Cineaste articles from June 2007

Cineaste archives from June 2007

A night at the movies: from art house to "microcinema".
June 22, 2007... There was a certain charm in attending the independent art-house theaters of the past. Each had its own style and programming quirks. Although usually noted for their squeaky, stained chairs, day-old popcorn, and watery coffee (in the...

"Touchy subjects": Amir Muhammad's films on race and power in Malaysia.
June 22, 2007... In 2005, Amir Muhammad's latest film, The Last Communist, after first being approved at home and featured at dozens of international festivals, including those in Berlin, London, Hong Kong, Oslo, Tapei, and Vancouver, was banned in his native...

Politics and pomeloes: an interview with Amir Muhammad.(Interview)
June 22, 2007... Malaysian filmmaker Amir Muhammad's documentary-essay films integrate performance, music, and innovative documentary techniques to raise politically sensitive questions, particularly on topics of race and religion. Muhammad positions himself as...

Living in a wilderness of mirrors: an interview with Eric Roth.(Interview)
June 22, 2007... The Good Shepherd is clearly one of those "love it or hate it" movies. This nearly three-hour-long film--which dramatizes the history of U.S. intelligence operations, from the wartime efforts of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to the...

Whose is this memory?: Hushed narratives and discerning remembrance in Balkan Cinema.
June 22, 2007... The more I look at Southeastern Europe's cinema, the more it seems that all important films from the region ultimately deal with historical memory. More specifically history is treated as something to endure, to live through, a process where...

Greek film: ever an ethnic crossroads.
June 22, 2007... Greek filmmakers are reluctant to identify themselves as Balkan artists. Ever since the armed revolt of 1821 that began a 200-year effort to expel the Ottomans from Greek-speaking territories, Greeks have struggled to reestablish themselves as...

Stoned on Mars: home and national identity in recent Bulgarian cinema.
June 22, 2007... In an early scene of Mila from Mars (Mila ot Mars, 2004) the heroine, Mila, arrives in an abandoned village on the Bulgarian border. When one of the half-stoned villagers still living there wonders out loud why she has come to this wasteland,...

Representations of gender as constructed, questioned and subverted in Balkan films.
June 22, 2007... Along while ago, an American screenwriting friend told me, after reviewing a number of Yugoslav films, that while he found love scenes to be rather rare, rape scenes were commonplace. His response to this was to write a script for an urban love...

Factum documentary films: searching for the present.
June 22, 2007... John Grierson believed documentary filmmakers should assemble fragments of reality into films of social and political import. Working in a concrete social environment, the documentarian should take action. In short, Grierson thought the...

Romanian documentaries and the communist legacy.
June 22, 2007... "Nobody wants to legitimize himself professionally as a documentary filmmaker in Romania. The genre has a low status and the term documentary triggers an array of negative memories which do not fit the prestige attached to the practice...

High profile yet invisible: Balkan Cinema on the Festival Circuit.
June 22, 2007... One could hardly think of a more paradoxical fate for a regional cinema heritage than that its talent, innovation, and insight into the human condition are at the same time both well recognized and thoroughly ignored. Recognition has come in...

Balkanisateur.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Balkanisateur Directed by Sotiris Goritsas, Greece/Bulgaria/Switzerland, 1997. Sotiris Goritsas's Balkanisateur tells the story of two Greek men, Stavros (Gerasimos Skiadaressis) and Fotis (Stelios Mainas), who travel in a rickety Peugeot...

Kolonel Bunker.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Kolonel Bunker Directed by Kujtim Cashku, Albania/France/Poland, 1998. Magic Eye Directed by Kujtim Cashku, Albania/ Germany, 2005. As if sleepwalking, Petro (Bujar Lako), the cameraman protagonist of Kujtim Gashku's Magic Eye (2005),...

Cordon.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Cordon Directed by Goran Markovic, Yugoslavia, 2002, Goran Markovic, the director of films such as Special Education (1977), National Class (1979), Variola Vera (1981), and Tito and Me (1992), was among the several hundred thousand...

Distant.(Climates)(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Distant Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey, 2002. Distributed in the U.S. by New Yorker Films, www.newyorkerfilms.com. Climates Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey/France, 2006. Distributed in the U.S. by Zeitgeist Films,...

