പേജുകള്‍‌

Friday, October 29, 2010

തട്ടുംമ്പോരത്തപ്പന്‍

തട്ടുംമ്പോരത്തപ്പന്‍(2010)
Short Film
Dir:Sudevan
Country:India,Kerala

പ്ലാനിംഗ് , വരൂ ,രണ്ടു എന്നീ മൂന്നു ഹൃസ്വ ചിത്രങ്ങളുടെ സംവിധായകനായ സുദേവന്റെ നാലാമത്തെ ചിത്രമാണ്‌ തട്ടുംമ്പോരത്തപ്പന്.
സുദേവന്റെ ചിത്രങ്ങളെകുറിച്ച് ബ്ലോഗില്‍ വന്നിട്ടുള്ള ചില കുറിപ്പുകള്‍ :

http://kaakadrushti.blogspot.com/2010/07/blog-post.html
http://hksanthosh.blogspot.com/2009/09/blog-post_21.html

സുദേവന്‍ ഫോണ്‍ :09289118258

Optical Illusions

Optical Illusions(2009)
Director: Cristián Jiménez
Country: Chile

Vision, or lack thereof, is at the heart of Chilean director Cristián Jiménez’s first film. A charmingly quirky narrative set during winter in southern Chile which explores society's neuroses over appearances, surveillance and communication, this film focuses on three main characters: a once-blind skier terrorized by the world he now sees; a mall security guard smitten with a beautiful thief spotted over security cameras; and a loyal über-employee unceremoniously transferred to a dead-end job and trained by his company on how to behave like an unemployed person. All three men face the world mired in desires and circumstances they barely understand, where everything feels somewhat unreal, a lotlike an optical illusion. Sometimes humorous, sometimes melancholy, their stories are all essentially about dreams, wishes, and disappointments. As a child, Jiménez could not decide if he wanted to be a sociologist or a stand-up comedian and both perspectives on the absurdities of life are clearly included here.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Last Summer Boyita

The Last Summer Boyita(2009)
Dir:
Julia Solomonoff
Country:Argentina

2 wins & 1 nomination See more awards »
Young Jorgelina feels estranged from her boy-crazy older sister, who has entered adolescence and doesn't want to hand around with little kids anymore. Finding refuge in their Boyita camper-van, Jorgelina travels with her father to the countryside, where her lifelong playmate Mario is undergoing some unexpected changes of his own.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Alex van Warmerdam


Alex van Warmerdam
Film-maker, writer, designer, director and actor Alex van Warmerdam was born on 14 August 1952 in Haarlem. After studying at the Graphic School he went on to train at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and was co-founder of the legendary music-theatre company, Hauser Orkater. Since 1980 he has made ten theatre shows with his company, De Mexicaanse Hond (The Mexican Hound), including Graniet (Granite), Kaatje Is Verdronken (Katie has been drowned), Kleine Teun en Adel Blank. His collected theatre works and his novel De Hand van een Vreemde (The Hand of a Stranger) were published by Thomas Rap publishing house. Besides his many film prizes, he was awarded the prestigious Prins Bernhard Prize for Culture for his entire theatre and film oeuvre, the Albert van Dalsum Prize by the city of Amsterdam and the Dutch/Flemish Theatre Writers Prize.

At the end of the '70s, he wrote the script and the storyboard for the filming of Hauser Orkater's Entree Brussels and Striptease, together with Jim van der Woude and director Frans Weisz. After the short film De Stedeling (The Townee), he made his first feature film, Abel, in 1986, followed by De Noordelingen (The Northerners), De Jurk (The Dress) and Kleine Teun (Little Tony)


Imdb link: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0912334/

Filmography:
1. De laatste dagen van Emma Blank (2009) aka The Last Days of Emma Blank
2. Ober (2006) aka Waiter
3. Grimm (2003)
4. Kleine Teun (1998) aka Little Tony
5. Jurk, De (1996) aka The Dress
6. Noorderlingen, De (1992) aka The Northerners
7. Abel (1986)

The Last Days of Emma Blank

The Last Days of Emma Blank(2009)
Dir:Alex van Warmerdam
Country;Netherlands

A she-devil holed up in a house in the Dutch dunes waits impatiently for death in "The Last Days of Emma Blank." The bitter irony of Dutch scribe-helmer-thesp Alex van Warmerdam's latest is that Emma's servants are possibly even more eager to see their boss-from-hell expire. More generally off-kilter than deadpan, this technically impressive ensembler from one of the Netherlands' few recognizable names suffers from an uneven tone and did just OK biz at home last May. International premiere at Venice will kick off the usual round of fests, with a possible afterlife in ancillary.

"The Last Days of Emma Blank" is a reworked version of van Warmerdam's 1999 play "Adel Blank." When that work premiered, the Dutch multihyphenate called his eponymous protag "Hitler in a dress," but that is an inadequate description. Indeed, Mrs. Blank is a domestic tyrant and always impeccably dressed, and there are plenty of references to Nazism (including a priceless gag involving a moustache). But the way in which van Warmerdam has constructed his screenplay makes it impossible for the character to personify evil incarnate. Emma is evil simply because she gets away with it.

The crux of "Emma Blank" is that the servants -- nitpicky butler Haneveld (Gene Bervoets); portly, no-nonsense cook Bella (Annet Malherbe); inexperienced chamber maid Gonnie (Eva van de Wijdeven); and randy handyman Meijer (Gijs Naber) -- put up with Emma's egregious lack of manners because they believe they will receive part of her inheritance. And to hear from Emma herself, the day she'll croak isn't too far off, so her servants swallow her increasingly ridiculous, often chuckle-inducing demands.

As is often the case in van Warmerdam's universe, nothing is what it seems. But whereas in his previous outings ("Waiter," "Little Tony") his slightly askew version of the real world felt coherent and somehow possible, in "Emma Blank," the mix of non sequiturs, deadpan comedy, more sincere drama and just plain wacky occurrences never quite gels.

The weirdest addition here is the character of Theo, played by van Warmerdam himself, who functions as the household dog, often humping his boss's leg and having to be taken outside to relieve himself. Rather than providing comic relief, the character unbalances the otherwise semi-serious tone.

Though the mood wavers, the ensemble acting is uniformly strong. Young van de Wijdeven, especially, is so convincing as the haughty maid, it's hard to believe the actress also played white-trash Desie in local B.O. hit "Dunya and Desie."

Though unmistakably a van Warmerdam film -- not least because of his presence onscreen -- "Emma Blank" seems infused with southern-Gothic elements, as if the helmer had been on a David Gordon Green binge before reworking his play. This feeling is reinforced by van Warmerdam's own score, which blends folksy guitar and harmonica, and the design for Emma's house, with its white-ledged windows and tarred walls. The rest of the tech package, led by Tom Erisman's impressive widescreen lensing, is slick.

