Cine Papaya
The best of world cinema. Briiliant movies that too often don't get the recognition they deserve
Thursday, 26 December 2013
The Auteurs of Christmas
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
Wednesday, 5 June 2013
FITZCARDBOARDALDO (a cardboard Fitzcarraldo)
Tekturowy hołd dla Fitzcarraldo Wernera Herzoga, stworzony przez Robin Forhardt.
Tuesday, 28 May 2013
Blue is the Warmest Colour
(original title: La Vie d'Adele—Chapitre 1 et 2)
Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche
France, 2013
Powstały na podstawie komiksu Julie Maroh, chwalony za delikatność i intensywność, już okrzyknięty przełomowym w pokazywaniu lesbijskiej miłości i seksualności kobiet, ten epicki (179 minut), choć równocześnie ekstremalnie intymny film to jedna z najpiękniej zaobserwowanych historii miłosnych, od pierwszego pocałunku do ostatecznego pożegnania.
Na koniec utwór, który już na zawsze będzie mi się kojarzył z tym filmem.
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
Monday, 1 April 2013
Friday, 15 March 2013
Friday, 22 February 2013
Sunday, 10 February 2013
Saturday, 9 February 2013
Post - Rotterdam
Let Fury Have the Hour
USA 2012
Director: Antonino D'Ambrosio
Various musicians discuss how their art was largely a reaction to the conservative politics of Reagan and Thatcher. Public Enemy, MC5, Minor Threat, Fugazi, The Clash, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Billy Bragg, Manu Chao, Gogol Bordello, DJ Spooky and many more.
This attempt at documenting a broad social history behind a wide range of popular music from the 1980s till now consists of an exuberant mixed-media collage incorporating art, music, animation and performance. The film brings together 50 writers, playwrights, painters, poets, skateboarders, dancers, musicians and rights advocates, each revealing that we can re-imagine the world we live in and take an active role in making that vision a reality.
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/let-fury-have-the-hour/
They'll Come Back
Eles voltam
Brazil 2012
Director: Marcelo Lordello
Cris (12) and her brother are thrown out of the car by their parents after their endless squabbling. That marks the start of a brief ramble through northwestern Brazil. In this modern fable, an upper-class teenager learns to see the world from a different perspective.
For all its simplicity, the opening scene is extremely effective. From a great distance, we see a car stop by the side of the road in the middle of a panoramic landscape of hills. Two figures get out of the car. We don’t know why and can’t make any judgement. They turn out to be Cris (12) and her slightly older brother who - rightly or wrongly - have been ordered out of the car by their parents. They don’t know where they are; initially they assume that their parents will come back for them.
In beautiful shots by cameraman Ivo Lopes Araújo, the film then shows the adventures of an upper-class teenager whose eyes slowly open on her quest for familiar territory: she realises who she is, where she comes from and in which country she lives. In his first fiction film after several documentaries, Marcelo Lordello shows a journey that is certainly universal for adolescents, but here subtly moves through a country that despite - or precisely because of - the rapid economic developments, is confronted with major contrasts between the classes. They'll Come Back, which has already won several prizes at the festival in Brasilia, makes it clear that the creativity of filmmakers from Recife and Pernambuco is still going strong: among those previously successful in Rotterdam are Cláudio Assis, Gabriel Mascaro, Marcelo Gomes and Kleber Mendonça.
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/eles-voltam/
Carne de perro
Dog Flesh
Chile, France, Germany 2012
Director: Fernando Guzzoni
Solidly nerve-wracking debut about Chilean fiftysomething who can no longer escape from the burden of his dark past as a Pinochet thug. Shot by unsurpassed camerawoman Bárbara Álvarez (De jueves a domingo). Just to reassure you: the dog was not harmed in making the film.
