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A Personal History of British Cinema

2010-01-01T15:21:00.000-08:00

I will begin my British Cinema series with the Silent Years: 1888-1929.

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My Personal Best Films from the Last Decade: 2000-2009

2009-12-31T05:01:00.000-08:00

If - The Crusaders of 1968

2008-10-28T10:40:00.000-07:00

The Period Film and National Sentiment

2008-08-26T09:38:00.000-07:00

Director Christophe Barratier´s proud sentimentality proved popular with audiences in his first film Les Choristes. The big nostalgia hit of the French Box Office has already been emulated in Paris 36 (Fabourg 36). This retro musical has all the period trappings of 1936 France, taking in accordion music whilst celebrating the left-wing Popular Front alliance which was a counter point to other political movements in Europe at this time.

The 65th Venice Film Festival

2008-07-29T09:16:00.000-07:00

It may be about to showcase the best in World Cinema for the 65th time but the Venice Film Festival is showing no signs of retiring or slowing down. For what is the oldest film festival in the world, it has a program this year to ensure that it justifies its claim as being the one that truly matters for the afficiando and critic alike.

See this year´s program here

Flashback 1968....and all that

2008-05-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

Coming Soon

Flashback ´68: The Effects on Cinema

2008-04-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

Coming Shortly.

Interview with Agnes Kocsis

2008-03-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

The Hungarian director talks to us about her career to date.

Berlinale Impressions

2008-02-01T10:53:00.001-08:00

60 Miles East was a film that was meant to creat a big buzz, not least in the self-publicity of its director, who subsequently failed to show up for our scheduled interview, double-confirmed only three hours earlier.

Cristian Mingiu Interview

2008-01-30T11:31:00.001-08:00

Coming soon....

Last Thoughts of 2007

2007-12-31T09:16:00.000-08:00

Film Critics in different countries of the world voted, via their associations and societies, for the best films of the last year released in the cinemas of their territories. These are very worthwhile polls because they not just respected but, moreover, introduce us to films that we may struggle to see outside of festivals depending on what country we live in.

USA

Here are The National Society of Film Critics votes, made up of the country's leading film critics:

Best Picture: There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Best Foreign-Language Film: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)
Best Nonfiction Film: No End in Sight (Charles Ferguson)
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood)
Best Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
Best Actress: Julie Christie (Away from Her)
Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett (I'm Not There)
Best Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins (The Savages)
Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood)
Best Experimental Film: Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (John Gianvito)
Film Heritage Award: to Ford at Fox, a 21-disc box set from Fox Home Video
Film Heritage Award: to Ross Lipman of the UCLA Film and Television Archive for the restoration of Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep and other independent films

Brazil

Brazilian Critics voted The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) by German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Best Films of 2007.

Australia

The Melbourne–based Australian Film Critics Association instituted its own awards (the first time in 2007). Awards in four categories were given.
Best Australian Film: Noise (Matthew Saville)
Best Overseas Film: No Country For Old Men (Ethan & Joel Coen, USA)
Best Documentary: Forbidden Lies (Anna Broinowski, Australia)
Best Unreleased Film: The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret) by Eran Kolirin, Israel)

Thoughts from the Film World

2007-11-28T15:49:00.000-08:00

It's good to see some independent and low-budget films doing particularly well at film festivals and gaining distribution in many countries as a result. One film that springs to mind is the forthcoming Romanian release 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, directed by Cristian Mingiu. Eastern European cinema is booming: Three productions from formerly communist countries have been nominated for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign-Language Film.

goEast – The Festival of Central and Eastern European Film runs in Wiesbaden from 9 to 15 April 2008. It is of course not the only festival representing this part of the world and certainly not the first but it is certainly a worthwhile addition for films that are rarely screened elsewhere. In 2008 goEast will feature a symposium on documentary film from the former Yugoslavia reflecting the ongoing quest for specific national identities. Also, there will be a dedicated Homage to Sergei Paradzhanov, the “magician with three motherlands” with the Portrait section focusing on Benedek Flieg¬auf.

The festival is growing in pace with the dynamic development of filmmaking in Eastern Europe. Over 150 fiction and documentary films from as many as 20 different countries will screen during the 7 days of the festival, and so offer considerable insight into the vigorous filmmaking scene in Central and Eastern Europe. Further opportunities to learn more about the region are offered in discussion forums and comprehensive sidebar programme. New for 2008 is the in-house cinema of the German Film Museum in Frankfurt which will beis screening films from the goEast programme simultaneously with the Festival.

Day Night Day Night: The Threat Within

2007-10-30T17:53:00.000-07:00

Day Night Day Night is Julia Loktev’s first fiction film after making documentaries. However, the film very much retains a documentary atmosphere while the subject matter is resonant and thought provoking. A 19-year-old girl is preparing to become a suicide bomber in New York’s Times Square. Director Loktev was born in St. Petersburg but grew up in America. No stranger to facing the harrowing side of life head-on, her award-winning film follows a documentary which dealt with the aftermath of her father’s debilitating car accident. Read my review

New Russian Cinema comes to London

2007-09-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

A showcase of Russian films are being screened over a week at London's new Apollo West End Cinema, including the excellent Euphoria (Eyforia) by Ivan Virypaev.

The Russian box office is one of the fastest growing in the world making 30 to 40 percent a year over the past five years. The box office in 2007 is expected to exceed $500m.