Ober

Ober (2006) aka Waiter
Dir:Alex van Warmerdam
Country:Netherlands

Ober, was one of the MANY films shown at the Seattle International Film Festival this year and one of the few I selected to view. Ober is a very black comedy which in many ways is an insider joke that only writers would fully appreciate. Often times when deeply involved in a writing project whether it is a screen play,stage play, or novel, a writer will feel like his/her characters have "taken on a life of their own". Well, this is what happens to Herman the screenwriter whose storyline begins to displease Edgar his main character.

There are some violent scenes, but so overplayed those scenes seem to be more parodies of movie violence than the "real" movie violence.

One scene toward the middle of this film is especially funny and painful at the same time. It involves an old shopkeeper and a bow and arrows. That scene appears to have been shot in "real" time,and with minimum edited put in the movie in real time. Funny and painful, but funny anyway.

Ober, which is German and Dutch for "waiter" is subtitled which for me was annoying. I understand a little bit of Dutch so I could pick up on some of the dialog and spent so much energy on listening, I missed reading some of the subtitles. It would be nice if this wacky gem could be dubbed into English.

Grimm

Grimm (2003)

Dir;Alex van warmerdam
Country:Netherlands

This is a story about a brother and a sister going on a journey together, because their parents didn't have money to support them anymore.

Where the movie is about a journey, the movie itself is like a journey too, where the viewer constantly falls into amazement, excitement, recognition, and sometimes a laughing fit. Its a surreal story that starts of exactly the same as Hansel and Grettel, but where you expect the brother and sister to find a house of candy, the movie takes a totally different turn, and goes on like that. Every time you think you know whats going to happen, its like the director says "ha ha, but I'm not that predictable" and sticking out his tong to you. This keeps the movie exciting and exhilarating till the end.

Little Tony

Little Tony (1998)
Dir:Alex van Warmerdam
Country:Netherlands

For his fourth feature, Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam based this dark Dutch comedy on his own play about power struggles within a menage a trois at an isolated farmhouse where dull-witted farmer Brand (van Warmerdam) lives with his overweight wife Keet (Annet Malherbe), who is unable to bear a child. Since Brand is illiterate, Keet invites bright city gal Lena (Ariane Schluter) into the house to give Brand some book learning. As Brand becomes attracted to his curvy teacher, he gets encouragement from Keet, who makes him tell Lena that he and Keet are brother and sister. Lena moves in, and Brand is soon trapped between the two women. Keet represses her natural hostility toward Lena and moves into the background as Lena gives birth to Little Tony. At this point, Keet plans to get rid of Lena, but there are complications and twists. Shown in the Certain Regard section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

The Dress

The Dress(1996)
Dir:alex van Warmerdam
Country:Netherlands

The Dress is a tale filled with sex, violence, comedy and drama as it follows the life of a dress. Conceived under a cloud of frustration and despair, the dress serves as the hub in a great wheel of misfortune in an extraordinary sequence of events that envelopes both the dress and those fatefully drawn into its universe. An aloof artist, a virginal school girl, an unfulfilled maid, a lowly train conductor and a broken business executive, all become involuntary players in a macabre game of tag. No one who comes in contact with the dress can escape its dramatic, shocking and hilarious consequences.

The Northeners

The Northeners(1992)
Dir;Alex van Warmerdam
Country:Netherlands

A surreal black comedy set in a decrepit 1960's housing development. When his mother is drawn into sainthood and the resulting frustrations of his father become too difficult to manage, Thomas, a young boy, becomes obsessed with events on the broadcast news. The liberation of the Belgian Congo is taking place and Thomas becomes Lumumba, one of the contenders as the Congo's new leader. He is encouraged in this escapism by Plagge, the postman who reads all the mail and knows all of the bizzarre and intimate secrets of the eccentric inhabitants of the estate.

Abel

Abel(1986)
Dir;Alex van Warmerdam
Country:Netherlands

With lots of insider Dutch jokes, this eccentric and uneven comedy from the Netherlands won't be to everyone's tastes. The Abel of the title is a 31-year-old weirdo who has never left the house he shares with his overly doting mother and his fractious father. The mother becomes increasingly strange in her behaviour and the fighting between the father and son intensify. When Abel gets thrown out of the family home, he finds solace in the arms of loose-living woman Zus, who, coincidentally, has been offering her ample breast as a comfort to Abel's father in times of trial. The visual gags are constant and the characters quirky, but it gets wearing after a time, which is a pity, because writer-director van Warmerdam, who also takes the lead role, shows he's got some good ideas bubbling around in here somewhere.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Poetry

Poetry(2010)
Dir:Chang-dong Lee
Country: Korea

Three years after Secret Sunshine, acclaimed director Lee Chang Dong made a splash at the Cannes Festival again in 2010 with his Poetry winning Best Screenplay. Lee wrote the bittersweet story with veteran actress Yoon Jeong Hee in mind for the gentle role of an inquisitive grandmother who seeks solace through writing. One of Korea's most famous and prolific actresses during the late sixties and seventies, Yoon Jeong Hee came out of retirement to star in Poetry, her first film in 15 years. Also co-starring Ahn Nae Sang (Fate), seventies action star Kim Hee Ra, and poet Kim Yong Taek, Poetry quietly writes the hope, tragedy, vulnerability, and tenacity of life on screen. Grandmother Mi Ja (Yoon Jeong Hee) works part-time as a caretaker, and struggles to raise a teen grandson (David Lee, Paradise Murdered) by herself. Despite her tough situation, she speaks softly, dresses fashionably, and approaches the world with child-like curiosity. Enrolling in a poetry class, she endeavors to capture life in verse form, but her simple dream of completing a poem is stalled by the early signs of Alzheimer's disease and the heavy financial and emotional burden of her grandson's shocking wrongdoing.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Nothing Personal


Nothing Personal (2009)
Director:Urszula Antoniak
Country:
Ireland | Netherlands
11 wins & 6 nominations See more awards »


Alone in her empty flat, from her window Anne observes the people passing by who nervously snatch up the personal belongings and pieces of furniture she has put out on the pavement. Her final gesture of taking a ring off her finger signals she is leaving her previous life in Holland behind. She goes to Ireland, where she chooses to lead a solitary, wandering existence, striding through the austere landscapes of Connemara. During her travels, she discovers a house that is home to a hermit, Martin.

