Asia Argento and Alice Rohrwacher at the 52nd Annual New York Film Festival

Aria and her found cat seek a home for the night in Asia Argento's Incompressa (Misunderstood). (Photo courtesy of the New York Film Festival.)

This is the first in a series of posts about the 52nd Annual New York Film Festival.

The New York Film Festival press screenings started on an interesting note last week with actress Asia Argento’s narrative film Incompressa (Misunderstood), which is about nine year-old Aria (Argento’s birth name) whose famous, cocaine-addicted parents—one an actor, the other a pianist—are so self-absorbed, they fail to notice when she stays out all night. The movie stars Giulia Salerno in a wonderful performance as the pixie blonde whose loneliness and despair lie at the core of Argento’s film.

In interviews, the writer-director has said that Misunderstood is not autobiographical—her father is filmmaker Dario Argento—but rather that the movie is inspired by incidents she witnessed as a child and as an adult. Charlotte Gainsbourg, who plays Aria’s pianist-mother, grew up in circumstances similar to Argento's, in an affluent, Bohemian family. Perhaps in casting Gainsbourg, Argento felt that the actress would be a kindred spirit on-set. She adds dimension to the life of a neurotic woman juggling creative work against the exigencies of marriage and children. Both Gainsbourg and Argento are moms, actresses and singers.

Misunderstood is not for the faint-hearted; this is a Carrie-like story in which Aria endures many betrayals. Her grandmother tries to poison her cat, and her classmates are jealous of her. They also mistake Aria’s motives when she makes a last-ditch effort to garner their affection. Argento’s script is far too episodic, but she is a capable director, and elicits good performances from the entire cast, including Gabriel Garko (Callas Forever, 2002) as Aria’s father. At this writing, the film does not have a distributor and can only been seen at the New York Film Festival on September 27th and 29th. It is in Italian with English subtitles. Nota Bene: While Misunderstood is about a girl, it is a movie aimed at adults, and is inappropriate for children younger than 15 or 16 years of age.

Gelsomina and her sister Marinella in Alice Rohrwacher's Le Miraviglie (The Wonders), a delightful movie aimed at adults, but also a rare movie about a girl's coming-of-age appropriate for adolescent children. (Photo courtesy of The New York Film Festival.)

Catherine Breillat's "Abuse of Weakness" Opens in Theaters this Month

French writer-director Catherine Breillat consistently portrays the lives of women and girls. (Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing.)

Last October, after a New York Film Festival screening of Abuse of Weakness (2013), I got to speak to its writer-director, Catherine Breillat. That interview has just been published in Film Journal International and can be found here: http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/news-and-features/features/movies/e3i1bc2d2cee723c26498137c7c6dfaded2

I last interviewed the French filmmaker for her wonderful reinvisioning of Charles Perrault’s fairy tale, The Sleeping Beauty (2011). (“Rewriting Fairy Tales, Revisiting Female Identity: An Interview with Catherine Breillat.” Cineaste, XXXVI, no. 3 (2011): 32-35.) A PDF of that article appears under "Archives," to the left of this column. I also spoke with her in 1999 after the release of Romance; a PDF of that article, “Quest for Romance,” will be posted soon.

Abuse of Weakness is a semi-autobiographical movie, based on the events that followed Ms. Breillat’s stroke in 2004 when she cast the notorious conman Christophe Rocancourt for a role in her upcoming movie. Taking advantage of her illness, Rocancourt stole about $800,000 from Ms. Breillat; she then filed an abus de faiblesse lawsuit against him, for which the film is named. Rocancourt was found guilty and is now serving a jail term.

This is Breillat’s fourth film since her stroke, and it is a courageous, unstinting portrayal of her continuing struggle to overcome a debilitating loss of balance, and to get on with her work. Abuse of Weakness stars Isabelle Huppert (The Piano Teacher, La Cérémonie) in an outstanding performance as a movie director whose stroke and subsequent recovery is complicated by her dependence on Vilko (Kool Shen), a convicted criminal.  

