Cineaste articles from June 2001

Cineaste archives from June 2001

EDITORIAL.
June 22, 2001... Film critic Andrew Sarris's application of the French auteur theory to Hollywood filmmaking, and its adoption by subsequent generations of film critics, was probably the worst thing that ever happened to American screenwriters. As more and more...

The Foundations of Film Art: An Interview with Alexander Sokurov.(Interview)
June 22, 2001... Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov lives in a world as far removed from commercial cinema as it is possible to get. Using modest means, he produces uncompromising works that address the most profound quandaries of human existence, giving form...

MOSCOW BELIEVES IN TEARS.(the challenges of post-Soviet Russian cinema)
June 22, 2001... THE PROBLEMS (AND PROMISE?) OF RUSSIAN CINEMA IN THE TRANSITION PERIOD It is conventional, and certainly legitimate, to think of Russia, since the Soviet collapse in 1991, as "in transition." There is a post-Soviet joke: "What is...

The World of Hollywood Art Design: An Interview with Henry Bumstead.(Interview)
June 22, 2001... In early August 2000, Henry Bumstead, one of Hollywood's most celebrated art designers, walked on stage in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Film Festival Awards ceremony to receive a special award in Production Design for a lifetime of work. At age...

They're Playing Your Song: The Role of the Music Supervisor.
June 22, 2001... Most of us have a favorite tune that we claim as 'our song' because of its sentimental associations with a romantic relationship, a time period, or a particularly meaningful event in our lives. These personal anthems of the heart are, of...

Confronting Turkey's Social Realities: An Interview with Yesim Ustaoglu.(Turkish filmmaker)(Interview)
June 22, 2001... In recent years, Turkish cinema has experienced a major revival with a new generation of filmmakers. Faced with economic difficulties, as the low number of productions every year attests, these young directors are showing a new maturity with...

'Beat' Comes to America: An Interview with Takeshi Kitano.(Interview)
June 22, 2001... Directing films is only one of Takeshi Kitano's many pursuits. A huge star in Japan, the fifty-four-year-old Kitano appears on seven different television shows, writes novels and poetry, paints, and acts. His career began in the Seventies as a...

ST. CLAIR BOURNE.(Critical Essay)
June 22, 2001... DOCUMENTING THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPENDITURE EXPERIENCE There is a telling moment roughly a third of the way into St. Clair Bourne's 1989 documentary Making Do the Right Thing. After watching the interactions among the cast and crew of...

Showing Complexity in Documentary Portraits: An Interview with St. Clair Bourne.(filmmaker)(Interview)
June 22, 2001... Cineaste: Once you've selected a subject, what is the biggest challenge in making a documentary--or is the selection one of those challenges? St. Clair Bourne: It is. The subject has to strike me emotionally, or to puzzle me or cause...

Race in Space.(Review)
June 22, 2001... The polemical call for Madonna Studies in the late 1980s challenged the adequacy of academic models for addressing popular culture, and it helped pave the way for Cultural Studies' enormous influence across the academy. Yet, as a recent spate...

In the Mood for Love.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Written, produced, and directed by Wong Kar-wai; cinematography by Christopher Doyle and Mark Li Ping-bin; production design and editing by William Chang Suk-ping; music by Michael Galasso and Umebayashi Shigeru; starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai,...

Traffic.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Produced by Edward Zwick, Marshall Herskovitz, and Laura Bickford; directed by Steven Soderbergh; screenplay by Stephen Gaghan; cinematography by Peter Andrews (a.k.a. Steven Soderbergh); edited by Stephen Mirrione; production design by Peter...

Last Resort.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Produced by Ruth Caleb for BBC Films; directed by Pawel Pawlikowski; screenplay by Pawlikowski and Rowan Jaffe; cinematography by Ryszard Lenczewski; edited by David Charap; production design by Tom Bowyer; music by Max de Wardener with Rowan...

Voyages.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Produced by Yael Fogiel; directed and written by Emmanuel Finkiel; cinematography by Hans Meier and Jean Claude Larrieu; edited by Emmanuelle Castro; sound by Pierre Garnet and Francois Waledisch; starring Shulamit Adar, Liliane Rovere, Esther...

Stranger with a Camera.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Produced and directed by Elizabeth Barret; edited by Lucy Phenix; 62 mins., color and black and white, VHS. Distributed by California Newsreel, 140 Ninth Street, Suite 420, San Francisco, CA 94103, phone (415) 621-6196, www.newsreel.org. ...

The Decalogue.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski; written by Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Ten one-hour films, with a total running time of 562 minutes, Polish dialog with English subtitles, color, VHS and DVD. A Facets Video Release. Writing in...