Darshan:The Embrace

Darshan:The Embrace(2005)
Dir;Jan Kounen
Country:France

Malayalam-speaking Mata Amritanandamayi was born near Kochi, Kerala, India and is one of the most well-known saintly persons of this millennium. She makes it a point to greet and hug everyone who comes for her Darshan, sometimes hugging as many as 45000 people in a 21 hour period. She also heads a Ashram that feeds the hungry and looks after the homeless, apart from being involved in several housing projects in India, and has displayed a special empathy for both humans and animals alike. She has also traveled to France and North America, and has preached about peace and goodwill especially in these troubled times. She has also traveled extensively in India, especially to Kolkata and Varanasi, where she was greeted with millions of devotees. She cautions everyone that during Ramrajya, Lord Ram had to travel across the seas to fight evil; then during the time of Lord Kishan evil was fought...imdb

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Life of Never End Co.Ltd


Life of Never End Co.Ltd (2009)
Dir:Looloo Lu
Country;Taiwan

An audience's favorite at the 2009 Kaohsiung Film Festival, Taiwanese director Looloo Lu's (assistant director for idol drama Honey and Clover) directorial debut Life of Never End Co. Ltd. tugs at heartstrings, making the audience laugh and weep, often at the same time. The touching drama tells the simple story of a seven-year-old girl (Sandy Lin) and her granny (acclaimed actress Lu Yi Ching). Taipei girl Chi Ting is forced to stay with her granny in Kaohsiung when her parents leave her there one day. In Chi Ting's eyes, granny is a weirdo, what with her Taoist medium profession and her claim that she's the director of the so-called "Life of Never End Co. Ltd." Chi Ting wishes to go back to Taipei to find her parents, so she begins to sneak away, only to be caught by the pesky granny every single time. It is 20 years later when Chi Ting finally finds out the secret to granny's "immortality"...

Monday, October 18, 2010

Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom(2010)
Dir:David Michôd
Country:Australia

Following the death of his mother, 17-year-old Joshua 'J' Cody (newcomer James Frecheville) moves in with his doting grandmother, Smurf (Jacki Weaver), and her three criminal sons—the Cody boys. The eldest, “Pope” (Ben Mendelsohn) is an armed robber, in hiding from a cadre of renegade detectives. Then there’s Craig (Sullivan Stapleton), a successful but volatile drug dealer, and the youngest, Darren (Luke Ford), who naïvely follows his brothers' lead.

Just as Pope's business partner and best mate, Barry Brown (Joel Edgerton), decides that he wants out, tensions between the Codys and the police explode. J finds himself at the centre of a cold-blooded revenge plot that turns his family upside down and throws him directly into the path of senior homicide detective, Nathan Leckie (Guy Pearce).

Animal Kingdom is a powerful crime drama that tells the story of a tense battle between a criminal family and the police and of the ordinary lives caught in the middle.

Winner Sundance Festival 2010

Friday, October 15, 2010

Lola

Lola aka grandmother(2009)
Dir:Brilliante Mendoza
Country:Philippines


Two elderly matriarchs bear the consequences of a crime involving their grandsons: one is murdered, the other is the suspect. Frail, poor, but resolute, they individually traipse around to the prisons, funeral homes, and courtrooms of a stormy Manila in hopes of raising the funds necessary for the victim’s burial, and the suspect’s bail bond. Brillante Mendoza, named best director at Cannes for Kinatay (2009), is one of the strongest cinematic voices from the Philippines.

One of the gems I screened at the Tribeca Film Festival this year was Brilliante Mendoza’s Lola. This is the latest film from the Filipino filmmaker who, for me, came out of nowhere. His breakout film, from 2008 was Kinatay was in competition in the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. Mendoza won Prix de la Mise en Scene (Best Director) for Kinatay during the festival. Moreover Kinatay was the first Filipino film accepted for competition for Cannes since 1984. Going into this film, I had huge expectations for the success of it. And my word, it does deliver.

Lola (Grandmother) is the story of a random act of violence and how it’s affected by the grandmother’s of those involved. The film starts with Lola Sepa who is traveling through the mean streets of Manlia with her grandson. They are on their way to make an appointment. When the picture starts, you’re not quite sure what these two are up to. It’s not until they meet up with Lola Sepa’s daughter at a funeral home. They are shopping for coffins. This opening scene is done in a very interesting way. The point of the scene is the purchasing of coffins but before then are smaller scenes of prayers at a church, a memorial, and a mugging on the streets. When we get to the funeral home we think Lola Sepa is buying a coffin for herself but then we find out she’s buying a coffin for her grandson, who was murdered days before.

Lola Carpin is the grandmother of the suspected killer, Mateo. We first meet Lola Carpin visiting her grandson in prison. We are brought to this rather scary and rough Filipino prison filled with equally scary and rough prisoners. On first meeting with her grandson, Lola Carpin is more concerned with general well being of Mateo. She asks him whether or not he has eaten dinner today. This is an organic response of a grandmother visiting her grandson. In this way, her view of Mateo is genuine. Her feelings towards his alleged crime is non-existent rather she ignores the suspicions and the backdrop of the scene.

Mendoza plays this film in an interesting way, dealing with grief and loss through the strength of two elderly matriarchs. One deals with it buy accepting and moving on, the other ignores and manufactures her perfect family. Both are caretakers of their respective families so who are we to judge whether one way is better than the other. Mendoza puts these ideas in the context of the grief. His camera is objective, shot as a documentary, Mendoza follows the action rather than creates it.

Lola is a highly engaging and absolutely riveting piece of true cinema. It plays as an interesting character study of two women dealing with the changing face of their families. Rather than explore whether Mateo is guilty or innocent, Mendoza choses to show the affect of violence on its victims. He also subverts the tropes of the procedural courtroom genre. Placing the fates of the families in the Filipino justice system but never shows the outcome or the stakes. They seem unimportant to the film as if they are unimportant to seeking justice. Brillante Mendoza has created a masterpiece. A gem of a film from a relatively unknown filmmaker from a country not known for its films. Highly recommended!

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Various - CANNES 2009

Various - CANNES 2009 - 48e Selection de la Semaine de la Critique (2009)

Metropolis Cinema Association is pleased to welcome again the Critics' Week in its 48th edition.

Co-organized with the French Cultural Mission and in partnership with Beirut DC, this event will offer the Lebanese public, and for the 5th consecutive year, the pleasure to discover, avant-première in Beirut, 6 feature films, 8 shorts and a medium-length film, all selected at the latest Cannes Film Festival 2009.

Films of different natures and equally different genres, filmmakers that are asserting, each in his singular approach, their way to observe a world in constant ebullition.A gentle French film with a Western touch (Farewell Gary), a day in the life of a family in the Southern Chilean countryside (Huacho), a strong and humanitarian gaze in a Lost Persons Area, a story worthy of the Cohen Brothers transposed into a South American Village (Bad Day to Go Fishing), a magnificent visual poem that emerges from the Iraqi Kurdistan (Whisper with the Wind), a fiction scattered on several continents, in a quest a re-enchantment of the world (Altiplano) and a reflection on the paradoxical state of violence carried by Vincent Gallo and dominated by the music of Anthony and the Johnsons (1989).
7 screenings, each preceded by a short film, to discover new young talents, because that's where the true mission of the Critics' Week lies.