In Chile, people look to the future. They work, dream of success, lose themselves in shopping and saccharine soaps. They prefer not to think of the dictatorship of Pinochet, who drowned the country in fear from 1973 to 1990. Except, that is, for types like Alejandro. This shabby fifty-something worked in one of Pinochet’s torture prisons. Now he lives on the fringes of society, unable to reinvent himself. When one of his former colleagues commits suicide, this emotionally handicapped macho completely loses it. His wife and daughter leave him. His trusty yet noisy dog has to take the full force of his temper tantrums. Fernando Guzzoni makes his debut filming Alejandro very close up. His paranoia is almost tangible, the mood bordering on claustrophobia. Despite being oppressive, Dog Flesh is not moralistic. With a star role for Alejandro Goic, who was himself tortured by Pinochet’s bullies.
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/carne-de-perro/
Harmonica's Howl
O uivo da gaita
Brazil 2013
Director: Bruno Safadi
A sun-drenched fluid love story between Antonia, Luana and Pedro. Possessed by passion, they are imprisoned in a puzzling game of attraction and rejection. Sensory experience forms part of the trilogy around the star Leandra Leal.
In the opening scene, which lasts for minutes, we see a gigantic container ship slowly sailing by at dawn. At the end of the film, Brazilian director Bruno Safadi shows an enormous cruise ship, but then in the middle of the night, filmed in the same way with a fixed camera from a distance.
In between, Safadi focuses on three beautiful, young, affluent people: Pedro, Antônia and Luana circle each other like floating islands. Restless. Adrift. Possessed by love. Possessed by themselves.
The form is experimental; the title only appears on screen after half an hour and the powerful, penetrating soundtrack often tells a completely different story from the suggestive images. This hypnotic, alienating film is part of Operation Sonia Silk, a project supported by the Hubert Bals Fund and made by a collective of filmmakers, actors and crew who shot three feature films in two weeks on a very modest budget.
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/o-uivo-da-gaita/
Rio Belongs to Us
O Rio nos pertence
Brazil 2013
Director: Ricardo Pretti
After receiving a strange picture postcard, Marina knows there’s nothing else to it but to return to Rio de Janeiro, the beautiful city that here seems threatening and almost enchanting. Part of a collective inventive film operation.
This could be two films. Either it’s a film-noir thriller, in which information emerges in fits and starts in a roller-coaster ride to inevitable danger. Or it’s a psychological drama with a poetic bent, in which the viewer is immersed in the memories of the troubled protagonist. The protagonist is Marina, who returns to Rio de Janeiro after an absence of 10 years. The motivation was a mysterious postcard, but Marina herself doesn’t really know why she is back in town. She looks for answers with an ex-boyfriend and her sister, but doesn’t get any further. Gradually, daydreams and reality start to mingle and paranoia grips her. Rio Belongs to Us was made on a modest budget of less than 200,000 dollars, but that can’t be seen in the design. The camera effectively captures the light and space of the metropolis, which can be stunningly beautiful one minute and threatening the next.
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/o-rio-nos-pertence/
Tropicália
Brazil 2012
Director: Marcelo Machado
An homage to Brazilian innovators from the 1960s, such as Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. A vibrant collage of news footage, video clips, photos and psychedelic graphics, the film also evokes the Tropicália bric-a-brac aesthetic.
Tropicália was a short-lived artistic movement that exploded out of Brazil in the late 1960s, with Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil as its chief instigators, and Glauber Rocha as their counterpart in cinema. It was a reaction to the country’s turbulent socio-political history of the 1960s and 1970s. Like the Brazilian Modernists before them, the Tropicalistas believed in ingesting aspects of the European and American vanguard as well as traditional Afro-Brazilian and indigenous cultures, with the aim of creating a contemporary music that was uniquely hybrid. The influence of the music, with its heretic use of elements ranging from 'imported' electric guitars of The Beatles to traditional pífanos (flutes) played by folk musicians, had in return a long lasting effect with contemporary musicians. Beck and David Byrne, Nelly Furtado and Sonic Youth are some of its most well-known acolytes.
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/tropic-lia/
La Playa D.C.
