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(Glasgow Film Festival ● Select event time ● Here are a list of days and times at which this event will take place ● March Mon 07 Screening time 20:30 ● Tue 08 Screening time 15:00) https://glasgowfilm.org/glasgow-film-festival/shows/benedetta-nc-18-1 "Benedetta" In the late 17th century, with plague ravaging the land, Benedetta Carlini (Virginie Efira) joins the convent in Pescia, Tuscany, as a novice. Capable from an early age of performing miracles, Benedetta’s impact on life in the community is immediate and momentous. Benedetta is a 17th century woman who has acquired real power, both in her convent of 'Theatine' nuns and in her town of Pescia. Benedetta is famous as a saint and as abbess of the convent. She reaches positions of power through her talent, visions, manipulations, lies and creativity. Whatever the means, she manages it in a society and era totally dominated by men. Women counted for nothing, except male sexual gratification and reproduction. They held no positions of power. What does physical climax bring her? Benedetta has a strong belief in Jesus, and she's also looking for power. She's not all sweetness and altruism. She takes sexual pleasure without giving it. The issue of love intersects with that of faith. The film shows the conflict between faith, in the private sphere, and clergy, as a component of a system of power. The theme is an intrinsic part of Benedetta’s story. If you take a closer look at her case, she's clearly a fervent believer. Her visions of Jesus may have been authentic, while also being a means to obtaining what she wanted. Benedetta truly believe she's Jesus’s bride. Every time, she sees him as a shepherd guiding his flock, in keeping with the imagery of St. John’s Gospel. From the moment Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) joins the convent, roughly sixty minutes of the film are devoted to the gradual crystallization of their lesbian love affair. After Bartolomea slips a finger into her lover’s behind for the first time, She sees Jesus, who tells her that she must resist Bartolomea and stay with him. At that point, Benedetta is still deferring to the religious orthodoxy of the time. She obeys Jesus and abides by the rules. She even punishes Bartolomea by forcing her to plunge her hands into boiling water in a demonstration of tough love. In the end, the erotic attraction is too strong. And then Benedetta has another vision, in which Jesus tells her that the previous apparitions were a false Jesus, an impostor. Benedetta’s visions take her in opposite directions depending on the circumstances! Later, another vision has Jesus ordering Benedetta to strip naked, saying there's no shame in it. Benedetta’s visions provide what she needs. She has her own private Jesus constantly at her side. Of course, that Jesus is a creation of her brain. It’s Benedetta’s psyche generating the visions, but she genuinely believes in them. Benedetta dreams up a Jesus who permits her to have sexual relations with Bartolomea. Benedetta is no saint, either. She reaches a point where she cannot bear dissent. There are also some very funny notes; when Felicita (Charlotte Rampling) asks Benedetta if Jesus gave her advice, she replies, 'No, he didn’t mention you!' It’s important not to forget that the film is funny. Bartolomea is direct and frank, tending toward how a modern young woman might express herself with regard to sexual desire. She was the victim of rapes within her family. In western Europe, notably in the Netherlands, where there are no longer very many believers, Bartolomea is most likely seen as more sympathetic. It's not the case in other parts of the world, where there are strong religious movements, such as the United States with it's evangelicals. People like them would probably empathize more with Benedetta than Bartolomea. It’s interesting to note that the evangelical concept goes back to the Middle Ages. The man as head of the family, the wife secondary and only there to satisfy the man. To see that concept in 2021 is very surprising. Moreover, that concerns every religion. Bartolomea and Benedetta use a statuette of the 'Virgin Mary' as a dildo. It’s more than an object, it perfectly encapsulates the conflict between Catholic taboos and sex, between body and mind, which is present throughout the movie. For Bartolomea, it's just an object. For Benedetta, the object is of high symbolic value, but she abandons that on her journey to love. There's a shot where Benedetta and Bartolomea are performing forbidden sex acts, while in the background, the statue of the Virgin Mary is illuminated by a candle. That shot sums it up; let’s ignore rules and taboos, let’s do what we want. In the book, Bartolomea is the main witness at Benedetta’s trial. She tells the inquisitors that she's abused by Benedetta, who forced her into sexual relations. That’s one of the major changes the film makes in comparison with the book. Bartolomea doesn’t seem to believe in Benedetta’s love. It’s like a disavowal for her, as if she were not loved enough. It’s difficult to shine a light on the person whose love is real, and the person whose love is not..Christina (Louise Chevilotte) is another interesting character. When she becomes aware of Benedetta’s manipulations, she denounces her because, for Christina, it's blasphemy. Soeur Felicita, the abbess, retorts, however, that Christina is blaspheming by refusing to believe Benedetta. Once more, who's right and who's wrong? Except that Christina was not there to see Benedetta’s manipulations. She's caught in her own trap, in her own lie, even though she's basically right. The religious authorities are happy to think of Benedetta as a medium, a prophetess, and it’s dangerous to go against the deep power doctrine of the Church. So, Christina is compelled to self-flagellate half-naked, and then she commits suicide. She cannot live with the shame. It all comes from her initial lie. To qualify that, Christina is the most realistic, the first to realize that Benedetta is inventing her visions and manipulating everyone around her. By lying, she digs her own grave, which is tragic. It also shows the reach of the deep power of the religious system. The abbess is very authoritarian, but she uses her power with discernment in the context of the times. Felicita is not a believer, except perhaps when death is approaching. She's a politician who respects extant power structures because it’s in her interest to do so. She denounces Benedetta in the end, but not out of religious conviction, rather for revenge after her daughter’s death. Benedetta drove Christina to suicide. Basically, none of these characters are completely sympathetic! But if you observe the behavior of present-day politicians, they’re not always very likable either. 'The Nuncio' (Lambert Wilson) is a dangerous, threatening character. After Christina’s suicide, there's no menace from within for Benedetta. 'The Nuncio' can be charming, unctuous, smiling. But he's still a man of power. The popular uprising is not in the book. To maintain the narrative tension, the Nuncio has to be intelligent and motivated by the desire to defeat Benedetta. The film is based on Judith C. Brown’s book, 'Immodest Acts: The Life Of A Lesbian Nun In Renaissance Italy'. Judith C. Brown stumbled across the story while researching another project in the archives in Florence. She opened up a box, and found the minutes of the trial of Benedetta, which took place in the early 17th century. She was impressed and intrigued. It’s a rare document. There are no other known trials of lesbians in the history of Christianity. In the original document, the clerk of the court is shocked by the sexual details described by Bartolomea, the nun who slept with Benedetta, that he could hardly write! He left blanks, scratched words out, rewrote them. Bartolomea is very explicit in her account of how they licked each other. The script is a superb balance between religion, sexuality and the Church’s political scheming. The film never says if Benedetta is a slightly deranged mystic or a manipulator, or both. Right to the end, the film maintains the uncertainty about her deepest nature. Two truths coexist, and the film does not say which is the real truth. You've to accept that some facts can be seen from two different perspectives. There's an assimilation to Arnold Schwarzenegger's dream about reality in "Total Recall". You see a good example of those dual realities later in the movie, when the plague hits; Benedetta tells the crowd in Pescia that Jesus will protect them, then she orders a soldier to shut the city gates, instituting a sort of lockdown! It once more shows her dual nature as a believer and politician. The Church does not prohibit sexual relations, except for members of the clergy. We humans are, fundamentally, animals, right? We've a body and instincts. Benedetta does not resist the call of the flesh, but why would she resist it? Science tells the truth, legends tell stories. That’s how we see it. The film shows what religion prohibits, especially with regard to sex. The hypocrisy and corruption is at the heart of the religious authorities. It's a film about freedom that's very relevant to the times we live in. Not all mystics believed in Jesus as a means to obtaining positions of power, but mysticism is often the only way for a woman to climb the social ladder. The issue of blasphemy is also shifting, ambivalent, with the accusation bandied about between characters. Yes, blasphemy works both ways. Religion forbids things, as if it's possible to lock away impulses, desire, urges and the unconscious in a little box. Except it doesn’t work like that. It’s important not to reduce the dildo to an immature prank, the desire to shock. History advances and evolves over the centuries, but it's always subjected to contradictory currents and the advances of civilization. You think that freedom has been won, but no, we get the feeling that a period movie always resonates with the present. We should be happy that in the partisan times we are living in, this film blurs boundaries, with mystery. And it's a film of powerful cinematic convictions. Written by Gregory Mann

Unlike previous Cartoon Saloon films – which have mixed the fantastical folk-tales with the modern, more grounded elements – The Breadwinner, very purposefully keeps them separate. That's what I'd like to talk about in this post: How the movie uses these vastly contrasting narratives that dance between reality and fiction to explore grief and courage; creating one of the most heart-breaking, uplifting, and powerful film endings I've seen for years. Be warned, this post will contain spoilers; I'd advise you not to read before you've seen the film. The Breadwinner is a movie of two parts: The visually lavish sequences of digitally recreated cutout animation; reserved for Parvana's tale of the "brave boy" and his struggle against the elephant king. In contrast, we have the grittier, dirtier, more grounded style of Parvana's existence. Intercut with Parvana's, the story of the boy is, at first, a form of escapism; for the audience as well as Parvana: A simple plot device to take the edge off some of the more uncomfortable subject matters. In fact, it's far more meaningful, and, as the film progresses, the story becomes an avenue for Parvana to overcome her fears and address grief. During the second act, Shauzia – another girl in disguise, a childhood friend of Parvana's – asks Parvana about her older brother: "But you have an older brother don't you? He used to bring you to school on his shoulders, what's his name?" "Sulayman" - Comes the reply. Parvana is reluctant to talk about him; saying merely he died some years ago, and that her mother won't talk about it. Sulayman's death is clearly still affecting the family deeply, and Fattima – Parvana's mother – has clearly not dealt with it well and seemed to me, to be suffering from depression; explaining Parvana's disinclination to address it directly. When Parvana leaves her house to earn money and buy food for her family, it's Sulayman's clothes she wears; reinvigorating her brother's spirit and memory. Fattima regularly, and unknowingly refers to Parvana by her brother's name; providing us more evidence to suggest she's not fully come to terms with his death. However, after this awkward exchange, Parvana does begin to open up more; bestowing the "brave boy" the name, Sulayman. This seemingly fantastical tale becomes a medium Parvana uses to express herself, conquer her fears, and acts as an insight into the state of her mind. During the more joyous times, Parvana spends with Shauzia; the tale of Sulayman is jovial and humorous. As she recites the story to her younger brother or mother, it's calmer, safer, but also more melancholic. And, as she faces down the horrors of her situation, the story is dark and menacing but full of the strength of courage. As the film reaches the final act, and amidst a bombing raid, Parvana races to the prison in a last, desperate attempt to save her father. Running in parallel, is the "brave boy" (Sulayman), who is struggling up the elephant king's mountain in what appears to be, a vicious and loud storm; perfectly echoing the bombing raid. Parvana begins shouting the story aloud to herself as a means of finding her courage. After arriving at the prison, Parvana witnesses the Taliban lining up prisoners and executing them. Placing her hands over her ears, she calls out for her brother and the movie cuts to Sulayman; fending off several of the elephant king's jaguar minions, and finally coming face-to-face with the elephant king himself. "I have not come to kill you!" - Shouts Sulayman: The elephant king rears up and bellows in provocation. "Sulayman! Soothe him with your story, the one that Mama-jan can't speak of. Tell him!" - Insists Parvana, who has now summoned the strength to confront the truth of her brother's story. "Tell him what happened. Tell him your story!" "My name is Sulayman!" - He begins. "My mother is a writer. My father is a teacher. And my sisters always fight each other." Then, comes the truth of it all: "One day I found a toy on the street. I picked it up. It exploded. I don't remember what happened after that because it was the end." The elephant king roars again and charges down the mountain towards Sulayman who repeats his words. "My name is Sulayman. My mother is a writer. My father is a teacher. And my sisters always fight each other. One day I found a toy on the street. I picked it up. It exploded. I don't remember what happened after that because it was the end." Stopping dead in his tracks, the elephant king stands in front of Sulayman: Reciting his words once again, this time, in a noticeably more melancholic manner. Sulayman has conquered the elephant king, and Parvana has conquered her fears, and rescued her father. The Breadwinner left me awestruck; almost breathless. I've seen it several times now, but the effect from those last few scenes has never abated. To me, everything about this film is as close to perfection as is possible to come. Jeff and Mychael Danna's soundtrack is superb and melancholic. The casting is flawless, as are the direction and screenplay. The stunningly hand drawn and lovingly recreated, digital cutout animation works perfectly together; particularly within the narrative of this movie. In my eyes, The Breadwinner is a must-see film; a testament to the power of animated film, and is arguably one of the best films of the year so far.

