Modern Family, Science Nonfiction, Sonic Cinema, and True Love. In most cases, filmmakers (and often their subjects) will be on hand to answer questions, post-screening. Awards will be given in several sections, including an overall Audience Award.
The gamut of films this year includes epic portrait Beyond the Bolex, Alyssa Bolsey’s doc about her great-grandfather, the groundbreaking movie camera inventor Jacques Bolsey; Afterward, in which Jerusalem-born director and trauma expert Ofra Bloch visits victims and victimizers in Germany, Israel and Palestine; Lindsey Cordero & Armando Croda’s timely I’m Leaving Now, about an undocumented worker in Brooklyn facing a difficult crossroads; and We Are Not Done Yet, a short directed by Sareen Hairabedian and produced by actor Jeffrey Wright, about U.S. veterans combating their traumatic military histories through art, poetry and performance.
A few more highlights:
Dennis and Lois
A doc by Chris Cassidy that will resonate with music fans, Dennis and Lois is a portrait of a 60-something couple who have been music superfans for over 40 years. The Brooklyn-based duo, together since 1975, live in a house stuffed with band mem[...]
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6 years ago
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Denmark’s official entry for Best Foreign Language Film, The Guilty is as suspenseful as they come. Gustav Möller’s dark, spare thriller opens in an emergency dispatch center and never leaves the premises. Most of the action takes place on the phone as Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren), a cop demoted to desk duty, tries desperately to save a life. It’s a testament to Möller’s abilities that this claustrophobic, no-frills film never loses steam, but continues to grip the viewer throughout its 85-minute runtime.
Right from the start, the focus is tight on Asger as he gruffly handles mundane, almost amusing, emergency calls—someone freaking out on drugs, a guy who was mugged by a prostitute. Just when the bored cop begins to space out, there's a call from a woman in distress. As he quickly ascertains that she is being held in a moving car against her will, the film’s tension immediately ratchets up.
The woman pretends she's speaking with her child as Asger asks a series of questions to figure out her location. His mind spinning with possibilities, he embarks on a series of frantic calls, which include sending a patrol car to a location indicated by her phone’s GPS. He also calls the woman’s home and speaks to her panicked six-year-old, promising the girl that he’ll protect her mother. Keeping his calm at first, Asger skillfully unravels the situation while constantly being told by various entities that it’s not his job. There’s talk about a big case coming up the next d[...]
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6 years ago
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Two very worthwhile documentaries open this week in New York City: Sasha Waters Freyer's Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable is a portrait of the groundbreaking photographer responsible for some of the most memorable images of the 1950s through '70s; Dan Habib’s Intelligent Lives follows three young adults who are challenging old ideas of what is achievable for those with intellectual disabilities.
Most of us have been intrigued by least one Garry Winogrand photo; perhaps “New York World’s Fair, 1964," featuring several white women and one African-American man on a park bench; or the untitled image of a man upside down in midair on a city street. Winogrand's photos, which capture nuance a well as overt movement, and the man “who turned street photography on its head” himself are both examined in All Things Are Photographable, an enjoyable doc full of images famous and lesser known. Along with testimonials from fellow photographers, museum curators and Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner, Freyer includes interview snippets with the late Winogrand himself, a gruff, outspoken Bronx native who often resisted analyzing his photographs, insisting that “all a photograph does is describe light on surface.” But Winogrand also admitted that a powerful image “makes you question what you think you know," an apt description of his work.
New York Times photo editor Jeffrey Henson Scales likens Winogrand's images to choreography because “everyone is dancing” in them; ano[...]
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6 years ago
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Jeremiah Zagar wasn’t the first filmmaker to approach novelist Justin Torres about adapting the latter’s 2011 coming-of-age tale We the Animals to screen. But the others were “too Hollywood,” according to Torres, and wanted to change his semi-autobiographical story into something else. (“Breaking Bad meets Malcolm in the Middle,” suggested one would-be suitor.) Torres was having none of it. Then Zagar contacted him. The director, a documentary maker (In a Dream, Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart) who’d never helmed a fiction film before, had picked up the book in McNally Jackson in Soho and couldn’t put it down. “It had one of the best first pages I’d ever read,” he says.
Torres and Zagar were discussing the making of We the Animals during a post-screening Q&A, one of several the pair have conducted while promoting the film. The project is something they’re clearly proud of and passionate about.
The book is a raw, pulsating, first-person account of three brothers and their volatile parents loving and fighting each other in an upstate New York town, as told by the youngest boy. It’s based on Torres’ own life and family, including the fact that his father is Puerto Rican and his mom of Irish-Italian descent. Though it was very different from Zagar’s own hippie-esque upbringing, he understood the “epic family mythology” of Torres’ book, the insular experience of a strong family dynamic. “We spoke the same language,” agree both writer and filmmaker. Torres wa[...]
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6 years ago
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A raw, unconventional film about the last years of iconic German musician/muse Nico, Susanna Nicchiarelli’s Nico, 1988 portrays its subject as an earthy, unglamorous woman and an uncompromising artist. It’s a far cry from the popular image of the icily mysterious chanteuse who performed with the Velvet Underground in the late 1960s, and that’s a big part of the movie’s fascination. As embodied with fierce intensity by Danish actor/singer Trine Dyrholm, Christa Päffgen (Nico’s real name) in her late 40s was as dismissive of her younger incarnation as Warhol figurine and rock star paramour as she was passionate about reconnecting with her troubled son, Ari. Nico, 1988 is a refreshingly unromantic portrait of a heavily romanticized persona.