The Beach
2012
Director: Juan Andrés Arango
Male hairstyles also count - above all in La Playa, a district of Bogotá where many immigrants from the West Coast live. Young Tomas is looking for a better future. He turns out to have hairdressing talent, but is hindered by loyalty and a sense of family duty. There’s a world of difference between the west coast of Colombia and the district of La Playa in Bogata, the capital. Ever since teenager Tomas had to flee his birthplace by the Pacific Ocean because of the civil war, he has yearned for the tropical countryside where he grew up. Everywhere he can, he draws scenes of his birthplace. Life in the city is hard too. His stepfather throws him out, his little brother Jairo is an addict and in big trouble. Together with his elder brother Chaco he is saving for a journey to the North, either the USA or Europe. Just as the sun is about to shine and he’s about to start earning money as a talented hairdresser, both his brothers ask for help and Tomas faces an impossible choice. To the accompaniment of latino hiphop beats, the camera follows the stoical Tomas through the streets of Bogota. A glimpse of the city's Afro-Colombian subculture - in which hairstyles play a major role.
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/la-playa-d-c/
Post tenebras lux
2012
Director: Carlos Reygadas
Dreamlike, extremely personal and visually surprising film by the Mexican master. Also puzzling. What do those rugby playing kids have to do with that illuminated devil? And how is the relationship crisis related to the distortedly filmed horses?
Mexican master Carlos Reygadas juxtaposes computer-generated images of a fiery red devil moving like the Pink Panther with B-film horror (a man pulls off his own head); group sex in a sauna with fairytale-like, slightly distorted images of a young girl pacing through a majestic landscape; and an affluent man and his stunningly beautiful wife having existential discussions about their relationship(s) with shots of a junior rugby team. Reygadas, whose feature debut Japón had its world premiere at the IFFR in 2002, compares the rough, associative and instinctive Post tenebras lux (‘light after darkness’) with an Expressionist painting in which he makes room for his deepest feelings, his memories, dreams, desires and fears. At the Cannes festival the film was booed, but Reygadas took home the prize for best direction. Partly financed by the Dutch Film Fund and co-produced by the Dutch company Topkapi Films.
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/post-tenebras-lux/
Ginger and Rosa
2012
Director: Sally Potter
London in the Swinging Sixties. The start of the sexual revolution, alongside protests against the Cold War. Ideological differences and painful treachery test the friendship of two teenagers. Elle Fanning plays a beautiful role in this new film by Sally Potter. The teenage girls Ginger and Rosa are best friends who grow up in London in the 1960s, under the real threat of a nuclear war as a result of the Cuba crisis in 1962. The friendship between the two is put to the test: Ginger becomes obsessed by her desire to take action and joins protest movements. In the meantime, Rosa falls for the charms of Ginger’s father, who has just left her mother. The mood of the restless 1960s, which is not only shaped by political changes but also by sexual liberation, is effectively captured in atmospheric images supported by a jazzy soundtrack (Dave Brubeck’s Take Five). Sally Potter (Orlando) took on a cast including Annette Bening, Alessandro Nivola and Mad Men's Christina Hendricks alongside the widely-praised leading lady, Elle Fanning, who was 13 when the film was shot.
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/ginger-and-rosa/
Blancanieves
Snow White
Spain, France 2012
Director: Pablo Berger
Blancanieves is Spanish for Snow White: the Grimm classic is situated in pre-war Spain, where the daughter of an invalid toreador has to cope with the terrible stepmother. Exciting, silent black-and-white film of course evokes comparisons with The Artist - to Spain's advantage.
Her mother dies in childbirth. Her father, a famous toreador, is skewered by a bull and ends up in a wheelchair. He marries his nurse, who turns out to be an evil stepmother. Instead of a mirror on the wall, she has a fashion magazine that tells her who is the most beautiful in the land. In this Spanish version of the Grimm classic, Snow White is called Blancanieves and hangs around with bullfighting dwarfs. But this is much more than a Spanish remake of a world-famous story; it’s a homage to the heyday of silent film. Pablo Berger, who worked on the film for eight years, situates the story in 1920s Seville. The stylish set is shot in sharp black-and-white. Dialogues are on inter-titles and are accompanied by a hot-blooded soundtrack with a large dose of flamenco. Blancanieves is a gloomy fairytale with an exotic undercurrent.
http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/professionals/films/blancanieves/
Thursday, 3 January 2013
Can. Not. Wait.