(Release Info London schedule; March 25th, 2018, Picturehouse Central, 30 Orange Street, 17:00) "Isle Of Dogs" "Isle Of Dogs",tells the story of Atari Kobayashi (Koyu Rankin), 12-year-old ward to corrupt Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura). When, by 'Executive Decree', all the canine pets of 'Megasaki City' are exiled to a vast garbage-dump, Atari sets off alone in a miniature Junior-Turbo Prop and flies to 'Trash Island' in search of his bodyguard-dog, Spots. There, with the assistance of a pack of newly-found mongrel friends, he begins an epic journey that will decide the fate and future of 'The Entire Prefecture'.   'Canine-Saturation' has reached epidemic proportions. An outbreak of 'Snout-Fever' rips through the city of Megasaki. 'Dog-Flu' threatens to cross the species threshold and enter the human disease pool. Mayor Kobayashi of 'Uni Prefecture' calls for a hasty quarantine; the expulsion and containment of all breeds, both stray and domesticated. By official decree, 'Trash Island' becomes an exile colony, 'The Isle Of Dogs'. Six months later, a tiny, single-engine, miniature airplane crash-lands onto the teeming waste-land. A pack of five starving but fierce abandoned dogs scrambles to the wreckage and discovers a twelve-year-old pilot staggering from the burning fuselage. Atari, orphan-ward to Mayor Kobayashi. With the assistance of his new canine friends, Atari begins a search for his lost dog, Spots (Liev Schreiber), and, in the process, exposes a conspiracy that threatens to destroy all the dogs of 'Megasaki City' forever.   Atari is a heartbroken Japanese boy who makes a heroic flight to search for his lost dog. Mayor Kobayashi is the authoritarian who outlaws dogs from 'Megasaki City', though the consequences hit closer to home than he ever imagined. His greatest nemesis proves to be Tracy Walker (Greta Gerwig), a feisty young foreign exchange student and editor of 'The Megasaki Senior High Daily Manifesto'. It's a paper that stands for transparency and truth. And Tracy believes that’s what all newspapers and news outlets should stand for. Even though it’s a student publication, they hold themselves to a very high, rigorous standard. That standard pushes her to discover the truth about the dog virus and Atari’s trip to 'Trash Island', and perhaps also the first hints of a crush. Tracy just admires Atari’s bravery. And she thinks he has a nice face. He’s the only person standing up to the madness that’s going on in 'Megasaki City'. And he’s doing it on his own for the love of his dog, which she thinks is noble. Each member of the conversationally gifted 'Trash Island" pack has a well-worn canine name suggesting they're once beloved as top dogs, which only serves to remind them of how much they miss their former human homes. Rex (Edward Norton) is a wiry, wire-haired mutt with spiky, mottled coat and the eyes of an Arctic sled-dog. His ribs stick out like a cast-iron radiator. He's a sleeping on a lamb’s wool beanbag next to an electric space heater. So, he’s not some rich man’s dog. He was probably comfortably middle-class, maybe upper middle-class. But he has a work ethic. He’s scrappy, willing to be resourceful and to fight for what he needs. At the same time, he has had a certain baseline of comfort and so psychologically 'Trash Island' is difficult for him. He can only take so much. King (Bob Balanon) is a graceful, red-haired mutt with a sable snout and a handlebar moustache. He's dappled with scabs, scars, scuffs, and scratches. Boss (Bill Murray) is a stout, liver-spotted mutt with black paws and a tail like a stubbed-out cigar. He wears a soiled, grimy, unraveling, striped, woolen dog-sweater with embroidered baseballs and the word Dragons scrolled across it in cursive. When there's the chance of a great success, you need a mascot, someone that’s going to be with you when things get tough, but someone that you’re really going to want to be there when things go well.  That’s Boss.   Duke (Jeff Goldblum) is a bohemian mountain-dog. Slender face, sleek ears, and a ballet-dancer’s overly-nimble gait. He has seven missing teeth and a consumptive dry-cough. Chief (Bryan Cranston) is a coal-black hound with long legs, black nose, a boxer’s jaw, and floppy, black ears with white spots all over them. He has the sturdy frame of a middleweight, but the starved mass of a long distance-runner. Chief is the odd one out, but he also has a great nobility. He represents the idea that with hope can come second chances. Spots is a 'Short-Haired Oceanic Speckle-Eared Sport Hound', who was once the beloved assigned bodyguard to the Mayoral ward Atari, but is now lost to the winds on 'Trash Island'.  He's highly trained, highly sophisticated animal who's not only the constant companion to Atari but also protects him.  In many ways Spots embodies the ideals of loyalty, duty and honor. Spots also finds romance amid the ruins with the steadfast survivor Peppermint (Kara Hayward). Peppermint has been terribly mistreated and Spots goes from feeling bad for her to falling in love with her. He’s really a dog who cares about other dogs.   Among the most enigmatic of 'Trash Island’s' dogs is Nutmeg (Scarlett Johansson), the coquettish show dog with her femme fatale persona and curiously spotless coat of fur. Nutmeg is incredibly resourceful. She keeps her fur clean by collecting garbage ash in an old coffee bean can. The she works the ash through her fur from root to tip. That’s a very important part of the process. You've to work the ash through from root to tip. And then she shakes off the remaining ash and collects it in the found coffee bean can. Which she then stores for next time. She knows what it’s like to lose something and come back stronger. She might be more civilized than Chief, but she recognizes in him a fighting spirit and a leadership quality she admires.  Plus, he has just the right amount of bite; and who doesn’t like a guy with bite? Jupiter (F. Murray Abraham) has chosen to live his life as though he’s given himself over to a Zen existence. He has a barrel of spirits around his neck. It's very wise because you never know when you might need a little shot, or when you’ll run into someone who could use one. And it’s a communal, convivial thing; we’re all going to drink from the same barrel; we’re all going to enjoy this together; and we’re going to find a way out of this mess. We would sure use Jupiter right about now in this poor old world of ours. "Isle Of Dogs" is a grand adventure set in a near-future Japan in the grips of a canine crisis and mass anti-dog hysteria. Here, in a far-flung floating junktopia known only as 'Trash Island', a scrappy pack of exiled dogs who’ve banded together to survive makes an amazing discovery, the crash-landing of a little human pilot who will take them on a life-changing journey. The resulting journey is packed with humor, action and friendship. But on it's trek, it also pays homage to the epic scope and beauty of Japanese cinema, to the noble loyalty of canine companions, to the hopeful heroism of the small and the overlooked, to the rejection of intolerance and most of all to the unbreakable boy-dog bond that has launched countless escapades. The film is inspired by Japanese movies. It's a story with chatty canines, furred femmes fatales, a boy aviator, an intrepid school reporter, mutant viruses, mythical isle and step-by-step unraveling of a big human mistake. In fact, "Isle Of Dogs" may owe as much to the storytelling legacy of Akira Kurosawa as the history of stop-motion animation. The story’s invention expanded from a dreamlike spark to the spectacularly detailed creation of 'Megasaki City', the rubbish-geography of 'Trash Island', and a cast of misfit but hopeful characters, both fur-bearing and human. An outsider (the little pilot) arriving in a new land (Trash Island), and an analogue of the timeless tale of, well, in this case literal underdogs striving against blinded oppressors. But the magic of it all sprang out of the details, from the charm and texture of each dog’s story, from the cluttered but artful architecture of 'Trash Island', from the idea that a child searching for his faithful pet might set off a world-altering chain of events. It just seemed the matching form for emotionally fluent, if down-and-out, dogs and a Japanese island lined with society’s strange, funny and downright calamitous discards. It’s a movie about talking dogs. Yet, it’s not a cartoon, it’s a movie. It pushes the boundary in terms of what people think can be done in this medium. In fact, stop motion animation’s century-long evolution has long been more creative than technical. Little has changed in the fundamentals. Though digital cameras and computers have smoothed the process, it’s still a matter of shooting the infinitesimally small movements of 3D objects frame-by-frame, in a painstaking process that nevertheless generates palpable life. So the biggest changes in the form have come in the content, in the kinds of stories one might tell, in pressing the limits of imagination.   "Isle Of Dogs" is a worldbuilding story that by it's very nature breaks animation norms and brings together all the themes, shots, emotional intricacy and adventures. From the intricate puppets and micro-sets arises this living, breathing realm of cold-nosed questers whose plight is intimately relatable.  