Actress Lucie Lucas, director Gabe Klinger, and actor Anton YelchinYou may already know the work of Brazilian-born American Gabe Klinger, perhaps through his writing as a critic for Cinema Scope and Sight & Sound, or through his programming at such venues as the Museum of Modern Art and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. In 2013, Klinger leapt behind the camera for his delightfully idiosyncratic debut film, Double Play, a documentary twofer chatting with and exploring the work of two distinctively different yet unexpectedly compatible American filmmakers, Richard Linklater and James Benning. This move to documenting (and combining) favorite filmmakers seemed like a natural extension of Klinger's advocacy in print and work at cinematheques and film festivals. Yet rather than remaining in the documentary mode, for his follow-up Klinger has gone overseas to Portugal to make a cleverly time-addled romance that's at once elated and melancholy. Porto, taking place in a dreamy, remembered...
- 9/20/2016
- MUBI
Like each of Lisandro Alonso‘s cinematic offerings that came before – La Libertad, Los Muertos, Fantasma and Liverpool – the Un Certain Regard debuted, Fipresci Prize winning Jauja regards the solitary man facing the exactings of life, nature and the human spirit. But something is quite different here. There seems to be some kind of scripted narrative, lavish costuming and even what many would call a proper movie star in the robustly mustachioed Viggo Mortensen. Yet by embracing these glacial shifts in the filmmaking process itself, Alonso has elevated his art from contemplatively ethnographic to something much more strange, exciting, illusive and illuminating.
For the first time in his career, Alonso parsed out something resembling a working feature length script in partnership with the Argentinian poet Fabián Casas whom he’d worked with previously on untitled Albert Serra addressed short and took on Mortensen as both his leading man producer on the project,...
For the first time in his career, Alonso parsed out something resembling a working feature length script in partnership with the Argentinian poet Fabián Casas whom he’d worked with previously on untitled Albert Serra addressed short and took on Mortensen as both his leading man producer on the project,...
- 8/25/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
“So one thing from another rises ever; and in fee-simple life is given to none, but unto all mere usufruct.” – Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, Book III
The above quote was once used by great Italian documentarian Franco Piavoli to open his masterful 1982 film, The Blue Planet. In that instance, it is deftly applied to the fragility of mother nature; her various granting and reclaiming of life, but can just as easily be applied to the figures followed by Roberto Minervini, an Italian based in the United States whose acclaimed Texas Trilogy – The Passage, Low Tide and Stop the Pounding Heart – was followed up at Cannes this year by The Other Side, which shifts the director’s gaze slightly eastward to the state of Louisiana. One must assume that Minervini, despite blazing his own trail that has led him through the Philippines and Spain en route to America’s Southern states,...
The above quote was once used by great Italian documentarian Franco Piavoli to open his masterful 1982 film, The Blue Planet. In that instance, it is deftly applied to the fragility of mother nature; her various granting and reclaiming of life, but can just as easily be applied to the figures followed by Roberto Minervini, an Italian based in the United States whose acclaimed Texas Trilogy – The Passage, Low Tide and Stop the Pounding Heart – was followed up at Cannes this year by The Other Side, which shifts the director’s gaze slightly eastward to the state of Louisiana. One must assume that Minervini, despite blazing his own trail that has led him through the Philippines and Spain en route to America’s Southern states,...
- 6/8/2015
- by Nicholas Page
- SoundOnSight
Lisandro Alonso and Viggo Mortensen are oddly like magnets – figures that on one side might resist one another, yet on the opposite sides naturally embrace one another, working perfectly in tandem toward one common goal in which creation and collaboration naturally flourish. Alonso, being an Argentinian director whose oeuvre almost almost solely constructed of mysterious works (even to the director himself), such as Los Muertos or Liverpool, that follow solitary men along near silent journeys into the harsh wilderness, and Mortensen, a multilingual Danish-American movie star whose reserved every-man persona has been marched on screen from Mordor to Millbrook to great acclaim, yet they share both a deep respect for transcendental cinema and a strikingly admirable lack of pretensions when it comes to their own investment in the medium. Their first collaboration, and Alonso’s first project working with not only a professional actor, but with an actual script (written...