- Together de Eicke Bettinga (14min30)
Allemagne, Royaume-Uni / Germany, United Kingdom – 2009 – 14’ – Couleur / Color – 35 mmRob is driving back home. It’s been a year since the death of his older brother. Upon Rob’s arrival it is clear that the family is still learning how to cope with their loss. The relationship between Rob and his father is awkward. There is a sense that the father blames Rob for moving on too fast, while Rob’s understanding of the reality, even a year later, is still distorted. Rob decides that in order to get through to his father he’ll have to “force” hisaffection onto him.
- Noche Adentro de Pablo Lamar (17min30)
Paraguay, Argentine / Paraguay, Argentina - 2009 – 17’ – Couleur / Color – 35mm
The newlyweds have already left the party where the guests are still dancing. The bride has bled to death and the groom carries the body. He drags her down the stairs and along a long corridor until they fall down. At the shore the groom gives her away to the river, floating in a boat.
- C'est gratuit pour les filles de Marie Amachoukeli et Claire Burger (22min)
France – 2009 – 23’ – Couleur / Color – 35 mm
In only a few days, Laetitia will have her hairdressing diploma. She and her best friend Yeliz will be able to realize their dream: open a hair salon together. But before taking her exam, Laetitia decides to go to a party.
- Tulum (La virée) de Dalibor Matanic (15min)
Croatie / Croatia – 2009 – 15’ – Couleur / Color – 35 mm
A girl is enjoying with her friends a careless summer day on the sunlit streets of Vukovar and quiet river-banks of Danube, where light-heartedness and leisure make everything seem nice and simple. They are not aware that the youthful idyll might be easily broken.
- Slitage (Seeds of the Fall) de Patrick Eklund (18min30)
Suède / Sweden – 2009 – 17’30’’ – Couleur / Color – 35 mm
Middle-aged couple Rolf and Eva live in a passionless relationship. They wear and tear at each other and Eva begins to feel sexually frustrated. One night she tries to seduce Rolf. He dismisses her but then something happens that will change their relationship forever.

Bonuses :- Ahendu nde sapukai (Argentine - Paraguay - 11min - 110 Mb)
- 5 Directors Interviews (27min30 - 268 Mb)

Last Train Home

Last Train Home(2009)
Dir;Lixin Fan
Country:China

Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year’s holiday. This mass exodus is the world’s largest human migration—an epic spectacle that reveals a country tragically caught between its rural past and industrial future.
Working over several years in classic verite style, Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan (with the producers of the award-winning hit documentary Up the Yangtze) travels with one couple who have embarked on this annual trek for almost two decades. Like so many of China’s rural poor, Changhua and Sugin Zhang left behind their two infant children for gruelling factory jobs. Their daughter Qin—now a restless and rebellious teenager—both bitterly resents their absence and longs for her own freedom away from school, much to the utter devastation of her parents. Emotionally engaging and starkly beautiful, Last Train Home’s intimate observation of one fractured family sheds light on the human cost of China’s ascendance as an economic superpower.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Oxhide

Oxhide(2005)
Dir: Jiavin Liu
Country:China

The most important Chinese film of the past several years—and one of the most astonishing recent films from any country—doesn’t come from the so-called Sixth Generation, formerly underground Chinese rebel directors whose output has fed Western film festivals regularly since the early 90s (e.g., Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, and Zhang Yuan). Nor does it come from the newly anointed masters of the Fifth Generation, whose leaders, Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, are busying themselves these days crafting media content, cinema morphed into blockbuster-ready marketing opportunities. The film is called Oxhide (a literal, though pleasantly strange direct translation of the Chinese title Niupi ), and it comes from young female first-time director Liu Jiayin.

Liu is a 23 year old Beijinger currently enrolled in the Masters program of the literature (i.e., screenwriting) department of the Beijing Film Academy . Oxhide is notionally underground: it was produced outside of the system, which means that the director made it by herself, and isn’t interested in submitting her film to the Film Bureau for its approval (which doesn’t much matter: they ignore her, she ignores them). After premiering in Berlin, Oxhide is making the rounds of foreign festivals, where it has already won a clutch of top prizes (including Vancouver’s Dragons and Tigers Award, the Jeonju JJ Star Award, the Hong Kong International Film Festival’s Golden DV Award), and has been shown in China at at least one semi-private Beijing screening.

Oxhide stands out from the multitudes of digital films that bubble up every month from the astonishingly fertile cultural well of present-day Beijing due to its ambition, its pure nerviness, and the extent to which it has achieved the outsize goals it sets for itself. Liu’s subject is her immediate family: the film is about a father, mother, and daughter, played by her father, her mother, and herself (there’s also a cat who pops up once in a while). It is shot entirely in their tiny apartment near the main train line in southern Beijing . The parents design and manufacture leather purses and bags, but their business seems to be failing. The daughter is very short and isn’t growing, a source of great concern and disappointment to her father. The family makes purses, prepares food, eats, squabbles, and sleeps, all in a warren of tiny, cramped spaces that they occupy so fully there’s barely enough room for the air that they need to breath.

So far, so minimal. Liu’s formal choices are absolutely clear and unvaried. The film is in 23 scenes, each scene shot in one continuous take from a stationary camera. The shortest shot is just under two minutes; the longest is a Jeanne Dielman-like dinner preparation. Its format is widescreen DV, Liu using the frame to capture what looks at first like merely the middle slice of each scene: often all we can see are torsos, hands, the top of a table, or the bottom of a couple of heads. This aesthetic choice is partly dictated by the extremely cramped space she lives in, one that’s typical for working-class Beijingers still housed in the un-modernized parts of the city centre. ‘Scope framing accentuates this sense of extremely tight focus, of a scene that is made only partially visible. We only get pieces, and have to infer the rest from visual and aural clues. Within these constraints, Liu knows how to design the frame so that it sings. Each setup is precisely arranged, with an astonishingly well-developed sense of balance and, in scenes with action, a beautifully clear choreography of movement in counterpoint.

Liu’s precise control of offscreen sound and space keeps the film intelligible: even if the beginning of a scene is difficult to decipher, we eventually hear and see enough to know what’s important. One characteristic example: the second scene opens with a view down to a desktop. A bit of a machine is in the upper right, and we hear voices apparently discussing Chinese calligraphy. Finally, the conversation resolves into the father instructing his daughter about formatting a text; she types in response to each of his suggestions; and after about six minutes, the visual punch line: the machine in the upper right starts to sputter, and coloured pages emerge. It’s a printer, and we can almost make out the content of the shop signs she’s printing for her father: “50% off sale.” While the signs are printing, Liu uses the time and extra screen space to run her brief credits, naming herself as the film’s screenwriter, cinematographer, and director.

