Quote:
Non-normative texts concern themselves with subject matter that is marginalized, or not widely accepted as “normal.” Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho – an ode to the abandoned, and the isolated – is an example. It’s an exercise in brilliant directorial innovation, and cinematic ingenuity – required viewing for the capsized, fissure-ridden heart.

The film offers up a discourse on the fragility, and the emotional and intellectual convolution, of children who are left with the burden of trying to understand why their parents have abandoned them. This search becomes obdurate and lost, in the cases of Mike Waters (a physical and emotional narcoleptic, played to perfection by River Phoenix), and Scott Favor (Keanu Reeves); Mike is subverted by an idyllic yearning for the past, while Scott is consumed by familial regret and rebellion.Read More »

When we think of Iraq, we picture a war torn country which had seen the worst of a dictatorship under Saddam Hussein, where it spent many years in conflict with Iran, before the UN moved in during Desert Storm to liberate occupied Kuwait, followed by the US led invasion in Desert Storm II. Western media continue to pepper us with news that internal strife continues to this very day with news of suicide and miscellaneous bombings, and I’m sure we’re more than curious to want to know about tales from within, rather than agencies from the outside that continue to paint it like a war zone. This is as close as you can go on a road trip from Northern Iraq to Baghdad, onward to Nasiriyah then Babylon.Read More »

gaze.ie wrote:
Bambi is the story of Marie-Pierre Pruvot, born Jean-Pierre in a small village in the former French colony of Algeria. She struggled in her early life as a boy but found a way out of her colonial life when a Parisian cabaret show came to town. Encouraged and enchanted, she moved to Paris, assumed the stage name of ‘Bambi’ and began her life as a female cabaret star.

GAZE veteran Sébastien Lifshitz lovingly tells her story using long interviews with the charismatic performer, stunning scenes of her return to Algeria and captivating old Super-8 footage from Marie-Pierre’s own collection.

Having overcome a difficult childhood and a tough gender transition, when surgery and hormonal treatments were still in their infancies, ‘Bambi’ is now a radiant woman in her late seventies and one of the most charismatic and engaging people you will ever seen on screen.

Winner, Teddy Award for Best Documentary, Berlinale 2013Read More »

A full decade ahead of the New Wavelet Christian Jacque, Louis Jouvet and a belle equipe were showing the Godards and Truffauts how the Big Boys do it and neither Godard nor Truffaut ever made anything even remotely as good as this and Godard never will. It all comes together like clockwork from Henri Jeanson’s caustic script, written at times with a quill dipped in vitriol, to Christian Jaque’s perfect direction which coaxes performances close to perfection from Louis Jouvet on down. Ludmilla Tcherina is especially effective in her very first film which gives her lots of chances to remind us that she was first and foremost a great ballerina and Francois Perier shines as the callow youth besotted with her to the point of attempted suicide. Louis Seigner was still popping up fairly regularly in films at this time (1946) and etches a standout portrait of a ruthless businessman prepared to sacrifice his son on the altar of Mammon and let us not forget Marguerite Moreno adding yet another unforgettable portrait to her gallery of grotesques.Read More »

Chloe is a young Canadian doctor who divides her time between Ramallah, where she works with the Red Crescent, and Jerusalem, where she lives next door to her friend Ava, a young Israeli soldier. Increasingly sensitive to the conflict, Chloe goes daily through the checkpoint between the two cities to get to the refugee camp where she monitors the pregnancies of young women.

As she becomes friends with Rand, one of her patients, Chloe learns more about life in the occupied territories and gets to spend some time with Rand’s family. Torn between the two sides of the conflict, Chloe tries as best she can to build bridges between her friends but suffers from remaining a perpetual foreigner to both sides.Read More »

Sokol and Lorna, two Albanian emigrants in Belgium, dream of leaving their dreary jobs to set up a snack bar. They need money, and a permanent resident status. Claudy is a junkie – he needs money to satisfy his addiction. Andrei, the cigarette smuggler, must hold up for a while outside Russia; he has loads of money. Fabio, the Italian taxi driver and aspiring gang boss, elaborates a clever scheme: he will pay Claudy to marry Lorna so that she acquires a Belgian citizenship. Then she is to re-marry Andrei, who will in this way obtain the coveted EU passport – and pay a hefty price to Fabio and Lorna for the service. Like all plans, this one will not survive the contact with reality.Read More »

Synopsis
To tell a history through architecture and music, the film matches the styles of Moscow’s 20th- and 21st-century buildings with electronic variations of the Soviet and Russian national anthem. The juxtaposition captures an aesthetic evolution driven by the evolution of ideology.Read More »

From the L.A. Times:
November 03, 1995
Kevin Thomas

“LOVE AND THE BERLIN WALL”

Margarethe von Trotta’s beautiful, stirring love story “The Promise” reveals, through the lives of one young couple, the profound impact the Berlin Wall had on all Germans, East and West alike. It is a splendid example of classic screen storytelling by a renowned international filmmaker, a work of strength and simplicity that illuminates with flawless craftsmanship many complex issues and contradictions. Epic in scale, spanning the entire 28-year existence of the Wall, it is at once romantic and political yet ultimately personal.Read More »

Repertory consists of one continuous tracking shot, during which the camera completely circles the outside of a locked and empty theatre, whilst a voice describes a three week programme of daily ‘imagined presentations’ inside the theatre. The contrast between the documentary image and fictional narrative is exaggerated by the nature of the descriptions, which are wittily absurd and fantastic – the presentations include a domestic interior covered in melting slabs of butter; an old aeroplane, an illuminated fish tank, etc. Extrapolated partly from Breakwell’s frequent visits to Nottingham Playhouse in the late 1950s, the film plays out with peculiar effectiveness his interest in the relationship between words and pictures.Read More »