The Sorrow and the Pity:.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Chronicle of a French City Under the Occupation Produced by Andre Harris and Alain de Sedouy; directed by Marcel Ophuls. Black and white, 251 mins., French and German with English subtitles. Released by Milestone Film & Video, P.O. Box 128,...

Leila.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Directed by Dariush Mehrjui. Starring Leila Hatami, Ali Mosaffa, and Jamileh Sheikhi. VHS, color, 129 mins.; Farsi with English subtitles. Distributed by First Run Features, 153 Waverly Place, New York, NY 10014. Although it should no...

Arbuckle and Keaton: The Original Comique/Paramount Shorts 1917-1920.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Directed by Roscoe Arbuckle. Volume One (The Bell Boy, The Butcher Boy, Out West, Moonshine and The Hayseed), color tinted, 125 mins. Volume Two (Back Stage, Good Night Nurse!, Coney Island, The Rough House and The Garage), color tinted. 121...

Forgotten Silver.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Directed and written by Peter Jackson and Costa Botes. DVD, B&W and color, 80 mins. Distributed by First Run Features, 153 Waverly Place, New York, NY 10014. Forgotten Silver is a hilarious example of a developing global film genre, the...

Slaves on Screen: Film and Historical Vision.(Review)
June 22, 2001... by Natalie Zemon Davis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. 164 pp., illus. Hardcover: $22.95. In this brief but insightful study, historian Natalie Zemon Davis examines five cinematic presentations of slavery by accomplished...

Cinema Nation: The Best Writing on Film From The Nation. 1913-2000.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Edited by Carl Bromley. New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2000. 508 pp. Paperback: $16.95. Whenever I pick up The Nation, before I feel ready to tackle the articles about sweatshops in Asia, or why I should vote for Ralph...

Emlie de Antonio: Radical Filmmaker in Cold War America.(includes another review)(Review)
June 22, 2001... by Randolph Lewis. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. 344 pp., illus. Hardcover: $50.00 and Paperback: $19.95. Emile de Antonio: A Reader Edited by Douglas Kellner and Dan Streible. Minneapolis, MN: University of...

I'd Hate Myself in the Morning: A Memoir.
June 22, 2001... by Ring Lardner, Jr. New York: Thunders Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2000. 198pp., illus. Hardcover: $22.95. Ring Lardner, Jr., was the most straight-faced comic that I've ever met. Probably he got the trait from his father, the fabulously...

Spanish Cinema: The Auteurist Tradition.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Edited by Peter William Evans. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999. 350 pp. Hardcover: S65.00. In recent years, in the world beyond Hollywood, Spain has been one of the brightest spots in terms of film production, with eighty to one...

Border Crossings in the Baltic: The "Transit Zero" Film Conference.
June 22, 2001... Sweden and Latvia are two small nations, neighbors across the Baltic Sea, but worlds apart in modern historical development. The Swedes enter the twenty-first century enjoying the comforts of an advanced welfare capitalism, while the Latvians...

The Thessaloniki Film Festival.
June 22, 2001... The Thessaloniki Film Festival prides itself on emphasizing the esthetic rather than the commercial aspects of filmmaking. To that end, it annually spotlights first films, regions whose cinemas generally do not get wide international exposure,...

LETTERS.(Letter to the Editor)
June 22, 2001... Your Reviewer is Not a Qualified Film Scholar! I wish to lodge a strong protest concerning the review by Richard James Havis of City on Fire (Cineaste, Vol. XXV, No. 2) and the nature of his written response to the authors (Vol. XXVI, No....

Coming to Light.(Review)
June 22, 2001... Anne Makepeace's Coming to Light: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indians addresses the work and life of Edward Curtis (1868-1952), a photographer for Seattle high society who became the single most important photographer of Native...

Long Night's Journey Into Day.(Review)
June 22, 2001... The title of Frances Reid and Deborah Hoffman's post-apartheid documentary alludes gravely to Eugene O'Neill's tale of the stingy patriarch whose concentrated policy of tyranny tears his family apart. South Africa's answer to the Nuremberg...

The Man on Lincoln's Nose.(production designer Robert Boyle)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2001... Production design has always been a key part of the Hollywood filmmaking process, but until recently the field received very little critical attention. But thanks to Daniel Raim's lucid and concise Oscarnominated documentary about Robert Boyle,...

One Day Lonaer.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2001... To win a strike, workers must hold out at least one day longer than their employers. When a strike lasts six years, four months and ten days, the chances of doing so are slim. But in 1997, in Las Vegas, a strike of that length by 550 employees...

Trade Off.(documentary film)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2001... Shaya Mercer's Trade Off is a fast-moving, informative documentary on the Seattle World Trade Organization protests. Mike Dolan, an energetic and dedicated if somewhat glib organizer, guides the film through a succession of orderly, and less...