All fourteen of Ms. Breillat’s movies as a writer-director are intended for adults, and are significant because of the filmmaker’s commitment to depicting the stories of women and girls. She is best-known for Fat Girl (2001), a controversial masterpiece that follows a pair of adolescent sisters on vacation with their parents. Ms. Breillat’s girl characters are a defiant bunch who flaunt social norms and live according to the dictates of their heart—as she does, unapologetic and without shame.

World Cup Soccer: Through the Eyes of a Tibetan Lama and an Iranian Dissident

Reading about the World Cup matches recently, I was reminded of an interview I did in 2000 with Khyentse Norbu, the only filmmaker I know of who is a real Tibetan lama. His film, The Cup, is about monks obsessed with the international match. Norbu’s take is so delightful, and timeless, I thought I would post the interview in the hope that fans who missed its limited theatrical release might look for it on DVD. A PDF of the interview can be found in “From My Archives” to the left of this column.

My review of The Cup appears here: http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/esearch/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000697408
 

Maryam Moghadam, who plays Melika in Closed Curtain, had her passport confiscated by the Iranian regime, along with writer-director Kambozia Partovi (Cafe Transit, 2005), after they attended last year's Berlin Film Festival to accept the Silver Bear (for best screenplay) on Jafar Panahi's behalf. (Photo courtesy of Amplify Films)

Offside (2006, on DVD and streaming) is another unusual World Cup film, written and directed by Jafar Panahi, an Iranian filmmaker whose work I admire. It is about the excitement an important match inspires in Tehran, and is perhaps the only soccer movie about female fans. A group of young women disguised as boys, in the hope that they can deceive guards, attempt to gain entrance to the stadium. Iranian girls and women are forbidden to attend sports events, even if they are accompanied by male relatives. The women’s ruse is discovered and they are detained; young security guards, equally disappointed not to be inside watching the game, are told to keep them penned in an area outside the stadium where they can only hear the shouts of the crowd.

My review of Offside can be found here: http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/esearch/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003555993

Offside is a clever indictment of Iran’s theocratic state, yet it is Panahi’s most optimistic film. Like so much of his work, including The Circle, the subject of my 2001 interview with him (see link in “From the Archives”), the movie is banned in his home country. Panahi, who is accused of creating “propaganda” against the state, is now prevented from making any movies in Iran, and from traveling outside the country. While it is a less severe sentence than other socially conscious artists have received in Iran, it is nevertheless unconscionable.

The unnamed writer and his dog in Jafar Panahi's Closed Curtain sit before a window that suggests Iran's darkened movie theaters. The movie will open at Film Forum on July 9th. (Photo, Courtesy of Amplify Films)

The filmmaker has managed to defy the ban with This is Not A Film (2011), a documentary shot inside his Tehran apartment, and Closed Curtain (2013), a conflation of fiction and documentary, shot at his seaside home, which will open at Film Forum in New York City on July 9th. A link to my review of Closed Curtain appears under “Film Reviews (Online),” to the right of this column, and my review of This is Not A Film can be found here: http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/esearch/e3id540457eab6376406a4d826262d6c725

This still from Closed Curtain is of Panahi arriving at his seaside home. The film is an unusual mix of documentary and fiction, and an eloquent expression of the writer-director's despondency over the filmmaking ban Iran has imposed on him. (Photo courtesy of Amplify Films)

Watching Panahi’s The Circle again recently, I found that I still flinch at the brutality his women characters are subjected to, first by the state who incarcerated them for crimes Panahi never names, and then by their families who reject them, or try to kill them, after they are released from prison. Women can be arrested in Iran for smoking in public, and unmarried girls and women for being in the company of a man who is not a male relative. At the end of The Circle, Panahi brings us “full circle,” to a prison cell, where we hear the guard call out to Solmaz. Solmaz is the name of Panahi’s daughter. She acted in that film, and has been representing her father for a few years now, attending screenings of his films abroad, and accepting awards for him. One hopes that Panahi and his daughter will soon be free of the “circle” that imprisons them, and so many other Iranian artists.