Berberian Sound Studio by Peter Strickland
Blancanieves by Marco Berger
No by Pablo Larraín
I'm So Excited (original title Los amantes pasajeros) by Pedro Almodovar
Buenas noches, España by Raya Martin
Violeta se fue a los cielos by Andrés Wood
Thursday, 20 December 2012
Another year. Another list.
So here it is:
1 "Oslo, August 31st" - Joachim Trier, Norway
"Holy Motors" – Leos Carax, France/Germany
2 "Amour" - Michael Haneke, France/Germany/Austria
3 "Rhino Season" - Bahman Ghobadi, Iran/Turkey
4 "Barbara" - Christian Petzold, Germany
5 "Neighboring Sounds" Kleber Mendonça Filho, Brazil
6 "Royal Affair", Nikolaj Arcel, Denmark
7 "Moonrise Kingdom", Wes Anderson, USA
8 "Wadjda", Haifaa Al-Mansour, Saudi Arabia
9 "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey
"Tabu" Miguel Gomes, Portugal
10 "Just the Wind"(Csak a szél) Benedek Fliegauf, Hungary
11 "Found Memories"
(Historias que so existem quando lembradas) Júlia Murat, Brasil
"Your Sister's Sister", Lynn Shelton, USA
12 "Martha Marcy May Marlene", Sean Durkin, USA
13 "Le Havre" Aki Kaurismäki, Finland/France
"Weekend", Andrew Haigh, UK
14 "Angel's Share", Ken Loach, UK
"Take This Waltz", Sarah Polley, Canada
15 "Even the rain", Icíar Bollaín, Spain
Monday, 10 December 2012
Saturday, 8 December 2012
Friday, 30 November 2012
Wednesday, 28 November 2012
Saturday, 24 November 2012
Saturday, 17 November 2012
A fascinating journey through the continents that is the 8th edition of FILMY ŚWIATA ALE KINO+ Festival
The idea behind the festival is a rigorous selection and presentation of the best films from outside of the so-called Western World. During this year's 8th edition of the festival, taking place in few Polish cities between 22nd November and 3rd December 2012, the organizers - the movie channel ALE KINO and Mañana - invite public for a cinematic expedition to Brazil, a fascinating country that in recent years is growing into a global power, both economically and culturally. The program includes four very different films, showing great richness of the local film industry:
- THE CLAUN (O Palhaço) dir. Selton Mello – Brazilian candidate for an Oscar in 2013;
- ONCE UPON A TIME WAS I, VERONICA (Era uma vez eu, Verônica) dir. Marcelo Gomes
- NEIGHBORING SOUNDS (O som ao redor) dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho
- XINGU (Xingu) dir. Cao Hamburger
Thursday, 24 November 2011
Neighbours (1952)
Directed by Norman McLaren
Canada, 1952
A 1952 Oscar-winning short, anti-war film by Scottish-Canadian filmmaker Norman McLaren. Produced at the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal, the film uses the technique known as pixilation, an animation technique using live actors as stop-motion objects.
Two men live peacefully in adjacent cardboard houses. When a flower blooms between their houses, they fight each other to the death over the ownership of the single small flower.
In 2009, Neighbours was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme, listing the most significant documentary heritage collections in the world.
Sunday, 30 October 2011
We Need To Talk About Kevin
Wednesday, 12 October 2011
Twenty-Four Eyes
Japan, 1954
Keisuke Kinoshita was one of the most prolific Japanese postwar directors, producing 42 films in 23 years, and then going on to a career in television. He is noted for his films about the suffering of women, especially mothers, and the strong performances of female stars in them.
„Twenty-Four Eyes” is an adaptation of a novel by the female writer Sakae Tsuboi. Set in a picturesque island in the Inland Sea, and covering a 20-year time span embracing prewar, wartime and early postwar Japan, it centres on the relationship between a primary school teacher and the 12 island children in her first class. (The 12 children explain the 24 eyes of the title). In the course of the film, she faces problems of acceptance by the children and their parents, then ideological criticism from the educational authorities, then wartime privations and losses in her family and among her pupils. The hardships of the young girls in her class, forced by economic privation and/or death of their parents to leave school and support their families, are stressed; as is the destiny of the young boys to become cannon fodder. The film concludes with a tearful reunion between the bereaved teacher and her original pupils, whose ranks are sadly depleted by the suffering of the past decade.