Nicchiarelli based her loose, impressionistic film on actual events, including interviews with Nico that are recreated throughout. There are also hazy flashbacks, actual footage of the Velvet Underground and the young Nico, provided by filmmaker Jonas Mekas. In casting Dyrholm, who bears no physical resemblance to Päffgen, Nicchiarelli opts to create her own character for this story, which may not sit well with some diehard fans. Truer to history is the film's sound, and Dyrholm, an impressive musician in her own right, nails Nico’s deep, stark vocals. (Dyrholm performs all songs in the film, including "These Days" and "All Tomorrow's Parties.")
Nico, 1988 begins in 1986, with the singer giving an interview in Manchester, Englan[...]
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6 years ago
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Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist, Lorna Tucker’s documentary on iconoclastic British designer Vivienne Westwood, has a trim runtime of 80 minutes. Maybe that’s why it feels like there’s a lot missing. How do you encompass the life and work of someone who 1) is half responsible for inventing British punk, 2) has evolved from an anti-establishment outsider into a revered fashion designer and beloved British subject, and 3) has had a fascinating personal life as well? This could have been a documentary series.
With the short shrift given various aspects of Westwood’s life and work, this nonlinear, nonchronological film yields more questions than answers. (Thank goodness for Wikipedia.) So it’s probably best to experience the interviews, archival photos, video clips and stock footage representing Westwood’s 77 years on earth as an impressionistic wash of information and fantastical visuals. In some ways, it’s a fitting framework for a wildly unconventional artist who has never done anything neatly or predictably.
The film begins with current-day Westwood looking overwhelmed as she asks crankily, “Do we have to cover every bit of it? So boring…” She's reassuringly punk from the get-go.
Tucker largely lets her subject narrate her own story, with input from husband, sons, employees and various others who have known her. We learn that she began making clothes at 11 or 12, around the same time that a painting of the crucifixion instilled the desire to save people and "preve[...]
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6 years ago
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In Summer 1993, the lovely and evocative feature film debut by Catalan filmmaker Carla Simón, a six-year-old girl slowly comes to terms with grief and a new way of life. The film's straightforward observational style conveys complex emotions without veering into sentimentality, while the orphaned Frida (played with gravity and charisma by Laia Artigas) is not portrayed as pathetic, but realistically moody, alternating between mischievous and melancholy.
The autobiographical story (Simón lost her own parents when she was a child) begins with a busy scene of adults packing boxes around the small, watchful figure of Frida, who is being sent from her grandparents’ Barcelona home to live with her aunt and uncle in the countryside.
We discover this rustic new home along with Frida, as the camera trails her explorations around the sprawling property where crowing roosters, aggressive hens and farm life in general all seem very foreign. Esteve (David Verdaguer), the brother of Frida’s recently deceased mother, and his wife Marga (Bruna Cusi) are young and fairly laid-back, but also kind and attentive. Frida immediately befriends their daughter Anna (Paula Robles), introducing her little cousin to various toys with the standard, older-kid “hands off” proviso.
The film's overall tone is low-key and intimate, with many close-ups of Frida’s small, pensive face. She expresses her sense of displacement in small acts of rebellion and leads the ever-willing Anna through var[...]
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6 years ago
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The story of how Chloé Zhao’s The Rider came to be is as intriguing as the movie itself. While filming her first feature, Songs My Brothers Taught Me, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, Zhao befriended some of its Oglala Lakota residents. Born and raised on the reservation, they are both Native American and genuine cowboys, as pure a distillation (and contradiction) of Americana as exists.
One charismatic young cowboy, Brady Jandreau, a horse trainer and rising rodeo star, particularly impressed Zhao. She wanted to feature him in her next film, but couldn’t think of a story line. In April 2016, fate tragically intervened when Jandreau was thrown off his horse while competing in a rodeo in Fargo, North Dakota. The horse nearly crushed his skull, necessitating surgery and a metal plate, followed by extensive rehab. When Zhao learned that Jandreau was back training horses just weeks after his accident, she knew she had her movie. Essentially a docu-drama, The Rider is an authentic and poetic film about a young man struggling to hold on to his identity.
The film has an immediate sense of place, as Zhao makes good use of Pine Ridge and the gorgeous, wide-open South Dakota prairie. Adding to the movie's authenticity is the cast, all playing versions of themselves. Aside from Jandreau himself (here named Brady Blackburn), his father Tim and sister Lilly have starring roles, as does former rodeo champ Lane Scott, shown recuperating from his own career[...]
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6 years ago
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Jean-Michel Basquiat was a well known plastic artist based in New York and sponsored by Andy Warhol. Music was very important in the life and work of this artist, and in 1979 he formed an experimental band with the artist and actor Vincent Gallo.
They named the band "GRAY" as a tribute to the book of anatomy published by Henry Gray in 1950.
The band arises in the middle of the punk explosion of New York, but especially to a more experimental branch known as No wave. No wave has a very industrial sound where the electric guitar is used not as a musical instrument, but as a tool that generates noise. He was also interested in the frenetic and eclectic rhythms of the seventies and eighties, like the incipient rap of the hip hop movement.
Basquiat played the clarinet and the synthesizer and the band frequented famous venues like CBGB where Blondie and The Ramones made their debut, the Mudd Club, etc.
The music from "Gray" can be heard in several films including "Downtown 81," starring Basquiat, talking about his life as an artist in New York.
Nerea T. Ruiz
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