The feel is of a whimsical legend but the grounding is in the real concerns, big and small, of modern life; friendship, family, humanity’s future and coming together to clean up our messes. It's a story of disenfranchised dogs, but that's also a very real experience for human beings in every country and walk of life. The main characters might be dogs, but they exist in a zone between animals and humans. They've all the dog behaviors we know and recognize but we connect to them through their very human emotions, through their excitement, sadness, anger, hope and their love for one another and their friends. There are disenfranchised people, the throwaways. And the demagoguery of fear, the kind that leads all the dogs of 'Megasaki City' to be put on an island to fend for themselves, is something humans are dealing with as well. It's a very timely theme. The music becomes another layer of a film that, not unlike 'Trash Island', is piled high with bits and pieces that, when combined, seem to alchemically forge a world that feels lived-in and alive in it's fantasia. If any single word seems to define the movie that word might be scale, both for the tiny scale of the intricate stop-motion work and the enormous scale of the story of how the 'Trash Island' pack unites in their trek towards freedom and to discover the potential in themselves. While the sheer number of individual moving pieces, physical and thematic, that make up "Isle Of Dogs" might be staggering, the paradox is that the prevailing core of the film is one of the most timelessly simple relationships on earth.   The animation is wild and the amount of detail packed into every frame is astonishing. It's a beautiful fable that takes you into a world of it's own, a world no one else could have imagined. With it's semi-fictional Japanese setting, it's construction out of comic book-like chapters and it's intercut themes of nature, heroism, technology, rescue and honor, perhaps it's only natural that the film is also reverberate with echoes of Japanese pop culture and some of Japan’s greatest film directors, from Yasujiro Ozu to Kurosawa to Seijun Suzuki, as well as the Japanese monster films of the 50s and 60s, with their climactic disasters. It's as referring to a whole range of Japanese filmmakers and Japanese culture, but Kurosawa is the main movie influence. It’s hard to even quantify Kurosawa’s impact on cinema because he arced so gracefully through a huge pendulum of genres from noir, to Samurai, to Shakespeare, to melodrama. Each seems to transcend the dark side of the modern world with characters of the utmost honesty and humanity. And seen in each is the legendary Toshiro Mifune, whose expressive countenance inspires the look of Mayor Kobayashi. Another branch of inspiration came from two 19th Century, Edo-period woodblock print masters; Hiroshige and Hokusai, whose emphasis on color and line deeply influenced European Impressionists. Their ukyio- artworks capture fleeting moments of pleasure focusing on natural landscapes, far-flung travels, flora and fauna, geishas and kabuki actors. The film collects a wide swath of woodblock print images and the storyboard artists trawled through the extensive collections at 'The Victoria And Albert Museum' in London. Then, by osmosis, the folkloric Japanese style began to merge with the tactile, handmade feel of stop-motion. The world of "Isle Of Dogs" is kind of an alternative reality. It looks and feels like Japan, but it's a slightly dreamier version. That's the beauty of setting the film in a make-up city, in a make-up time; you get a certain amount of artistic license. The blending of old and new is very common in Japan. There are scenes in the film that are very minimalist and wabi-sabi; but then you switch over to the city, which is maximalist and very intense. The film is a scope of Samurai movies and adventure. It's a big movie in every way, but with simple basic themes that anyone can relate to. 

(Release Info London schedule; Sun Jul 11, Mon Jul 12, Tue Jul 13, Wed Jul 14, Thu Jul 15, Fri Jul 16, Sat Jul 17, Picturehouse Central, Piccadilly Circus, 13 Coventry Street, LONDON W1D 7DH, United Kingdom, 3:30 PM) https://www.picturehouses.com/movie-details/022/HO00010945/summer-of-soul "Summer Of Soul" The documentary is part music film, part historical record created around an epic event that celebrated 'Black' history, culture and fashion. Over the course of six weeks in 'The summer Of 1969', just one hundred miles south of 'Woodstock', 'The Harlem Cultural Festival' was filmed in 'Mount Morris Park' (now 'Marcus Garvey Park'). The footage was never seen and largely forgotten; until now. "Summer Of Soul" shines a light on the importance of history to our spiritual well-being and stands as a testament to the healing power of music during times of unrest, both past and present. The feature includes never before-seen concert performances by Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, 'Sly & The Family Stone', 'Gladys Knight & The Pips', Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, and 'The 5th Dimension'. A song isn’t just a song. It can capture a moment in time. It will tell you a story, if you look close enough. Stevie Wonder and David Ruffin, products of 'Motown’s Hitsville USA' system, each have a style intended to appeal to both 'Black And White America', and both are in the process of remodeling their careers in 'The Summer aof ’69'. Ruffin has recently parted ways with 'The Temptations' and is forging ahead as a solo artist, while Wonder is moving from the feel-good love songs of his earlier days to a politically tinged funk sound. Nowhere is the bursting of Wonder’s new identity feels more than in the film’s cold open, where he unleashes a drum solo whose every strike clears the way for the oncoming philosophies that would define his later career. Probably no artist encapsulated this period of transition more than the mix-gendered, mixed-raced race supergroup, 'Sly And The Family Stone', the only act to play both 'Woodstock' and 'The Harlem Cultural Festival', a fitting fact for a band that seemed to straddle the two separate worlds, and gives new definition to 'Black' artists. 'The Apollo 11' moon landing occurred on July 20, the same day Stevie Wonder, David Ruffin, and 'Gladys Knight And The Pips' take to the stage. Nina Simone deliverers a sharp edge in her fearless set, wherein she sings her anthem 'To Be Young, Gifted And Black' for one of the song’s first public performances. Of great importance is how the composition articulated the tenor of 'Black America' as it transitioned into 'The 1970s'. In 1969, vast socio-political headwinds swirling around the country came to 'Harlem’s Mount Morris Park'. During 'The 60s', 'Americans' witnessed 'The Vietnam War', a rising drug epidemic, and the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Robert Kennedy. Only a year earlier, in 'The Summer Of 1968', parts of 'New York City' went up in flames following the death of Martin Luther King Jr. While the film focuses on performances, "Summer Of Soul" uses past footage as a catapult for real-time change and reflection. Nearly overlapping with 'The 1969 Woodstock Festival' 100 miles away, these seminal 'Black' artists performed for over 300,000 people at a once-in-a-lifetime event. From 'June 29th' to 'August 24th', 'The Harlem Cultural Festival' played for six Sundays in 'Harlem’s Mount Morris Park'. Unlike that other music festival upstate, the footage from 'Fhe Harlem Cultural Festival' could not find a home that summer of 1969, and instead sat in a basement for over 50 years, keeping this momentous celebration hidden until now. The film seeks to recover the meaningful spirit of the past, when the biggest names in 'African-American' music, culture, and politics came together for six consecutive weeks for a landmark, transformational 'Black' cultural event. "Summer Of Soul" documents the moment when the old school of 'The Civil Rights Movement' and new school of 'The Black Power' movement shared the same stage, highlighted by an array of genres including soul, 'R&B', 'Gospel', 'Blues', 'Jazz', and 'Latin'. 'Blacks' have always been a creative force of our culture. But sometimes those efforts are easily dismissed. It goes to show that revisionist history and 'Black' erasure, be it mean, spirited or on purpose or by accident is very real. The initial directive for the festival was laid out by 'The City Of New York' to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination under 'The Banner Of Black Unity'. 'New York City' had thrown smaller versions of 'The Harlem Cultural Festival' in ’67 and ’68, though the smaller events felt more like casual, block parties. But the festival in 1969 was supersized; some thought the expanded version was intended to divert the local population from additional rioting brought on by the anniversary of King’s death. 'New York City Mayor John Lindsay' walked the streets of 'Harlem' in a bid to quell the unrest, and became a key backer of the festival. The film represent the evolution of 'Black Music', not necessarily in a linear way: from it's roots in gospel, to the blues and feel-good soul, to the futuristic hybrid of soul represented by Sly Stone, through to the activist music of the late '60s'. “But gospel ended up in the middle because it’s importantly heavy, telling the story of 'The MLK' killing for instance. And the gospel in the middle becomes the pivot point or fulcrum where 'Black Music' and 'Black Identity' tip over into a new post-'MLK' world. After 50 years, are we truly back at square one with the exact same unrest, protests, deaths, shootings, and injustices? "Summer Of Soul".is a searing testament to the cyclical and constant nature of racial prejudice. The same urban decay inflicted upon Harlem during the 1960s exists in urban areas housing people of color across the nation today. There's simply too much happening off-stage, in Harlem, in New York, in America, for us to focus on just what's happening on-stage. Progress was being made in 1969, but there's still so far to go. The war on poverty, job equality education, all those things. To 'The Harlem Community', there were a lot more important issues than putting a man on the moon. The bedrock non-violent strategy of 'The Civil Rights Movement' receded to a charged 'Black Power' philosophy. 'African-Americans' transitioned from suit and ties to bell-bottom pants and dashiki shirts. Chemically relaxed hair gave way to natural afros. And younge 'African-Americans' began defining themselves separate from a white lens. The wider we zoom out, the more similarities we see with what's happening in America even today, 50 years later.

