Mahammed Rasoulof's The White Meadows (2009)
Rituals and allegories of repression and loss. A new film about a traveling healer who collects tears by the Iranian director of Iron Island, who was recently arrested along with others including Jafar Panahi.
Click on the title above for the CK Festival Coverage review of this film.
mohammad rasoulof
Dorothée Van Den Berghe's My Queen Karo (2009)
Coming of age in a hippie communal squat in 1974 Amsterdam. Open marriages are hard on young kids, it would seem.
Click on the title to see the Filmleaf Festival Coverage review.
VAN DEN BERGHE
Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington's Restrepo (2010)
A closeup of US soldiers fighting on a 15-monhth deployment in the treacherous Korangal Valley in Afghanistan, this won the Grand Jury Prize for documentary at Sundance this year and is being broadcast globally by National Geographic.
Click on the title above for the Festival Coveragy SFIFF 53 review.
Awards of the SFIFF
Golden Gate Award Documentary Feature Winners
Investigative Documentary Feature:
Last Train Home, Lixin Fan (Canada/China 2009)
- Winner receives $25,000 cash prize and Final Cut Studio software provided by Apple
Documentary Feature:
Pianomania, Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis (Austria/Germany 2009)
- Winner receives $20,000 cash prize and Final Cut Studio software provided by Apple
Previously announced Golden Gate Award winner
Bay Area Documentary Feature:
Presumed Guilty, Roberto Hernández, Geoffrey Smith (Mexico 2009)
- Winner receives $15,000 cash prize, FInal Cut Studio software provided by Apple and $2,000 in lab services from EFILM Digital Laboratories
New Directors Award
Alamar, Pedro González-Rubio (Mexico 2009)
- Winner receives $15,000 cash prize and Final Cut Studio software provided by Apple
FIPRESCI Prize
Frontier Blues, Babak Jalali (Iran/England/Italy 2009)
Audience Awards
Winter's Bone, Debra Granik (US 2009), narrative feature
Budrus, Julia Basha (Palestinian Territories/Israel, 2009), documentary
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 05-07-2010 at 12:33 AM.
All my SFIFF reviews for 2010
SFIFF 2010 FILMS REVIEWED EARLIER (except Northless and La Pivellina, seen at ND/NF but not reviewed):
Around a Small Mountain (Jacques Rivette 2009)
Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press 2010)--ND/NF
Everyone Else (Maren Ade 2009)
Father of My Children, The (Mia Hansen-Løve 2009)
Hadewijch (Bruno Dumont 2010)
Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (Serge Bomberg, Ruxandra Medea 2009)
How I Ended This Summer (Alexei Popogrebsky 2010)
Lebanon (Samuel Moaz 2009)
Making Plans for Lena (Christophe Honoré 2009)
Night Catches Us (Tanya Hamilton 2101)
Northless (Rigoberto Pérezcano 2009)
Oath, The (Laura Poitras 2009)
Pivellina, La (Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel 2009)
Soul Kitchen ((Fatih Akin 2009)
Tehroun (Nader T. Homayoun 209)
Last Train Home (Fan Tixan 2009)
To Die Like a Man (João Pedro Rodrigues 2009)
White Materia (Claire Denis 2009)
Nénette (Nicolas Philibert 2010)
Wild Grass (Alain Renaid 2009)
REVIEWS OF FILMS SEEN AT THE FESTIVAL:
Air Doll (Hirakasu Koreeda 2009)
Alamar (Pedro González-Rubio 2009)
Brand New Life, A (Ouunie Lecomte 2009)
Cargo (Ivan Engler, Ralph Etter 2009)
Domain (Patric Chiha 2009)
Famous and the Dead, The (Esmir Filha 2009)
Gainsbourg (Je t'aime...moi non plus (Joann Sfar) (20010)
Linha de Passe (Walter Salles, Daniela Thomas 2008)
Lourdes (Jessica Hausner 2008)
Loved Ones, The (Sean Byrne 2009)
Man Who Will Come, The (Giorgio Diritti 2009)
Moscow (Whang Cheoul-mean 2009)
My Dog Tulip (Paul and Sandra Fierlinger 2009)
My Queen Karo (Dorothée Van Den Berghe 2009
Pianomania (Robert Cibis, Lilian Frank 2009)
Practice of the Wild, The (John J. Healey 2010)
Restrepo (Sebastian Junger, Tim Hetherington 2010)
Russian Lessons (Andrei Nekrasov, Olga Konskaya 2009)
Seducing Charlie Parker (Amy Glazer 2010)
Transcending Lynch (Marcos Andrade 2010)
White Meadows, The (Mohammad Rasoulof 2009)
Winter's Bone (Debra Granik 2010)
You Think You're the Prettiest, But You're the Sluttiest (Che Sandoval 2008)
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 05-06-2010 at 01:51 AM.
