Jose Sarmiento – desistfilm

Cinéma du Réel

CINÉMA DU RÉEL 2017: AUSTERLITZ BY SERGEI LOZNITSA

By Aldo Padilla
Austerlitz has been analyzed as a portrayal of horror as a commodity and the relation of man with its history, which is something that Loznitsa explores in his filmography, but it’s also pertinent to point to the depersonalization of the people moving in front of the camera, reducing it all to masses with an undefined face, which seem to condemn they all from the beginning. It’s possible that everything said until now can be reduced to a simple question: Does Loznitsa and the spectators feel morally superior to the people being filmed?

2017.03.30

Cinéma du Réel

CINÉMA DU RÉEL 2017: AUSTERLITZ DE SERGEI LOZNITSA

Por Aldo Padilla

Austerlitz ha sido analizada respecto al horror como un bien de consumo y la relación del hombre con su historia, que es algo que explora Loznitsa en su filmografía, pero a la vez es necesario apuntar a la despersonalización de la gente que pasa frente a la cámara, reduciendo todo a masas sin un rostro definido, lo cual pareciera condenarlos a todos desde un inicio.

2017.03.30

Cinéma du Réel

CINÉMA DU REÉL 2017: PARIS EST UNE FÊTE – UN FILM EN 18 VAGUES

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

The apparatus of resistance and its relentless mechanism in an era of crisis has already been explored in Sylvain George’s Vers Madrid: The Burning Bright, a slow burner of political uprise and class struggle on the Madrid revolts of 2011 and 2012. And while the immediate consequences of political civil organization might not be instantly apparent, the sense of general malaise in a population pushed to the verge of self suffocation was absolutely palpable, and the film turned a hopeful eye in the light of civilian organization capabilities.

2017.03.28

Cinéma du Réel

CINÉMA DU RÉEL 2017: A STRANGE BEAUTY BY SHELLY SILVER

By Mónica Delgado

A Strange New Beauty is a film that deals with the inequity of world economics and creates a concept from that. The metaphor of a house as a closed exclusive entity which can only shelter a privileged group while the “outside” follows a savage and natural course, is the bet from which American filmmaker Shelly Silver develops a structure of ideological confrontation . An opulent empty house with big gardens clashes with an out of field auditory field, where we hear the other vein of narration, where voices and screams from a mental hospital, sighs and phrases spoken by an almost cybernetic soul, rule this different “outside”, which is sensorial and full of memory.

2017.03.28

CPH:DOX

CPH:DOX 2017: BITTER MONEY BY WANG BING

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

It seems that with each consecutive documentary, Wang Bing gets closer to narrate the real experience of human drama in rural China. In Bing’s camera, his country becomes a hostile environment which must be dealt head on, a rural and urban labyrinth to be traversed by these disenfranchised citizens, who seem to abandon any possibility of true hope to deal with the cruel reality of raging capitalism and its consequences.

2017.03.25

CPH:DOX

CPH:DOX 2017: THE UNFORGIVEN, BY LARS FELDBALLE-PETERSEN

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Issues of repentance, forgiveness and revindication are carefully dissected in Lars Feldballe-Petersen new documentary The Unforgiven. The Finnish director sets its gaze in former war criminal Esad Lanzo, a man trying to rebuild his life after being sentenced for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia civil war. Lanzo, a man tormented by his demons, tries to appease his suffering in an exhausting search for the war prisoners he abused, in order to ask for forgiveness and some comprehension.

2017.03.18

Q&A

FEATURED FILMMAKER: JEANNE LIOTTA

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Jeanne Liotta (New York, 1960) calls herself a “professional amateur”, and beyond that particular declaration there’s more than 30 years of amazing work in different fields of art. Of course, she’s better known as one of the best avant-garde filmmakers of all time, but her intertwined work that consists of installations, photography, field recordings and films transcend the experience of cinema in so many different ways. Desistfilm had a chance to talk to her about her initial “intuitions” as an artist, and how did she adapt to the different formats she ended up working with.

2014.11.28

Main Articles

ON Hi-8/DIGITAL AND THE INTIMATE: THE FILM DIARIES OF ALAIN CAVALIER

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

When we watch the first minutes of La Recontre (1996), it seems that we’re confronted with a revolution: digital cinema has merged with the home movie, and they both have reached a new narrative language in which the immediate recollection of images through the analogue system provides the filmmaker with the immediacy and urgency of what needs to be captured.

2014.07.08

Main Articles

DIALOGUE WITH A WOMAN DEPARTED BY LEO HURWITZ

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Dialogue With a Woman Departed is a monumental film. In the ever mutating genre of the film diary, the love letter of Leo Hurwitz, American blacklisted documentary filmmaker, to his former wife, Peggy Lawson, takes the form of a four hour love poem in which the filmmaker creates not a diary of himself, but that of his deceased wife, bringing her back to life in spirit through long footage of the depression, World War II, and other world events. It’s not much a portrait of his long life partner, but an homage to her spirit, their shared views of the world, their undying relation. Hurwitz also brings his wife back to life, gives her a voice, a presence in the film, a ghostly sensation that leaks through the celluloid and takes shelter in the images of a world in crisis. For the filmmaker, evoking the memory of his wife is a way of reaffirmation of his convictions, his own particular gaze on his surroundings, both filled with beauty and terror.

2014.07.08

Q&A

FEATURED FILMMAKER: JENNIFER REEDER

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Mother of three, self proclaimed feminist and prolific filmmaker, Jennifer Reeder has slowly shaped cinema into her own little invention, a craft that we can all love, relate to and appreciate. Desistfilm managed to steal some time from her, and we present to you our long and fun conversation.

2014.07.08