Among gypsy diversity, one common thread – aside from an art that gives voice to the very Life Force – is a deep well of suffering: gypsies know well the troubles that chase all inassimilable Others down a neverending road, but they also share more universal pains.
“What’s the difference between the Imaginarium and Flickerings,” people have asked me. My coy answer: at Flickerings, we screen films. At Imaginarium, we watch MOVIES.
Insight into the process of festival programming is one more essential thread of film culture well worth weaving into the Filmwell conversation.
“I hate Nazis,” says Indiana Jones. But do we REALLY? I mean – don’t we love movie Nazis? That is, don’t we LOVE TO HATE them? The new-on-DVD German film AFTER THE TRUTH challenges film-goers usual engagement with the cinema’s most perversely beloved Evil Other.
In Treeless Mountain, two sisters feel their way forward through that limbo between innocence and premature knowledge, between a child’s dreams and nightmares.
The Silver Anniversary edition of the Chicago Latino Film Festival gets underway this week in the Windy City, featuring over one-hundred films from more than a dozen countries across Latin America, Spain and Portugal.
In the face of imminent disclosure, a mocking irony is often the shield of choice to defend one’s fragile sense of self-worth. That’s what makes SPECIAL so special (might as well get that out of the way): the filmmakers absolutely refuse to treat their hero (that, too) as an object for the viewer to feel superior to.
Don Quixote – now there’s a loaded character for a filmmaker to take up. Whether Spanish director Albert Serra is a genuine man of vision or a tilter at windmills, credit him at least for the wit and self-understanding to choose the Man from LaMancha as his breakthrough feature subject. Of course, as soon as viewers realize that Serra’s Honor of the Knights (Honor de cavalleria, 2006) sets this beloved character adrift without the familiar narrative — or any narrative at all — they may join the naysayers calling Serra a conman. Or they may join those hailing him a genius.