 The official trailer for Closed Curtain is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQyU7dpuLl4&feature=youtu.be

The Oscar Nominees: Animated Shorts

In Shuhei Morita's Possessions, the ghosts of discarded objects haunt a man seeking refuge in an abandoned temple. (Image courtesy of ShortsHD and AMPAS.)

Some Oscar-nominated filmmakers, the ones who write and produce the cinematic equivalent of the short story, rarely get the critical attention they deserve. They make “short subjects,” Animated, Live Action and Documentary movies of less than 40 minutes. This post is a review of the 2014 Animated shorts. To read my published reviews of the 2014 Live Action and Documentary categories, click on the links to the right in “Film Reviews (Online).”

Feral (USA, 13 minutes) by Daniel Sousa, Dan Golden

A still from Feral in which a "wild child" grapples with his true identity. (Courtesy of ShortsHD and AMPAS.)

This “wild child” tale is rendered in sharp, menacing drawings, mostly black on a white or gray background, appropriate to the film’s dramatic subject matter. The boy at the center of the story seems to shape-shift from boy to wolf; a hunter “rescues” him, and for a short time, he wears clothes, attends school and struggles with living indoors. Like many a child before him, he is tested in the schoolyard when he is jeered at by the other students. He reverts to wolf and bares his teeth. It is not long before the boy heads out of the city, shedding all vestiges of “civilization.” While the story’s denouement is enigmatic, it is also quite stunning—and the music, by composer Golden, is affecting. This is a simple, yet beautifully realized short.

Get a Horse! (USA, 6 minutes) by Lauren MacMullan, Dorothy McKim

It was only a matter of time before Mickey and Minnie went 3-D, as they do in this clever, fast-paced cartoon in which the mice, as usual, do battle with a demon cat. A rare female filmmaking team make quick work of updating the old characters, allowing them to leap in and out of the screen, and from black and white to color. Even those for whom the anthropomorphic mouse holds little appeal will smile at the skill and imagination illustrated by MacMullan and McKim.

An Interview with Oscar-Nominated Palestinian Filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad

Palestinian resistance fighter Omar (Adam Bakri) and Nadja (Leem Lubany), the woman he loves, in a still from the film "Omar," to be released in the United States on February 21st. (Courtesy of Adopt Films)

Hany Abu-Assad never had any formal training as a filmmaker; in fact, the Nazareth-born writer-director began his professional life as an airplane mechanic in the Netherlands. The first of his movies to be released in the United States, Paradise Now (2005), is about the recruitment and training of two friends who are aspiring suicide bombers. While he remains a controversial figure for his resolute position on Palestinian statehood, Abu-Assad is an engaging and talented artist—and his newest film, Omar, while providing an uncompromising view of Palestinian resistance and Israeli occupation, opened in Tel Aviv in January and will open in New York City on February 21st. It is an Oscar nominee in the Foreign Film category.

You can read my interview with the filmmaker in Film Journal International: http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/news-and-features/features/movies/e3ied404e4ee6feeb949ff624d2e10d378a

Six of 2013's Best Films Now on DVD or Streaming

A still from the documentary "Cutie and the Boxer" (courtesy Weinstein Co.), which shows Noriko Shinohara completing one of her murals for an exhibition with her husband and fellow artist Ushio Shinohara.

Like most critics, I see excellent narrative films and documentaries every year which open for two weeks in New York or LA, as well as movies which never receive any theatrical distribution, and still others that are not picked up for DVD distribution or streaming—and we are all the worse for it. Some are human rights documentaries, but others are narrative films, often independently produced, which may have flopped at the box office—a fact no viewer should use as a measure of whether or not to screen it—and have difficulty getting a DVD distributor.

