By Tara Judah
Using disappointingly one-dimensional stereotypes to tell a male coming-of-age story is Anu Aun’s Estonian entry into the Official Competition at the 38th Cairo International Film Festival, Polaarpoiss (Polar Boy).
By Tara Judah
After the Storm is a beautiful film that has brought tearstains from my soul to the surface. And, as the fictional typhoon moved on, and the credits rolled, I smiled. After the film, I know my tears will dry, outside the auditorium, in the cool breeze of the very real world.
By Tara Judah
It costs too much, everything. Anna answers her apartment door to a man, his hand trembling, as he clutches a cup and a religious image. He asks for money; his child is sick and needs medicine. Anna is on the phone; she is agitated, distracted and, after rummaging in the fridge, brings him meat and fresh bread. The man is disappointed, “I’d prefer money,” he tells her. “I’d also prefer money, but I don’t have it,” she spits back, and closes the door.
By Tara Judah
It may be a stretch to call them ‘popular’, but Sans toit ni loi (Vagabond, Agnès Varda, 1985), Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, 2008) and Cathy Come Home (Ken Loach, 1964) are engaging and well revered films about homeless women. Tjuvheder (Drifters), which has screened in Sweden and Norway and at a handful of international film festivals, is a Swedish film about two homeless women who are stuck in a cycle of poverty and substance abuse.
By Tanner Tafelski
Lee Morgan had talent. He was a hard bop jazz trumpeter who told stories in songs like “The Sidewinder,” “Ceora,” and “Search for the New Land.” At 18, he was a young master and a snappy dresser. All eyes were on him. He knew he had talent, and he made it known. It was at that age Morgan joined Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra. A year and a half later, in 1958, he signed up with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers.
By Tanner Tafelski
A living poet is the protagonist of Jim Jarmusch’s new film. Paterson (Adam Driver) the man lives in Paterson the city—Paterson, New Jersey that is. He also happens to be a bus driver, transporting passengers here and there throughout the town. He is the town. The town is filtered through Paterson, who in turn idealizes it. Through the poet, who is aware of his surroundings, Jarmusch characteristically captures the nuance and intensity of moments.
By Tanner Tafelski
Pablo Larraín returns to the past. Along with Jackie, Neruda makes a pair of films Larraín made this year that could be considered historical dramas. I haven’t seen Jackie yet, but Neruda demolishes whatever assumptions tied to that label (exposition, a reverence to illustrating facts in the most ho-hum style).
By Tara Judah
The most beautiful work of art was hiding in a programme designed to elucidate the processes and effects of different technical approaches to colour on film. Among the Oskar Fischinger and Albert Pierru was a little known two-minute gem called Magie Moderne by Segundo de Chomón.
By Tara Judah
The “shared experience” that cinema-goers so often speak of presumes some consensus of experience. And yet, so often I find myself in an auditorium wondering why the atmosphere suggests everyone else is experiencing something entirely different to me. Buster Keaton’s recently restored and beautifully digitally presented Seven Chances (1925) is a chief example.
By Tara Judah
Beneath the dirt and amidst the scratches of a tired 35mm print is a shade of yellow I have never seen onscreen, so far as I am aware. When the golden title sequence comes to an end I think I will see Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor’s skin tones as I have seen them before, but I am wrong. John Huston, determined to give his screen adaptation of Carson McCullers’ short novel a hue that would reflect (…)
Director: Mónica Delgado Ch.
ISSN 2311-7451
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