Monthly Archives: April 2012

Art, Social Progress

Histórias Que Só Existem Quando Lembradas | Found Memories – New Directors/New Films 2012

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Director: Julia Murat
Writers: Julia Marat, Maria Clara Escobar, Felipe Sholl
Music: Lucas Marcier
Cast: Sônia Guedes, Lisa E. Fávero, Luiz Serra, Josias Ricardo Merkin, Antonio Dos Santos
Brazil, 2011

25 March 2012, Walter Reade Theater, NYC

A symphony of silences, rich with distant thunder and the sound of the forest. A palpable sense of heavy atmosphere and exquisite attention to the innumerable details of daily life in a fictive village of eleven elderly people who have forgotten how to die.

Madalena bakes bread. Antonio prepares the coffee. At midmorning the church bells ring, summoning the villagers to mass and they all share a midday meal together.

One day, Rita, a city girl, arrives looking for a place to stay. Initially reticent, the townsfolk gradually open up to her, sharing their stories and allowing themselves to be photographed.

What does it mean to be free? Be surprised.

Pinhole photography like you have never seen. Quito is the artist. Guy Madden would flip.

New Directors/New Films website

Update: US Distributor – Film Movement (2012)

Art

L’exercice de L’État | The Minister – New Directors/New Films 2012

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Writer/Director: Pierre Schöller
Cast: Olivier Gourmet, Michel Blanc, Sylvain Deblé, Zabou Breitman
France, 2011

25 March 2012, Walter Reade Theater, NYC

Dreaming of a beautiful woman crawling into an alligator’s maw à la Helmut Newton, Transport Minister Bernard Saint-Jean (Olivier Gourmet) is jolted awake by a 2 a.m. call from his right-hand man Gilles (Michel Blanc) that propels him to the scene of a fatal bus crash in the mountains. Hours later, still shaken by the experience, Saint-Jean tags along uninvited to the trailer home of a chaumeur inconnu (Sylvain Deblé) hired by his staff so his regular driver can go on parental leave for a month.

Bookended by two horrific, senseless accidents, L’exercice de L’État explores human isolation via a nuanced procedural about the internal workings of government.

New Directors/New Films website

Art, Social Progress

O Som Ao Redor | Neighboring Sounds – New Directors/New Films 2012

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Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Cast: Irandhir Santos, Gustavo Jahn, Maeve Jinkings, W.J. Solha, Irma Brown, Lula Terra, Yuri Holanda
Brazil, 2012

24 March 2012, Museum of Modern Art, NYC

Masters and servants circle each other in deadly embrace, in a paranoid urban fantasy played out against a background of guilt and hatred engendered by Brazil’s plantation history.

Shot in a cloistered upper-middle class enclave in Recife and in Pernambuco´s rain forest region, the sociological thriller O Som Ao Redor builds to a climax of generational revenge with the inevitability of a shark attack. Writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho layers hyper-realistic scenes of domesticity onto a backbone of the uncanny, effectively conjured by almost-subliminal exploitation of an urban legend, circulated in Recife in the 1990s, of a feral spider-boy who broke into apartments of the rich by scaling building exteriors (see Mariana Lacerda’s Menino Aranha).

Brilliantly directed, with a diverse cast of memorable characters in perfect low-key performances that erupt tectonically.

New Directors/New Films website
Film website

Update: US Distributor – Cinema Guild (2012)

Art

Romance Joe | Ro-Maen-Seu Jo – New Directors/New Films 2012

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Writer/Director: Lee Kwang-kuk
Cast: Kim Yeong-pil, Shin Dong-mi, Lee Chae-eun, David Lee, Kim Dong-hyeon, Jo Han-cheol, Ryu Ui-hyeon, Kim Su-ung, Park Hye-jin, Jo Deok-je, Seo Yeong-hwa, Baek Ik-nam, Park Su-min, Bae Dan-hui, Bang Yeong-bae, Lee Dal, Gwak Ja-hyeong, Kim Sae-byeok, Jo Jae-yun
South Korea, 2011

24 March 2012, Museum of Modern Art, NYC

A tabang girl guides a despondent film director down the rabbit hole via a slit wrist, first opened in a lonely suicide attempt in the woods and repeated among a number of protagonists in a brilliant evocation of M.C Escher’s “Drawing Hands”.