The film evinces a characteristic attitude towards World War II among the Japanese – an attitude of sorrow rather than remorse. In the early years of the Occupation, the Japanese cinema briefly gave voice to anger and protest against the sins of prewar and wartime leaders, who had “misled” the nation, but by the 1950s this attitude had given way to a more amorphous wallowing in sorrow and a general feeling of victimhood. Made soon after the end of the Occupation, when memories of the war were still fresh, Twenty Four Eyes functioned both as a symptom of these prevalent attitudes and an aid to their consolidation; it was welcomed by domestic audiences, giving them the opportunity to indulge in mourning. The film was not only a popular one, it also garnered the award of Best Film of the year from the national film critics. When you consider that 1954 was a year of prodigious achievements in the Japanese cinema – the year of Kurosawa’s "Seven Samurai"– it was an astounding coup for Kinoshita. It appears the critics, as well as the public, responded to a certain Zeitgeist in which a soft and diffused backward look on their own recent past was highly valued.
"Twenty Four Eyes" remained a favorite with Japanese audiences for decades after its production. Its use of music and cinematography alone is conducive to an indulgence in nostalgia. The film is punctuated with choruses of well-known children’s songs, appealing to the Japanese audience’s sentimental memories of their own childhood; and, for modern urban Japanese, the picturesque island setting with its small old-fashioned village community arouses nostalgia for the furusato, the old home town, where life was simpler if more arduous, apparently timeless and changeless. Both triggers of nostalgia, childhood and furusato, are brought together in the children’s song “Furusato”, sung repeatedly during the film.
The heroine, Miss Oishi, played by Hideko Takamine, is a teacher who is modern in dress and educational practice but also very maternal towards her pupils as well as being a mother herself. She voices some critical opinions, but these had become commonplace in postwar Japan, given the benefit of hindsight. Even in the prewar setting, she is not threatening; on the contrary, she is supremely comforting, a loving and loyal friend to her past pupils, and fellow sufferer in the trials and tribulations of the times they live through. She may be more educated and middle class than they are but that does not make her exempt from suffering and loss. She, like the villagers, suffers wartime privation and loss of a child and a husband. They are all scarred and aged by the war. As in wartime ideology, the Japanese are represented as more united than divided. Differences of class, gender and even political opinion are finally rendered less important than a common experience of suffering. The audience is invited to empathise with Miss Oishi and her pupils, and to shed copious tears.
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
Autumn reading
The Story of Film by Mark Cousins
A gateway to hours of movie watching.
This edition of The Story of Film, published to coincide with the fascinating 15-hour film documentary that is now aired in UK TV. Apparently it's the most accessible and compelling history of the medium yet published. The book is divided into three main epochs: Silent (1885-1928), Sound (1928-1990) and Digital (1990-Present). Film critic, producer and presenter, Mark Cousins shows how film-makers are influenced both by the historical events of their times, and by each other. Film is an international medium, so as well as covering the great American films and film-makers, the book explores cinema in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and South America, and shows how cinematic ideas and techniques cross national boundaries.
Directory of World Cinema: Spain
Bought yesterday at the London Spanish Film Festival this latest volume of the renowned Intellect collection offers an insight into Spanish national cinema through a series of reviews, essays and interviews covering key players and genres in their sociopolitical context.
24 Frames: The Cinema of Latin America
Similar idea: through twenty-four essays, each considering one significant film or documentary, the editors of this volume have compiled a unique introduction to the cinematic output of countries as diverse as Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Mexico, Bolivia, Chile and Venezuela.
