Sátántangó opens to a languid, insidiously ironic shot of cattle traversing the muddy field of a near desolate, neglected communal farm in rural Hungary, as the cows concurrently attempt to mate during the process of migration. The clumsy and awkward episode is reflected in the fluidly tracked, change of perspective shot of a disheveled, sparsely […]
The occasional, labored sound of inertia and friction emitted by the motion of mining cable cars disrupts the unnerving silence of Karrer’s (Miklós Székely B.) austere and sparsely furnished apartment, as the lethargic electric powered conveyances endlessly traverse along the overcast, desolate landscape, obscured by the density of the fog. Karrer abstractedly stares out the […]
Almanac of Fall opens to a bleak and resigned passage from Aleksandr Pushkin: “Even if you kill me, I see no trace, this land is unknown, the devil is probably leading, going round and round in circles.” In a large, austere, and impersonal apartment, a middle-aged woman named Hédi (Hédi Temessy) recounts with detached acceptance […]
André Téchiné’s films exist in a rarefied atmosphere between idyllic nostalgia and haunting memory. Ma Saison Préferée is the bittersweet story of Emilie (Catherine Deneuve), a successful, repressed, middle aged business woman, sensitively told through the banality of everyday life: a pervasive, uncomfortable silence during family dinner; a vague conversation with her degeneratively ill mother […]
A compendium of self-contained multicultural stories featuring ethnically, economically, and existentially diverse children, each at the cusp of a pivotal turning point in their young lives, Living Rights examines the contemporary relevance – and often divergence – between the humanitarian statement crafted by 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that sought […]
During the Q&A, Jean-Marie Téno remarked that he was inspired to shoot Sacred Places as a result of seeing dramatic changes to the format of the 2009 FESPACO film festival in Burkina Faso, where the practice of holding open-air simulcasts of featured films for public viewing around the festival grounds in Ouagadougou – often, their […]