The Last Time I Saw Macau(A Última Vez Que Vi Macau)
· Portugal, France 2012; 82 min
· Original version: Portuguese, Cantonese
· Genre: Drama
Synopsis
“After
30 years I was back in Macau, where I had spent my childhood. A little more
than a week before, in Lisbon, I had received an e-mail from a friend who I had
not seen for ages. I knew that Candy had gone to Asia, attracted by its
exoticism, or an easier life, I don’t know which… In any case, I had lost touch
with her. In her e-mail, she said that she’d yet again got involved with the
wrong sort of men, but now there really was going to be trouble: a very good
friend of hers had been killed in a quite harmless game of paintball. She
thought she might be the next victim and that I was the only person she could
still trust. She begged me to come to Macao where, to quote, ‘weird and
disturbing’ things were going on. Tired after the long flight, I approached
Macao on a jetfoil ferry that brought back memories of the happiest time of my
life.” João Rui Guerra da Mata
Directed by Ilmar Raag
• France, Estonia, Belgium 2012; 94 min
• Original version: French, Estonian
• Genre: Drama
Synopsis
Anne
leaves Estonia to come to Paris as a caretaker for Frida, an elderly Estonian
lady who emigrated to France long ago. Anne soon realizes that she is not
wanted. All Frida wants from life is the attention of Stéphane, her younger
former lover. Stéphane, however, is desperate for Anne to stay and look after
Frida, even against the old lady's will. In this conflict of strangers, Anne
will find her own way…
Greatest Hits(Los mejores temas)
·
Mexico 2012; 103
min
·
Original version: Spanish
·
Genre: Drama
Synopsis
Drifting
from fiction to documentary, GREATEST HITS tells the story of Emilio, a man in
his fifties who shows up at the family home after fifteen years of absence. His
wife and his twenty-eight year old son receive him with bitterness and
confusion. After a couple of days they decide to kick him out, only to find out
that he has left on his own accord. The son ends up tracking down Emilio and
spends a couple of days hanging out with him in his apartment.
Director's Statement
After
making several films with the same actors playing similar roles I decided to
make a film about the process of representation. This opened a world of new
possibilities including rehearsals, repetitions and interactions between
fictional characters and the actors playing those characters. I continued this
search by replacing one of the actors with my uncle half way into the shooting.
My uncle enters the film as a documentary subject who has to relate to
fictional characters that act as if he was one of them.
In the Bedroom(W sypialni)
·
Poland 2012; 78
min
·
Original version: Polish
·
Genre: Drama
Synopsis
Forty-year-old
Edyta is in crisis. She sleeps at hotels, and when her money runs out she uses
the internet to find men who are looking for sex. Edyta spends nights in the
homes of the nameless men but, instead of the promised sex, she takes advantage
of their involuntary hospitality. She reaches a turning point, however, when
she meets a young artist named Patryk.… In his minimalist movie, debuting
director Tomasz Wasilewski makes smart use of the tension resulting from the
lack of information his story provides viewers about the protagonists. Faces
and gestures reveal the characters more than words, with the brittle,
unnameable atmosphere that pervades the entire film playing a fundamental role.
In her entirely natural manner, Katarzyna Herman lends veracity to the
character of Edyta, and her excellent performance earned her the domestic award
for Best Actress at the Koszalin Debut Films Festival
The Red And The Black(La rouge et la noire)
·
France 2012; 74
min
·
Original version: French
·
Genre: Drama
Synopsis
Two
lady thieves, who speak in voiceover and whose identities are only revealed at
the end of the film, plot to steal one of Aaton’s cameras – “the Penelope”. As
the heist story unfolds, it is continually
interrupted
by a little (animated) monster who turns the plot, creating chaos for the women
and their mission.
Based on a script by French New Wave filmmaker Luc Moullet (LAND OF MADNESS, MIFF 10), The Red and The Black is assembled in a kaleidoscopic style, with archival footage from Beauviala’s personal collection inserted into the drama along with animated characters and deliberate desynchronisation to create a mystery as to what is real and what is not. At only 28, French filmmaker and artist Isabelle Prim displays a mind as fertile as that of her subject, Beauviala.