- 3/19/2015
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
A strikingly shot odyssey that makes extensive use of the dramatic, varied landscapes of rural South America and moves at a pace that would see it quickly outflanked by the average glacier, “Jauja” may involve the talents of the biggest star he’s ever worked with in Viggo Mortensen, but it’s resolutely a Lisandro Alonso film, for better, or if you like watching things happen, largely for worse. We can’t say we’re massive fans of the director’s previous features (2008’s “Liverpool” and 2004’s “Los Muertos” feel like the closest siblings to "Jauja," and both frustrated the hell out of us), but the director has gained a fairly worshipful critical following elsewhere, especially among the “narrative”-is-a-dirty-word brigade. Still, we were hopeful that his tendency for tedium might be mitigated this time out, as the film not only stars an actor we admire, but has a relatively...
- 3/18/2015
- by Jessica Kiang
- The Playlist
We're proud to be partnering up with the Human Rights Watch Film Festival again this year. It opens tonight in London and to celebrate we're currently showing Sara Ishaq's The Mulberry House (pictured above) in the UK—watch it now! the 74th issue of Senses of Cinema is online now, and will keep you busy with a dozen feature articles, not counting festival reports. Start with the Editor's Note and work your way to their focus on Michelangelo Antonioni and Paul Thomas Anderson.Another online journal we're very fond of, desistfilm, has a new issue as well. Among the highlights, Adrian Martin writes on "The Post-Photographic in 1951: A Secret History." The lineup for Hot Docs, the Canadian documentary film festival taking place between April 23rd and May 5th, has been announced and the details can be found here, and trailers for the films (over 80!) can be found here.
- 3/18/2015
- by Notebook
- MUBI
Generally speaking, all a viewer needs to do while watching a Lisandro Alonso film is look and listen. Starting with La Libertad (2001), the Argentine director’s features -- the rest of which are Los Muertos (2004), Fantasma (2006), Liverpool (2008), and now Jauja -- have foregone anything resembling conventional, narrative-based filmmaking. Alonso’s recurring subject -- the relationship between people and the landscapes that surround them -- is disarmingly primal, showing non-actors conduct their daily business (La Libertad’s subject is a woodcutter, for instance) in something resembling real-time. Alonso is not interested in backstory or psychology, at least not in the ways these are usually broached and exploited in mainstre...
- 10/8/2014
- Village Voice
Another year, and another edition of the Lima Film Festival is upon us. Just in time for its milestone 18th birthday, the Fest has released their full slate of films, both in the Fiction and Documentary competitions and other sections.Argentina, the biggest film industry in South America, has a couple of highlights. If you've been wondering where Viggo Mortensen has been hiding for the last few years, he can be found in Jauja, a drama from renowned director Lisandro Alonso (Los Muertos, Liverpool). There's also the eagerly anticipated Wild Tales, Damián Szifron's dark humoured anthology film.With more and more movies being made here, it's no surprise that Peru has four films in the Fiction Competition. Álvaro Velarde (Destiny Has No Favorites) returns to local screens with...
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- 7/25/2014
- Screen Anarchy
The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Jaeger-LeCoultre revealed award-winning Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso as their 2014 Filmmaker in Residence. The announcement took place last night at a dinner in New York co-hosted by Charles Finch, Lesli Klainberg, Bennett Miller, Todd Solondz, and Lisa Cortes. Last year the role was held by director Andrea Arnold ("Fish Tank," "Wuthering Heights"), who utilized the post to develop her next film "American Honey" and work within the local community, speaking at New York Film Festival panels and nearby high schools. Read More: Here's Why This Was the Best Cannes Film Festival in Years Alonso's work had been described as minimalist comparable to Tarkovsky blending documentary and film. Alonso has directed five features, including "La Libertad" (2001), "Los Muertos" (2004), "Fantasma" (2006), and "Liverpool" (2008). This year he debuted his most recent,...
- 6/25/2014
- by Oliver MacMahon
- Indiewire
Cannes - "Did you see the Lisandro Alonso?!" came the eager text from a friend not in Cannes, mere minutes after I had, indeed, seen Alonso's "Jauja" -- an Argentine western turned existential comedy turned, well, any number of alternate-dimension subgenres. I envied him his excitement. Alonso has built up a fiercely devoted band of admirers with his opaque brand of slow-cinema puzzle picture, as demonstrated in the likes of "Liverpool" and "Los Muertos"; for those of us who have never gained access to that club, "Jauja" is unlikely to bring us much closer. Intermittently playful, consistently confounding, finally petrified, it's a film of fussy, cultivated austerity; Alonsolytes will debate what it's hiding, while others will suggest "an actual movie" as the answer. Initially, improbably, it seems that we're in for more hand-holding than usual from Alonso, as proceedings open with a lengthy block of text that helpfully gives context...
