2011-2020

  • Daisuke Miyao – The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema (2014)

    2011-2020BooksDaisuke MiyaoUnited Kingdom

    The reality of transnational innovation and dissemination of new technologies, including digital media, has yet to make a dent in the deep-seated culturalism that insists on reinscribing a divide between the West and Japan, even in realms of technological activity that are quite evidently dispersed across cultures. Film and media studies are not immune to this trend. They continue to fret over the “Westernness” of film technologies vis-à-vis the apparently self-evident “Japaneseness” of other modes of cultural production. The main goal of The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Cinema is to counter this trend toward dichotomizing the West and Japan and to challenge the pervasive culturalism of today’s film and media studies. This volume addresses productive debates about what Japanese cinema is, where Japanese cinema is, and where Japanese cinema is going at the period of crisis of national boundary under globalization. In order to do so, this volume attempts to foster dialogue between Japanese scholars of Japanese cinema, film scholars of Japanese cinema based in Anglo-American and European countries, film scholars of non-Japanese cinema, film archivists, film critics, and filmmakers familiar with film scholarship.Read More »

  • Mikhail Segal – Kino pro Alekseeva AKA A Film About Alekseev (2014)

    2011-2020DramaMikhail SegalRussia

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    Quote:
    Sometimes we know less about the past than about the future. Alekseev, a lonely old man, unexpectedly discovers that he has not lived the life he thought he had, and finds himself to be a completely different person.Read More »

  • Celina Murga – La tercera orilla (2014)

    2011-2020ArgentinaArthouseCelina MurgaDrama

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    Plot
    Nicolás lives in a small town in the Argentinian province of Entre Ríos. His father Jorge is a respected doctor who claims the privilege of leading a double life with two families. Seen through the eyes of Nicolás, his oldest son, Jorge is a man who will not allow himself be called ‘Dad’ and who, after a day they spend together, returns to his other family which he has privileged with much greater financial support. Nicolás takes on the role of a father: he looks after his siblings, comforts his mother and takes care of financial matters. The inconsistency of these parallel worlds becomes even more evident when Jorge calls upon Nicolás to follow in his footsteps. He is to become a doctor, too, and to take over the ranch his father inherited and manages in a colonial manner. Unperceived by the people around him, the boy starts to nurse rebellion against his father’s authoritarian ways and machismo, and against the open secret which everyone knows but which everyone ignores.
    (from berlinale’s cat.)Read More »

  • Raúl Perrone – P3ND3JO5 (2013)

    2011-2020ArgentinaMusicalRaúl PerroneSilent

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    Quote:
    Skater musical from Buenos Aires suburb. In this silent black-and-white 4:3 format film, the hypnotising soundtrack drives the images. Love, desire, drama, faces. Perrone, the godfather of Argentine independent cinema, reinvents it in his 35th film.

    Argentinian director Raúl Perrone calls P3ND3JO5 (‘pendejos’: slang for teen, but also idiot or worse epithets) a ‘cumbia opera in three acts with coda’. Cumbia is rhythmic Columbian music that became immensely popular in Latin America during the 1940s.
    Read More »

  • Alex Ross Perry – Listen Up Philip (2014)

    2011-2020Alex Ross PerryArthouseDramaUSA

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    Anger rages in Philip as he awaits the publication of his second novel. He feels pushed out of his adopted home city by the constant crowds and noise, a deteriorating relationship with his photographer girlfriend Ashley, and his own indifference to promoting the novel. When Philip’s idol Ike Zimmerman offers his isolated summer home as a refuge, he finally gets the peace and quiet to focus on his favorite subject: himself. Read More »

  • Bruno Dumont – P’tit Quinquin AKA L’il Quinquin (2014)

    2011-2020Bruno DumontComedyFranceMystery

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    Synopsis:
    A clueless police inspector stumbles his way through a provincial murder investigation, in this shocking — and shockingly funny — change of pace from premier French auteur Bruno Dumont (L’humanité, Hadewijch).
    Originally conceived and broadcast as a four-part miniseries, Bruno Dumont’s P’tit Quinquin works seamlessly when screened in its cinematic version.
    Dumont has again chosen to shoot his new film against the countryside of his birthplace, the Boulonnais region around Calais; apart from that, the film marks a notable change in tone for this immensely creative filmmaker. (Well, it does share one other thing in common with his earlier films: like L’Humanite, the film centres on a police detective investigating a murder.)
    P’tit Quinquin is — believe it or not for those who have been following Dumont’s career — a comedy. Little prepares you for the adventure, rollicking and slapstick, in this idiosyncratic screwball of a film. Chuckles abound — at times you can’t quite believe what you are seeing — but, not surprisingly in the hands of a director who has always managed to keep a firm, controlling hand on his material, the film never spirals into silliness. Wit and intelligence prevail.Read More »

  • Bill Morrison & David Harrington – Beyond Zero: 1914-1918 (2014)

    2011-2020Bill MorrisonBill Morrison and David HarringtonDocumentaryExperimentalUSA

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    Intro from CPH : DOX homepage
    The 100 year old film images sparkle and crackle with an expressive fury, which almost looks like a reaction to what they depict. This year, it is 100 year since the First World War – the first ‘modern’ war, and the first to be documented in moving images – forever destroyed any notion of the (Western) world’s continued progress under the banner of reason and industrialisation. 1914 was the modern era’s absolute year zero. A landmark year, which is here marked in a cinematic collaboration between the renowned American filmmaker Bill Morrison and the string quartet Kronos Quartet, who have recorded the original score by the Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov. Read More »

  • Corneliu Porumboiu – Al doilea joc AKA The Second Game (2014)

    2011-2020Corneliu PorumboiuDocumentaryExperimentalRomania

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    The Second Game (Romanian: Al doilea joc) is a 2014 Romanian documentary film directed by Corneliu Porumboiu. The film integrally depicts the Dinamo — Steaua footbal derby played on December 3, 1988; the game is commented on by Porumboiu and his father, Adrian, the referee of that match.

    It was selected for the Forum section at the 64th Berlin International Film Festival.Read More »

  • Daniel Geller & Dayna Goldfine – The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (2013)

    2011-2020CrimeDaniel GellerDayna GoldfineDocumentaryUSA

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    “This overlong documentary lacks something in structure and focus – and I wanted to know a little more about the exact provenance of all of its home‑movie footage. But it has an extraordinary true story to tell, with hints of the Happy Valley murders in Kenya, and Paul Theroux’s novel The Mosquito Coast. In the 1930s, the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador, famed for Darwin’s expedition, were thought of as the last great pristine territory, unspoiled by human habitation.

    In Europe, some hardy souls – disenchanted by what the first world war had revealed about humanity – decided to settle there. A German doctor called Friedrich Ritter, who had a passion for Nietzsche, left his wife and went there with a married woman, Dore Strauch. A visiting American scientific party was fascinated by these modern-day Robinson Crusoes and effectively publicised their lives for the press back home, and Ritter was horrified when other would-be settlers turned up too. A stolid, bourgeois family, the Wittmers, arrived, and then a bizarre fantasist and adventuress who styled herself the “Baroness” Eloise von Wagner Bouquet.Read More »

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