A Touch of Spice.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... A Touch of Spice Directed by Tassos Boulmetis, Greece/Turkey, 2004, A Touch of Spice (Politiki Kouzina) opens with a close-up of a woman's breasts and a baby; a sprinkling of sugar on the breast encourages the baby happily to latch on,...

Bal-Can-Can.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Bal-Can-Can Directed by Darko Mitrevski, Italy/Macedonia/U.K., 2005. Cult-film enthusiasts may be familiar with Macedonian director Darko Mitrevski. His film Goodbye, 20th Century (Zbogum na dvadesetiot, 1998) was released on VHS in...

Lost and Found.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Lost and Found Directed by Stefan Arsenijevic, Nadejda Koseva, Malt Laas, Kornel Mundruczo, Cristian Mungiu and Jasmila Zbanic; Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Romania, 2004, Lost and...

Gravehopping.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Gravehopping Directed by Jan Cvitkovic, Croatia/Slovenia, 2005. The past few years have seen a fruitful flourishing of a talented group of young filmmakers in Slovenia. Films such as Branko Djuric's Cheese and Jam (Kajmak in Marmelada,...

The Shutka Book of Records.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... The Shutka Book of Records Directed by Aleksandar Manic, Serbia and Montenegro/Czech Republic, 2005. Distributed in the U.S. by Seventh Art Releasing, www.7thart.com. Director Aleksandar Manic's The Shutka Book of Records was filmed in...

A Midwinter Night's Dream.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... A Midwinter Night's Dream Directed by Goran Paskaljevic, Serbia and Montenegro, 20043 A Midwinter Night's Dream (San simske noci, 2004) is one of the most powerful Balkan films of the new century and one of the most compelling about...

Grbavica.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Grbavica Directed by Jasmila Zbanic, Austria/Bosnia-Herzegovina/Germany/Croatia, 2006. Distributed in the U.S. as Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams by Strand Releasing, www.strandreleasing.com. Although the shooting in the former...

12:08, East of Bucharest.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... 12:08, East of Bucharest Directed by Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania, 2006. Distributed in the U.S. by Tartan Films USA, www.tartanfilmsusa.com. 12:08, East of Bucharest (A fost sau n-a fost?), Corneliu Porumboiu's highly successful first...

Border Post.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Border Post Directed by Rajko Grlic, U.K./Serbia and Montenegro/Croatia/Slovenia/Republic of Macedonia/Bosnia-Herzegovina/Yugoslavia, 2006. Border Post (Karaula) is the tenth feature directed by Rajko Grlic, a veteran of Croatian and...

Das Fraulein.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Das Fraulein Directed by Andrea Staka, Switzerland/Slovenia, U.S., 2006. Distributed in the U.S. as Fraulein by Film Movement, www.filmmovement.com. Winner of the Jury Prize for best film at the Sarajevo Film Festival and the Golden...

Balkan Cinema resources.(Bibliography)
June 22, 2007... Recommended Reading Alagjozovski, R. "Postmodernism in the Macedonian Film," MovEast 9, 2004, Budapest: Hungarian National Film Archive. Available at www.filmintezet.hu/uj/kiadvanyok/moveast/moveast_9/alagjozovski.htm Bjelic, Duan...

Amazing Grace.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Amazing Grace Produced by Edward Pressman, Terrence Malick, Patricia Heaton, David Hunt, and Ken Wales; directed by Michael Apted; screenplay by Steven Knight; cinematography by Remi Adefarasin; production design by Charles Wood; edited by Rick...

The Good Shepherd.(Breach)(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... The Good Shepherd Produced by Robert De Niro, James G. Robinson, and Jane Rosenthal; directed by Robert De Niro; screenplay by Eric Roth; cinematography by Robert Richardson; production design by Jeannine Oppewall; costumes by Ann Roth;...

Into Great Silence.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Into Great Silence Produced, directed, and edited by Philip Groning; cinematography by Philip Groning. In French, German, and Latin. Color, 162 mins. A Zeitgeist Films release. Among many bounties bestowed by the ongoing surge of...