Based on a script by French New Wave filmmaker Luc Moullet (LAND OF MADNESS, MIFF 10), The Red and The Black is assembled in a kaleidoscopic style, with archival footage from Beauviala’s personal collection inserted into the drama along with animated characters and deliberate desynchronisation to create a mystery as to what is real and what is not. At only 28, French filmmaker and artist Isabelle Prim displays a mind as fertile as that of her subject, Beauviala.
Compliance
·
USA 2012; 90 min
·
Original version: English
·
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Synopsis
Sandra,
an overworked manager at a fast food restaurant, receives a call from a police
officer accusing one of her employees, a teenage girl named Becky, of stealing
from a customer. Sandra, overwhelmed by her managerial responsibilities,
complies with the officer’s orders to detain Becky. Based on true events.
Press Quotes
Inspired
both by a bizarre true story of a prank caller who targeted the employees of
rural fast-food restaurants and by the famous Milgram experiment, its tightrope
balance between squirm fest and morality play would not have been possible
without a performance as bold and incisive as the one the veteran character
actress Ann Dowd delivers as Sandra."
Dennis
Lim, New
York Times
Combative New York Premiere of 'Compliance' Latest Victim of the Most
Provocative Film of the Year
"Compliance"MAGNOLIA PICTURES
The best movies
encourage audience reaction. "Compliance" forces it on them. In the
seven months since Craig Zobel's provocative psychological thriller had its
premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, it has faced divisive reactions from
viewers around the world. The story, about a fast food manager who is conned
into thinking an anonymous caller is a police officer and follows directives to
strip-search a young employee, naturally makes people uncomfortable. Some find
the experience enlightening; others are wildly infuriated by the human behavior
it presents. However, there's always one constant: The crowd speaks up.
"Compliance" opens in New York this Friday, but already it has become the most energizing interactive theatrical experience since "The Room," if for entirely different reasons. The opposite of camp, "Compliance" is designed to make you squirm and maybe even tick you off. Con artistry isn't entirely fresh turf for Zobel, whose 2007 directorial debut "Great World of Sound" followed a pair of salesmen drawn into a pyramid scheme. But where the earlier movie exhibited a warmth toward its hopelessly naive protagonists, "Compliance" stays well away from it. Virtually everyone onscreen is responsible for the bad deeds that take place.
"Compliance" opens in New York this Friday, but already it has become the most energizing interactive theatrical experience since "The Room," if for entirely different reasons. The opposite of camp, "Compliance" is designed to make you squirm and maybe even tick you off. Con artistry isn't entirely fresh turf for Zobel, whose 2007 directorial debut "Great World of Sound" followed a pair of salesmen drawn into a pyramid scheme. But where the earlier movie exhibited a warmth toward its hopelessly naive protagonists, "Compliance" stays well away from it. Virtually everyone onscreen is responsible for the bad deeds that take place.
READ MORE: Why Every Screening of 'Compliance' Should Be Followed By a
Q&A Session
The movie presents itself as a question -- not "could this happen?" but rather "how did this happen?" After announcing the film's true-story basis in the opening credits, Zobel proceeds with his increasingly lurid tale by drawing from legal documents involving roughly 70 similar incidents around the U.S. that took place over the course of a decade beginning in the early '90s. The unsettling pattern found a man calling a restaurant under the guise of a police officer, convincing a manager that an employee had stolen from a customer and coercing him or her to commit any number of physically invasive acts against the accused -- coercion that in some cases culminated in sexual assault.
Zobel draws liberally from these occurrences to construct a fictional account of overworked blue-collar ChickWich manager Sandra (Ann Dowd, in perhaps the year's eeriest turn), who is convinced by the raspy voice (Pat Healy) at the other end of a call to strip-search terrified young employee Becky (Dreama Walker). Trapped in the restaurant's back room for much of the runtime, Becky is subjected to increasingly degrading behavior under Sandra's nervous complicity, as her incapacity to question the motives of the caller nudge her from victim to enabler.
When I first saw "Compliance" in January, I found the performances and scenario riveting but grappled with whether the screenplay sufficiently conveys the process by which a seemingly disciplined and moralistic woman like the middle-aged Sandra could fall for such a transparently disgusting prank. A few viewings later, I'm still not sure if it succeeds, but that's precisely the conundrum that "Compliance" continually encourages to remarkable effect.