"All Of Us Strangers"     One night in his near-empty tower block in contemporary London, Adam (Andrew Scott) has a chance encounter with a mysterious neighbor Harry (Paul Mescal), which punctures the rhythm of his everyday life. As a relationship develops between them, Adam is preoccupied with memories of the past and finds himself drawn back to the suburban town where he grew up, and the childhood home where his parents appear to be living, just as they were on the day they died, 30 years before.   There’s a textured, indelible sense of pathos that runs through "All Of Us Strangers", and the vast majority of the film’s complexities sits firmly on the shoulders of the protagonist Adam. Adam is a forty-something gay screenwriter living in a new build apartment block in London. He’s an orphan. He’s single, lonely. He carries around the burden of grief from a traumatic episode in his youth that saw both parents killed in a car crash. A cliché, he claims. Adam is a very solitary figure. He’s described by his mother as a very gentle and compassionate person. But that’s a kind of privilege, in a way. Adam is yearning to see his parents again, aching to be known by them. Perhaps finding them again will bring comfort and closure after the terrible loss. But it’s no easy task, nostalgia can often hide a different truth, and his parents were a product of the time they lived. Adam must also confront his fragile sense of self, battered by growing up gay in the 80s and 90s. Two traumas perhaps, closely entwined, stopping him from finding peace. Harry lives in the same apartment block as Adam, and after propositioning his neighbor one drunken evening, the two eventually become romantically involved. Their intensely passionate and transformative love affair has a transcendent power for them both.   He feels like a little boy, like somebody who should be a lot happier than he is, and the world tells him that he should be, but he’s not. He hides behind being sex positive and sex forward, and being fun, and he has a somewhat casual but problematic relationship with drugs and alcohol, he’s trapped. We recognize him in little bits of outself and friends and young men in the world. Much of the film’s emotional punch comes from the tender, heart-wrenching, and healing bond between Adam and his parents, when he returns to his childhood home and spends time with them. His deceased parents, who are alive, and the same age they were when they died. It’s a unique and endearing sense of absurdity, yet one that almost instantly feels weird. Mum (Claire Foy) has a complicated role, she's less accepting of who Adam is, of who he’s become. You can imagine that the father (Jamie Bell) would be the one to be uncomfortable with the idea that his son is gay. It adds this layer of complexity to Mum’s character. Adam coming out to his parents, finally, is one of the key narrative forces within this tale, and is handled with an adept, delicate touch that makes for some of the film’s most moving sequences, down to the subtlety of the writing. The characters have to maintain a sort of element of mystery.   "All Of Us Strangers" is hauntingly poignant and hypnotic story of loss and love and everything in between, is inspired by the novel 'Strangers' by Japanese author Taichi Yamada. First penned in 1987 and translated into English in 2003. What if you met your parents again long after they were gone, only now they’re the same age as you? The romantic parallel journey of "All Of Us Strangers" takes place in a more familiar, contemporary London. Scenes there range from the towering, modern apartment block where both Adam and Harry live, to the nightclub, which hosts an impactful and beautifully rendered portion of the film, shot on location at the iconic queer London institution: the Vauxhall Tavern. The isolation of the former set where Adam lives adds not only to the themes of loneliness that are prevalent, but to an otherworldly feeling which plays up to the supernatural element of the story. It’s a key part of the story as it really symbolizes the character’s isolation, and feeling very disconnected from the world, so we all have a real vision in mind. It seems an emotional way to explore the nature of family. The film wants to explore the complexities of both familial and romantic love, but also the distinct experience of a specific generation of gay people growing up in the 80s.   Though "All Of Us Strangers" is set in a singular time frame and era, the sequences when Adam returns to his childhood home to see his parents take place in a 1980s version of our world, as though stepping into a dream, a hazy, nostalgia-induced memory. It’s kind of hallowed turf, in a way. Move away from the traditional ghost story of the novel and find something more psychological, almost metaphysical. It's very surreal, and it makes us think a lot about what our children are going to say about our homes in forty years. It almost feels apocalyptic. It mirrors the isolation of the world to a certain extent; you’ve got these corporate towers, and these cities that are rapidly eroding, and you feel like little ants in this massive tower.   If you’re not inclined to go out and mix with the world, you can very easily find a place that isolates you. That’s what the tower represents, it feels cold and soulless. And in the face of all that, these two characters still manage to find a connection which we think is really uplifting. The off-realism feeling, the ever-so-slightly otherworldly atmosphere, is something that's also informed by Francis Bacon exhibition in London and the paintings were really strong, timeless, and there’s something about floating in time and space, about a lot of those images which ties in really well with this script. It's also grounded by the way in which it tackles the human experience. Its many layers and textures carry a profound, emotional undercurrent.   The film feels quite like a dream, then like the moment just before you fall asleep or the moment you wake from a dream, not quite sure what’s real. A more liminal space. Rather than play up to the supernatural elements, the film wants to focus on the notion of memory and how it works. Memories define us; they define what we become, our character, both for good and bad. We dug deep into our memories of growing up. It's a painful but cathartic experiment. In many ways, the film is about how you integrate emotional pain into your life. That pain will never vanish, it will always find a hiding place, but that doesn’t mean you can’t move forward. We're just living in the moment. We are not considering that this has a finite time on it. We’re not considerate of the rules on what it means to be dead.   We don’t think we’re ever really discussing the logistics of what that means, necessarily, and that’s what we love about it. That’s something not just gay people experience, everybody wants to feel connected to their family. What would you want to tell your parents about your life if you could revisit them, or what would you tell them right now? We live in a world that feels impersonal, or cold. It’s harder and harder to find the connections that we see Adam and Harry have in the film. All of us have been children, and most will lose our parents. Many of us will be parents ourselves and have kids who will grow into adults in the blink of an eye. Many of us will find and lose and hopefully find love again, even if it doesn’t last an eternity.   Written by Gregory Mann

Oppenheimer (2023) Cold, dark and brooding, Oppenheimer misses the mark when it comes to narrative drama. Christopher Nolan’s $100 million summer blockbuster explores the making of the atomic bomb, and America’s tumultuous attempts to come to terms with what it unleashed.   Over three long hours, Nolan time-hops between the 1920s through to the 1950s as American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) develops the bomb and struggles with its moral and political fallout. Oppenheimer is brought on to the Manhattan Project by the US Army’s Leslie Groves (Matt Damon), and the story is woven with two complex love interests in Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt) and Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh).   Many of the post-war scenes centre on the jealousies and obsessions of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downie Jr.), chair of the US Atomic Energy Commission, as he seeks the Senate’s approval to join Eisenhower’s cabinet.   This is undoubtedly an all-star cast, but beyond the wry wit of Damon’s character, the ensemble inspired little feeling. Is this numbness an ingenious reflection of how most of us feel when trying to comprehend something so morally complex and shudderingly terrifying as nuclear weapons? That may be too generous.   The danger in biopics is that the meandering complexities of people’s real lives rarely lend themselves to excellent narrative cinema. By way of example, a line that jars most with the tone is when the President calls Oppenheimer a “cry-baby”. It felt limp and cheesy, yet a quick internet search later shows it is historically accurate that Truman said this. There’s an irony that if the best Hollywood writers were freed from the constraints of historical record, a more consistent tone could probably have kept the film on track.   Non-linear storytelling is Nolan’s bread and butter, but overall Oppenheimer’s sequencing leaves a lot to be desired. The fundamental flaw is the set-up of a rivalry between Oppenheimer and Strauss, where for much of the film it is not entirely clear what their conflict is even about.   The two main characters barely meet or interact on screen, leading to a frustrating absence of drama. Nolan has the skill to pull this off – he did so exquisitely with Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale’s rival characters in The Prestige – but he may have taken a time and space hop too far here, thawing any sense of friction between the characters.   Oppenheimer is packed with dialogue, but much of it is emotionally muted, faux scientific and essentially dull. Talking about science and showing how people work together in a lab might not sound like a winning recipe, but try telling that to the Oscar-winning writer of The Imitation Game, Graham Moore. The Imitation Game also uses flashbacks and flashforwards, but with a sense of purpose that makes the audience invest more in its main character.   Murphy’s Oppenheimer struggles to draw out the same emotion. Perhaps that is not surprising, given he is the father of the atomic bomb, but the lack of emotional connection to the main characters made it difficult to feel much when they faced tragedy or internal turmoil. Often cinema uses love or romance to help open up their main character, but in this Oppenheimer didn’t prioritise making the audience relate. Most of us aren’t so squishy and perfect as a Rom Com when falling in love, but most of us aren’t so grim and sad as Oppenheimer either.   The film is very America-centric, which may be a conscious choice given the themes of introspection (or lack of). When Oppenheimer is picturing the scenes of destruction caused by the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he visualises them within an American lecture theatre. The Americanisation of trauma is reminiscent of the old Vietnam War films made in Hollywood, which can feel a little crass in our globalised world. The moral questioning could have been more powerful if the audience was confronted with the devastation in Japan itself.   Space to explore the moral dilemmas was denied to the audience, perhaps as a reflection of the self-denial that the main characters are experiencing. But while that allows the audience into Oppenheimer’s psyche, it does not necessarily make for compelling viewing. An interesting dynamic is the use of a black and white filter for the scenes furthest in the future, reflecting how the world had stepped backwards since the making of the bomb.   No audience member could walk away without being acutely aware that we live with the means for our own extinction. The themes of Oppenheimer are also timely as questions remain unanswered over who will regulate or control artificial intelligence.   A metaphor about getting carried away with our own abilities might be appropriate as Nolan indulges his love of gritty time-jumps at the expense of viewer satisfaction.

