Applause, 2009

From the first images of Applause, Martin Zandvliet seeks to capture a rawness and immediacy in his complex, if familiar portrait of a recovering alcoholic. Shot in grainy, desaturated medium and close-ups with a handheld camera, a middle-aged woman (Paprika Steen), seemingly under the influence, makes a candid assessment of her relationship with her husband. […]

Short Notes from The Calm After the Storm: Making Sense of Lebanon’s Civil War

Ready To Wear Imm Ali (Dima El-Horr) is a delightful, understated comedy that like Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention and Randa Chahal Sabag’s The Kite, finds brittle humor in the absurdities of everyday life under a protracted occupation. Ostensibly chronicling an enterprising woman’s efforts to launch a fashion boutique in a bucolic farming village and her […]

House of Flying Daggers, 2004

In an age of lawlessness and impotent (and corrupt) central authority, a member of the notorious, underground alliance of righteous, altruistic warriors known as the House of Flying Daggers is believed to be operating among the pleasure workers of the Peony Brothel. Police officers Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) attempt to root out […]

Ghost Town, 2009

Composed of three chapters – Voices, Recollections, and Innocence – Zhao Dayong’s Ghost Town is a textured, graceful, and indelible panorama of the “other” China, a sobering account of threadbare lives lived in the shadows cast by China’s modern day economic miracle and its founding architect, Chairman Mao Zedong, whose imposing statue graces Zhiziluo village’s […]

Permission to Remember, 2003

Shot on DV, Permission to Remember opens to a shot of a bustling Ukrainian market as a holocaust survivor and expatriate now living in Israel named Moishe begins to recount memories from his childhood, only to be interrupted by an aggressive woman who complains of the “foreigners” who are blocking her way into the market […]