I think of Nagieb Khaja’s documentary My Afghanistan: Life in the Forbidden Zone, which did not get a theatrical distributor and is not available on DVD or streaming. It provides a remarkable portrait of that country. For long moments while screening it, I felt the grief of an Afghani child who cares for his younger siblings, and wonders whether he will ever be able to complete his education, and the mixed emotions of an American soldier who suddenly realizes that the people living in the village he is defending in Helmund Province do not care who wins the war. Some of them want to kill him, a few believe he may liberate them, but most just want him and the Islamic extremists to leave so that they can return to tending their goats, or harvesting the fruit from a beloved orchard. (For an interview with Khaja, use the link to the left under Feature Articles: “On Human Rights Watch.”)

With Khaja in mind, instead of compiling a “Ten Best” list this year, I hope you will consider my “Best Films of 2013 on DVD or Streaming.” Some of these six documentaries and narrative films suffer on the small screen, especially Alice Winocour’s Augustine and Pablo Larrain’s No (which is from last year’s list but opened in theaters in 2013). These filmmakers shot on 35 mm. film, and their aesthetic is more easily evinced on a theater screen, but their work is nevertheless worth seeing under any circumstances because of their unusual historical narratives, and the artists’ perspectives, both of which are a pleasant break from large-budget Hollywood standards on everybody’s “Best Ten” list.

I was lucky enough to be assigned interviews or reviews of all six films, many of which are available on the Internet. Check for links to the right and left of this post. Where indicated, I conducted videotaped interviews as well; these are available on the dates listed (see "Blog Archive").

Here is the list in alphabetical order:

1.    Augustine (narrative), in French with English subtitles, by Alice Winocour. (See video interview below. (Videotaped interview: May 10th, 2013)
2.    Caesar Must Die (documentary/narrative), in Italian dialect with English subtitles, by the Taviani Brothers (Videotaped interview: January 27th, 2013)
3.    Cutie and the Boxer (documentary), in English, by Zachery Heinzerling
4.    No (narrative), in Spanish with English subtitles, by Pablo Larrain
5.    Stories We Tell (documentary), in English, by Sarah Polley
6.    Wadjda (narrative), in Arabic with English subtitles, by Haifaa Al Mansour

Interview with Production Designer Dante Ferretti

Dante Ferretti, Francesa LoSchivo and Maria Garcia at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Behind us are lion sculptures Signore Ferretti designed for the 65th annual Venice Film Festival.

 My interview with the iconic Italian production designer Signore Dante Ferretti, and his wife, set decorator Signora LoSchiavo, will appear in print in the Winter issue of Cineaste Magazine, which will be on newsstands this week.

Signore Ferretti recently won his third Oscar for Martin Scorsese’s Hugo (2012), on which Signora Lo Schiavo “dressed” the sets.

Production designers are members of a movie’s principal crew, which includes the director, costume designer, cinematographer and film editor. They are responsible for all aspects of a motion picture’s design, and supervise the construction of sets and alterations to the film’s locations. The task of the set decorator is to choose and place furniture, draperies, and other objects on the set or location under the supervision of the production designer. In Hugo, for instance, Signora Lo Schiavo’s work may be seen in the delightful arrangement of books in the train station’s library, or in the choice of flowers for the flower seller’s carts, as well as in their positioning inside that built set.

Signore Ferretti speaks with the press at MoMA. Behind him are some of his paintings and sketches rendered in preparation for the building of various film sets. They can be seen in the exhibition, "Designing for the Screen."

In my Cineaste interview, Signore Ferretti and Signora Lo Schiavo discuss their preference for built sets and real objects, as well as the challenges of their creative partnership. Signore Ferretti, the subject of a current MoMA exhibition, recalls his 40-year career in film and theater, which includes some wonderful memories of his collaborations with Federico Fellini.

More information on the MoMA tribute to Signore Ferretti may be found here: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/films/1415.