Every once in a while, nature makes a mistake. The beginning explains a lot. First, footage of an adorable-looking 2-year-old, growing up and having one injury after the other. And again and again, you get this emotionless stare because he turns out to be numb to pain. In addition, there’s an increasingly desperate-looking mother. And finally, that picture of a little boy in plaster staring sadly ahead while in the background children enjoy themselves in a playground. Perhaps this little boy realizes at that moment that his life will be very different from that of an average person. And that’s how you’ll see the grown-up Henry (Joey Klein) afterward. A person who lives completely isolated and who moves carefully through society every day. Taking with him a backpack stuffed with attributes to take care of injuries. The only thing he’s trying to produce in his as a lab equipped apartment is a medicinal product. Not to treat pain. But something so he finally can feel pain. A vital signal that the human body passes on to indicate that something isn’t right physically. A medicine so Henry has the feeling he’s really alive. It feels like watching a science programme. “Painless” is not SF, even though I don’t know whether there are people in the world who suffer from the same condition as Henry or not. I’d rather call this film a drama with a scientific undertone. Because believe me, a lot of Chinese sounding medical terms will be fired at you. Technical terms about chemical compounds and genetic stuff are used throughout the whole movie. No idea what education Henry has followed. But it’s clear he’s a genius in the field of science. He also appears to have an unprecedented gift that allows him to diagnose a person’s condition with a single glance. This all makes this film rather boring sometimes and too intellectual. It feels as if you are looking at some scientific program. Something only real nerds like to watch. And they get excited about every scientific term that’s being used. Yet there’s something else to be enjoyed for ordinary people without a master degree. Someone like me for instance. And that’s the wonderful acting. The acting is absolutely superb. Joey Klein delivers a great performance. The way he shapes Henry is simply brilliant. The unworldly loner who looks shyly around and who avoids any contact with other individuals. The only one he has regular contact with is his doctor Dr. Raymond Parks (Kip Gilman). Probably someone who took care of Henry countless times after yet another incident. He’s also Henry’s confidant. So regularly Henry storms into his office without asking, just to argue about a new theory. In my opinion, it’s also the only one who fully understands Henry. And then one day Henry meets the graceful Shani (Evalena Marie). A painful encounter (there’s hot coffee involved) after which he comes to the realization that there’s more to life than his eternal search for a cure. It’s painful to see how clumsy he is when interacting with others who don’t have a medical background. A scientific drama with a romantic twist. “Painless” is about the absence of physical pain. It’s also about the numbing effect this had on the emotional part of Henry. He’s just as insensitive when it’s about emotions. The way he responds to certain situations shows a social ignorance and a lack of experience in the field of human interaction. For him, everything is a distraction that prevents him from finding a solution for his ailment. “Painless” is certainly not an action-packed and adventurous blockbuster but still an interesting film. It shows how persons with a disorder still can function in our society. And even though you usually don’t understand what they’re talking about (thanks to the frequent use of medical and scientific terms), you can understand Henry at the end. “Painless” is about perseverance and determination. But at the same time, it is also about loneliness and sorrow. In short, a scientific drama with a romantic touch that surprised me. My rating 7/10 More reviews here

Go ahead and take her. She’s all yours. But I’ll tell you this. She got a dark side… Darker than hell. I admire the phenomenon called Nicolas Cage enormously. Every film with him (and nowadays it’s a lot every year) is a mandatory watch for me. I really can’t let a single Cage movie pass by. Even though I know that more than half of them are of a dubious level. And some downright bad. And yet there are sometimes gems in between. Now, “Grand Isle” certainly isn’t the pinnacle of his film oeuvre. It’s rather mediocre. The run-up is promising. The concept had potential. And Cage is having a blast with his role that fits him like a glove. Add to that a bitter Milf, a young handyman whose hormones are going berzerk and “Frasier” as a biased, god-fearing detective who would prefer to put the suspect on a stake, and you still have enough material to make something out of it. It all looks reasonable. Until halfway somewhere. And then the movie transforms to the level of an average C film. Unfortunately, the presence of such a cult figure as Cage couldn’t change that. Alcohol and a Nam past. Bad combination. And to think that a white fence is the beginning of all the misery for Buddy (Luke Benward). Such an innocent item with far-reaching consequences. The way in which this fence was damaged, on the other hand, is not so innocent. Not difficult when the owner of the house is an ex-marine with a serious drinking problem. Walter (Nicolas Cage) is a bitter, fatalistic persona. A bit of a crazy person who still can’t get over the fact that he got wounded in Vietnam in a ridiculous way and returned home while his platoon went on a mission the next day. The disappointment was immense. Even knowing that the entire platoon got eliminated completely a few weeks later, the disappointment about a missed opportunity remains. This pent-up anger in combination with excessive alcohol consumption makes him an unguided projectile. His mood, grumpy reactions, and downright aggressive attitude make him an unpleasant person. Let’s seduce the handyman. Walter also doesn’t treat his other half kindly. She’s a mature diva whose body shapes are extremely well preserved and whose libido clearly hasn’t disappeared yet. And let that be exactly what Walter fails to deliver. He won’t even budge when she shows up in a transparent nightgown with erotic underwear underneath it. A disinterested look and another sip of a glass of whiskey are the only reactions. It’s not without reason that this hot woman sets her sights on the young, muscular handyman. A handyman with a sex life on the back burner since his lovely wife gave birth to a cuddly daughter. And just when you think it’s going to be about a dangerous triangular relationship where the psychopathic-looking husband wants to initiate a lynch party, the young handyman sits at the police station, face bloodied, trying to prove his innocence in a murder case. Perfect part for Cage. Indeed, Walter is really the kind of character that has Nicolas Cage written all over it. The manic mood. Maniacal laughter. Medium length, greasy hair, and a rough stubble beard. The constant drinking and the half-awake state he’s in practically all the time. And it’s not the first time Cage played such a person. In short, it feels familiar to see him that way. The most interesting interpretation, however, is that of Kadee Strickland as the voluptuous Fancy. Every time she’s in the shot, you simply feel the erotic tension increase. Her sultry voice and sensuous appearance ensure she demands all the attention. Unfortunately, Luke Benward could not compete with these two heavyweights. And although he actually plays the main character, it felt like his part was less important. A half-decent, half-finished flick. As I said before, the format of the film is only half successful. It seemed to be heading in the direction of a “Basic Instinct” -like, erotic thriller. Only the eroticism and the thriller section remains below par. And you get a rather absurd conclusion. Also, the dark secret of this demonic couple is presented so casually that its impact is negligible. And let’s not forget about the intervention of the police. You really can call this part quite ridiculous. Furthermore, the movie is peppered with improbabilities. Such as that small detail from the testimony that cannot even be verified immediately. But still, it ensures that the biased inspector makes a 180-degree turn immediately. It’s amazing how someone’s beliefs can change so quickly. And the end of the film is simply terrible. Apparently even the marine uniform Cage was wearing, was also completely wrong. Again proof that quantity and quality aren’t related. If you are an immense Cage fan, you should watch it of course. Unfortunately, “Grand Isle” isn’t really grand after all. My rating 4/10 Links: IMDB

(Release Info London schedule, June 25th, 2020, Curzon Home Cinema) https://www.curzonhomecinema.com/film/watch-anthropocene-film-online "Anthropocene: The Human Epoch" A cinematic meditation on humanity’s massive reengineering of the planet, "Anthropocene" is a four years in the making feature documentary film from Jennifer Baichwal. Third in a trilogy that includes "Manufactured Landscapes" (2006) and "Watermark" (2013), the film follows the research of an international body of scientists, 'The Anthropocene Working Group' who, after nearly 10 years of research, are arguing that the evidence shows 'The Holocene Epoch' gave way to 'The Anthropocene Epoch' in the mid-twentieth century, as a result of profound and lasting human changes to 'The Earth'. From concrete seawalls in China that now cover 60% of the mainland coast, to the biggest terrestrial machines ever built in Germany, to psychedelic potash mines in Russia’s 'Ural Mountains', to metal festivals in the closed city of Norilsk, to the devastated 'Great Barrier Reef' in Australia and surreal lithium evaporation ponds in 'The Atacama Desert', the filmmaker has traversed the globe using high-end production values and state of the art camera techniques to document the evidence and experience of human planetary domination. At the intersection of art and science, "Anthropocene" witnesses, in an experiential and non-didactic sense, a critical moment in geological history; bringing a provocative and unforgettable experience of our species breadth and impact. 'Anthropocene' is our current geological epoch, proposed by members of 'The Anthropocene Working Group' and beginning mid-twentieth century, in which humans are the primary cause of permanent planetary change. 'The Anthropocene' is a term widely used to denote the proposed current geological epoch, in which humans are the primary cause of permanent planetary change. The research charts the progression of human influence on 'The Earth’s' system through a variety of markers: the terraforming of land for agriculture, industrialization and urbanization; the extraction of resources and the phenomenon of anthroturbation; sediment displacement, the proliferation of dams and groundwater depletion; the technosphere, consisting of all human-systems and technologies, which now weighs upwards of 30 trillion tons; and human-influenced peak levels of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. At time of writing, 'The Anthropocene' is not a formally defined geological unit within 'The Geological Time Scale'; it must be formally debated and ratified or rejected by 'The International Commission On Stratigraphy', a process that can take decades. Our current period of geological time is widely accepted to be 'The Holocene Epoch', which began some 12,000 years ago as the glaciers of the last ice age receded. We've reached an unprecedented moment in planetary history. Humans now affect 'The Earth' and it's processes more than all other natural forces combined. 'The Anthropocene Project' investigates human influence on the state and future of 'The Earth'. 