This scene also exemplifies a principle of Oxhide’s dramatic construction: Liu loves a punch-line. Though she’s chosen a rigorous form, Oxhide is genuinely funny. Out of the stressed, frequently quarrelsome interactions of the family, Liu finds moments of humour, and places them right at the end of most of her chapters. Whether it’s her father’s realization that a pull-up bar he has engineered can’t actually help lengthen his daughter’s lower body, or his insistence that a truly correct sesame paste can be made only by stirring the glop clockwise, many of the chapters play as comedy.

Though Liu insists the film is carefully scripted, the relentlessly close, absolutely still camera catches the family in what feel like documentary-style moments of self-revelation. Chapters that end in abrupt flares of minor violence are as frequent as punch lines. We learn that much of the stress is economic: the family is getting poorer—they used to have a car and a larger apartment—and now there seem to be a monthly struggle to meet the rent. The film’s central crisis, a moral as well as a financial one, is precipitated by the act of printing those “sale” signs. Customers, the father complains, demand discounts, but for him discounting his goods is akin to denigrating the value of his labour and skill. It’s a question of dignity, his definition of his worth as a person. Liu characteristically converts her father’s unbearable sense of humiliation into a moment of humour when he apologizes to the long-expired cow whose skin he’s working with for failing to do justice to said cow’s sacrifice.

The father emerges as something of a tragic figure by the final chapters: a generous sensibility ground down by a society that no longer has space for his art. Liu Jiayin’s accomplishment here is to give the viewers a feeling that they are discovering a new way of looking, coming into being right before their eyes. Her film’s gaze shows us what we couldn’t see otherwise: people rich with potential who can’t grow, precisely because the spaces that they inhabit are too small for them. Oxhide sections and distorts the outsized figure of the father, recapturing him in claustrophobic framings that can’t contain the grandeur of his wounded dignity. At the same time, it gently mocks the figure of the daughter, who seems to submit to such a limited space and refuses to grow.

Liu’s restrictive apparatus is paradoxically liberating. We feel these characters vibrating outside of the frame: their existence—and Liu has surely made a film communicating an existential urgency—is made palpable by our experience of seeing them partial, and inferring the rest. The film not only affirms its characters’ vitality, it also calls an activated, participatory viewer into being by exercising our creativity as well. O ne of the last lines the father has—“I have a lot of things waiting to be fulfilled”—is followed by his plaintive calling out, in the dark, to his wife and daughter, who don’t answer. But the palpable vitality with which the film imbues its family assures us that they are anything but defeated. With films as confidently and stunningly radical as Oxhide, Chinese cinema’s future looks no less bright.

Oxhide II (2009)
Dir:Jiavin Liu
Country:China
Just as in her previous film, Oxhide, the Chinese director films herself and her parents in their rather claustrophobic apartment with documentary realism. She uses nine fixed camera positions, with which she turns clockwise around the kitchen table (so that the last shot has exactly the same perspective as the first). The shots, from 5 to 20 minutes long, were made from close by, so that the three family members largely remain off-screen. The resulting rigorously minimalist story passes in real time: Oxhide II is as long as it takes to clear a worktable, to prepare Chinese dumplings on it and to eat them. While the meal is being prepared, the three talk occasionally about the problems surrounding their bag shop, with the wife and daughter having a serious word with the father. However, as long as they talk about making dumplings, the family is united.

Kinatay

Kinatay(2009)
Dir:Brillante Mendoza
Country:Philippines

Dedicate a movie to one thing, respect the singular attention of the camera, and a film should be rich enough to overcome just about anything. Brillante Mendoza gives almost half of his film Kinatay to the nocturnal drive of a group of policemen out of Manila to its suburbs, and another half hour of night awaits them at their destination, a police black site. This rich vision of so much gloom, dim suspension, no action, no spectacle, no drama is a beautiful thing, something out of an avant-garde film dedicated to textures, subtle shifts in color, and spatial uncertainty of a sunless world. There is a story of course, of a young police trainee just married (that very day!) taken along on an off -he-books mission to torture a drug addicted stripper, and for a long time Mendoza plays the story like Haneke’s Funny Games (or a Park film), building up the audience’s desire for his hero to act violently, here to lash out at his sadistic superiors. And some of Kinatay is that tasteless, with its handholding music (riffing off of Kubrick’s synth scores for A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket) and artless, didactic cutaways That Explain Motivation by showing the cops’ horrific acts, the home that must be thought of. But, as with Mendoza’s previous film Serbis, the rest of the movie is given as a handheld dedication to space—there, a porno theater, here, a sinister, anonymous police van traveling great distances at night for the purpose of terrible things, and later a torture house. But it is a space of obscurity, of uncertainty in a morally certain situation, and so the space, covered and run over again and again by the roving camera, takes on an abstraction nearly outside the story itself. A palette of sleek grays makes a death grip on this film that started—again, didactically—in daylight with a marriage, and Kinatay’s immersion into nightfall stands strong, splendidly, as independent force.

A grim Filipino tale of extreme police corruption that sparked as much outrage at Cannes as Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist,” not least when its helmer, current festival mainstay Brillante Mendoza, coolly picked up the Best Director prize. If you were paying even vague attention to the furore at the time, you’ve by now heard the film’s story in a nutshell: a naive police cadet is drafted by one of his superiors into a secret after-hours mission, which turns out to be the merciless rape, murder and dismemberment of a prostitute, a procedure depicted in real time and in shadowy, sometimes wincingly graphic, detail.

It’s not hard to see what about the film ruffled so feathers — but accusations that Mendoza is dealing in dangerous or self-gratifying torture-porn prove unfounded as the film, not unlike Gaspar Noé’s “Irréversible,” reveals its rigid moral framework from the outset. Our perspective mirrors that of the increasingly horrified protagonist throughout; we lose our grasp of the situation together with him and suffer the significant emotional consequences.

Apparently based on true events, the film derives none of the pleasure from its pain that much mainstream genre film does, rather using the horrific central incident to probe social weaknesses. Like his quieter, more recent (and more accomplished) “Lola,” the film amounts to a stinging attack on Filipino bureaucracy, sometimes via over-egged symbolism, but often via intelligent observational detail. “Kinatay” is a hard film to love, and an even harder one to like, but it’s difficult to stand unaffected by its long night’s journey into day.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Chekist

Chekist(1992)
Dir:Aleksandr Rogozhkin
Country:Russia

A small Russian town in the early 1900′s is the backdrop for this deeply disturbing film about a group of communist revolutionaries called the cheka-men who spend their days rounding up their political rivals for execution. The majority of the film takes place inside the basement of a charnel house. We are witnesses to execution after execution as people are killed with rapid expediency and professionalism. Men, women and children are forced to strip, stand against a wall, and then are shot. When the dead are removed, five more are brought in and the atrocity is committed again.
There is not a moments reprieve from the brutality as director Rogozhkin plants the camera and the story inside that basement. I found his examination of the assassin’s mindset most interesting. Early on, the cheka-men seem indifferent to their jobs, but as the film winds down, we see that all the killing has slowly begun to erode their very souls. Igor Sergeyev is amazing as the ambitious chekist who finds himself caught up in a machine of death that he helped to create and slowly losing his mind. The film is like passing a car accident on a highway, it’s horrible and you might not like what you see but you can’t take your eyes off of it. A disturbing film that is hard to forget.