Two August Film Releases Criticize Islamic Practices and Traditions

Two movies to be released this month are about the plight of women and girls living in Islamic countries, a record of sorts, especially since each of them is a human rights film. Both Haifaa Al Mansour’s Wadjda and Atiq Rahimi’s The Patience Stone were screened at Tribeca Film Festival this year, and are being distributed by Sony Pictures. It is unusual and heartwarming when major distributors decide that women and girls are a “market.” While both movies appeal to general audiences, they also assume a feminist perspective, and criticize the exclusion of women and girls from public life in Islamic countries, namely Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.

Wadjda and her mother share a quiet moment in Haifaa Al Mansour's "Wadjda." (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

I spoke with Saudi filmmaker Ms. Al Mansour, the first woman to make a movie on-location in Saudi Arabia, on two occasions this year, most recently in July for an interview that will be published in the Fall print edition of Cineaste Magazine, along with my review of the film. My earlier Tribeca Film Festival interview with Ms. Al Mansour has just been published in Film Journal International. (See link in "Feature Articles, Print/Online.") Ms. Al Mansour makes her feature debut with Wadjda, which centers on a determined 10 year-old Saudi girl. The film will open in New York City at the end of August. While the two interviews cover different topics, both contain discussions of the position of women and girls in present-day Saudi Arabia.

Atiq Rahimi directs Golshifteh Farahani, the star of "The Patience Stone." (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)

Under “Feature Articles,” I have posted a link to my interview with Afghani writer-director, Mr. Rahimi, the lead story in this week's Film Journal International. The Patience Stone will open on August 14th at Film Forum in New York City. It stars the wonderful Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, who plays an Afghani wife and mother struggling to survive after her husband is shot and lapses into a coma. During the long hours she cares for him, she confesses her many disappointments in their married life. Those familiar with Iranian films will remember Farahani as the star of Samira Makhmalbaf’s Cannes Jury Prize Winner, Blackboards (2000), and more recently for her role in the ensemble film, Asghar Farhadi’s About Elly (2009). Rahimi’s second feature (his first was Earth and Ashes), in his native Dari (a dialect of Farsi), is based on his book of the same name, and was filmed on-location in Kabul and Morocco.

Human Rights Watch Film Festival

I have just posted a link to my feature article (to the left of this column) in Film Journal International about HRWFF in New York City. It includes interviews with four outstanding documentary filmmakers: Harry Freeland, Nagieb Khaja, Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami and Raoul Peck.

 

A still of Shukrullah, one of Nagieb Khaja's subjects in "My Afghanistan: Life in the Forbidden Zone." (Courtesy of HRWFF)

Freeland’s film, In the Shadow of the Sun, chronicles the struggle of albino men and women in several southern African countries where they are subject to hate crimes. Albinos suffer dismemberment, and are hunted and killed as a result of the claims of witch doctors that their body parts can cure disease. Freeland’s documentary focuses on a charismatic albino activist, and a young albino man who finally escapes the “shadows” to realize his dream of completing his education. In my interview with the British filmmaker, he discusses the genesis of his documentary, and his upcoming plans for screening the movie in the Tanzanian bush, in villages where many albinos were murdered.

Nagieb Khaja, a Danish-Afghani filmmaker, spoke with me about his documentary, My Afghanistan: Life in the Forbidden Zone, from the mountains of war-torn Syria where he was shooting footage for a new project. Khaja recruited residents of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, gave them cameras, and asked them to film their everyday existence. He then skillfully edited the resulting footage to produce a documentary that will alter every viewer’s preconceived notions of that country and its people. In our interview, Khaja speaks about the courage of his co-filmmakers who often risked their lives simply being seen with him.

