By Giuseppe Sedia. According to a decision recently voted by the Polish Senate, the remaining state-owned film studios are due to be privatized by 2013. This provision will affect 11 companies including the studio TOR headed by Krzysztof Zanussi. Since the aftermath of the events of 1989, Poland has not […]
The Room of One’s Own: An Interview with Tommy Wiseau
By Peter Rinaldi. “What’s the line for?” a middle aged man asks me. It’s 11:30pm on a Saturday night in Manhattan. I’m in the middle of hundreds of people waiting to get into the Ziegfeld Theater. “The Room”, I answer. “What’s that?” he says, surprised to be totally unaware of […]
Interview with Maria Schneider
By Moira Sullivan. This interview with Maria Schneider was made in March 2001, when she was the guest of honor at the Créteil Films de Femmes festival. This year’s festival, the 33rd, held between 25 March – April 3 2011, is dedicated to Maria Schneider. Maria Schneider was the Guest […]
If history runs, cinema can’t keep walking: an interview with Tinto Brass
By Amy R. Handler. Since the erotic art-house flick Salon Kitty(1975) and, particularly, the infamous Caligula(1979), starring the renowned Sir Arthur John Gielgud, Peter O’Toole and Helen Mirren, the films of Giovanni ‘Tinto’ Brass are considered controversial by most critics and spectators. However, what many may not realize is that […]
Collectivized Creativity: The Rediscovered Films of the CNT
Interview with Richard Prost and Andres Garcia-Aguilera by Christiane Passevant. Richard Prost has made four documentary films on the history of left libertarian movements in Spain. The focus of his work is the period of the Spanish civil war and its importance. The outbreak of revolution in July 1936 transformed […]
‘What circus are you from?’ A Round Table Discussion with Alex de la Iglesia
Presented by Christiane Passevant. Alex de la Iglesia has a unique role in contemporary Spanish cinema. His work simultaneously encapsulates its major tendencies while defying classification. From his first feature film, Accion Mutante(‘Mutant Action’, 1992) to his recent A Sad Trumpet Ballad (Balada triste de trompeta, 2010), and passing through […]
Russia 88: ‘The purer the blood, the more dramatic the degeneracy’
A Brief Interview with Filmmaker Pavel Bardin by Amy R. Handler. Considering Russia’s role in taking Hitler down during WW2 and that its soldiers liberated death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Monowitz-Buna, and Majdanek, it’s questionable how and why Hitler has risen again in that part of the world, where neo-Nazism seems […]
‘For foreigners the Japanese toilet really must be something amazing’: An Interview with Ogigami Naoko
By Doris Lang and Johan Nordström. Of the Japanese female directors active in recent years, Ogigami Naoko (b. 1972) is among those who has garnered the most attention, both at home and abroad. In 1994, after graduating from Chiba University’s Image Science program, she went to the United States to […]
The Most Dangerous Man in America: An Interview with Rick Goldsmith
By Amy R. Handler. The case of Daniel Ellsberg and the ‘Pentagon Papers’ is re-visited in a fascinating documentary by Rick Goldsmith and Judith Ehrlich. It is not surprising that their film, The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers was a 2010 Academy Award nominee. […]
Pieces of Momoko Ando: A Conversation With the Director of Kakera
By Johan Nordström and Doris Lang. Momoko Ando, born in 1982, is one of Japan’s hot and upcoming new directors, whose debut film Kakera: A Piece of Our Liferecently had a simultaneous release in England and Japan, after first having played the festival circuit. Momoko Ando, the daughter of actor-director […]