Cineaste articles from December 2003

Cineaste archives from December 2003

Contemporary Spanish cinema.(Editorial)
December 22, 2003... During the late Seventies, Generalisimo Franco's agonizingly slow death became a running joke on Saturday Night Live. Now that Franco is only a distant memory for young Spaniards and Spain is one of the liveliest countries in Western Europe,...

Where is The Other Side of the Wind? or quien es mas macho: Orson Welles, John Huston, or Ernest Hemingway?
December 22, 2003... When Orson Welles died on October 10, 1985, at the age of seventy, he left behind a cluttered legacy that rivaled Charles Foster Kane's wilderness of statuary seen at the end of Citizen Kane. He'd been working on numerous films in his last...

Changing the face of Chinese cinema: an interview with Chen Kaige.(Interview)
December 22, 2003... It's been twenty-five years since Chen Kaige began his studies at the Beijing Film Academy. Little did he suspect back then that the "class of 78"--which included future luminaries Zhang Yimou and Tian Zhuangzhuang, among others--would first...

The Stooges, at last, get some respect.(Critical Essay)
December 22, 2003... On December 17, 2002, the National Film Preservation Foundation listed another twenty-five films selected for preservation in the Library of Congress. One of them is Punch Drunks, a 1934 two-reel comedy featuring The Three Stooges. This...

Acting as the joy of discovery: an interview with Emmanuelle Beart.(Interview)
December 22, 2003... Early in Claude Sautet's meticulously crafted Un coeur en hiver (A Heart in Winter), the film's putative heroine, a beautiful and talented violinist named Camille Kessler, is described as a "smooth and hard" woman who "keeps her distance" from...

Whale Rider.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Produced by John Barnett; directed by Niki Caro; screenplay by Niki Caro, based on a novel by Witi Ihimaera; cinematography by Leon Narbey; edited by David Coulson; original music by Lisa Gerrard; production design by Grant Major; costume...

The Fog of War.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Produced by Errol Morris, Michael Williams, and Julie Ahlberg; directed by Errol Morris; original music by Philip Glass; cinematography by Peter Donahue and Robert Chappell; edited by Karen Schmeer, Doug Abel and Chyld King; production design...

Thirteen.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Produced by Tim Bevan, Liza Chasin, Eric Fellner and Holly Hunter; directed by Catherine Hardwicke; screenplay by Catherine Hardwicke and Nikki Reed; cinematography by Elliot Davis; original music by Mark Mothersbaugh; edited by Nancy...

Shattered Glass.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Produced by Craig Baumgarten, Adam Merims, Gaye Hirsch and Tove Christensen; written and directed by Billy Ray; cinematography by Mandy Walker; edited by Jeffrey Ford; production design by Francois Seguin; costume design by Renee April; music...

Madame Sata.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Produced by Isabel Diegues, Mauricio Andrade Ramos, Donald K. Ranvaud and Marc Beauchamps; directed by Karim Ainouz; written by Karim Ainouz; cinematography by Walter Carvalho; edited by Isabla Monteiro de Castro; production design by Marcos...

Lost in Translation.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Written, produced, and directed by Sofia Coppola; cinematography by Lance Acord; edited by Sarah Flack; production design by K.K. Barrett and Anne Ross; sound design by Richard Beggs; music by Brian Reitzell; starring Rill Murray, Scarlett...

New creators for the new millennium: transforming the directing scene in Spain.
December 22, 2003... The last decade of the twentieth century witnessed a pronounced rejuvenation of the guard in Spanish cinema, especially among directors. This revitalization has led to a visible and manifest transformation of the cultural imaginary and the...

Women in Spanish cinema: "Raiders of the Missing Mother"?
December 22, 2003... It is not by chance that, upon being given the opportunity to write about women in contemporary Spanish cinema, one would turn to the figure of the mother. This character has since the Eighties drawn the attention of critics such as Besas...