At times channeling Woody Allen and Wong Kar-wai by way of Lewis Carroll, first-time auteur Lee Kwang-kuk crafts a series of deceptively simple, entertaining scenes into a fascinating labyrinth of a film about death-defying/embracing storytelling worthy of a modern-day Scheherazade.

Perfectly realized scenes and precise video cinematography combine with a spare original score to produce an effect that will not let the viewer go, long after the credits roll.

New Directors/New Films website

Art

Serbuan Maut | The Raid: Redemption – New Directors/New Films 2012

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Serbuan Maut | The Raid: Redemption
Writer/Editor/Director: Gareth Huw Evans
Action Choreographers: Iko Yuwais, Yayan Ruhian, Gareth Huw Evans
Music: Mike Shinoda, Joseph Trapanese
Cast includes: Iko Uwais (Rama), Donny Alamsyah (Andi), Ray Sahetapy (Tama Riyadi), Yayan Ruhian (Mad Dog), Pierre Gruno (Lieutenant Wahyu), Joe Taslim (Sergeant Jaka), Tegar Satrya (Bowo), Eka “Piranha” Rahmadia (Dagu), Verdi Solaiman (Budi), Ananda George (Ari)
Indonesia/USA, 2011

22 March 2012, Walter Reade Theater, NYC

A second collaboration of Welsh director Evans and Indonesian martial art Pencak Silat experts Iko Yuwais and Yayan Ruhian, The Raid “documents” a rookie police SWAT team raid on an impenetrable housing project deep in the heart of Jakarta’s slums that has become a safe house for the city’s most dangerous murderers and gangsters under the watchful eye of a psychopathic crime-boss.

“We’re not here for good reasons,” one of the officers says, and sure enough, the mission has been leaked, and the rookie fighters find themselves massively outnumbered in a lethal game of cat and mouse with machete-wielding low-lifes, for 90 minutes of relentless and savage close-quarters shoot-outs and punishing martial-arts combat sequences. No redemption in sight, but terrific fight direction, art and sound design.

New Directors/New Films website
Film website

Update: US Distributor – Sony Pictures Classics (2012)

Art, Social Progress

Et Maintenant, On Va Où? – New Directors/New Films 2012

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Et Maintenant, On Va Où? | Where Do We Go Now?
Director: Nadine Labaki
Music: Khaled Mouzanar
Cast: Claude Baz Moussawbaa (Takla), Leyla/Layla Hakim (Afaf), Nadine Labaki (Amale), Yvonne Maalouf (Yvonne), Antoinette Noufaily (Saydeh), Julian Farhat (Rabih), Ali Haidar (Roukoz), Kevin Abboud (Nassim), Petra Saghbini (Rita), Mostafa Al Sakka (Hammoudi), Sasseen Kawzally (Issam), Caroline Labaki (Aïda), Anjo Rihane (Fatmeh), Mohammad Aqil/Akil (Abou Ahmad) (as Mohammad Akil), Gisèle Smeden (Gisèle)
France/Lebanon/Italy/Egypt, 2010

21 March 2012, Museum of Modern Art, NYC

In a poetic-choreographic opening sequence, women in black – half in hajib, half wearing crosses – march to a cemetery divided into two based on faith.

A remote mountain village relies on two boys who make a dangerous trek over a broken bridge and through combat zones to supply the villagers with newspapers and goods, and who with their friends brave landmines to find a signal for nightly open-air telecasts of soap operas and news broadcasts.

War is breaking out between Muslims and Christians all over Lebanon, and the women of the village collaborate to prevent war from taking root in their homes.

Working with a village ensemble of more than a hundred non-professional actors and a troupe of Ukrainian exotic dancers, Nadine Labaki expertly portrays multilayered human relationships across faiths and cultures.

Labaki maintains a balance between comedy and tragedy, aided by charming musical numbers, lifting the film from local polemic to universal fable.

What would you do, to stop war?

Lebanon’s nomination for the foreign-film Oscar, Et Maintenant, On Va Où? premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and won the People’s Choice Award (Best Narrative Feature) at the Toronto International Film Festival (2011).

New Directors/New Films website: http://newdirectors.org/film/where-do-we-go-now-et-maintenant-on-va-ou/

Update: US Distributor – Sony Pictures Classics (2012)