Interview with Alice Winocour

Below is my video interview with French writer-director Alice Winocour in which she discusses Augustine, her sublime cinematic debut. The narrative film, which will open at New York City’s Film Forum on May 17th, is based on the life of the eponymous 19th century maid. As Ms. Winocour explains at the start of the interview, Augustine’s fits led her to be admitted to Salpêtrière, then an asylum in which doctors experimented with impunity on their female patients, most of whom were diagnosed with “hysteria.”

Augustine became the patient of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot, often credited as the founder of the discipline of neurology. (Ms. Winocour refers to Charcot's celebrated student, Sigmund Freud, who named his first son Jean-Martin.) She soon became the star among his hysteria patients, and was hypnotized onstage to induce a fit, ostensibly for the purposes of studying the malady.

In writing her screenplay, Ms. Winocour drew upon Dr. Charcot’s notes, which included a photographic record, but it is her incisive analysis of the period, and of “hysteria” in Victorian-era France, that distinguishes the film. And, in imagining the doctor-patient relationship from Augustine’s perspective, Ms. Winocour adopts a rather unique point of view in a genre where the male voice of authority is too often felt.

My review of the film appears in the Spring issue of Cineaste, which will be on newsstands this month.

Interview With Sarah Polley

I have just added a link ("Feature Articles, Print/Online") to my interview with Ms. Polley, the writer-director of Stories We Tell. This is the filmmaker's debut documentary and her third feature film. Polley's first two movies as writer-director were Away From Her and Take This Waltz.

Stories We Tell opens in theaters in May. 

Remembering "La Magnani"

Anna Magnani and Joseph Burstyn (circa 1950). Mr. Burstyn was the distributor of Roberto Rossellini's "l'Amore," a  pair of shorts in which Ms. Magnani starred. 
(Photo Credit: "Anna Magnani," Fabbri Editori, 1998.)

The Italian Embassy in the United States has joined with several other departments of the Italian government, and a few trade organizations, to declare 2013 The Year of Italian Culture in the United States. This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Italian actress Anna Magnani, one of the most unique talents ever to grace the silver screen. It would seem a perfect time to celebrate her legacy, especially since Ms. Magnani holds a very special place in the history of American cinema.

Ms. Magnani’s performance in il Miracolo (The Miracle, 1948), where she plays a woman who believes her baby represents a virgin birth, sparked demonstrations when it screened at New York’s Paris Theater in 1950. Cardinal Spellman called the Roberto Rossellini short “sacrilegious” and demanded the theater withdraw it. The Paris did just that, and distributor Joseph Burstyn sued. His case eventually went to the Supreme Court of the United States. It voted unanimously in his favor, effectively granting the cinematic medium protection under the First Amendment. Sadly, il Miracolo is not available in the United States, nor is its accompanying short, the much celebrated Una Voce Umana (The Human Voice, 1948), in which Ms. Magnani portrays a spurned lover in a spectacular solo performance. (The two shorts were released together as L'Amore.)

Ms. Magnani and director William Dieterle (circa 1949) during production on "Vulcano," just one of the actress's many Italian films not available in any format in the U.S. Francesco Patierno's excellent documentary, "The War of the Volcanoes," which premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2012, covers Ms. Magnani's career during this period, shortly after her break-up with Roberto Rossellini. (Photo courtesy of The Film Society of Lincoln Center.) 

My review of Patierno's film and others at NYFF, begin on page 59 of Ambassador Magazine: http://www.niaf.org/publications/ambassador/issues/ambassador-magazine-vol-24-2.pdf

Only a fraction of Ms. Magnani’s Italian films are available to American audiences (including to those who do not need English subtitles) in any format, despite her iconic status in Italian Neo-Realist cinema. Below is the complete text of my Spring 2013 "On Film" column from Ambassador Magazine, which is a brief consideration of the remarkable woman Italians call “La Magnani” in recognition of her singularity.