'The Holocene Epoch' started 11,700 years ago as 'The Glaciers' of the last 'Ice Age' receded. We've left 'The Holocene' and entered a new epoch; 'The Anthropocene'. Humans have become the single most defining force on the planet and that the evidence for this is overwhelming. Terraforming of 'The Earth' through mining, urbanization, industrialization and agriculture; the proliferation of dams and diverting of waterways; 'CO2' and acidification of oceans due to climate change; the pervasive presence around the globe of plastics and other technofossils; unprecedented rates of deforestation and extinction; these human incursions are so massive in scope that they've already entered, and will endure in, geological time. Embracing and developing innovative techniques, the film embarks on an epic journey around the world to every continent save 'Antarctica', to capture the most spectacular evidence of human influence, while taking time to reflect on the deeper meaning of what these profound transformations signify. The result is a collection of experiences that will immerse viewers in the new world of 'The Anthropocene Epoch', delivering a sense of scale, gravity, and impact that both encompasses and moves beyond the scope of conventional screens and prints. It feels like the films keep getting bigger in scope. This is because the urgency around problems we face at a global level demands it. But big picture subjects falls apart without an appropriate balance of scale and detail. Sometimes you need to go up in the sky to convey place, but if you stay up there all the time, you float away from what is meaningful. Humans are not meant to remain at an omniscient level, though we like to contemplate from there and technology allows us to do so. The film tries to intelligently translate one medium into another; which meant in most instances trying to convey scale in time. Hence the eight minute long, single take opening sequence. The vast Eupa factory floor would not have meant as much without the glances up from workers as the dolly passed them, or the person sleeping at his post after everyone left for lunch; the massive resettling of people and cities for 'The Three Gorges Dam' would not have resonated without the woman sewing at the construction site. The biggest lesson is illumination through juxtaposition. The film did not have a lot of information about context; if you needed more than a few words to describe where you're, it isn't going to work. Instead the film puts one place against another to sharpen the focus of both; 'The Buriganga River' next to a pristine 'Lake Ealue' in 'British Columbia'; people taking a sacred bath in 'The Ganges' at 'The Kumbh Mela' next to girls cartwheeling on the beach in California. But here again it's the combination of big picture and particular focus that brought an experiential understanding of context. It's the testimony of Inocencia Gonzales from 'The Cucupá Nation', whose fishing community is decimated as a result of the dry delta, that makes viewers understand that place. "Anthropocene" steps one place back from the other two films in it's premise; that humans change 'The Earth' and it's systems more than all natural processes combined. The film required a global perspective to drive home the fact that we humans, who've really only been up and running in modern civilization for about 10 thousand years, now completely dominate a planet that has been around for 4.5 billion. How do you convey that domination? Here again it's tempting to stay in the realm of the big; the omniscient. The aerial perspective, through helicopter and cineflix or drones, is woven all through the film, and sometimes the only way you experience a place; the phosphate mines in Florida, for example, or the oil refineries in Houston, Texas. But when everything is big or far away and diagrammatic, scale becomes incomprehensible. A timelapse of one small piece of bleaching coral tells the story of anthropogenic ocean acidification, and the tusks of seven thousand elephants, each one carefully weighed and recorded, becomes the way we understand human-directed extinction. The balance of scale and detail is also where we've learned from each other over 13 years of collaboration. This film certainly deploys the big picture, and endeavors sometimes to convey a place in one wide frame. But the film also seeks moments of intimacy, the detail needed to reveal, understand or encourage empathy within context. This is where the ethics of engagement are critical, and go further to say that ethics are the most important dimension of our filmmaking practice. When you go all over the world for your project, it's crucial to try and do so with humility, and an openness to what the context wants to tell you about itself, especially its overlooked margins or ignored corners. The post-1950 period of accelerated industrial development, extraction of natural resources, population growth and globalization, bringing unprecedented increases in forms of human-caused pollution. The measurement of time as it relates to geological phenomena, encompassing the entirety of Earth’s history since it's formation. Our current geologic epoch, which extends to approximately 11.7 thousands years before the twenty-first century, and is the second of two current 'Quaternary Epochs'. A dynamic marriage of lens-based media and cutting-edge technology, "Anthropocene" combines documentary storytelling with responsive gigapixel essays, 360° film, and '3D' modelling to fully immerse audiences in these photographic worlds, revealing what they signify for both the history and future of human civilization, and it's accumulated effect on the planet. The film allows audiences to journey to some of the most imposing, stunning, and remote locations in the world; places they will learn they're connected to, or often accountable for, but would never normally experience. These hot spots encourages exploration of the entire image, give context connecting the photo to the tenets of 'The Anthropocene', and offer gratifying scavenger hunt moments of discovery. Designed to open up a unique and complementary exploration of locations, ideas, and themes, '360°' video and cinematic 'VR' bring the borderless frame to cinema, offering viewers a completely different relationship to the photographic image, where the spatial relationships between objects and people in the images remain intact. The aim is to create experiences that literally take viewers into the realities of 'The Anthropocene'; hard-to-reach, out-of-bounds locations that few people ever get to visit in their lifetime.

We have no idea what it was that bit you. It had fingers, Andy! Fuck! If there’s one genre with so many releases that you get tired of it, it’s certainly the zombie genre. I’m sure this kind of movies is made on a daily basis. Movies in which infected undead stumble around, searching for victims, to have a portion of juicy brains. Most movies aren’t very innovative and all known clichés are being used. But occasionally you come across something completely different where they want to give a new direction to the zombie genre. Just like in “Maggie” it’s about a father who wants to protect his daughter. Only, little Rosie (Finlay and Nova Sjoberg) isn’t aware of any threat. It starts off idyllic. The story is set in the Australian bushes (the last Australian zombie flick I have seen was “Wyrmwood“. Also highly recommended). Andy (Martin “The Hobbit” Freeman), his wife Kay (Susie Porter) and their baby-daughter Rosie are quietly riding a dilapidated boat across a river. It seems idyllic and has a high “The African Queen” mood. There’s no indication of a post-apocalyptic situation with humanity again being the victim of a viral outbreak. Until they come across the wreck of a boat. The same stupid decisions over and over again. The only thing that bothered me in this film are the stupid, illogical decisions that were made. It’s understandable that this family can’t go on forever without providing themselves with new food and provisions. Trust me. I would also go and check if there wasn’t anything useful to find on board this boat. But knowing that every moment you can be attacked by a hungry zombie, I would certainly not do this unarmed and without informing the other person. I suppose they are of the same intellectual level because Kay makes the same primal mistake. With all the consequences. Hit the tree instead of the zombie, please. The next stupid fragment announces itself when the family is on the run in an abandoned off-road vehicle. In normal circumstances, you as a driver will try to avoid inattentive crossing pedestrians. You’ll probably perform some neck-breaking maneuvers that are a risk to your own life. But when knowing that the mainland is populated by soulless creatures whose only goal is to take a big bite from any uninfected after they have towed them to a local zombie barbecue, you would rather put the pedal to the metal. But no. Not Andy. He’s so good-hearted that he prefers to crash the all-terrain vehicle against an Australian boab instead of hitting such a creature. But as I said before, these are the only drawbacks in this, for the rest, fascinating and especially emotionally poignant zombie story. Problems in Australia? Ask the Aboriginals for help. The film itself isn’t unnervingly exciting. It shows the self-sacrificing agony Andy undergoes so he can take his daughter to a safe place. Far from the mutated fellowmen and half-wits who do totally crazy things in this chaotic world. Like putting an Aboriginal in a cage after which the target practice can start with zombies, which are lured by fresh meat. Incidentally, it’s the Aboriginals who know how to maintain themselves in this new world. With primitive-looking rituals they succeed in liquidating zombies and plant-based ointment provides protection. It’s also a young Aboriginal girl (Simone Landers) who helps Andy with his trip through the bush and who provides a safe haven. An emotionally touching zombie-flick. Who would have thought that? Frankly, I thought this film was original in many ways. Not only the zombie concept was elaborated in a different way. The transformation is totally different than in a typical zombie movie. Here it’s not only blood and ripped off flesh, but it’s a blubbery, slimy substance that manifests itself during the 48-hour transformation. Also, the phenomenon of zombies with their head in the ground (ostrich-like behavior) was surprising. Was it to shut themselves off from the outside world? Or is it part of the transformation process? No idea. But it was fascinating enough. And finally, the most impressive thing for me personally was the atmosphere that this film radiated. I never thought I would ever watch a zombie movie and get emotionally touched by it. You really have to be a zombie if you don’t want to be moved by this movie. And finally, praise for the admirable acting performance of Martin Freeman. A whole movie he played a leading role and not for a moment I had the feeling he was playing a hobbit. That’s what I call an achievement. My rating 7/10 Links: IMDB More reviews here

