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snazzybobblington
I like to Cineville … with an emerging focus on Švankmajer
https://smashingbobblehead.wordpress.com
Reviews
Serdtse mira (2018)
A well-told story
I saw this at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2019.
it is the new film from Natalia Meschaninova who made 'Hope Factory.' I had an interesting discussion about zapoi (look it up) with her and Stepan Devonin who turns out to be the lead role (Egor) in this movie as well.. and why not, he has an amazingly likeable yet babyish yet intense face which he uses to good extent in this story which (like 'Hope Factory') unfolds inexorably towards a brutal yet hopeful ending.
All the acting is good actually and there's lots of animals too. We are hanging out in a weird animal farm where Egor is the animal doctor and foxes are bred for dogs to hunt 😦The sex scenes were a bit too tender for me but the story was great. it hangs together well with some funny lines.
The QnA was a bit of a carcrash like normal :(
Going South (2018)
An enjoyable youtube romp
I saw this at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2019.
Ah this was a refreshing dive into the depths of youtube. In cinerama zaal4! My favourite and rarely used room. Cinerama also has a huge bassment that used to be used for parties by the way. Anyway i digress.
'Going South' is the second section in a tetralogy, the first part being 'of the north', which gathered quite some controversy. Inuit elders were unhappy with the depiction of their culture in the film, which gathered youtube clips of Inuits and displayed them without asking permission. Was it necessary to ask permission or was it fair use? Who owns a youtube clip anyway? These are thorny questions which Dominic gagnon the Quebecois artist has stirred up.
Personally i think indigenous voices should be heard. Also i think these films are works of art and Gagnon wasn't striving to portray the inuit in a negative light, he was taking from what was already there. But then again he used a famous musician's throat singing without permission. Is that fair use or not?
Maybe it is at least good that someone is provoking these questions. in any case i dont think Gagnon is getting superrich from this .. although perhaps the artistic cachet is worth more ultimately .. hmm it is complicated.
Anyway this is part two .. and do the same concerns apply? actually yes but I'm not sure if anyone is complaining yet. Perhaps Gagnon has not so much engaged with the criticisms as sidestepped them.
I.ll be honest i enjoyed this. If gagnon was ripping people off i would be angry but he is taking youtube clips and repurposing them.
I am ok with that.
Chèche Lavi (2019)
An unexpected gem!
I saw this at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2019.
I stumbled onto this stone cold classic by accident, glad i did.
It is the migration story / bromance of two Haitians who separately migrated to Brazil and then to Tijuana, trying to get into USA
It is a heavy film but also meditative and occasionally sad. it took me places and i like that feeling.
When one of the two got into the us only to be imprisoned in the ICE system before being deported back to Haiti, i had to think of some of the stories recounted in 'Black Britain', a book about the English slave trade. somehow some people were forcibly migrated from the Horn of Africa to the american confederacy as slaves, became freemen, emigrated to England and then returned to Africa several decades later.
It would be hard not to be defined by this sort of life event, but both james and Robens seem to be keeping on in the pursuit of their dreams.
This line teared me up at the end:
i smile because i know what it is to be destroyed
Romantic Comedy (2019)
Great analysis of romcoms
I saw this at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2019.
It is a meta film about romcoms just like 'Beyond Clueless' (whose director was also at the screening apparently), which was about teen films
It was really good! in the film and in the QnA the director went hard on diversity which is superimportant
Some clip choices stuck out for me, like 'grosse point blank' popped up a few times but wasn't discussed at all and is to my mind quite a subversive romcom.
The end of the romcom as a genre was rued, but maybe more attention could be paid to how bad later versions were .. i'm thinking about films like 'there's something about mary' for example
Werk ohne Autor (2018)
With this much talent and money it could have been a much better film
Well this will doubt win the foreign language Oscar. And the acting is for sure great, everyone is super beautiful and very good at what they do AND it's really epic, but the whole thing is somehow overplayed and ultimately uninteresting. I would think this was an amazing movie if i was 13.
The power of KUNST triumphs over all! But does it really...
More to the point why is this three hours long!?
I just don't think a smooth Nazi would get unbalanced by a painting.
And what's with the horny ending!?
I joke about horniness of course but at the same time this is a pretty patriarchal movie right? All the women have pokies, most show off their small breasts (must be the writer/director's type). And the Nazi and the Russian men form a bond because the Nazi delivers the baby of the Russian's woman, whilst she remains an incidental character. Pfff.
Sorry, it's just not my kind of movie, it's mainstream and takes itself way too seriously. At one point I thought the protagonist would hook up with his girlfriend's mum and expose the Nazi, that would have been amazing. Didn't happen though.
On the other hand, it is good to see a film like this coming out of Germany both because it is interrogating what happened in WWII and the sheltering of Nazis afterwards and because it gives exposure to some great actors. Paula Beer is superb and I do like Sebastian Koch a lot.