“La Magnani” (Ambassador Magazine, Spring 2013)

In her final film appearance, Anna Magnani is seen first as a shadow entering the frame. She is walking toward her home, the Palazzo Altieri in Rome, the camera tracking her from behind. It is evening, and she is alone in the chiaroscuro of a darkly lit street. Federico Fellini’s narration is lauding her as a symbol of Rome, a “she-wolf and vestal virgin, aristocrat and beggar.” When the camera reaches her, Magnani enters a door. She turns and faces the camera, which is in now in close-up. She inveigles: “What am I?” Fellini ignores the provocation, and bids the actress to allow him to question her. Magnani refuses. “I don’t trust you,” she says. Then, she closes the door, wresting control of the movie and her legacy. 

Women Filmmakers and Filmmakers of Color

The First in a Series of On-Camera Interviews

I have recently begun two related projects to highlight the work of filmmakers whose movies I have either been unable to write about in print, or have written reviews of, but not interview/feature articles. I ask these filmmakers to agree to on-camera interviews. The first appears below, as part of this post, and is an interview with the co-directors of a new documentary, The Revolutionary Optimists.

One project brings attention to women filmmakers (“Interviews With Women Filmmakers”) or those who make thoughtful, progressive movies about women and girls, and another will focus on filmmakers of color (“Interviews With Filmmakers of Color”) or those who tell similarly thoughtful stories about people of color around the world. I am interested in both narrative and documentary films, and you will see a mix of these in both of my interview projects.

These on-camera interviews are conducted in the same way I would an interview for a print publication. Questions are not submitted in advance, and while filmmakers are offered a chance to review the footage, or a transcript of the interview, this is done for the purpose of ensuring accuracy. These videos are not advertisements. I have no financial or artistic connection to the films or filmmakers, nor do I benefit financially from the making of these videos. I have no aspirations with regard to making my own films, and that is immediately obvious from the simple videos you will see here.

On March 27th, Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen (Rare, 2006) spoke with me about their documentary The Revolutionary Optimists, which opens in New York on March 29th, and will open in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco in April. In the course of the interview we discuss the film’s child subjects, Shika, Salim, Priyanka and Kajal, who live in one of the 5,500 slums of Kolkata (Calcutta), the capital of West Bengal, India. The program which brought them to the attention of the filmmakers, “Prayasam,” was founded by another subject in the documentary, Amlan Ganguly, a charismatic Bengali activist.

In the video, seated left to right are: Me, Ms. Newnham and Ms. Grainger-Monsen.

My review of the documentary appears in Film Journal International: http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/esearch/e3i9646fa46434f6c06748afeafb3ee2043

Since this project seeks to highlight the work of these filmmakers, should anyone wish to add the resulting videos to their website, I simply ask that the title cards remain intact and that I receive recognition for my work. (I would also appreciate hearing from you.) As you can imagine, film journalists spend long hours watching the films they write about (I never interview any filmmaker without having watched their movie at least twice), and researching the topic of the film in order to ask informed questions during an interview. I hope this project will foster a greater appreciation for movies known in the industry as “small films,” a woefully inadequate sobriquet for movies that so often alter people’s view of the world.

New Directors/New Films

This festival is co-sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Each year, it screens shorts, feature documentaries and narrative films in New York City (at MoMA’s theaters and at the FSLC’s Walter Reade Theater) by first-time filmmakers from around the world. Some films open theatrically, but many do not because they fail to fit easily into a particular genre and so do not have wide box office appeal. The festival offers audiences the opportunity to see the first efforts of directors who may later go on to have distinguished careers—and, sometimes, actors making their screen debut.

ND/NF, which is celebrating its 42nd anniversary in 2013, runs from March 20th-31st. Of special note this year are Sarah Polley’s “Stories We Tell” (Canada), Ali Aydin’s “Küf” (Turkey), Emil Christov’s “The Color of the Chameleon” (Bulgaria), and Leonardo di Constanza’s “l’Intervallo” (Italy).

A photo of Sarah Polley and her father, Michael Polley, from the documentary "Stories We Tell."