The London Short Film Festival 15th Anniversary is on from 12-21st January 2018. It’s such an exciting programme this year. In terms of specific events, there's a 15th Anniversary event called We Dare To Fail that really highlights the impact that LSFF can have on feature-film directors careers. Films like God’s Own Country, The Greasy Strangler, Berberian Sound Studio, The Levelling, Prevenge, Couple in a Hole, Spaceship, Gone Too Far, True West, Nina Forever represent great British films from the last few years, and there’s a retrospective event looking at the early works of the uncompromising auteur feature-film directors behind these features (for example Francis Lee, Alice Lowe, Hope Dickson Leach etc.) who all showcased shorts at LSFF at the beginning of their careers. There are early-career performances and cameos from the likes of Michael Fassbender. There’s also Brexit Shorts: Dramas From A Divided Nation which has been put together by The Guardian and Headlong Theatre, and they've teamed up to mark the one-year anniversary of the controversial decision to leave the EU. They’ve commissioned a host of prominent scriptwriters and well-known actors (including Maxine Peake, Abi Morgan, Kristen Scott Thomas, Penelope Wilton…I could go on!) from each of the UK regions have been commissioned to highlight the nation’s growing divisions in their area at a moment of seismic political change. LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES 15TH ANNIVERSARY PROGRAMME “PICTURES SNATCHED OUT THE FRAME” WE DARE TO FAIL: 15 YEARS OF LSFF CELEBRATES FESTIVAL’S LEGACY AND IMPACT ON BRITISH FILMMAKING (2018 FESTIVAL RUNS 12-21 JANUARY) Feat. William E Jones, The Final Girls, Radio Atlas, Cookie Crew, She Rockers, Barbara Hammer, Dawn Shadforth, Simon Ellis, Christine Molloy, and Joe Lawlor LSFF Inaugural International Short Film Jury: Lucile Hadžihalilović, Katie Jarvis, Lili Hartwig London Short Film Festival (LSFF) announces its full 2018 programme, screening over 500 UK and international short films over 10 days, from 12-21 January 2018. Celebrating its 15th year, LSFF is a vital moment in the UK film calendar, a beacon of inclusive and ground-breaking film-making from a diverse range of backgrounds. The Festival will show a huge selection of UK and international short films across music, culture, and politics. The 15th anniversary content includes We Dare To Fail, a strand that screens the early LSFF entries from uncompromising auteur filmmakers. There will be shorts shown from Francis Lee (God’s Own Country), Hope Dickson-Leach (The Levelling), and Alice Lowe (Prevenge). The celebratory retrospective will also feature shorts from the directors behind The Greasy Strangler, Berberian Sound Studio, Couple in a Hole, Spaceship, Gone Too Far, True West, and Nina Forever. There are also early-career cameos from the likes of Michael Fassbender and Danny Dyer when their stars were rising. Brexit Shorts: Dramas From A Divided Nation marks the one year anniversary of the divisive decision to leave the EU, with new short films from notable scriptwriters and actors in response to the referendum. A panel discussion with Jess Gormley and Noah Payne-Frank (Guardian), and Amy Hodge (Headlong Theatre) will be followed by a performance from one of the actors in the films. Screenwriting and acting talent involved in the shorts, include Maxine Peake, Abi Morgan, Kristen Scott Thomas and Penelope Wilton amongst many others. Other highlights from the programme include trailblazing films from Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad (in partnership with MUBI), video artist William E Jones’ reclaiming of police surveillance footage of the gay community in 60s Ohio, and LSFF’s own With Teeth artists premiering newly commissioned experimental AV work. Ngozi Onwurah is the first Black British woman to have a feature film released in UK cinemas (Welcome II The Terrordome,1995), and there will be a legacy screening of her rare works, for which Ngozi will be in attendance. Pioneering lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer will be answering questions following a screening of her films. There will also be a retrospective of Dawn Shadforth’s music video back catalogue, looking at the work of pop doyennes Kylie Minogue, Bjork, Sugababes, and Peaches. Other music video events include a new visual project from Domino, in celebration of their long association with LSFF. A brand new competition strand to celebrate the 15th anniversary is made up of six programmes, all of which exemplify the Festival’s commitment to diversity and continual audience development. The 36 selected films take in migration, prejudice, survival and the darker side of family life, and dissect everything from the entertainment industry to reality itself. The esteemed international short film jury includes French filmmaker Lucile Hadžihalilović, international short film festival curator Lili Hartwig, and Fish Tank actress Katie Jarvis. Each LSFF 2018 Competition programme will screen twice, at Curzon Soho and Rich Mix. As always, the core of LSFF is the New Shorts section; programmes of short films selected from 2500 open submissions into the Festival, with popular, returning slots from Funny Shit to Leftfield & Luscious, from Lo-Budget Mayhem to A Winter’s Matinee of Romantic Films, alongside new themes around identity, visibility and relationships. LSFF will screen films at important cultural landmarks in London's film community, including the ICA, which has hosted LSFF every year since it began. New venues for 2018 includethe Rich Mix in Shoreditch; Regent Street Cinema Curzon Soho, the Rio Cinema in Dalston and the BFI Southbank. The industry programme will take place entirely at its new home at MOTH Club in Hackney. 2018 will also showcase new With Teeth projects. LSFF’s long-term short film commissioning fund, aims to become a solid support base for the most exciting emerging cinematic voices and auteurs, supported by Arts Council England National Lottery Funding. Tash Tung, Kim Noce and Zoe Aiano, will premiere newly commissioned experimental work that uses a range of unconventional AV techniques to enhance and communicate beautiful and nuanced stories. As a champion of diverse and inclusive film, LSFF continues to see a huge contribution from women, LGBT and BAME filmmakers, and in a Festival first will introduce a programme led by and for the D/deaf community. With an established network of sponsors and supporters who help champion the Festival, LSFF strives to become more accessible and inclusive with the support of the BFI and Arts Council England, both awarding funds from the National Lottery. LSFF is also proud to have been awarded the Screen Diversity mark of good practice for meeting the BFI Diversity Standard, which recognises the Festival’s commitment in this endeavour. Detailed highlights from the full programme are below: LONDON SHORT FILM FESTIVAL 15TH ANNIVERSARY The festival celebrates its 15th year in 2018 with a retrospective of the early works of auteur directors who all showcased short films at the festival at the beginning of their careers. With films like God’s Own Country, The Greasy Strangler, Berberian Sound Studio, The Levelling, Prevenge, Couple in a Hole, Spaceship, Gone Too Far, True West, Nina Forever representing great British films from the last few years, by uncompromising auteurs, who have all screened early works at London Short Film Festival. We Dare To Fail: 15 Years of LSFF looks at pieces by the directors of films including Francis Lee (God’s Own Country) and Alice Lowe (Prevenge), amongst many others. Filmmakers will be in attendance, and the event will be hosted on stage by LSFF co-founders Philip Ilson and Kate Taylor. Alongside BAFTA winners Simon Ellis and Joe Lawlor & Christine Molloy (The Desperate Optimists), we bring an incredible selection of shorts back to this very special 15th anniversary screening. This impressive collection of shorts come from: FREE SPEECH The Blaine Brothers 2004, 6 mins LITTLE CLUMPS OF HAIR Jim Hosking 2003, 12 mins WHAT THE Simon Ellis 2004, 7 mins WHO KILLED BROWN OWL? The Desperate Optimists 2004, 10 mins A METAPHYSICAL EDUCATION Peter Strickland 2004, 3 mins SHAME Tom Geens 2006, 4 mins LADIES IN WAITING Hope Dickson Leach 2005, 7 mins STICKS AND BALLS Alice Lowe / Jacqueline Wright 2007, 4 mins TIGHT JEANS Destiny Ekaragha 2008, 9 mins KIDS MIGHT FLY Alex Taylor 2009, 7 mins MAN ON A MOTORCYCLE John McClean 2009, 12 mins BRADFORD HALIFAX LONDON Francis Lee 2013, 9 mins POLITICAL The Guardian and Headlong Theatre have teamed up to mark the one-year anniversary of the controversial decision to leave the EU, with Brexit Shorts: Dramas From A Divided Nation. A raft of prominent scriptwriters and well-known actors from each region were commissioned to highlight the nation’s growing divisions in their area at a moment of seismic political change. A mix of noteworthy names across screenwriting and acting are involved in the shorts, with scripts and stories from Maxine Peake and Abi Morgan, playwrights David Hare and Gary Owen, and actors including Kristen Scott Thomas, Meera Syal, and Penelope Wilton amongst many others. The screenings will be followed by a panel discussion with Jess Gormley and Noah Payne-Frank from The Guardian, Amy Hodge from Headlong Theatre and a live performance from one of the actors in the films. MUSIC Dawn Shadforth: Spinning Around takes a look at one of the most quietly prolific music video auteurs of the 90s, Dawn Shadforth, who has created visuals for the likes of Kylie Minogue, Björk, Sugababes, and Peaches. A Q&A with Dawn and special guests follows. This year there’s a celebration of 15 years of LSFF and Domino, working together, It’s All Good!, is an evening of music videos, DJs, giveaways and surprises. Domino have created and curated music videos from a wealth of directors since LSFF’s inception, and this event will see the introduction of new visual projects. To celebrate the legacy of of women in British rap and MC-ing, Home Girls: Live sees LSFF team up with contemporary performers who are currently raising the bar in a scene dominated by men. The closing night party will feature a special guest appearance from Hackney-based Paigey Cakey, and special guests TBA, in a homegrown London-centric talent event. Home Girls: From Cookie Crew to Now, takes stock of the representation of female hip-hop artists over the decades, from the swim-suited video vixen to the in control and hyper sexualized. Cookie Crew, Wee Papa Girl Rappers and She Rockers burst onto the scene in the 80s and 90s with a self-defined, powerful onscreen image. A panel discussion with members of the bands, and key industry figures will follow. LGBTQ LGBTQ content this year is led by long time LSFF collaborators New Queer Visions. The first film programme, Don’t Look Back In Anger, looks at the nature of hate and positivity, with touching stories about queer characters dealing with ups, downs, and everything in between. This is accompanied by Medium Rare, a programme of medium length shorts exploring the mixed-up mind of an impressionable young man. In partnership with MUBI, Radical Softness Through A Haptic Lens is a retrospective of the works of Barbara Hammer, feminist filmmaker and one of the pioneers of lesbian film, and Chick Strand, avant-garde documentary filmmaker. The films examine the idea of ‘radical softness’, the power that can be found in in being both abrasively feminine and openly vulnerable, through a soft and kinesthetic style of filmmaking. Following incredibly rare screenings of Superdyke and Soft Fictions, there will be a Skype Q&A with the legendary Barbara Hammer. Also in association with MUBI is Cruelty and Crime, a showcase of the key works of American writer Chris Kraus. From feminist readings of Antonin Artaud to Cold War sleeper agents, via dominatrices and New York City crime scenes, these films are filled with humour, sexuality, abjection, metaphor, allusion, an insatiable curiosity and a Dadaist sense of provocation and absurdity. A collection of 1962 police footage documenting men cruising in a public toilet, was reworked and re-presented by William E Jones as a separate work, Tearoom* in 2007. The experimental video art project shows how surveillance is used as a blunt tool of oppression. The footage shown was eventually used as evidence to prosecute the men of sodomy and public deviancy. Prior to the screening LSFF will also be showcasing Robert Yang’s game The Tearoom, a cruising simulation made in direct response to the film. On release the game ran afoul of the censors and so in a bold piece of satirical provocation Yang replaced all the penises with guns. The game was then successfully passed uncut. Additionally we also welcome filmmaker Sam Ashby, who will present a newly commissioned work in response to Tearoom, and artist Prem Sahib for a post screening discussion of the themes highlighted in the work. *18 - contains scenes of real sexual activity. BAME When director Julie Dash created the groundbreaking Daughters of the Dust in 1991, a multigenerational tale of black women from the Gullah sea islands struggling to hold on to their culture, little did she know that 25 years later her work would be held up on the world stage thanks to one of the music industry’s most influential artists: Beyoncé. Given the subject matter and the detail paid to the cinematography, Dash’s film provided an obvious touchstone to inspire Beyoncé’s vision in Lemonade. 