It's a shame that the initial case of audience outburst -- when a female audience member at the Sundance premiereaccused Zobel of misogyny for presenting Becky's plight in uneasy details -- failed to engage with the actual ideas onscreen. Not for a moment does "Compliance" sympathize with Becky's experience, nor does it mold her treatment into the nightmarish extremes that horror films often portray as caricature. In those cases, good and evil tend to exist at two cleanly defined ends of the scale. "Compliance" operates under the assumption of certain objective standards for human behavior, then watches as they're repeatedly violated. Nobody escapes unscathed, not even the victim. After all, why does Becky go along with these increasingly degrading orders?
The movie presents itself as a question -- not "could this happen?" but rather "how did this happen?" After announcing the film's true-story basis in the opening credits, Zobel proceeds with his increasingly lurid tale by drawing from legal documents involving roughly 70 similar incidents around the U.S. that took place over the course of a decade beginning in the early '90s. The unsettling pattern found a man calling a restaurant under the guise of a police officer, convincing a manager that an employee had stolen from a customer and coercing him or her to commit any number of physically invasive acts against the accused -- coercion that in some cases culminated in sexual assault.
Zobel draws liberally from these occurrences to construct a fictional account of overworked blue-collar ChickWich manager Sandra (Ann Dowd, in perhaps the year's eeriest turn), who is convinced by the raspy voice (Pat Healy) at the other end of a call to strip-search terrified young employee Becky (Dreama Walker). Trapped in the restaurant's back room for much of the runtime, Becky is subjected to increasingly degrading behavior under Sandra's nervous complicity, as her incapacity to question the motives of the caller nudge her from victim to enabler.
When I first saw "Compliance" in January, I found the performances and scenario riveting but grappled with whether the screenplay sufficiently conveys the process by which a seemingly disciplined and moralistic woman like the middle-aged Sandra could fall for such a transparently disgusting prank. A few viewings later, I'm still not sure if it succeeds, but that's precisely the conundrum that "Compliance" continually encourages to remarkable effect.
It's a shame that the initial case of audience outburst -- when a female audience member at the Sundance premiereaccused Zobel of misogyny for presenting Becky's plight in uneasy details -- failed to engage with the actual ideas onscreen. Not for a moment does "Compliance" sympathize with Becky's experience, nor does it mold her treatment into the nightmarish extremes that horror films often portray as caricature. In those cases, good and evil tend to exist at two cleanly defined ends of the scale. "Compliance" operates under the assumption of certain objective standards for human behavior, then watches as they're repeatedly violated. Nobody escapes unscathed, not even the victim. After all, why does Becky go along with these increasingly degrading orders?
Light in the Yellow Breathing
Space
·
South Korea, Sri
Lanka 2012; 40 min
·
Original version: Sinhale
·
Genre: Drama
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Synopsis
In the
most beautiful place in the planet, a father wants his little son to witness
his last breath with a deep understanding of life.
Director's Statement
I plan
to go on art attack and produce an experimental contemporary piece, but keeping
very spiritual and emotional yet with reality of life.
The Great Cinema Party
Directed by Raya
Martin
·
South Korea, Sri
Lanka 2012; 70 min
·
Original version: English
·
Genre: Drama
Synopsis
A group
of friends, sharing a passion for cinema, assemble in Corregidor, a small
island in Manila Bay that has preserved relics from the Pacific War as its
foremost attractions. There, they explore the island and retire in a rustic
mansion used once to make silent films. Outside the city, the woods and sea
become a meeting place for more movie personalities and it all becomes a
celebration of what was left behind.
Director's Statement
During
a filmmaking hiatus, I discovered another kind of life with some of my film
friends. That which exists outside the theaters, outside the festivals, and
inside their homes and hearts. This reminded me strongly about the work I do,
which always bleeds into my personal life. Cinema is not just about making
movies, but how we make it. I invited my closest film friends to my home, and
introduced them to my other film friends here. In life, time passes quickly.
And everyday, the filmmaker decides to live or die.
അഭിപ്രായങ്ങളൊന്നുമില്ല:
ഒരു അഭിപ്രായം പോസ്റ്റ് ചെയ്യൂ