The representation of ethnicity and 'race' in contemporary Spanish cinema.
December 22, 2003... In the 1989 comedy The Mambo King (El rey del mambo, Caries Mira) middle-aged homosexual Donato Martinez (Jose Luis Lopez Vazquez), envious of the sexual appeal of aerial engineer All (Kelvin Garvanne), decides to "go black" in order to be like...

Women are also the future: women directors in recent Spanish cinema.
December 22, 2003... Prior to the 1980s there had been, in the history of Spanish cinema, only a few women directors, such as Rosario Pi (1899-1967), Ana Mariscal (1921-1995), or Margarita Aleixandre (1923). The 1980s saw the rise of a first important nucleus of...

Public money and private business (or how to survive Hollywood's imperialism): film production in Spain (1984-2002).
December 22, 2003... Spanish cinema is governed by the industrial criteria of the market only in the distribution and exhibition sectors. The 122,906,883 Spanish moviegoers who attended movie theaters during 2002 make the Spanish market one of the largest in...

Spanish filmakers forum.(Interview)
December 22, 2003... Cineaste invited various figures in the Spanish film industry to respond to the following questions. The responses published below (except for that from Fernando Trueba, who wrote in English) have been translated by Dennis West and loan M....

Contemporary Spanish Cinema a guide to resources.(Bibliography)
December 22, 2003... Biblingraphy of Books in English Allinson, Mark. A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodovar. London: I.B. Tauris, 2001. Besas, Peter. Behind the Spanish Lens: Spanish Cinema Under Fascism and Democracy. Denver: Arden, 1985. ...

The Adventures of Antoine Doinel.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... The Antoine Doinel saga, comprising five films shot over a twenty-year period, remains unique. No filmmaker before or since has followed the development of a character through so many episodes. The approach is not unusual in...

Metropolis.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Directed by Fritz Lang. DVD, B&W, 124 mins, Distributed by Kino Video, 333 West 39th Street, New York, NY 10018, phone (212) 629-6880, www.kino.com. Over two years in production, director Fritz Lang and producer Eric Pommer's attempt to...

Without Lying Down.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Directed by Bridget Terry. DVD, Color and B&W, 56 mins. The DVD includes A Little Princess, 1917, B&W, 62 mins, Released by Milestone Film & Video, 38 George Street, Harrington Park, NJ 07640, phone 1 (800) 603-1104, www.milestonefilms.com. ...

Il posto.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Il posto Directed by Ermanno Olmi. DVD, B&W, Italian dialog with English subtitles, 93 mins. I fidanzati Directed by Ermanno Olmi. DVD, B&W, Italian dialog with English subtitles, 77 mins. Criterion Collection releases distributed by Home...

Hiroshima mon amour.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Directed by Alain Resnais; written by Marguerite Duras; produced by Anatole Dauman, Samy Halfon, Sacha Kamenka, and Takeo Shirakawa; music by Giovanni Fusco and Georges Delerue; starring Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada. DVD, B&W, 90 mins. A...

The Chess Player.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Directed by Raymond Bernard. DVD, B&W and tinted, 133 mins. Distributed by Milestone Film Film & Video, 38 George Street, Harrington Park, NJ 07640, phone 1 (800) 603-1104, www.milestonefilms.com. From the very opening shots, The Chess...

The Wide Blue Road.(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Directed by Gino Pontecorvo. DVD, Color, 99 mins., Italian dialog with English subtitles. Distributed by Milestone Film & Video, 38 George Street, Harrington Park, NJ 07640, telephone 1 (800) 603-1104, www.milestonefilms.com. In 1946, when...

Alexander Dovzhenko: a Life in Soviet Film.(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... by George O. Liber. London: British Film Institute Publishing (Distributed in the U.S. by University of California Press), 2002. 309 pp., illus. Hardcover: $58.00. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, when there has been rejoicing over...