2009’s Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam refers respectively to ‘taqwa’ and ‘core’, a synthesis of an awe-inspiring consciousness of Allah, and a hard-core punk music style, and a fusion of Muslim and American culture. A panel discussion, Muslim Punk and the New Subculture, hosted by filmmaker Hammad Khan asks what happened to Taqwacore, and questions how class, race, and gender are tied to Muslim resistance to Trump and Brexit. Hammad Khan’s Anima State is arguably the most important film to come out of Pakistan in decades. As we approach the 70th anniversary of the country’s independence from British India, it is an uncomfortable, in-your-face examination of the country’s violence, to its apathy, to its refusal to recognize its moral corruption, in every single facet of Pakistani society. Pioneer of Black British cinema Ngozi Onwurah’s body of work weaves autobiographical narrative with astute socio-political observation. As the first Black British woman filmmaker to have a feature film released in UK cinemas we celebrate Ngozi’s legacy with a screening of early works and panel discussion in Ngozi Onwurah: Shorts. A rare 35mm screening of Welcome II The Terrordome will also show at the festival. The House is Black, a screening of the only known film by one of Iran’s greatest 20th century poets Farough Farrokazad, depicts an isolated community of lepers living in Northwestern Iran, and is soundtracked by a reading from the poet herself. There will be a reading of her work, translated into English, and The Oberhausen Archive have kindly donated a 35mm print of the film. CULTURE The festival will open with Adrena Adrena’s Movements of A Nebulous Dawn, supported by Arts Council England. This is a one-off audiovisual collaboration, with a 360-degree nebulous orb defying the conventions of theatrical presentation, as musicians perform in-the-round beneath multiple circular projections created by Daisy Dickinson. An improvised live set will see a constantly changing and evolving set of guest musicians from Faust, Wire, Boredoms and other experimental, electronic and progressive bands.  Julian Hand, who directed the 2018 LSFF trailer, will be projecting psychedelic visuals using coloured liquids and slides. This year’s festival sees a first for LSFF, with a premiere screening exclusively for D/deaf audiences, curated by LSFF’s Deaf Young Programmer Zoe McWhinney. Save The Date, a selection of archive and contemporary short films, brings stories about D/deaf culture and experience to the screen. The screening, at BFI Southbank, will be fully supported by BSL interpreters, and films will include BSL dialogue, and/or subtitles. The Final Girls Present: The Witching Hour is a screening of two of the original 1970s documentaries that showcase the continuing, cultural obsession with witchcraft and the occult. Secret Rites is a pseudo documentary illustrating a series of initiation rites for a novice witch, while The Power of the Witch is a rarely-seen documentary featuring interviews with the King and Queen of the witch craze, Alex and Maxine Sanders. The Final Girls will host a panel discussion following the screenings. An in-conversation event around the works of the cult sci-fi author, JG Ballard: This Is The Way, Step Inside, explores the writer’s 20th century preoccupation with the machine vs. the 21st century obsession with the digital towards an anthropological take on disembodiment, honing in on how Ballard perceives both the body, and the human condition. The panel is made up of filmmakers Jason Wood, Simon Barker and Harley Cokeliss, with Ballard scholar Dr. Jeanette Baxter. Radio Atlas: Risk is an award-winning platform for subtitled audio from around the world. A place to hear inventive documentaries and aural art works that have been made in languages you don't necessarily speak. This intimate event premieres documentaries which explore the thin line between freedom and risk, taking the listener to unexpected places, with a Q&A discussion with Radio Atlas founder Eleanor McDowall. INTERNATIONAL As the international film strand enters its fourth year, a programme of four screenings brings together some of the most unique voices in fiction, documentary and experimental filmmaking. LSFF have shorts from all over the world, with entries from China, Cuba, Slovenia, and Mozambique, to name a fraction. The festival is becoming a key player on the festival circuit when it comes to showing high quality and well-curated international short film. WITH TEETH With Teeth is a bi-annual commissioning award from LSFF, supported by Arts Council England, aimed at embodying LSFF’s core principle of championing contemporary artists moving image works, diverging from more traditional avenues of funding to nurture diverse and unconventional independent short filmmaking. Following the second round of awards from the commissioning fund, the With Teeth Premiere will showcase the works of the three recipients of this year’s grant, Kim Noce, Zoe Aiano, and Tash Tung. Their films use experimental methods, including Your Mothers Are Mine! a projected live animation by Kim Noce observing the complexities of the mother daughter relationship. A multi-screen fiction explores the multiplicities of the image and female domesticity by Tash Tung in Unknown Pleasure. Zoe Aiano presents a wild and delicate documentary of a life spent communicating with the dead, in Imam Pesnu. INDUSTRY EVENTS This year’s industry programme sees experts from across the industry offering their words of wisdom on everything from getting your film funded, to engaging audiences. There’ll be contributions from Channel 4 Random Acts, BBC3, Noisey, and Bechdel Test Fest; Director of VR and New Media at Raindance Mária Rakušanová, will be sharing her expertise in ‘AR You Feeling It?’ and Alexander Karotsch of Fringe! Film Festival will be there to discuss ethical responsibility in ‘Let’s Talk About Sex’. All LSFF 2018 Industry events take place at MOTH Club, which has been turned into the festival’s day time Industry hub. As well as tips on funding, and what commissioners are looking for, the talks and discussions cover everything from driving feminist change in cinema, depicting sex on screen, how to manage the relationship between filmmakers and progammers, and an insight into how new AR technologies are being used to drive stories and emotional responses.

Those who hear the three bells toll, accept his invitation. When you hear the first, you must close your eyes, keeping words unspoken. If one wants to hear, you must listen closely, for they are soft and distant. I was really curious about this movie. Not that I expected anything spectacular. But the photos with this cult figure, which popped up on the internet, were rather intriguing. Not really scary but mysterious. A faceless figure with disproportionate limbs who appears in the background while observing children playing. A kind of Pied Piper of Hamelin who lures innocent children and makes them disappear. The fact this creation is the result of an internet competition is widely known. I was only curious if this figure would convince in a horror film. Well, it’s not really innovative. You’ll see the same clichés again. And the same stupidities and bad decisions are made by those who are about to become a victim. And the same tricks out of “Horror for dummies” are applied. It’s not so bad. And yet, I didn’t think it was bad. “Slender man” certainly isn’t such a big fiasco as you might think. It isn’t as disastrous as the comments you can read here and there on the internet. It won’t go down in history as one of the most frightening or bloody horrors of all time. And the obscure and dark images creates an appropriate atmosphere but also ensure that you can’t see a damn thing most of the time. But I felt that constant threat and the fear among the four teenage girls. And no, I won’t have panic attacks immediately when hearing the sound of crackling wood. But these sound effects did create a creepy mood. This is a hip demon. Normally I am such a person who whines about the fact that too little background information is given in a film. You are kept in the dark (appropriate for this movies) in terms of the origin and arising of the particular creepy phenomenon. With “Slender Man“, however, I didn’t think this was necessary. It made Slender Man even more mysterious. Summoning malicious demons also isn’t exactly something new. Only recently you could see in “Pyewacket” how a frustrated teenage girl evoked something similar with the help of an occult ritual. And a long time ago, a group of young adults played a tape in “The Evil Dead” which caused Kandarian spirits to ruin everything. In “Slender Man” the cause of all the misery is a video on YouTube. Maybe that fits with today’s time, but perhaps this bothered me the most. They tried to make it too hip. Especially when afterwards this ancient legend also knows about mobile phone technology. They say it might be dangerous. Oh hell, what the heck. Maybe that’s the problem with this movie. They focused more on the continuation of the internet hype and tried to make a modern horror out of it. They lost sight of the concept of a well-thought-out horror. Maybe it fits perfectly with the life the four teenage girls Wren (Joey King), Hallie (Julia Goldani Telles), Chloe (Jaz Sinclair) and Katie (Annalize Basso) lead. A group of carefree teenagers who gained a certain popularity status at school (as seen in so many other Highschool films) and show an everyday affinity with current modern technology. They have more affection for their smartphone than for their fellow students. Yes, they display a kind of arrogance. To such an extent that they simply ignore the warnings for watching the video. Until one of them suddenly disappears and they realize that they might be stalked by this lugubrious figure. Javier Botet. I love this creepy looking actor. Want to know my conclusion in the end? The whole legend created around this Slender Man was much more interesting than the film itself. All in all, it wasn’t original and I didn’t see anything baffling new in this film. But I still found certain scenes successful. Such as the one in the library with the use of a sort of psychedelic footage. And throughout the film, there are more of those hallucinatory passages. Also, I didn’t think the acting was that awful. Ok, sometimes the four girls acted rather childish during meaningless conversations. And yes, some of their decisions were downright stupid. But that suited these young girls. And finally, I also thought the appearance of the mysterious Slender Man was reasonably successful. He blended perfectly with the background so you had this feeling that he could appear at any time. It’s Javier Botet again who has put his peculiar physique at the service to play this nasty character. Just like he did in “Mama“, “Don’t knock twice” and “Mara“. No, “Slender Man” wasn’t disastrous, but seasoned horror fanatics will look at it in a rather condescending way. Beginners, on the other hand, might be afraid this faceless figure will show up. After all, they’ve seen a large part of the illustrious video. Not? My rating 6/10 Links: IMDB More reviews here