The audience vote just came in. The favorites were:
Audience Awards
(Popular favorites determined by ballots collected after public screenings)
Narrrative feature:
Winter's Bone, Debra Granik (US 2009)
Runner-up: Teddy Chen's Bodyguards and Assassins
Documentary:
Budrus, Julia Basha (Palestinian Territories/Israel, 2009), documentary
Runners-up: Richard Press's Bill Cunningham New York and Davis Guggenheim's Waiting for "Superman"
I've added these winners of the audience vote above. Sorry I missed Budrus!
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 05-07-2010 at 12:52 AM.
Debra Granik's Winter's Bone will have its US theatrical release beginning June 11, 2010. Besides its SFIFF narrative film award it recei ed the Grand Jury Prize for Drama and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. There will be a special "premiere" preview screening in NYC at MoMA's Titus 2 Theater June 9, at 8:30. Granik will be present.
ALAMAR is being made available on DVD by Film Movement in July, around the same time as its commercial run at Film Forum in NYC. Life in a Mexican fishing village through the eyes of a native father and the boy who resulted from his brief but lovely relationship with an Italian tourist. Father and child reunion depicted with attention to minute detail in naturalistic style. Not a single overwrought moment. Stunningly photographed.
If I didn't note the DVD release I should have. "Life in a Mexican fishing village" might slightly mislead one who hasn't seen the film, as festival blurbs often do. There is no picture of a fishing village, just brief interaction with a few of the fishermen. The main focus and a very intimate one is of course on father and son.
Alamar had its US theatrical premiere at BAMcinétek March 4 as part of a series Rotterdam @ BAMcinétek, and the Film Forum run begins July 14 sponsored by, indeed Film Movement.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 05-14-2010 at 06:26 PM.
Debra Granik's Winter's Bone was just shown at Cannes May 14, 2010, and Mike D'Angelo, AV Club's blogger from the fest, wrote glowingly of it
. . .just as 'Down to the Bone' singlehandedly jump-started Vera Farmiga’s career, I suspect that 'Winter’s Bone' marks the beginning of a long-term love affair between discerning moviegoers and Ms. Jennifer Lawrence. . .Lawrence turns in a performance so steely and yet so heartbreaking that maintaining an intellectual distance soon becomes impossible. I wish Cannes luck matching this one, frankly. Grade: A-
Update on SFIFF 2010 films as of July 6, 2010:
Current or soon coming to Bay Area theaters:
AIR DOLL Landmark theaters. Mediocre reviews; short run.
ALAMAR. Special brief SFFS showing at Sundance Kabuki Theater.
EVERYONE ELSE. Current at Landmark Theaters. Fair to good reviews.
FATHER OF MY CHILDREN, THE Landmark Theaters, San Francisco run finished. Fair to good reviews.
LEBANON Coming to Landmark Theaters.
RESTREPO San Francisco; coming to other areas. Fair to good reviews.
WILD GRASS Coming to Landmark Theaters.
WINTER'S BONE. At four Bay Area theaters currently. Rave reviews.
(Landmark has widespread control of Bay Area art houses, making it harder for others to survive, but there are some independents.)
WINTER'S BONE has received rave reviews in the Bay Area, notably in the influential SF Chronicle newspaper, with special praise (as elsewhere) for Jennifer Lawrence's lead performance. AIR DOLL did not do well critically. RESTREPO has gotten fair reviews with some very positive comments.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 07-06-2010 at 03:26 PM.