Zodiac.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Zodiac Produced by Cean Chaffin, Brad Fischer, Mike Medavoy and Arnold Messer; directed by David Fincher; screenplay by James Vanderbilt, based upon the book by Robert Graysmith; cinematography by Harris Savides; production design by...

Reds.(Video recording review)
June 22, 2007... Reds Directed by Warren Beatty; screenplay by Warren Beatty and Trevor Griffiths; cinematography by Vittorio Storaro; starring Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson and Maureen Stapleton. Two-disc widescreen DVD, color, 195 mins.,...

Seduced and Abandoned.(Video recording review)
June 22, 2007... Seduced and Abandoned Directed by Pietro Germi; screenplay by Age-Scarpelli, Pietro Germi and Luciano Vincenzoni; cinematography by Aiace Parolin; edited by Roberto Cinquini; music by Carlo Rustichelli; starring Stefania Sandrelli, Saro...

Blind Husbands.(Video recording review)
June 22, 2007... Blind Husbands Directed and written from an original short story by Erich von Stroheim. DVD, 99 mins., 1919. German intertitles with English subtitles. A Film & Kunst Release, www.edition-filmmuseum.com. Erich von Stroheim biographer...

King Lear.(Video recording review)
June 22, 2007... King Lear Directed by Grigori Kozintsev; translated by Boris Pasternak; cinematography by Yonus Gritsius; music by Dmitri Shostakovich; starring Yuri Yarvet, Elsa Radzin, Galina Volchek, Oleg Dal and Valentina Shendrikova. Widescreen DVD,...

Gandhi.(Video recording review)
June 22, 2007... Gandhi Directed by Richard Attenborough; screenplay by John Briley; cinematography by Ronnie Taylor and Billy Williams; edited by John Bloom; starring Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Martin Sheen, lan Charleson,...

Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut.(Video recording review)
June 22, 2007... Directed by Oliver Stone; screenplay by Oliver Stone, Christopher Kyle and Laeta Kalogridis; cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto; edited by Tom Nordberg, Yann Herve and Alex Marquez; music by Vangelis; starring Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie,...

Animated Soviet Propaganda.(Video recording review)
June 22, 2007... This handsome four-disc package is a superb, wide-ranging introduction to the politically charged animation films of the U.S.S.R., from the 1920's to 1984. (The subtitle of the set is From the Revolution to Perestroika, but the latter period...

Un chant d'amour.(Video recording review)
June 22, 2007... The DVD release of Jean Genet's 1950 underground classic, Un chant d'amour, is the latest irony in the film's storied history. Made before Genet became a master of French letters, it would haunt his literary fame for decades until he...

The Films of Kenneth Anger, Volume One.(Video recording review)
June 22, 2007... For devotees of the avant-garde, Fantoma's release of The Films of Kenneth Anger, Volume One is heaven-sent. Encompassing pristine new transfers of his first five films--Fireworks (1947), Puce Moment (1949), Rabbit's Moon (1950), Eaux...

Guard Dog and Guide Dog.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Guard Dog, one of Bill Plympton's two Academy Award-nominated shorts, exposes the inner life of the eponymous canine. As he and his master walk through the park, encountering the most innocent creatures, the dog graphically imagines the ways in...

Intimate Lighting.(Video recording review)
June 22, 2007... What exemplifies the pre-1968 Czech films of directors like Milos Forman, Jiri Menzel, and Ivan Passer was a view of the foolishness of ordinary behavior that was at times black comic, and other times touched with gentle sympathy and wit....

The Jackal of Nauheltoro.(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... In Chile in the 1960's and early 1970's, an urgent socio-political debate weighed appropriate ways to integrate into society so-called "marginal" citizens-including the nation's many landless, exploited, and illiterate rural laborers....

F Is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth's Undoing.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... F Is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth's Undoing Edited by Alexandra Juhasz and Jesse Lerner. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. 255 pp., illus. Hardcover: $60.00 and Paperback: $20.00. Well, this just doesn't seem fair....