Under the Hawthorn Tree

Under the Hawthorn Tree(2010)
Dir:Zhang Yimou
Country:China


Zhang Yimou's highly anticipated film, which is adapted from a popular novel of the same name from Ai Mi, harkens back to the innocence of the 1970's in presenting this pure and moving tear jerking love story, set in 1975 in a small village in Yichang City, Hubei Province. The story is of an unfulfilled romance between Jingqiu and a young man named Laosan during their “zhiqing” days towards the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Zhiqing refers to young urbanites who were sent to the countryside during that turbulent decade. Jingqiu, who had had a difficult life after her father was labeled a right-winger, met the handsome Laosan, who had a promising future because of his high-ranking military officer father. The couple fall in love, despite the gulf between their backgrounds. The only question remains is if their romance ever become fulfilled.

Homero Manzi, a poet in the storm

Homero Manzi, a poet in the storm(2009)

Dir:Eduardo Spagnuolo
Country:Argentina

Bio-pic which chronicles the life and work of one of its greatest poets, Argentine, author of famous tangos such as "Malena", "South" and "Barrio de tango".

The story unf
olds in a narrative plot where the historical time and social conditions and becomes in stock and fictional scenes, real-life recreation of Homero Manzi Añatuya from his childhood, his adolescence in the neighborhood of Pompeii as well as maturity facing the glare of the Buenos Aires upper class by the foreign culture, especially the French. As an important radical political approach does not hesitate to President Perón, who recognized as representative of the people of the underclass and the poor of the country.



Homero Manzi is part of national and popular art movement of the early century and rescues in his poems the suburb where they mixed poor European immigrants and newly arrived countrymen to the city.

With a memorable performance of actor Carlos Portaluppi, like Homero Manzi, the film recreates in his band, 28 of his tangos like "Old Blind", "Romance de barrio", "Che bandoneon. Choreographed tango shows, theatrical scenes, film images that Manzi filmed as "The Gaucho War," "My poor dear mother," "The Last Payador", "Pampa Barbara."

His life, his passions and his true love. His tangos back to the screen not only as a document of his work, but as lines of opinion that are combined with fictional scenes, showing that the work of Homero Manzi is a reflection of what was his life, his feelings and convictions .

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Popular Music

Popular Music(2004)
Director: Reza Bagher
Country:Sweden/Finland

Growing up in Pajala isn't much fun for Matti and Niila. Between the puritanical community, abusive parents, a kiddy-fiddling peddler and a janitor who uses his shoes to sedate children who muck around, it's awful. In fact, it looks pretty bleak for them until Grandma's funeral where Niila's American cousins introduce them to The Beatles. From that day on they decide upon their destiny: to become rock'n'roll stars!

Friday, October 08, 2010

The Feast of the Goat

The Feast of the Goat(2005)
Dir;Luis Llosa
Writer:Maro Vargas Llosa
Country:Spain

Based on the best-selling novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, this is the story of Urania Cabral, a beautiful, kind, intelligent and independent Manhattan lawyer whom, after 30 years returns to República Dominicana to face her ghosts... and the horrifying circumstances that altered her life forever when she was a teenager and Rafael Leónidas Trujillo a.k.a El Chivo (The Goat) was the iron-handed ruler of this island paradise... after Urania faces her past, nothing in her present or future will ever be the same again.

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Submarino

Submarino(2010)
Dir:Thomas Vinterberg
Country;Denmark
As children, Nick and his little brother take care of their baby brother while their mother drinks herself senseless. But the baby dies, and both brothers blame themselves. Many years later, Nick is out of prison after serving time for an assault. He drinks, lives in a shelter and tries to help an old friend. When their mother dies, Nick meets his brother at the funeral. The brother, who remains nameless, is a single father to a young boy, but also supports a drug habit that is spiraling out of control. When an opportunity presents itself, he becomes a drug dealer to secure his son's future. Eventually, the two brothers meet again. (imdb)

A story about two estranged brothers, marked by a childhood of gloom. They were separated from each other at a young age by a tragedy that split their entire family. Today, Nick's life is drenched in alcohol and plagued by violence, while his kid brother, a solo-parent, struggles as a junkie to give his son a better life. Their paths cross, making a confrontation inevitable, but is redemption possible? (det danske institut)

I have not read the novel, and barely knew that this was based upon one. This film is like a splinter in your heart, from the first frame to the last. It is pushed to the limit of what we can handle of authentic misery. The social realism, so unrelenting, such rich detail to it, and none of it strains credulity. I was interested in this from when I first heard of it, and when I found out it was by Thomas Vinterberg, the man behind Festen and Dear Wendy, I knew I would watch this. He does wonders with the editing and the cinematography, creating a bleak and mundane(not to be confused with ugly or boring) feel to the visuals, matching the lives of the people we are witnessing and their environment. The camera stays "in the background", letting what we see speak for itself. This has impeccable writing, the events, the dialog(and its delivery), the crowning little touches, it's all excellent. In the end, what truly makes this work beyond belief is the amazing acting from everyone(who are all perfectly cast, as well), and that definitely also goes for the children(who, might I add, are charming and sweet kids, too, including the baby; seriously, can't you count on one hand the infants in movies that are *genuinely* cute?

This is one of the only ones, in over a century of the medium), who deliver some of the most astonishing performances seen from ones around that age. Honestly, there is perhaps one single(and entirely understandable) moment that isn't completely convincing, but everything that comes before or since is. In spite of all that we see them do, we sympathize with the credible and well-developed characters. There is a lot of disturbing content, a bit of violence, some sexuality and infrequent strong language in this. I recommend this to anyone mature enough for the subject matter, at least if you can handle it. 10/10

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Three Step Dancing

Three Step Dancing(2003)

Director:Salvatore Mereu

Country:Italy
4 wins & 4 nominations See more »

Four separate-but-interconnected stories - one for each season - about life in Sardinia.

Developing through four episodes marked by the four seasons, the film tells the story of many characters of different ages, strictly linked to Sardinia's world and whose fates seem to become accidentally intertwined.