More about Sebastian Juner and Tim Hetherington's RESTREPO:
The documentary's lack of a position on the Afghan war may in fact be more a pro-war position if one is to judge by Sebastian Junger's statements in recent TV appearances. This at least is the assertion of Bill Cody in an article online at www.ropeofsilicon.com, "A Closer Look at Sundance Favorite 'Restrepo.'" Cody has recent personal experience filming US combat troops and says he has looked at a lot of Afghan war footage. He points to a lack of basic information in RESTREPO about the unit and its training. He questions the quality of the camerawork itself and says there's a lot just as good to be found on YouTube. Cody points out these guys were originally not there to make a film at all but to do a Vanity Fair article. Did Sundance get fooled not only about the merit of the film but about its politics, since they have previously favored anti-war docs like IRAQ IN FRAGMENTS and NO END IN SIGHT? Some have interpreted RESTREPO as anti-war. Junger's would call that seriously into question. (I personally do not think it is anti-war in any way. It is critical of the conduct of the war only in the sense of many pro-war strategists who argue there should be more and massive support and far more foreign troops involved, not as anti-war people feel, that the US ought to get out of Afghanistan.)
We might extrapolate from Cody's discussion and ask: Aren't war films that "lack context" or are "apolitical," like THE HURT LOCKER and RESTREPO, really pro-war by virtue of their sheer lack of criticism of the situations they relate? You're either for it or against it, and if you're not against it, you're for it. As for the film, reviewers often seem to think that its intense "vérité" feel means it is valid. Cody finds it too much like the footage the troops make of themselves.
In fact, Cody says, the 173rd Airborne unit covered in RESTREPO is a highly trained attack force, but the film focuses on the youngest faces and makes them look like a crew of innocents, while its vérité look and clumsy technique mask a highly manipulative structure.
I was not, that I recall, familiar with the www.ropeofsilicon.com website or Bill Cody but this "ripping into" Junger piece is being referenced elsewhere on the Web. I think it is valid in that at least the same caveats are in order here as for THE HURT LOCKER.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 07-06-2010 at 02:57 PM.
Film Forum will show ALAMAR for one week, July 14-20. This well-publicized New York run begins a theatrical tour of the film in the US, perhaps.Originally Posted by Chris Knipp
Stephen Holden reviewed the film in the NY Times July 13, 2010: http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/07/14...lamar.html?hpw
Holden points out the "grandfather" is not a real blood relative, and explains that the ne-story cabins perched on stilts above the water are called "palafittes." A well-informed review that gracefully touches all the bases.The characters in “Alamar” may be playing versions of themselves, but the writer, editor and director Pedro González-Rubio has constructed a film in which the journey has an overarching mythic resonance that evokes fables from “Robinson Crusoe” to “The Old Man and the Sea.”
Gainsbourg (Je t'aime...moi non plus (Joann Sfar) (20010)
This excellent biopic, winner of the César award for best first film 2010, is having a US theatrical release, and it begins with Aug. 31-Sept. 13 at Film Forum in New York City.
DOMAIN
This French movie starring Béatrice Dalle opens at the San Francisco Film Society's theater on Friday, Feb. 3. 2012. I'll republish my review of this film from the 2010 San Francisco International Film Festival on that day. Meanwhile here is the SFFS's blurb:
This moody, contemplative drama explores the unusually intimate relationship between an aunt and her nephew. Nadine (Betty Blue's Béatrice Dalle), a single mathematician in her 40s, is struggling with alcoholism. She’s worldly, educated, wild and mischievous and she dazzles young Pierre with captivating stories from her past on their daily walks through the park. With suspenseful restraint, first-time filmmaker Patric Chiha reveals the story, allowing room for silence, facial expressions and body language to do their work. Dalle is mesmerizing throughout matched by newcomer Isaïe Sultan’s compelling work as Pierre. Selected by John Waters as his favorite film of 2010.
Domain was released in NYC January 13, 2012.
Last edited by Chris Knipp; 06-01-2014 at 10:53 AM.
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