mother! – Art, Spaceships and Satire

This is what I thought art was about in high-school: a heavy, ‚deep theme‘ held together by rigid structure and the iron will of an artist.

This offhand quote characterizes Aronofskys new work ‚mother!‘ pretty well. It also sums up the approach of somebody caught in an artists fantasy: constantly talking about it(he doesn’t get tired of mentioning that he wrote the script in just five days), even making it the theme of most of his works, but never quite reaching the point of creating and speaking fluidly in his own language. It’s a shame, because I didn’t hate ‚Black Swan‘ and quite enjoy seeing Jennifer Lawrence do her thing. I was quite curious and open to a special experience, but ‚mother!‘ is just so far of the mark on so many levels it made me cringe into my seat… weiterlesen →

The Winners! Taking A Look From The Seaside

At 18.47 on Saturday, the 9th I’m heading across the festival area after a long and exciting two weeks. It’s almost quiet in comparison to when George Clooney walked across the carpet with only a few fans for the newest Takeshi Kitano movie waiting outside. In a few minutes the awards ceremony will begin in the Sala Grande. weiterlesen →

Cuba and the Cameraman – What is in your fridge?

There has been a lot of talk about Netflix joining one of the big festivals for the first time in 2015 with Beasts of No Nation. This year a few Netflix-Productions are present at the Lido again: Starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford in ‚Our souls at night‘, the series Wormwood and Suburra as well as ‚Cuba and the Camera Man‘, a 40- years-in-the-making documentary about life and times in Cuba. weiterlesen →

Caniba – (In)human desire in Close Up

Cannibalism has always been a horror story in the sense that it provokes both disgust and fascination. In colonial history and legends from the greek to the slavic it has served to separate the human from the inhuman, the civilized from the primitive. And at this point ‚Caniba‘ starts, a documentary by Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, who work as both anthropologists and filmmakers. It puts the viewer uncomfortably close to the questions: What can we know about cannibalistic desire? What do cannibals dream of at night?

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Foxtrot – Tragedy is a Square

History moves in circles – or rather a square, if you go according to Samuel Moaz new film ‚Foxtrot‘, that follows the traumatic impact of war and more everyday tragedies on a family in modern-day Israel. The square, that the steps of the foxtrot trace on the floor, become a symbol for how psychological wounds get handed down the generations. From a survivor of the holocaust, to her accomplished son that hides the darkness of the Lebanon war and has never talked about his experiences. Not even to his wife and certainly not to his son, who now has to serve as a soldier himself on a remote checkpoint in the middle of nowhere. It’s forward, forward, sidestep, back, back, sidestep, forward, forward, sidestep…

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Strange Colours

Writing about the Berlinale, we have always taken care to have a look at the festival program outside of the movies that will end up in cinema for sure. Movies and projects that might be a little off or come from strange places, telling stories beyond or against the expectations. For this reason I took a look at a program that was launched by the Venice Film Festival in 2012, where the Festival funds a feature-length film with 150.000 Euro, that has to be made in ten months and presented at the Festival. I expected something rough and maybe interesting. I didn’t expect to be really taken in by Alena Lodkinas ‚Strange Colours‘.

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