Ballo a tre passi is a fine example of the encouraging renaissance of independent Italian cinema, in which young directors are turning afresh to regional subjects and locations. Like L'isola and Il dono, Ballo a tre passi skillfully conjures up a sense of its locale, avoids overdramatic narrative and is more concerned with the evocation of mood and atmosphere and a truth that can be found in simplicity and incident.

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Raging Sun, Raging Sky

Raging Sun, Raging Sky(2009)
Dir;Julián Hernández
Country;Mexico

The power of desire has rarely been so ravishingly lensed as in "Raging Sun, Raging Sky," cult helmer Julian Hernandez's stunning ode to love and sex, which literally elevates both to mythological heights.

A passionate exploration of love, sex and destiny from acclaimed director Julián Hernández (Broken Sky), Raging Sun, Raging Sky, is a rich, transcendent film experience worthy of its great critical acclaim. Kieri and Ryo, two young, handsome Mexican men have an unquestioning love for each other; a love expressed through an intense sexual bond that gives meaning to both their lives. When Ryo is abducted, Kieri embarks a journey to reunite with his soul mate under the watchful eye of a female spirit. But the voyage is not an easy one and when Ryo escapes, a chain of events will test the lovers true devotion to each other. Raging Sun, Raging Sky is a visually stunning ode to the nude male form and power of desire.

Saturday, October 02, 2010

I'm gonna explode

Voy a explotar (2008) aka I'm gonna explode
Dir:Gerardo Naranjo
Country: Mexico
4 wins & 2 nominations See more »

Voy a Explotar (I’m Gonna Explode) is the contemporary Mexican teenage Pierrot le Fou. It knows this, and it wants you to know it, and it doesn’t care if this makes you hate it on principle. The third feature by Gerardo Naranjo (director of Drama/Mex, co-writer and star of Azazel Jacobs‘ The GoodTimeskid), it’s the rare love letter to influence that’s infused with enough personal style and sentiment to transform the stolen into something thrilling and moving.

15 year-old Maru (Maria Deschamps) is a prep school bad girl with a mangy mane of hair and, apparently, a drinking problem. When spoiled little rich boy son of a right-wing politician Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago) gets kicked out of his school and transfers to Maru’s, he introduces himself via faking his own hanging at a talent show. The girl is instantly besotted. “He exists, but I also made him up,” she writes in a letter to a friend which doubles as internal monologue. “The best part is that he’s angry.” Roman is equally smitten, and soon the pair are scheming to run away together.

Or so they want their parents to think; really, they’re camped out in a tent on the roof of Roman’s father’s mansion. Maru’s hysterical mother and sister come over to the house to become part of the rescue effort––which, under the oversight of Roman’s distant dad, consists mainly of drinking tequila and waiting for clues to come to him. With a stolen cell phone, Roman calls daddy’s security detail with false leads to get the grown ups out of the house so that he and Maru can crawl downstairs and collect provisions. It’s only when the pair decide to finally leave home for real that their saga starts to hew to the traditional tropes of love-on-the-run.

Explotar is so blatantly indebted to Pierrot le Fou that it’s tempting to play Count the References –– here Maru clomps around singing “I don’t know what to do!” There the screen fills with her notebook-scrawled ephemera about romantic destiny! But Naranjo has made Maru more than the beautiful mystery that embodies the typical Godard woman. This girl is a loud-mouthed firecracker who vacillates between unguarded passion for Roman and brittle rejection of his advances. In cutting off her hair to become Roman’s “twin”, Maru reveals that her attraction to Roman is actually a kind of jealousy. Deluded as she is about most elements of the real world and grown-up life, she knows her power over Roman ends the moment she becomes a “put outer.” even if she puts out in the name of love, and there’s a resentment there. She’s the kind of realistically conflicted girl almost never seen on screen.

The sex scenes between the two teenagers are surprisingly sexy, not because of what you see but because there isn’t much to see at all. Though the nudity is borderline frank in that Euro, “teenage breasts=freedom” sort of way, it’s not overtly titillating so much as it’s recognizably real, from the nervous twitching leading up to it to the lack of assuredness that runs throughout. Maru and Roman’s romance is brittle and tentative at first, but then the floodgates open, at which point, with an almost fin de siecle spirit, it gushes.

The peak of Maru and Roman’s relationship coincides with the puncture of their invincibility. Once they cement that they are one another’s “perfect accomplice,” as Maru puts it, the time comes to pay the bill for their rebellion. This is the essence of teenage romance ––the first love will be the last love–– and thus, it’s something we’ve seen on screen before. What feels unique, and genuinely tragic, about Explode’s denouement is not that shit gets violent and people get hurt, but that Maru and Roman, like most kids, clearly never really wanted to get in trouble at all. Mouthy and lazy but ultimately uninterested in any kind of criminal nihilism that would take them too far away from the womb of parental-funded modern comforts, Maru and Roman went looking for a Ferris Bueller-style charmed but temporary time-out from mundane responsibility, and end up bumbling into Bonnie and Clyde. In these climes of quirky indie romantic lessons learned, the punishment of starry-eyed delusion feels not only refreshing, but almost like a corrective with political implications.

Eyes Wide Open

Eyes Wide Open(2009)

Director:Haim Tabakman

Country:Israel
Homosexuality in the Orthodox community is the subject of a very dark and disturbing Israeli film, Eyes Wide Open (Einaym Pkuhot) which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Aaron Fleishman (Zohar Shtrauss) is a father of 4 who takes over the family kosher butcher shop following the death of his father. Aarons observant world is turned upside down with the arrival of a young Yeshiva student Ezri (Ran Danker). When Aaron and Ezri begin spending time together, Aaron is quickly ostracized within the Orthodox community. Confronted by Rabbi Vaisben (Tzahi Grad), Aaron declares he was dead before meeting Ezri. We see how quickly social control turns violent and ugly in the Orthodox community when Ezri is forced to leave. Eyes Wide Open is set during a dark and wet winter in Jerusalem. Rain and the darkness of night are used as metaphors for the ritual of cleansing and the omnipresent pressure to conform in the Orthodox community. It has a strong cast and delivers a powerful message in a country divided by debates about the growing influence of the Orthodox Jewish community.

