By John A. Riley
Hyun-Jun is an actor, specialising in musical theatre. He is given an opportunity to study acting in America, but before venturing abroad, he returns to the small village where he grew up. Once there he re-kindles his acquaintance with his beautiful cousin So-yeon, acquaintance quickly turning to Romantic desire
By Narda Liotine
To say cinema is a matter of movement tout court is something I personally don’t agree with: To experience film format as a big canvas should imply that one is able to explore every single fragment of a reel and contemplate their unique beauty.
By John A. Riley
Watching an East Asian film, the Anglophone, Euro-Americo-centric viewer comes face to face with an at-first pressing dilemma: whether to incorporate everything one sees into familiar, Western paradigms or whether to defer to the infinite mysteries of the Orient
By John A. Riley
Those who know Tomas Alfredson from his international successes Let the Right One In and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy are likely to consider him as a director at home with genre material, working with well-known tropes in a highly stylised but somehow unassuming way. His two well known films have a hard-edged indifference that is as exhilarating as it is chilling.
By Monica Delgado
Eighty Letters (Osmdesát Dopisú) by Václav Kadrnka is a film set in early eighties socialist Czech Republic under the ex USSR. The filmmaker has made it clear that this is an autobiographical film and it traces the memories of his adolescence, where his mother organized a future encounter with his father, who lived in London as a migrant.
By John A. Riley Slowly, over the course of a day, five black boys intimidate some younger, wealthier Swedish boys (two white, one of Chinese
By José Sarmiento Hinojosa
Somehow the religious and mystical overtones in Bruno Dumont‘s oeuvre have always been a trademark of his work, but in his latest films (especially Hadewijch and Hors Satan) they seem to slowly lose some of their subtlety and give way to a more evident although not less troubling mise-en-scene.
By Mónica Delgado Bonsái by Cristian Jiménez is a Chilean film programmed in the International BAFICI Competition, by a filmmaker from Valdivia, which is one of the most cinephilic
By Lea Liotine
I anticipated this film with the highest expectations, not only because it was a potpourri of twenty-five minute shorts by many established and emerging Taiwanese directors, including the master himself Hou Hsiao-hsien, but also because it was commissioned by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Republic of China’s formal establishment.
Por Mónica Delgado
Tabú is a film of references to the old days of cinema, a two part tale (“Lost paradise” and “paradise”), an ode to black and white nostalgia, to the expressive aesthetics of silent film, with small moments of brilliant humor and a 60’s pop soundtrack. If in Aquel querido mes de agosto, Gomes makes a lucid exercise in expressive renovation and metalanguage surprises, in Tabú, the clear homage to F.W. Murnau’s film feels powerful, like if the ghost of the German filmmaker was tempted to suddenly appear in front of us.
Directors:
Mónica Delgado Ch.
ISSN 2311-7451
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