Shot in São Tomé and Príncipe, a small island country off the coast of Central Africa, this Berlin-based production is clearly focused on the anthropological observations of life and work, but without the post-colonial sensationalism and overt exoticism. The film premiered at the new Flash competition of FID Marseille.
The influences Brès looks up to are numerous and pretty clear to identify, from nature-themed to observational school of documentary filmmaking, with a dash of attraction of the fiction films.
The trouble with the long titles, especially when accompanied with even longer subtitles, is that they reveal too much of the film’s content. Well, almost the entire content… This is certainly the case with The Sun and the Looking Glass – for one easily forgets but the tree remembers by the Brussels-based multidisciplinary French artist Miléna Desse.
For casual fans and novice film scholars, Forman Vs. Forman offers a concise, compelling introduction to the feted Czech director. But the breezy tone and skimpy detail may frustrate more experienced cineastes craving a more thorough, insightful, investigative bio-documentary. F
The documentary starts as a series of interviews, with Voin and his parents, occasionally cut with some of the 8mm home movies from the decades ago. But as the runtime progresses, the memories become more diverse, the footage is more and more distorted and the lines between the past and present, memories and the reality, gets blurrier and blurrier
Sidi Wang is a Chinese filmmaker living and working in Beijing and Austin, Texas. The quarantine order got her while she was in China, living with her mother, brother and step-father during the day and spending her nights in Skype talks with her father, whom she missed.
As complicated and as random as it seems, there is a clear method: the footage itself is in its technical aspects and “home movie” style (hand-held filming, abrupt cuts) is a nod to the times in the past, but are also debunking the thesis that everything was easier and simpler back then.
With this year’s selection of Melies d’Argent shorts, Grossmann has mastered to mostly pick a selection of shorts that broaden the given genre conventions or at least pay homage to them. From stylish eye candy to entertaining reimaginations, there is a spark of whiz and originality in these shorts…
Expect the unexpected. In many ways, Grossmann’s selection of shorts defies the laid-out narrative or utilizes it to translate it into stunning visualizations. There is more to the formula that can be found repeatedly in full-length features but should be reexamined whenever the chance presents itself.
