Global Lens 2011 Has Eye on World Cultures

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Published on Thursday, 13 January 2011 22:12

Written by Lynne Shannon

Global Lens 2011 is being held January 13–28, 2011 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.  This collaboration between MoMA and the Global Film Initiative (GFI) is now in its 8th year of touring throughout the United States and Canada.  

This year’s series includes nine award-winning feature films from Argentina, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, China, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, India, Iran and Uruguay. Three of the films -- from Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Uruguay -- are official submissions to this year’s Academy Awards™.

The Light Thief / Svet-Ake
dir. Aktan Arym Kubat
(Kyrgyzstan)
Kyrgyzstan’s official submission to the 2010 Academy Awards.  A humble village electrician (played by writer-director Kubat) devotes his compassion and ingenuity to destitute neighbors as he dreams of supplying wind-generated electricity to the whole valley. But his dreams are threatened by encroaching corruption. This is Kubat’s fifth film. His second feature, The Swing, won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1993, followed by The Adopted Son, which won the Silver Leopard at Locarno in 1998. In 2001, he was nominated for the European Film Academy (EFA) Discovery Award.

Street Days / Quchis Dgeebi
dir. Levan Koguashvili
(Georgia)
Georgia’s official submission to the 2010 Academy Awards.  A middle-aged, unemployed heroin-addict hangs around the street outside his son’s school, where he himself was once a promising student while his wife works to support the family. But the couple is confronted with a moral dilemma which could affect their survival. Koguashvili attended the graduate film program at New York University. His short film, The Debt, was an Official Selection of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. His documentary, Women from Georgia, was selected for the Panorama section of the 2009 Sarajevo Film Festival. Street Days is his first feature film.

A Useful Life / La Vida Útil
dir. Federico Veiroj
(Uruguay)
Uruguay’s official submission to the 2010 Academy Awards.  After 25 years, Cinemateca Uruguaya is forced to close due to lack of support. Its most dedicated employee (real-life Uruguayan critic Jorge Jellinek) has devoted his life to caring for his beloved arthouse cinema, and now finds he needs to get a new life. Veiroj’s first feature film, Acne, was awarded the Films in Progress TVE Award at the 2007 San Sebastián International Film Festival, premiered at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes and went on to receive the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 AFI Festival in Los Angeles. This is his second feature film.

Belvedere
dir. Ahmed Imamovic'
(Bosnia & Herzegovina)
A widow in the Belvedere refugee camp tries to forget the tragedy of the past war even as she continues to search for the remains of her husband and son. “An emotionally rich portrait of war’s troubled aftermath....” This is Imamovic's second feature.  His first feature, Go West, won the Audience Award for Best Film at the 2006 Bosnian-Herzegovinian Film Festival in New York.

Dooman River
dir. Zhang Lu
(China)
In rural China, 12-year-old Chang-ho lives with his grandfather and mute sister along the frozen river-border with North Korea. Chang-ho bonds over soccer with one young border-crosser who comes scavenging food. “An exquisitely detailed story of compassion and strife across an uneasy geopolitical border.” Zhang made his feature debut with Tang Poetry in 2004. His second film, Grain in Ear, was invited to the 2005 Critics’ Week in Cannes, where it won the ACID/CCAS Support Award. This is his fifth film.

The Invisible Eye / La Mirada Invisible
dir. Diego Lerman
(Argentina)
Set during Argentina’s military regime of the 1980s, a lonely and deeply repressed assistant teacher at an elite Buenos Aires private school becomes obsessed with one of her students, despite “the school’s rigid code of conduct and proud identification with the nation state.” Lerman’s first feature film, Suddenly, was awarded the Silver Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival. In 2008, he co-founded the production company Campo Cine with Nicolas Avruj.

The Tenants / Os Inquilinos
dir. Sérgio Bianchi
(Brazil)
A manual laborer/night student and his family live a relatively contented life in working-class São Paulo, until some young criminals move in next door. The real meaning of “there goes the neighborhood” as a community deals with both real and imagined dangers in an increasingly chaotic atmosphere.  Bianchi began his career in film and photography in 1972. In addition to several short films, his features include Romance, The Secret Cause and Chronically Unfeasible.

The White Meadows / Keshtzar Haye Sepid
dir. Mohammad Rasoulof
(Iran)
Rahmat the boatman “navigates the increasingly brackish waters of a coastal land, collecting the heartaches and tears of its inhabitants.” This is Rasoulof’s third film. His first feature film is the docudrama The Twilight. His feature, Iron Island, was selected for the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. He also directed Head Wind, a documentary about the restrictions currently imposed in Iran on using satellites and the Internet.