“Stories We Tell” is not Ms. Polley’s first film as a writer-director, although it is her first documentary. She wrote and directed two narrative films, “Away From Her” (2006), and the much-overlooked “Take This Waltz” (2011); Ms. Polley is also an accomplished actress, best-known in the U.S. for her performances in Atom Egoyan’s “The Sweet Hereafter” (1997) and, more recently, in Isabel Coixet’s “My Life Without Me” (2003). “Stories We Tell” is autobiographical, and features interviews conducted by Ms. Polley with her immediate family and family friends. The documentary is about her mother who died when she was eleven years old, although it is also a nuanced investigation into the nature of memory, and often of abandonment.

A still from Ali Aydin's “Küf," which is about Basri, a railroad worker whose son is one of Turkey's "disappeared."

Mr. Aydin’s “Küf” (the English translation is “Mold”) is about Basri (Ercan Kesal), a railroad worker whose only child vanished eighteen years ago while he was a student at an Istanbul university. Every year since then, Basri has written letters to government agencies asking that his son’s disappearance be investigated. “Küf” was inspired by demonstrations the filmmaker witnessed in which mothers attempted to force authorities to investigate the disappearances of their children, many of whom were victims of political assassination. If Mr. Aydin’s purpose seems peripheral as the movie unfolds, it is because he has crafted a beautiful, haunting portrait of grief, but also of one man’s unstinting faith that someone in the government will eventually admit responsibility for his son’s death. The cast is excellent, especially Mr. Kesal and Muhammet Uzuner as the local police captain who befriends Basri. Viewers will remember these actors from Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” (2011). Reminiscent of the films of Robert Bresson, “Küf” is about the impossibility of earthly redemption.

Mr. Christov’s “The Color of the Chameleon” is a satire, but many of the references it makes to Bulgaria’s history will be impossible for American audiences to grasp (unless the folks at www.balkanleaks.eu can explain.) Fortunately, the movie can also be appreciated as a spoof of spy films. Ruscen Vidinliev gives a wonderfully nuanced performance as Batko, a student recruited by the secret police to spy on dissidents. When he is later fired for some minor infraction, he invents his own spy game. While the script has some pitfalls, Mr. Christov’s direction is outstanding in nearly every respect. As the title implies, viewers must take pleasure in the circumstances of the moment where some brief glimmer of substantive purpose emerges from shades of concealment.

A still from "l'Intervallo" in which Salvatore and Victoria look out over their neighborhood from the relative safety of a rooftop.

Mr. di Constanza’s “l’Intervallo” (The Interval) begins with a tale about caged birds, narrated in voice-over, and then a long sequence in which we see a teenager and his father prepare their carts for a day of work. They are granita vendors in Naples. Salvatore, the son, is hired by the neighborhood Mafioso to mind a prisoner, Victoria, a teenage girl whose infraction Mr. di Constanza keeps secret until the end of the film. Over the course of the day in which the story unfolds, we get a glimpse of Salvatore and Victoria as carefree young people, but mostly what “l’Intervallo” provides is a terrifying portrait of their future in contemporary Southern Italy. Reminiscent of Italian Neo-Realist films, Mr. di Constanza’s critique is aimed at a government seemingly unable to grapple with the stranglehold of  organized crime. While “Küf” illustrates the effect of years of corruption on one family, “l’Intervallo” presages it in the lives of two people who have barely begun to live.

Photos: Courtesy of MoMA and Film Society of Lincoln Center. 

An Interview with Pablo Larrain

I have just added a link ("Feature Articles") to my interview with Pablo Larrain, the director of "No," nominated in the category of "Best Foreign Film." Larrain's candid remarks provide insight into his work as a politically committed filmmaker.

"No" is the third film in Larrain's trilogy about Chile's turbulent past. The first two were "Post Mortem," about the coup which unseated President Salvador Allende and ushered in the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, and "Tony Manero," about a psychopath living during Pinochet's dictatorship who dreams of winning a national dance contest.