- 5/21/2014
- by Guy Lodge
- Hitfix
A strikingly shot odyssey story that makes extensive use of the dramatic, varied landscapes of rural South America and moves at a pace that would see it quickly outflanked by the average glacier, “Jauja” may involve the talents of the biggest star he’s ever worked with in Viggo Mortensen, but it’s resolutely a Lisandro Alonso film, for better, or if you like watching things happen, largely for worse. We can’t say we’re massive fans of the director’s previous features (2008’s “Liverpool” and 2004’s “Los Muertos” feel like the closest siblings to "Jauja," and both frustrated the hell out of us), but the director has gained a fairly worshipful critical following elsewhere, especially among the “narrative”-is-a-dirty-word brigade. Still, we were hopeful that his tendency for tedium might be mitigated this time out, as the film not only stars an actor we admire, but has a relatively rich logline,...
- 5/19/2014
- by Jessica Kiang
- The Playlist
Argentine filmmaker Lisandro Alonso was last seen at Cannes in 2008 with his drama about a sailor, "Liverpool." He's exploring the natural world yet again in "Jauja," the Un Certain Regard entry starring Viggo Mortensen as a father who treks with his daughter from Denmark to an uncharted desert in South America. Costarring Ghita Norby, "Jauja" is cowritten by Alonso and first-time scribe Fabian Casas, and this is Alonso's first narrative feature since "Liverpool." He made an international splash in 2004 with "Los Muertos," another mystery that turned on the relationship between father and daughter. Take a look at images from the set of "Jauja" below, and Indiewire has an exclusive on the beautiful new poster here. The film will compete for the Un Certain Regard prize, under Argentinian jury president Pablo Trapero.
- 5/8/2014
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Thompson on Hollywood
11. Zama – Dir. Lucretia Martel
Why This Makes Top 10: At number eleven we have Argentinean filmmaker Lucretia Martel’s latest film, her first since 2008’s The Headless Woman (a film that critics were slow to warm to, but ended up being on many a best end of year list in 2008/2009). Previous titles include her stunning debut, 2001’s La Cienega, along with 2004’s The Holy Girl. Her latest is a period piece based on the novel by Antonio de Benedetto and will be produced by Lita Stantic, El Deseo (the Almodovar Bros’ company), as well as a still to be named French producer. Martel is one of the most prolific names to come out the New Argentinean Wave and this looks to be a massively mounted period piece we’re eager to get a look at.
The Gist: Written in 1956, Zama is an existential novel about Don Diego de Zama, a...
Why This Makes Top 10: At number eleven we have Argentinean filmmaker Lucretia Martel’s latest film, her first since 2008’s The Headless Woman (a film that critics were slow to warm to, but ended up being on many a best end of year list in 2008/2009). Previous titles include her stunning debut, 2001’s La Cienega, along with 2004’s The Holy Girl. Her latest is a period piece based on the novel by Antonio de Benedetto and will be produced by Lita Stantic, El Deseo (the Almodovar Bros’ company), as well as a still to be named French producer. Martel is one of the most prolific names to come out the New Argentinean Wave and this looks to be a massively mounted period piece we’re eager to get a look at.
The Gist: Written in 1956, Zama is an existential novel about Don Diego de Zama, a...
- 1/8/2013
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Have you ever wondered what are the films that inspire the next generation of filmmakers? As part of our monthly Ioncinephile profile, we ask the filmmaker the incredibly arduous task of identifying their top ten list of all time favorite films. This April/May we profile Alistair Banks Griffin who will see his debut feature, Two Gates of Sleep have its world premiere within the sidebar section of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Look for this Director's Fortnight selected film to show screen during the Fall film festival season. - Have you ever wondered what are the films that inspire the next generation of filmmakers? As part of our monthly Ioncinephile profile (read here), we ask the filmmaker the incredibly arduous task of identifying their top ten list of all time favorite films. This April/May we profile Alistair Banks Griffin who will see his debut feature, Two Gates of Sleep...