The Global Film Initiative promotes cross-cultural understanding through the medium of cinema. Global Lens is “a project conceived to encourage filmmaking in countries with emerging film communities. The selection of nine programs, which include films developed with seed money from GFI, represents a concise survey of contemporary filmmaking from areas where local economic realities make such expensive and technology-driven endeavors a challenge.

Accomplished, entertaining, and thought-provoking, the films are also deeply rooted in the social and political realities of the countries where their talented and resourceful makers live and set their stories.”

For further information on the Initiative, please visit: http://globalfilm.org.  

For more information about Global Lens 2011, also visit www.moma.org/film.

Global Lens 2011
January 13–28, 2011

The Museum of Modern Art
11 W. 53rd Street
New York, NY
(212) 708-9400

Darren Aronofsky Celebrated at Lincoln Center

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Published on Monday, 10 January 2011 15:57

Written by Seth Shire

On January 4 and 5, 2011, the Film Society of Lincoln Center presented Darren Aronofsky’s Dreams and Nightmares a two-day retrospective of the films of the Black Swan director.   The event climaxed with an appearance by Aronofsky on January 5th, following a screening Aronfosky’s 2008 film The Wrestler. The director was interviewed by The Film Society's Associate Program Director Scott Foundas.

The evening began, appropriately enough, with a discussion about the similarities and differences between Aronofsky’s current film, Black Swan, and his prior one, The Wrestler. Aronofsky pointed out that a story about a 50-year-old dying wrestler and a 20-year-old ballerina were actually very closely linked thematically.  The director said he was fixated by the ritualistic nature of rehearsal and ritual.  “What is interesting is if I can make them both characters with whom audiences can connect.  Make them human.”  He elaborated by explaining that one of the great things about filmmaking is that he gets to “go behind the curtain” and see what is going on the worlds he chooses to explore. He likened it to receiving a Phd.

The characters in both films put their bodies through a great deal of self-inflicted abuse.  “I’ve always had an attraction for the extreme.  You have to be memorable for people to be thinking about it.  I like to take things to the edge of acceptable, kind of like a fever pitch melodrama,” Aronofsky explained, adding “It’s great that people react with crying and horror.  As long as they’re reacting.”

In terms of directing Aronofsky explained that being a director is 90% administrative and that when he finally gets to work with actors he tries to get to that zone where all other considerations are pushed aside and “everything is clicking.”

“The actors I work with are up to the challenge,” Aronofsky explained.

He said that in the case of “Black Swan,” which did not have a large budget, there were no trailers for the actors, the food was “crappy” and that all the money was up on the screen.

He said he could not get any more money for an art film than he already had and that the actors just had to go for it. “Trust is really the bottom line,” Aronofsky explained, “Just let them (the actors) know I’m going to burn with them.”

An terms of his hand held improvisational camera work, featured in both The Wrestler and Black Swan, Aronofsky explained that his training was in documentaries and that the looser style evolved out of concern that Mickey Rourke was not going to hit his mark or remember his lines.  He added that at first he did not know if the looser hand held style would work in a ballet film.  Ultimately, he explained, he decided to risk it because that type of camera felt objective.

The final question of the evening came from an elderly audience member who commented on what she termed the grotesqueness in “Black Swan.”  Aronofsky explained that “Grotesqueness is a very hard line to know when it is too much, but I’m usually on the wrong side of it.”

He added that the physicality of “Black Swan” is such an important part of the film and that many dancers have thanked him for showing the pain and how difficult it is to create beauty.  Aronofsky ended the evening on a perfect note by saying to the audience member, “Sorry if I upset and offended you, but beware of my films.”

The Annual New York Jewish Film Festival Hits 20

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Published on Monday, 10 January 2011 02:55

Written by Laura Blum

Why is the New York Jewish Film Festival (January 12 to 27, 2011) different from all other Jewish film festivals? Lenny Bruce's Talmudic commentary, "Even if you are Catholic, if you live in New York you're Jewish," hints at an answer. Back for its 20th whirl, NYJFF once again presents movies exploring the Jewish experience but that any restless, ironic, brow-beating Manhattanite might identify with in spirit.

The Festival brings together two of the City's cultural shrines, The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, in this annual ritual at the Film Society's Walter Reade Theater. Its 2011 slate spans 37 features and shorts from 14 countries.

Read more: The Annual New York Jewish Film...