Alice Guy Blache: Lost Visionary of the Cinema.(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... by Alison McMahan. NY: Continuum, 2002. 361pp., illus. Hardcover: $35.00 and Paperback: $19.95. Alice Guy Blache was the first woman filmmaker in the world. She was the first and sole director for the French House of Gaumont until 1905;...

It Don't Worry Me: the Revolutionary American Films of the Seventies.(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... by Ryan Gilbey. London: Faber & Faber, 2003. (Distributed in the United States by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). 262 pp., illus. Hardcover: $24.00. The Seventies, the Me! Decade, the decade of excruciatingly bad taste--bell bottom trousers,...

Contesting Identities: Sports in American Film.(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... by Aaron Baker. Urban, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003. 162 pp., illus. Hardcover: $32.50 In the United States, sports are an expanding multibillion dollar industry, a physical activity, a spectator entertainment, and an advertising...

Andy Warhol's Blow Job.(Book Review)
December 22, 2003... by Roy Grundmann, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press., 2003. 240pp., illus. Hardcover: $69.50 and Paperback: $22.95, For some time, gay or queer theory perspectives have dominated Warhol studies (the defining moment being Doyle,...

Karlovy Vary: take 38.(Communiques)(Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)
December 22, 2003... The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival--one of the world's oldest--celebrated an important milestone this year: one decade under the distinguished leadership of President Jiri Bartoska and Artistic Director Eva Zaoralova. During this...

The 9th Sarajevo Film Festival.(Communiques)
December 22, 2003... The 9th Sarajevo Film Festival was held August 15-23, screening over 160 films from 42 countries and pulling in an audience of over 100,000 before the Best Picture, a Bosnian entry, Fuse by Pier Zalica, was announced. Of course, simple math...

The year of the 'Doc' in Toronto.(Communiques)(Toronto International Film Festival)
December 22, 2003... It's become a cliche to maintain that the Toronto International Film Festival is vast enough to allow every filmgoer an opportunity to create his or her own idiosyncratic cinematic event. Truism or not, a visitor to Toronto's 2003 edition who...

The Montreal World Film Festival.(Communiques)
December 22, 2003... This year's Montreal World Film Festival (August 27th-September 7th) lived up to its name once again, screening 224 feature films from sixty-eight countries. Given the vast array of films available--with selections from Africa, Asia, Canada,...

Documentary vs. non-fiction narrative.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 22, 2003... In "True Confessions, Sort Of--Capturing the Friedmans and the Dilemma of Theatrical Docucmentary" Paul Arthur's severe criticisms of director Andrew Jarecki's Capturing the Friedmans are based on a completely faulty premise. He has...

A scholarly reference book.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
December 22, 2003... Thank you for your comprehensive analysis of Reel Bad Arabs [see review by Lisa Suhair Majaj in Cineaste, Vol. XXIII, No. 4], my most recent book on Hollywood's Arab stereotypes. The book was designed to provide Americans with an extensive...

Georgie Girl.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... "Madame Speaker, I will take the liberty of assuming that I am the only member of this house to have firsthand experience of the sex industry, having been a sex worker myself." The person making this speech has a warm alto voice and eyes that...

Masked and Anonymous.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... I expected Weird and Preposterous. It's weird, all right, but not as preposterous as most reviewers had it, or as I expected--having once sat through the whole of Bob Dylan's 1987 wreck of a home movie, Renaldo and Clara. This latest Dylan...

My Terrorist.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... Yulie Cohen Gerstel's hour long account of the personal ramifications of a 1978 terrorist attack is part of a recent flurry of first-person, quasitherapeutic documentaries. The movie equivalent of literary memoirs, this subgenre examines...

September 11.(Short Takes)(Movie Review)
December 22, 2003... In one of the most ambitious attempts to deal with the WTC disaster, eleven directors from eleven different countries were each given eleven minutes, nine seconds, and one frame, free of editorial control, to project very different points of...