From My Cold, Dead Hands: Charlton Heston and American Politics.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... From My Cold, Dead Hands: Charlton Heston and American Politics by Emilie Raymond. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 2006. 376 pp. Hardcover: $27.95. It is perhaps symptomatic of today's political climate that there is often an...

Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. 851 pp,, illus. Hardcover: $35.00. This is the first book by Neal Gabler since his magisterial and eye-opening An Empire of Their Own:...

Red Velvet Seat: Women's Writing on the First Fifty Years of Cinema.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Red Velvet Seat: Women's Writing on the First Fifty Years of Cinema Edited by Antonia Lant, with Ingrid Periz. New York: Verso, 2007. 872 pp., illus. Hardcover: $94.95 and Paperback: $39.95. "Of all the different industries that have...

Insights Into Syrian Cinema: Essays and Conversations with Contemporary Filmmakers.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Insights Into Syrian Cinema: Essays and Conversations with Contemporary Filmmakers Edited by Rasha Salti. New York: Rattapallax Press, 2006. 189 pp., illus. Paperback: $15.00. Although film production in Syria has been under the...

Film Fables.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... Film Fables by Jacques Ranciere. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2006. 196 pp. Hardcover: $99.95 and Paperback: $29.95. "In the writing of movement with light," Jacques Ranciere muses, "fictional and sensible matter coincide: the darkness of...

On Strike and on Film: Mexican American Families and Blacklisted Filmmakers in Cold War America.(Book review)
June 22, 2007... On Strike and On Film: Mexican American Families and Blacklisted Filmmakers in Cold War America by Ellen R. Baker. Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 2007, 349 pp., illus. Hardcover: $59.95 and Paperback: $22.50. In...

The International Film Festival Rotterdam.(COMMUNIOUE)
June 22, 2007... Extolling experimental rigor while exemplifying bohemian nonchalance, the 2007 edition of the Rotterdam Film Festival was once again a refreshing antidote to the self-importance and superficiality of many of the other major festivals. Very few...

Politicizing Steven Spielberg.(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2007... I am writing in response to an unfavorable reference to my writings (and intelligence) that appeared in a recent Cineaste book review. The comment appeared in Joseph McBride's review of Lester Friedman's Citizen Spielberg (Cineaste XXXII, no....

Resurrecting The Noah.(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2007... I wish to correct some mistakes in your article on Daniel Bourla's The Noah (see DVD review by Dan Georgakas, Cineaste, Vol. XXXII, No. 2) and my role in its resurrection. The article correctly notes the only public screening of the film...

Reviewing the Queens.(Letter to the editor)
June 22, 2007... "Off with her head"? Or "the show must go on"? Alexander Zevin's essay on Marie Antoinette is quite bracing, while Sandy Fitterman-Lewis on The Queen is thoughtful, especially when discussing Elizabeth's ability to work the press. The...

Correction from our last issue.(Correction notice)
June 22, 2007... Richard Porton had the last word in his interview with Care Blanchett in the last issue ("Trusting the Text: An Interview with Care Blanchett," Vol. XXXII, No. 2) of Cineaste only because a production error deleted BlancheR's reply. In...

9/11: Dust and Deceit at the WTC.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... "Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink." This quote from former EPA administrator, Christine Todd...

Home Front.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... In an age when mass-manufactured docudramas rule ratings and "Reality TV" excels in viewer manipulation, Richard Hankin's documentary Home Front aims for intellectual integrity and emotional nuance. It chronicles the struggles of Jeremy...

Investigation of a Flame.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... One wants to like Lynne Sachs's Investigation of a Flame (2001) because it brings to light a nearly forgotten story about the liberal use of Christian values in protesting an unjust war. Sachs's subject is the Catonsville Nine--a group of...

Iran: A Cinematographic Revolution.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Among the factors most liable to distort our view of foreign (film) cultures, none looms larger than having limited access to the full history of a nation's cinematic output, Iran: A Cinematographic Revolution provides non-Iranians with...

The Wild Blue Yonder.(SHORT TAKES)(Movie review)
June 22, 2007... Werner Herzog has long blurred the line between fiction and documentary, but with The Wild Blue Yonder he may have directed his first mockumentary. Brad Dourif stars as an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy who is disillusioned by his people's...