Cineaste articles from June 2005

Cineaste archives from June 2005

Political documentaries, at last, get some respect.(EDITORIAL)(Editorial)
June 22, 2005... After the 2004 presidential election on November 2nd, Michael Moore acknowledged on his website that he didn't leave his apartment for nearly a week. In a funk after having worked so hard for so long to remove George W. Bush from the White...

Million dollar baby: a split decision.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... The vehement attacks on Million Dollar Baby have been less surprising than its unanticipated acclaim. On the principle, one surmises, of what's least objectionable, Academy members made the film their choice as Best Picture in preference to...

The wine we make reflects who we are: an interview with Jonathan Nossiter.(Interview)
June 22, 2005... Jonathan Nossiter is the son of Bernard Nossiter, the famed foreign correspondent for The Washington Post and The New York Times. He grew up in France, Italy, Greece, India, and the United rates, and now resides in Brazil. He has directed eight...

Extreme makeover: the changing face of documentary.(Column)
June 22, 2005... For the past fifteen years, I have asked the same question to successive groups of students in my Introduction to Film course: "How many of you have recently rented or gone to a movie theater to see a documentary?" Throughout the 1990s, student...

The changing documentary marketplace.
June 22, 2005... The documentary film is situated somewhere between art, entertainment, and journalism. Theorist Bill Nichols characterizes this cinematic form as one of society's "discourses of sobriety"--along with science, economics, politics, education, and...

The political documentary in America today: commentary by distributors, exhibitors, filmmakers and scholars.
June 22, 2005... Over the last few years, there has been a virtual renaissance of the documentary in America, with many feature-length documentaries enjoying unprecedented theatrical distribution and garnering numerous awards, including citation on many...

Going against the grain: an interview with Pawel Pawlikowski.(Interview)
June 22, 2005... Insistent on not being pigeonholed, Pawel Pawlikowski is one of the most distinctive voices in recent British cinema--a director who refuses to churn out films that conform to predictable trends and generic prescriptions. Given the usual...

The cinema of a stateless nation: an interview with Bahman Ghobadi.(Interview)
June 22, 2005... Bahman Ghobadi burst onto the international scene in 2000 with his wrenching A Time For Drunken Horses. The film's unrelenting depiction of Kurdish children forced to smuggle goods between Iran and Iraq, over harsh terrain in a bitter winter...

On Film-Making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director.(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... Though he made only nine films throughout his twenty-year career, Alexander Mackendrick (conceived in Hollywood, born in Boston, raised in Glasgow) remains one of Britain's most highly regarded directors. Acclaimed for his much admired features...

The Bangkok International Film Festival.(COMMUNIQUE)
June 22, 2005... As her film was about to screen at the Bangkok International Film Festival, a young Thai filmmaker I knew from New York approached me and remarked--quite matter of factly--"This is the only festival in the world run by a country's tourist...

A staged happening: an interview with Erland Josephson & Liv Ullmann.(Interview)
June 22, 2005... Countless books and monographs have been written about Ingmar Bergman, but little about the relationship between Bergman, Erland Josephson, and Liv Ullmann. A movie could be made about the relationship between these three artists. Since it is...

Saraband.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... Produced by Sveriges Television; directed and written by Ingmar Bergman; cinematography by Stefan Eriksson, Jesper Holstrom, Per-Olof Lantto, Soft Stridh, Raymond Wemmenlov; edited by Sylvia Ingemarsson; production design by Goran Wassberg;...

Head On.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... Produced by Ralph Schwingel, Stefan Schubert, Wuste Filmproduktion; directed and written by Fatih Akin; cinematography by Rainer Klausmann, bvk; edited by Andrew Bird; set design by Tamo Kunz; costumes by Katrin Aschendorf; starring Sibel...

Inside Deep Throat.(Video Recording Review)
June 22, 2005... Produced by Brian Grazer, Fenton Bailey, and Randy Barbato; directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato; cinematography by David Kempner and Teodoro Maniaci; edited by William Grayburn and Jeremy Simmons; music by David Steinberg. Narrated by...

Nobody Knows.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... Produced, written, directed and edited by Hirokazu Kore-eda; cinematography by Yutaka Yamazaki; production design by Toshihiro Isomi and Keiko Mitsumatsu; original music by Titi Matsumura and Gonzalez Mikami; starring Yuya Yagira, Ayu Kitaura,...

Mysterious Skin.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... Produced by Mary Jane Skalski, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and Gregg Araki; directed by Gregg Araki; screenplay by Gregg Araki, based upon the book by Scott Heim; cinematography by Steve Gainer; edited by Gregg Araki; music composed by Harold Budd and...

