TIFF Wavelenghts

Film Festival Reports

TIFF 2017. WAVELENGTHS: OCCIDENTAL BY NEÏL BELOUFA

By Nicolás Carrasco

Our setting is a two-star hotel in Paris that seems suspended in the 70’s. In what time frame is this movie set? The riots on the streets outside the hotel seem to refer, rather than to a distant May 1968, to our current times of European crisis. At night and during these revolts, an Italian gay couple arrives at the Occidental Hotel, a microcosm that will represent that night all of Europe and where almost the entire film will take place.

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Film Festival Reports

TIFF 2017: WAVELENGTHS. ALIENS BY LUIS LOPEZ CARRASCO

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Questions apart, Aliens stays as an invaluable document and magnificent documentary about one of the most characteristic figures of the eighties in Madrid, and about this decade, its figures (Almodovar, Zulueta, Berlanga, nobody escapes the memory of Tesa) and this necessity of López Carrasco to construct new narratives from Spain’s contemporary history. Is a fantastic endeavor that wants to rescue the fundamental discourses of a generation that is “now in power, trying to manipulate and control any dissident discourse”. This articulation of the personal portrait and the testimony of the social array, is what makes the Spanish filmmaker so special. A VHS treat in 2017. 

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Críticas

TIFF 2017. WAVELENGTHS: OCCIDENTAL DE NEÏL BELOUFA

Por Nicolás Carrasco

Un hotel de dos estrellas en París parece haberse quedado en los años 70.  ¿En que época nos encontramos? Las manifestaciones en las calles fuera del hotel parecen remitir, más que a un lejano mayo del 68, a la situación actual de crisis europea. De noche y durante estas revueltas, una pareja italiana y homosexual llegará al hotel Occidental, microcosmos que representará esa noche a toda Europa y donde transcurre casi la totalidad de la película

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Film Festival Reports

TIFF 2017: WAVELENGTHS. WASTELAND N°1: ARDENT, VERDANT BY JODIE MACK

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Ardent, Verdant, (Burning green) is a proper title for Jodie Mack’s latest exploration in the structural games of textures, patterns and colorful images that carry an unsuspected depth. This playful way in which Mack orders her personal structure of objects can be misleadingly deceitful, although in the best of ways: there’s always something to reflect on this intense game of materials which is the filmmakers way of speaking of the optical arrest that the everyday object can bring to life, and the underlying reflection on the origins of the same object and what does it speaks for.

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Film Festival Reports

TIFF 2017. WAVELENGHTS: THE WATCHMEN BY FERN SILVA

By Mónica Delgado

With a world premiere in Rotterdam Film Festival and a Canadian premiere in Wavelenghts, Fern’s Silva The Watchmen is a revisitation on the concept of the panoptic from its vestiges and interactions with new dispositives of social surveillance. If the Jeremy Bentham invention is recovered here from some abandoned architectural ruins, which give an idea of the failure of methods of control and power, the question of feeling surveilled and repressed by an omnipresent being seem to be a conceptual motivation that the filmmaker uses in this short film.

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Críticas

TIFF 2017: WAVELENGHTS. CANIBA DE LUCIEN CASTAING-TAYLOR Y VERENA PARAVEL

Por José Sarmiento

Para todo aquel que conoce la historia de Issei Sagawa (un caníbal japonés que mató y comió a su compañera de clase Renée Hartevelt, y que luego fuera puesto en libertad por razones de locura), revisitar el casi relato mítico a través de los lentes de Castaing-Taylor y Paravel (el dueto detrás de la extraordinaria Leviathan) es una suerte de válvula de escape, una experiencia catártica dentro del reino íntimo de uno de los personajes más peculiarres y estremecedores de la humanidad, pero a la vez es una lección de humanidasd, de escucha y de percepción.

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Críticas

TIFF 2017. WAVELENGTHS: THE WATCHMEN DE FERN SILVA

Por Mónica Delgado

Con estreno mundial en el festival de Rotterdam y estreno canadiense en Wavelenghts, The Watchmen de Fern Silva es una revisitación sobre el concepto de panóptico desde sus vestigios y desde sus interacciones con nuevos dispositivos de vigilancia social.

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Film Festival Reports

TIFF 2017: WAVELENGTHS. CANIBA BY LUCIEN CASTAING-TAYLOR AND VERENA PARAVEL

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

As someone who knows the story of Issei Sagawa (a Japanese cannibal who killed and ate his classmate Renée Hartevelt, and was subsequently released by reasons of insanity), revisiting the almost mythical tale yet again trough the lenses of Castaing-Taylor and Paravel (the duo behind the extraordinary Leviathan) is something of a release valve, a cathartic experience into the intimate realm of one of mankind mos peculiar and disturbing characters, but also a lesson on humanity, on perception and listening

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Film Festival Reports

TIFF 2017: WAVELENGTHS. (100) FT BY MINJUNG KIM AND HEART OF A MOUNTAIN BY PARASTOO ANOUSHAHPOUR, RYAN FERKO AND FARAZ ANOUSHAHPOUR

by Ivonne Sheen

In the section Wavelengths 3: figures in the landscapes, one can find two shortfalls which portrays a sort of Inner Landscape. This is to say, subjective experiences that find their appearances in the evocative power of a landscape. (100) ft by Minding Kim and Heart of a Mountain by Parastoo Anoushahpour, Ryan Ferko and Faraz Anoushahpour, are cinematic Inner Landscapes that go deeper into images’ nature, instead of going wider. A exploration that comes from the inside and returns to it.

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