Log Out When you think of cinema, Turin may not be the first city that comes to mind. While Paris, a city famed for its cinephilia, has its cinemathèque at Bercy, somewhat off the beaten path for tourists, Turin makes sure almost every visitor experiences cinema history: its Museo Nazionale del Cinema in situated right [...]
As a freelance film critic looking to get involved with film festivals, I feared that talks at the International Film Festival Summit might be too specialised for me. True, I was one of only two film critics in a room of about 40 people, many of whom had vast experience in founding, financing, organising and [...]
From April to May, the UK is being treated to a retrospective Jiří Trnka’s animation, through a collaboration by the Czech Centre London, the Czech National Film Archive and specialist cinemas in London, Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Known as ‘The Walt Disney of the East’, Trnka was the father of Czech animation, which really only [...]
After the last two weeks’ blogs on highlights of Toulouse’s Cinélatino film festival, this week will conclude with a selection of films which, in my opinion, should be avoided at all costs. First of all, Alejo Franzetti’s The Destruction of the Ruling Order (La Destrucción del orden vigente), which wanted to be a thriller/murder mystery. [...]
Like A Secret World (reviewed last week), Southwest (Sudoeste, 2012, dir. Eduardo Nunes) was a flawed film. But audiences are more likely to be forgiving of A Secret World’s flaws because the director was wise enough to keep it short. Audiences might be prepared to be mildly bored for an hour and a half, but [...]
A Secret World (Un mundo secreto, 2012) was among 14 films in the fiction feature competition at Cinélatino, Toulouse’s Latin American Film Festival. The film received a special mention from the French critics’ jury. Perhaps more important, though, it also received the ‘Prix lycéen de la fiction’, an prize for best fiction film as awarded [...]
Slow, meditative films that were thin on plot dominated the awards at the16th Sofia International Film Festival. Grand Prix winner Stories Which Only Exist When Remembered (dir. Julia Murat) centred on a young photographer’s stay amongst the elderly of a small village, while Jaffe Zinn’s Magic Valley traced the discovery of a crime in a [...]
Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist and Vittorio De Sica’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis were both released in 1970, both based on novels (by Alberto Moravia and Giorgio Bassani, respectively) and both set during World War II. De Sica’s film covers the beginning of Fascist atrocities, while Bertolucci’s film covers the end. The two films are [...]
Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) was made in 1963, but is set just over a century earlier, during the Risorgimento, when Garibaldi fought for Italy to be united into one kingdom, free of foreign control. To give a personal dimension to the changes taking place in the region, the film portrays their influence on [...]
Judging from a conversation I overheard before the start of the screening, it seems that there will always be people who haven’t seen Casablanca (1942). ‘I can’t believe you guys have never seen it,’ said the man to the two friends he’d brought along. ‘How did that happen?’ Even the friends were probably wondering. Because [...]
DIFF 2012 Reviews: ‘Cinema Six,’ ‘Compliance,’ ‘Faith, Love and Whiskey’
Things I Don’t Understand (2011)Jiří Trnka: Animation RetrospectiveLowlights of CinélatinoBrevity Pays Off‘A Secret World’ at Cinélatino‘Future Lasts Forever’ at SofiaTwo Treatments of Italy’s Fascist Past‘The Leopard’: novel, opera, but above all, filmWe’ll always have ‘Casablanca’
