The feature debut of director Tomáš Lunák, Alois Nebel (2011) is an animated film based on a trilogy of graphic novels by Jaromír99 and Jaroslav Rudiš. The film’s black-and-white images sometimes look like a graphic novel come to life. At other times, they possess the stark enchantment of woodblock prints. Through the use of rotoscope [...]
The Kids Are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010) was a highlight of last year’s BFI London Film Festival. This year’s highlight looks set to be The Descendants (Alexander Payne, 2011), a film similar in many ways. At the dramatic centre of The Kids Are All Right was the desire of a lesbian couple’s two kids [...]
Have you ever wondered what it was like for spectators watching their first sound film? Michel Haznavicius’ latest feature brings home just how strange it would have been. For the most part, The Artist (2011) is a close imitation of silent film from the late 1920s: black and white, the only sound a piano or [...]
After making her feature debut as an actress in Bosta (2005), a film about a travelling dance troupe and their eponymous bus, Nadine Labaki went on to direct her own films, in which she also stars, always as a seductive but independent-minded character. She began 4 years ago with Caramel (Sukkar banat), a romantic comedy [...]
This year’s London Film Festival launched with a damp squib in the form of 360, Fernando Meirelles’ latest feature. How far Merielles seems now from City of God (2002). Set in Rio’s slums which force children to grow up fast, City of God was urgent, both socially and stylistically. Children taken from the street played [...]
The 55th edition of the London Film Festival (LFF) starts tomorrow, October 12th, and runs until the 22nd. This year the festival will screen 204 features and 110 shorts from 55 different countries. A selection of films will compete for the festival’s 4 main prizes: the Best Film Award, The Grierson Award for [...]
Wichita’s own Tallgrass Film Festival announced its feature lineup, and a schedule of events Friday. The ninth annual Tallgrass Film Festival is coming to 16 venues in the heart of downtown Wichita and the surrounding area from Oct. 20-23, and will showcase 44 independent feature films representing 18 countries from around the world. “Get Twisted,” this year’s [...]
This year the Riga International Film Festival ‘Arsenals’ has chosen to honour Latvian documentarist Herz Frank on the occasion of his 85th birthday. Sporting his signature knitted beret and Leica camera, Frank attended the opening of an exhibition on his life and work at Riga’s small but modern Film Museum, where he signed copies [...]
‘Arsenals’, the 21st Riga International Film Festival has begun, running from the 10th–18th of September 2011. Invited as a member of the FIPRESCI critics’ jury, I’ll be focusing mainly on the newest Baltic cinema. Today, though, I had a chance to catch a film from the festival’s International selection. The very title of Sivaroj Kongasakul’s [...]
The 13th edition of the Rushes Soho Shorts Festival took place in London at the end of last month (20th-29th July, 2011). The festival gives awards to short films in 8 competitive categories: Documentary, Animation, Music Video, Broadcast Design, International, Newcomers, Short, and Long Form (for films over 12 minutes but under 30 minutes long). [...]
DIFF 2012 Reviews: ‘Cinema Six,’ ‘Compliance,’ ‘Faith, Love and Whiskey’
Things I Don’t Understand (2011)
Jiří Trnka: Animation Retrospective
Lowlights of Cinélatino
Brevity Pays Off
‘A Secret World’ at Cinélatino
‘Future Lasts Forever’ at Sofia
Two Treatments of Italy’s Fascist Past
‘The Leopard’: novel, opera, but above all, film
We’ll always have ‘Casablanca’
