REVIEW by Anji Milanovic (from plume-noire.com):
In Old, New, Borrowed and Blue director Natasha Arthy begins the film with a signed certificate of authenticity from the Dogma school. By the film’s end, however, it’s clear that she has taken the rules of Dogma and used them to make her own engaging film, instead of an exercise in philosophical experimentation.Read More »
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Distributed by L’Italnoleggio Cinematografico, with Sven Lasta, Rada Rassimov, Claudio Volonte, Jean Martin, Milena Vucotic
Presented at the Venice Biennale 1974.
Segnalazione ufficiale della Critica Cinematografica (SNCCI)
Winner of the Nastro d’Argento 1975.
Presented at the Festival du Jeune Cinéma de Toulon 1975.
Presented at the Festival of New Delhi 1976.
Presented at the Italian Film Festival in London (British Film Institute) 1976.
Invited to the Festival of Valladolid 1975.Read More »
OMG by by Mark Deming
Blending dramatic situations with a documentary -influenced visual style, S Dnyom rozhdenya / Happy Birthday looks in at a typical day in a Russian maternity hospital. The patients range from a middle aged woman pleased if surprised by her current pregnancy to a Muslim woman whose marriage to a Russian has blighted her relationship with her family. No matter what their situations, the women draw strength and support from each other as they share their common experience. This film was shown at the 1999 Rotterdam Film Festival.Read More »
Sivas is a 2014 Turkish drama film directed by Kaan Müjdeci. It was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 71st Venice International Film Festival[1][2] where it won the Special Jury Prize. The film was selected as the Turkish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards but it was not nominated.
11-year-old Aslan saves an injured Kangal sheepdog named Sivas, a fighting dog that was left for dead after losing a brutal match. He then tries to use Sivas to impress his classmates, in particular the girl he likes, and even sets up an amateur fight with another boy’s dog. Written by AlpRead More »
Synopsis:
Darvish Khan, a deaf-mute shepherd living in the desert, has a mystical vision in a dream in which he encounters a saint. When he awakens, he finds himself clutching a large stone. Grateful for the vision, he aims to pay homage and begins to construct an unusual monument in its honor. After his wife tells a neighbor that it is miraculous place, news of his ‘garden of stones’ spreads and people from neighboring villages come to see it. The result wreaks havoc upon Darvish Khan’s life. Bagh-e Sangi won the Silver Bear prize for the best film at the 1976 Berlin Film Festival and was shown at the Tehran, London and Paris film festivals. It was recently included at #20 on a list of the 27 best Iranian films, as selected by 14 Iranian directors for the 2014 Fribourg International Film Festival.Read More »
Crowned best film in Venice’s Horizons section, Lav Diaz’s latest madly uncommercial 7½-hour magnum opus, “Melancholia,” sets a trio of survivors wandering the country in a dirge to those lost to disaster. To reconcile themselves to the deaths of their leftist comrades and loved ones, two women and a man undertake a succession of role-changes as a radical form of grief therapy. But the alienation implied by their incarnations of a prostitute, pimp and nun, assumed at the pic’s opening, reads as anything but therapeutic.Read More »
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Determined 15-year-old Lara is committed to becoming a professional ballerina. With the support of her father, she throws herself into this quest for the absolute at a new school. Lara’s adolescent frustrations and impatience are heightened as she realizes her body does not bend so easily to the strict discipline because she was born a boy.Read More »
“Very sweet, wryly funny in spots, but always haunted by war (described sparingly but never shown). It was based on a stage play and betrays its theatrical roots in some of the pacing and staging. It’s slow, perhaps too slow for action film fans, but it’s not boring. Rather, it’s delicate and precise like tea ceremony.Read More »
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Abouna is a gently heartbreaking look at the lives of two boys growing up impoverished and fatherless in Chad. Filmmaker Mahamat-Saleh Haroun mixes in telling bits of documentary realism with his story of the two boys’ lackadaisical search for their father. The filmmaker takes his time with the tale, lingering on details, like a long shot of the two boys meandering across a field, roughhousing and walking on their hands. Haroun also pointedly displays posters for Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, Idrissa Ouedraogo’s Yaaba, and Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise outside the little movie theater that the boys visit.Read More »