Film Festival Reports

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 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: RAGE BY DOMINIQUE LOHLÉ AND GUY-MARC HINANT

By Ivonne Sheen

The sound vibrations you feel in a techno rave can be described as intense, kind of violent, raw, but mainly cathartic (to the ones we enjoy it), like the feeling of the drummer who opens this film. Rage addresses about Acid Techno music and all the underground culture around it. The film sets a dialogue about Anarchy and Techno which comes and goes from theoretical talks to sensorial documentary with found footage and lots of music. Through and anarchic narrative we are immersed in a ecosystem of philosophical and performative interviews, and hardcore beats, which gives us an organic point of view of social phenomenons against the system, such as Anarchy and Techno.

2017.03.23

CPH:DOX

CPH:DOX 2017: CRAIGSLIST ALLSTARS BY SAMIRA ELAGOZ

By Morella Moret

Craigslist Allstars is a postmodern tale of the loneliness of man. The director Samira Elagoz opens the film with an e-mail: she contacts strangers so she can then record herself meeting them and anything that happens in the process. She listens to them, disinhibits them and creates a safe place for them to present their secrets and deepest pains, and we are there to witness this.

2017.03.22

CPH:DOX

CPH: DOX 2017: KÉKSZAKÁLLÚ BY GASTÓN SOLNICKI

By Ivonne Sheen

In a summer environment of the Argentinian upper class, Gaston Solnicki portraits a group of intergenerational girls, who seem to be in discomfort and bored with their surroundings. The narrative aspects are composed as a mosaic of the different points of views and emotions of each girl we get to meet. Nevertheless, along the film, our gaze is focused in one girl in particular, a young adult one, played by Laila Maltz, who starts a naive hunt of her independency.

2017.03.21

CPH:DOX

CPH:DOX 2017: BEUYS BY ANDRES VEIEL

By Monica Delgado

Premiered in the last Berlin film festival, German filmmaker Andres Veiel’s Beuys is a documentary that focuses on one of the most political passages in the life of one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. Through archive footage, (which includes installation recordings, happenings and interventions) and accompanied by interview extracts, photography and testimonies, we assembly the most political part of Beuys, the one dealing with his position towards the relationship of art and social transformation.

2017.03.21

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

CPH:DOX

CPH:DOX 2017: THE LOST DREAMS OF NAOKI HAYAKAWA BY ANE HJORT GUTTU AND DAISUKE KOSUGI

By Mónica Delgado

Screened in the New:Vision Award section of the CPH:DOX Film Festival, happening this week, The lost dreams of Naoki Hayakawa is interesting when the filmmakers see as a rarity this labor alienation, rescuing the poetic in the life of a character that lives for his work, single, alone, with broken dreams, but who fantasizes about bubbles in the elevators or a flag made of hair that flames near the sea.

2017.03.17

desistfilm

CINÉMA DU RÉEL 2017: AUSTERLITZ BY SERGEI LOZNITSA

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

CINÉMA DU RÉEL 2017: A STRANGE BEAUTY BY SHELLY SILVER

CPH:DOX 2017: BITTER MONEY BY WANG BING

CPH:DOX 2017: RAGE BY DOMINIQUE LOHLÉ AND GUY-MARC HINANT

CPH:DOX 2017: CRAIGSLIST ALLSTARS BY SAMIRA ELAGOZ

CPH: DOX 2017: KÉKSZAKÁLLÚ BY GASTÓN SOLNICKI

CPH:DOX 2017: BEUYS BY ANDRES VEIEL

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

CPH:DOX 2017: THE LOST DREAMS OF NAOKI HAYAKAWA BY ANE HJORT GUTTU AND DAISUKE KOSUGI

desistfilm