Friday, 16 September 2011
The Skin I Live In
Original title: La Piel Que Habito
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Spain, 2011
“The Skin I Live in” reunites Almodóvar with the first star that he launched – Antonio Banderas. The films Almodóvar and Banderas made together in the 1980s – “Labyrinth of Passion”, “Matador”, “Law of Desire”, “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” and “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!" – formed one of the most iconic onscreen collaboration. Hollywood has truly wasted Banderas's potential. Now, twenty-one years after the 1990's “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” they are back together with a loose adaptation of Thierry Jonquet’s novel ‘Mygale’ (published in English as Tarantula) - the story of diabolical plastic surgeon, whose skills allow him to take control of the people's life in ways unimaginable to anyone but him. The bones of the film's character might be based on the novel, but the rest is all Almodóvar.
“The Skin I Live In” is a story of revenge. Dr Robert Ledgard (Banderas), an eminent plastic surgeon and grief-stricken widower is engaged in an ethically dubious experiment to create a new artificial skin, which he believes, could have saved his wife life. She committed suicide after being horrifically burned in a road accident. Ever since this tragic event Robert becomes obsessed in his search for medical perfection of the idea he developed: heat- and pain-resistant, although still sensitive to the touch, transgenic skin.
In addition to years of study and experimentation, Robert needed three things: no scruples, an accomplice and a human guinea pig. Scruples were never a problem. Marilia (Marisa Paredes, another Almodóvar regular), the woman who looked after him from the day he was born, for reasons known only to her, is his most faithful accomplice. And as for the human guinea pig there's Vera (Sex And Lucia 's Elena Anaya), whom he holds captive in his vast, seemingly inescapable isolated mansion El Cigarral.
The less said about the story, the better. Almodovar cleverly uses flashback to unsettlingly reveal who Vera really is, an outrageous, sexually perverse twist that only he could get away with. Almodóvar’s vision is more ominous than anything I've seen before. The subject is extreme, and the plot so grotesque yet, Almodovar is Almodovar - he has the ability to turn highly disturbing plots into something beautiful. He is constantly testing the limits of plausibility – looked at objectively, the plot appears absurd – but his meticulous craftsmanship and confident storytelling ensures it remains riveting. With “The Skin I Live In” once again he revealed his genius for turning the ridiculous into the sublime.
Dr Ledgard is possibly the director’s most sinister character, but his lunacy is rooted in a domestic tragedy which is instantly humanising. I was never quite sure whether Robert is the mad scientist-style psychopath or a tragic hero. His personal life was already messy when he finds himself falling unexpectedly in love with his most beautiful, and certainly the most unusual, patient. Frankenstein is seduced by his own beautiful monster. Elena Anaya, re-teaming with Almodóvar after a small part in 2002’s “Talk To Her”, is fantastic as the object of Dr Ledgard obsessions. Most of the time totally covered by a flesh-coloured bodysuit that clings to her like a second skin, she spends her life locked up in a room in Robert 's idyllic Toledo mansion, a tastefully-designed deluxe prison.
For anyone who's familiar with Almodóvar's body of work, it is clear that while often appearing frivolous, he explores profound emotional and intellectual matters. He loves self-referencing. Same pieces. Different puzzle. In '”The Skin I Live In” Almodóvar, once again, is playing with themes of power, identity and sexuality. Skin is the frontier that separates us from others, it determines the race to which we belong, it reflects our roots, whether biological or geographical. Although Vera decided that “she has to learn to live within her skin”, even if it is a skin imposed by Dr. Robert, she hasn’t lost her identity. Yet, skin is what appears to define us and, our identity is being shaped by the skin we live in and gaze upon in the mirror. Indeed, a crucial scene sees Robert's wife mortified by looking at what has happened to her face after the accident.
“The Skin I Live In” is beautifully put together. Visuals are stunning, as expected. I can't think of any other director who uses colour as well as Almodovar. Endowed with an extraordinary voice Spanish singer Concha Buika is getting the exposure that she so deserves in the scene as potent as Caetano Veloso singing in “Talk To Her.”
This is a thrilling, edgy, riveting and superbly realised piece of work. Fantastically twisted and provocative story that leaves you wondering who’s heroic, villainous, an oppressor or a victim. Bloody excellent movie. Almodovar at his best.