Friday, October 01, 2010

Changement d'adresse

Changement d'adresse (2006)
Director: Emmanuel Mouret
Country: France



Rating: 6,8/10
Runtime: 85
Language: french
Country: France
Color: color
IMDb Link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0759509/

Director: Emmanuel Mouret
Cast:
Emmanuel Mouret: David
Frédérique Bel: Anne
Fanny Valette: Julia
Dany Brillant: Julien
Ariane Ascaride: mère de Julia

Description: A musician sharing an apartment, seems to fall in love for a student he gives private lessons to. His flatmate (a girl) thinks she's in love with one of the customer at the copyshop she manages. The love story of the student for the musician doesn't evolve as expected, ...
-----
Sorry and warning people! The value of this movies is much in the dialogues and the wordplays. For instance in the first scene between David and Anne, the talk about his job, which is horn player, the french word for "horn" is "cor", and it's exactly the same phonetic than "corps" which means "body". He offers to show her his "cor" , etc.
It's a finely carved little gem, that french speakers will appreciate for its originality even if they don't like the closed non-action, stage-like, kind of style.
-----
A reasonably adequate (IMHO) review:
http://filmsdefrance.com/FDF_Changement_d_adresse_2006_rev.html

"Mouret surpasses himself not only in his direction (he is clearly a keen student of Eric Rohmer), but also in the quality of his screenplay, which subtly reveals an acute sensitivity for human relationships and an absolute genius for comic word play. The jokes are great (especially the double entendres, which are so sharp you can almost shave with them), but the characters are also well-drawn and totally believable.

Much of the charm of the film lies in the understated acting performances of Mouret and his three co-stars, Frédérique Bel, Fanny Valette and Dany Brillant. It is a terrific ensemble which makes the most of Mouret’s great script, bringing not just a seemingly endless series of smiles and laughs, but also a sense of realism and genuine poignancy – albeit from beneath a thin veil of quirky naivety. Changement d’adresse is unquestionably one of the most satisfying French film comedies in recent years.

ദി ലൈഫ് ആന്‍ഡ്‌ പാഷന്‍ ഓഫ് ജീസസ് ക്രൈസ്റ്റ്

The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ(1903)
Country:France
Decent telling of the story of Jesus from his birth up to the resurrection. This early French feature is full of wonderful imagination and the use of color is a real added bonus. The visual are all very nice and the set decoration is among the best I've seen in any silent film of its era. The biggest problem is that the feature runs just over 40-minutes and it seems like a bunch of short films edited together. There's really no consistent storytelling but instead just various segments from the Bible.

This is an interesting film in a few respects, if not necessarily a very good or entertaining one. It's an early filmed passion play and chronicle of the life of Jesus Christ and is of both religious and film history interest. It becomes more of curio because of its length and extravagance for a film made in the early 1900s. It seems to be the longest story film made to that date. There had been some actuality, or documentary, films already made that were longer, including some boxing matches and a series called 'Army Life' (1900) by R.W. Paul. Nevertheless, film subjects lasting near or longer than 40 minutes were rare until the 1910s.

Jesus has been a popular subject throughout film history, perhaps nevermore so than in the beginning of its history. Before this film, quite a few passion plays had already been filmed. Moreover, these films were generally longer and more elaborate than were other subjects. In 1897, when the cinema was barely more than a year old and when nearly every film was one shot-scene and under a minute in length, a Frenchman named Léar filmed a passion play of 12 scenes, which received popular distribution in Britain and the US, as well as in France. George Hatot's 'La Vie et la Passion de Jésus-Christ' (1897/1898), produced by the Lumiére Company, had 13 tableaux. An American passion play, featuring Horitz villagers, was supposedly even grander and longer. Shortly thereafter, 'The Passion Play of Oberammergau' (1898), which probably didn't have much of anything to do with the plays performed in the village of Oberammergau, contained over 20 scenes. Sigmund Lubin also made a passion play claiming, but lacking, authenticity to the Oberammergau performances. With a lecturer and magic lantern slides, these films would provide as long an entertainment as does the modern feature-length film. In 1899, Alice Guy made 'La Vie de Christ' in 11 tableaux for Gaumont, and again, in 1906, made a passion play of, reportedly, 25 scenes. Pathé, in fact, had made a film on Christ before this picture; their 1900 release consisted of 16 scenes. They, too, would go on to make another one after this, in 1907.

According to film historian Richard Abel ("The Ciné Goes to Town"), there were a few versions of this film sold to exhibitors, and exhibitors may have had the option to purchase individual scenes and may have further edited various passion plays together (these were common practices back then, when exhibitors retained much editorial control over films). Abel says Pathé filmed this over three different periods; others say this production lasted from 1902 to 1905. Actors and styles changed during shootings. The version available from Image Entertainment seems to be complete, if not more than (with the title of 'Passion and Death of Christ'). Abel says the longest version was 32 tableaux. Yet, I counted 35 tableaux separated by title cards and 46 total shots in the version from Image Entertainment.

In the beginning of the history of cinema as an international business, Georges Méliès was the most popular and innovative filmmaker, and, consequently, his films were the most often imitated. Supposedly, this film avoided any reference to prior theatrical productions, says Abel. Upon a second viewing of this film, however, I noticed that this Pathé production, like so many other Pathé films, significantly copies the féeries/fairy films of Méliès. This is especially evident in the soft, fanciful set designs, and the device of female angels guiding characters and events being a variation of the female fairies in Méliès’ fantasy pictures. Additionally, the use of stop-substitutions and superimpositions for trick effects, moving props, and dissolves between scenes and trick effects were trademarks of Méliès adopted religiously by Pathé. The use in this film of many actors or extras to fill and decorate some scenes, which often serve no narrative purpose or biblical fidelity, was also done in Méliès' féeries. This imitation of Méliès' films makes this passion play stand out from the drab, realist set designs that seemed to have been used in other such early passion plays and the location shooting used in later films such as 'From the Manger to the Cross' (1912) and the Christus films made in Italy. They're also in stark contrast to the more realist painted sets used by Ferdinand Zecca, the co-director of 'The Life and Passion of Christ' and Pathé's studio manager for a time, in 'Historie d’une crime' (1901).

Most of the technique and style in 'The Life and Passion of Christ' is common of film-making in the beginning, but there are some notable exceptions. Not many prints from this period exist with tinting, which doesn't seem to have been a prevalent practice yet ('Scrooge; or Marley's Ghost' (1901) is another early example). It's also an early example of Pathé's patented stencil colouring, and their use of bold, red lettering and the rooster logo in the title cards. Pans are used often, including in the Nativity scene, where a pan and tinting changes move the scene between the indoor action of the nativity and the outdoor action of the approaching wise men and gang. Another example of three scenes in one via panning is the Mount of Olives/Kiss of Judas tableaux, where the camera follows Jesus into and out of the woodlands. I haven't seen this kind of extensive panning anywhere else in story films this early in film history (extensive panning was widely done by actuality filmmakers). The use of a window to show outside action is another example of early alternatives to scene dissection (of which there is very little here or in most early films). There's also a match-on-action shot in The Holy Family at Nazareth tableaux, and two medium insert shots later in the film, which are rather unexpected departures from the film's mostly fixed camera, head-on long shot framing tableaux style. I certainly recommend this for those interested in the history of Christianity and cinema.