- 5/7/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
Have you ever wondered what are the films that inspire the next generation of filmmakers? As part of our monthly Ioncinephile profile (read here), we ask the filmmaker the incredibly arduous task of identifying their top ten list of all time favorite films. This April/May we profile Alistair Banks Griffin who will see his debut feature, Two Gates of Sleep have its world premiere within the sidebar section of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Look for this Director's Fortnight selected film to show screen during the Fall film festival season. Here's his top 10 list as of April 2010. A Journey That Wasn't (2006) 21mins. - Pierre Huyghe"Huyghe's film work seems to be commenting on capacity of cinema to shape memory and draw direct connections to all aesthetic mediums. Here he takes the glacial topography of an island near Antarctica, translates the data to flashing binary code, then sets up a light...
- 4/21/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
As Jay Kuehner assesses for Parallax View: "Fantasma, per its title, coyly and spectrally endeavors to bring together the principal 'non-actors' of his previous films to Buenos Aires, to the fabled Teatro San Martín, for--what else?--a retrospective of Alonso's films. The setup is an ingenious way to bring nature to the city, actors to their affect, and audiences to their subjective screens." The program capsule for the Harvard Film Archives notes the offbeat delight in watching Argentino Vargas wandering the labyrinthine corridors of the Teatro San Martín "in search of the film's premiere."
Fantasma was Alonso's way of saying thank you to the lead actors in his first two films: Misael Saavedra (La Libertad) and Argentino Vargas (Los Muertos). He wanted to thank them because they had both helped him change a certain portion of his life when he became his kind of filmmaker. Fantasma is an inbetween film in many respects.
Fantasma was Alonso's way of saying thank you to the lead actors in his first two films: Misael Saavedra (La Libertad) and Argentino Vargas (Los Muertos). He wanted to thank them because they had both helped him change a certain portion of his life when he became his kind of filmmaker. Fantasma is an inbetween film in many respects.
- 11/27/2009
- Screen Anarchy
Introducing Los Muertos, Northwest Film Forum Program Director Adam Sekuler offered that Lisandro Alonso's characters are most often playing themselves and--while the trajectory of his films don't always follow a traditional plot--they do follow the trajectory of what all of us go through in any given day. In the selfsame way that Alonso's films might be unfamiliar cinematically, they are very familiar physically. Alonso followed with a brief, hurried introduction as he was desperate to secure a ticket to the Pixies concert at the Paramount. He said that--if he went back home and his friends found out he could have seen the Pixies and didn't--they would never forgive him. Fortunately, he was able to secure his Pixies ticket and returned after the film for a brief Q&A before rushing off again to attend the concert.
Alonso shot Los Muertos three years after La Libertad. He wanted to make...
Alonso shot Los Muertos three years after La Libertad. He wanted to make...
- 11/27/2009
- Screen Anarchy
Adam Sekular, Program Director for Seattle's Northwest Film Forum (Nwff), organized the retrospective "At the Edge of the World: the Cinema of Lisandro Alonso", which ran this past week November 11-19, 2009. All four of Alonso's films--La Libertad (2001), Los Muertos (2004), Fantasma (2006) and Liverpool (2008)--received their Seattle premieres and Alonso was present to introduce the films and conduct Q&As afterwards. He likewise led an intimate afternoon "master class."
In his write-up for The Stranger, Sean Axmaker emphasized: "In addition to putting together this Seattle series, Northwest Film Forum has taken up the mantle of distributor for Liverpool in the United States." At Parallax View, Axmaker elaborated: "Liverpool was heralded at both Cannes and Toronto from 2008, proclaimed 'one of the best undistributed films' by both indieWIRE and Film Comment, and 'Best Film of 2008' by Cinema Scope, yet no distribution was forthcoming. So Adam Sekular and Nwff stepped in to...
In his write-up for The Stranger, Sean Axmaker emphasized: "In addition to putting together this Seattle series, Northwest Film Forum has taken up the mantle of distributor for Liverpool in the United States." At Parallax View, Axmaker elaborated: "Liverpool was heralded at both Cannes and Toronto from 2008, proclaimed 'one of the best undistributed films' by both indieWIRE and Film Comment, and 'Best Film of 2008' by Cinema Scope, yet no distribution was forthcoming. So Adam Sekular and Nwff stepped in to...
- 11/26/2009
- Screen Anarchy
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