By Hannah Grayson. Yael Kipper and Ronen Zaretsky’s documentary film follows a group of cashiers as they work in a Tel Aviv supermarket. What we view is a tender portrayal of Russian and Israeli women moving through their everyday tasks and concerns. The plot contains few moments of drama, and […]
The Tribeca Shorts of 2015
May 2, 2015
By Gary M. Kramer. The Tribeca Film Festival’s shorts programs, curated by Sharon Badal offer slices of life that are often more satisfying than the features that play alongside them. The programs are thematically linked. The New York programs—one narrative, one documentary—are always highlights of the fest. In the “New […]
Motherhood and Mourning in Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Unknown Woman
By Francesco Pascuzzi. Already with the film’s title, Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Unknown Woman (La Sconosciuta, 2005) sets out to toy with the audience’s perspective and its perception of the lead character Irena (Ksenia Rappoport). When the protagonist arrives in town[1] and lands herself some menial work in an upscale residential […]
Un Flic: Melville and the Ambiguities
By Tony Williams. On initial release, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Un Flic (1972) disappointed many and has remained in critical limbo to the present day. Despite growing appreciation of its visual style, the reasons why the director adopted such an ambiguous and seemingly incoherent approach still remain mysterious. Any film that followed […]
Steve Hoover and Danny Yourd on Crocodile Gennadiy: A Tribeca Interview
By Gary M. Kramer. Crocodile Gennadiy is Steve Hoover’s compelling documentary—executive produced by Terrence Malick—about the charismatic Gennadiy Mokhnenko, a Ukrainian pastor who rescues drug-addicted kids off the streets and places them in his rehab center, Pilgrim Republic. A combination prison/hospital and police station, the center is a place for […]
Sibs Shongwe-La Mer’s Necktie Youth: A Tribeca Interview
April 25, 2015
By Gary M. Kramer. Necktie Youth is a gorgeous black and white drama writing and directed by Sibs Shongwe-La Mer. Set in Johannesburg, South Africa, the film opens with Emily (Kelly Bates) live streaming her suicide. The effect this action has on a handful of characters plays out throughout the […]
Constancy and Variation: An Autumn Afternoon as Ozu’s Final Testament
April 22, 2015
By Jeremy Carr. An Autumn Afternoon was director Yasujirô Ozu’s final film. He passed away a year after its release, on his 60th birthday, Dec. 12, 1963. Knowing that the film is indeed his last, it’s easy to look at it in terms of being a sort of grand summation […]
Stand, Men of the West! The Battle for Middle-earth (and Britain)
By Laura Crossley. “You’ve enjoyed the film, so now what are you going to do about the message? Tolkien didn’t just write The Lord of the Rings for fun, you know. He wrote it to inspire people, to make people understand that – faced with bad government and threats to […]
Radical Film-Making and Digital Paradox: the case of The Fourth Estate
By Elizabeth Mizon and Lee Salter. Digital media technologies are full of paradoxes. On one hand they are said to open up new opportunities, a “democratisation” of media, but on the other they are said to consolidate not just media power, but also the ideological frameworks that constrain critical creative […]
The Trials of Love, Justice, and Prejudice: Tom Hanks and Jonathan Demme’s film Philadelphia
By Daniel Garrett. In the film Philadelphia (1993), written by Ron Nyswaner and directed by Jonathan Demme, the actor Tom Hanks is impressive for being able to incarnate several perspectives in one man – states of health and malady, youth and sudden age, but also the public and private man, […]