Machuca.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... Produced by Mamoun Hassan, Gerardo Herrero, and Andres Wood; directed by Andres Wood; screenplay by Roberto Brodsky, Mamoun Hassan, and Andres Wood; cinematography by Miguel Joan Littin M.; edited by Fernando Pardo; original music by Miguel...

Chile in the time of the generals: an interview with Andres Wood.(Interview)
June 22, 2005... Andres Wood was born in Chile in 1965. Of Irish and Scottish descent, Wood was educated in an English School in Santiago, Chile. He later studied economics at the Catholic University of Chile where he graduated in 1988. In 1991 he came to the...

L'Eclisse.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... Directed by Michaelangelo Antonioni; starring Alain Delon, Monica Vitti, Francisco Rabal. Black and White. 1962. 125 minutes. A Criterion Collection release. In an essay included in The Criterion Collection DVD release of Michaelangelo...

Bringing Up Baby.(Video Recording Review)
June 22, 2005... Directed by Howard Hawks; written by Dudley Nichols and Hagar Wilde; starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. DVD, two discs, B&W, 102 mins. A Warner Home Video release. Although the tendency may be to place Howard Hawks's Bringing Up...

Bed and Sofa.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... Produced by Sovkino; directed by Abram Room; screenplay by Viktor Shklovsky and Abram Room; starring Nikolai Batalov, Vladimir Fogel and Liudmilla Semyonova. Commentary by Julian Graffy. DVD, B&W, 87 mins. Russian dialog with English subtitles....

Eyes Without a Face.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... Directed by Georges Franju; produced by Jules Borkon; cinematography by Eugen Schufftan; starring Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli and Edith Scob. DVD, B&W, 90 mins. French dialog with English subtitles. A Criterion Collection release, distributed...

Fanny and Alexander.(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman; starring Bertil Guve, Pernilla Alwin, Gunn Wallgren, Ewa Froling, Borje Ahlstedt, Allan Edwall, Jarl Kulle, Erland Josephson, Jan Malmsjo, Pernilla August, and Harriet Andersson. Five-disc DVD set, color,...

Porn Studies.(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... Porn Studies Edited by Linda Williams. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. 528 pp., illus. Hardcover: $89.95 and Paperback: $24.95. Pornography is in a perpetual state of almost being understood by cultural critics, especially academic...

Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film.(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film Edited by Atom Egoyan and Ian Balfour. Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T. Press, 2004. 528pp., illus. Hardcover: $35.00. "Every film is a foreign film," claim Atom Egoyan and Ian Balfour in their introduction to...

A Line of Sight: American Avant-Garde Film Since 1965.(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... A Line of Sight: American Avant-Garde Film Since 1965 by Paul Arthur. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press., 2005. 232 pp., illus. Hardcover: $59.95 and Paperback: $19.95. Avant-garde film is surely among the most neglected art...

Women, Islam, and Cinema.(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... Women, Islam, and Cinema by Gonul Donmez-Colin. London: Reaktion Books (distributed in the U.S. by the University of Chicago Press), 2004. 206 pp., illus. Paperback: $16.00. In this informative and concise book, Gonul Donmez-Colin sets out...

If....(Book Review)
June 22, 2005... If by Mark Sinker. London: British Film Institute (Distributed in the U.S. by the University of California Press), 2004. 88 pp., illus. Paperback: $13.95. Released in 1968, Lindsay Anderson's If.... was hailed as a clarion call to...

The Dark Side of the Moon.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... Ever wondered how far the U.S. would go to prove it had beaten the Soviets in the space race? As juicy and craftily paranoid as the latest best-selling political potboiler (though much funnier), The Dark Side of the Moon, all fifty-two minutes...

The Future of Food.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... In The Future of Food, Deborah Koons Garcia presents the science, history, and politics of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in North America; it is a frightening, depressing, and at times enervating film about the pesticide- and disease...

Professional Revolutionary.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie Review)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2005... Saul Wellman was expelled from high school in 1930 due to his playing hooky to take part in a march of the unemployed that became violent. Before his death at age ninety in 2003, a wheelchair-bound yet spirited Wellman took part in an anti-Iraq...

Tell Them Who You Are.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... Mark Wexler explains the premise for his portrait of cinematographer and activist Haskell Wexler as follows: "My dad and I have had a difficult relationship. I hoped the film would be a vehicle for reconciliation." Since when did moviemaking...

WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie Review)
June 22, 2005... This valuable work of "news dissection" by Danny Schechter is part of the most recent wave of left-wing documentaries engaged in media criticism that also includes Outfoxed, Fahrenheit 9/11, Orwell Rolls in His Grave, and Control Room. Here the...