Read the Euphoria review here

12:08 East of Bucharest and the New Romanian Cinema

2007-08-17T15:58:00.000-07:00

In light of this week's release of Corneliu Porumboiu’s debut feature 12:08 East of Bucharest, Romanian cinema is continuing its surprising success of films that goes back to 2001. The truth is that, after Ceausescu, the collapse of communism inadvertently helped to change the situation of the country's cinema. Thereafter, financing often depended on a jury awarding state grants but the international success of filmmakers at the turn of the new millennium, disliked by the old juries, saw a new emergence in talent. Films of this new wave included: Sinisa Dragin’s Every Day God Kisses Us on the Mouth (2001); Cristi Puiu's low budget first feature film Stuff and Dough (Marfa si Banii, 2001); Occident (2002), a comedy drama directed by a then-unknown Cristian Mungiu and also Nae Caranfil’s satire Philanthropy (Filantropica, 2002). All of these films won awards at festivals.

More recently The Death of Mr. Lazerescu (2005) saw Cristi Puiu following his debut success for 2001’s Stuff and Dough with a multi-award-winning film. This year, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days has been a phenomenal success in film festivals for Cristian Mungiu. Read the recent emergence of Romanian cinema and the review of 12:08 East of Bucharest .

The Star: The Russian WW2 Experience

2007-06-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

The Star (Zvezda) is director Nikolai Lebedev's film adaptation of a short story of the same name by Emmanuil Kazakevich. It concerns the brave young men and women, Russian intelligence officers sent to work behind enemy lines in World War II. It features Aleksei Kravchenko who portrayed the shell-shocked young boy in Elem Klimov's Come and See (1985). Though he didn't act again until 1998, Kravchenko won a special government award for his role in The Star.

It is the summer of 1944 and the Nazi Armies are preparing their massive Tank Division named Viking for a surprise offensive on occupied Russian land. However, the Russian Army's special group of seven snipers named Zvezda are sent for a reconnaissance mission behind enemy lines in Poland. Two previous Russian groups never came back and these seven men realise that they are being sent to an almost certain death in order to end the war sooner...

Read my review of this DVD edition by clicking here

Raoul Servais to be awarded Dragon in Cracow

2007-05-30T16:38:00.001-07:00

At the opening ceremony of the 47th Cracow Film Festival (31st May, 2007) the Honorary Prize, the Dragon of Dragons for Lifetime Achievement will go to Raoul Servais, the acclaimed Belgian animated film director of brilliant works like The False Note (De Valse Noot, 1963, pictured) . Now 79 years old and still working, he accepted the news with great joy, admitting it was a big honour to receive such an award at one of the major film festivals across the world, particularly in a country like Poland with renowned filmmakers who gave significant contributions to the world of film animation.

The Dragon of Dragons lifetime achievement award was set up in 1998 in recognition of filmmakers belonging to the fine tradition of documentary and animated films and is presented by the Programme Committee of the Cracow Film Foundation. So far it has been awaraded to: Bohdan Kosiñski, Raymond Depardon, Werner Herzog, Albert Maysles, Kazimierz Karabasz and animated film directors: Jan Lenica, Jan Svankmajer, Stephan and Timothy Quay and Yuri Norstein.

Raoul Servais has been awarded in various film festivals across the world, most notably for his animations Chromophobia (1966), Operation X-70 (1971), Harpya (1979), Taxandria (1994), Nocturnal Butterflies (Papillons de nuit, 1997) and Atraksion (2001).

Read more on Raoul Servais here

Vera Chytilová and her Surreal Paradise

2007-05-23T16:26:00.000-07:00

Vera Chytilová has the prestige of being the only female director to emerge in the Prague Spring. Moreover, she was one of the best directors of that era, period. Working with her husband, the cinematographer Jaroslav Kucera, and writer-designer Ester Krumbachová, she directed two of the most inventive films of the Czech New Wave. Daisies (1966)was an avant-garde montage of the destructive antics of two female teenagers which demonstrated that such a film could still be funny while The Fruit of Paradise (1969) used allegory to portray male-female relations using imagery of a remarkable aesthetic beauty.

Because of her excessive approach, Chytilová subsequently found it almost impossible to work following the Soviet invasion of Prague in 1968. However, she was to remain in Czechoslovakia working on shelved or unreleased projects.

Read more on Vera Chytilová, followed by my interview with her in London in 2002 at the start of her retrospective, by clicking here.

Archive: Jan Nemec Online Chat

2007-04-29T15:54:00.000-07:00

In support of the coverage of The Fruits of Paradise season in London in 2001 that celebrated the work of Ester Krumbachová, Jan Nemec was happy to talk about his career and working with the costume designer and writer on three films in the program that he directed.

A champion of the advancements in media technology, Nemec was fascinated with the Internet so agreed to an online chat on the FilmWorld website which took place at the Czech Centre in London. This was at the same time that he had completed his first film on digital, Late Night Talks with Mother so he had plenty to say about his career past and present. Read the online chat here

Flashforward from '68: Jan Nemec Then and Now

2007-03-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

Continuing the series looking at the heroes of the Czechoslovakian New Wave, I turn my attention this time to arguably the greatest maverick of them all. Jan Nemec and the Prague Spring seemed made for one another. Defiant, brave, expressive, talented and clever are just some words to sum up this scourge of the authorities. His first feature Diamonds of the Night (1964, pictured) laid down his manifesto for creating a visual world independent of reality while alluding to themes from the worst of humanity. Nemec was so controversial he ended up being banned for life after his allegorical landmark film The Party and The Guests (1966) and the documentary Oratorio for Prague (1968).

Beginning with a short introduction into the films that have made him both famous and notorious, I will then focus on a more recent work that has found him embracing new technology for a very personal reflection on his past and the ensuing twilight years. Click here for my focus on Jan Nemec.

Flashback '68: Evald Schorm and Social Conscience Cinema

2007-02-28T12:35:00.000-08:00

Czech director Evald Schorm was known for using his films to promote notions of compassion, equality, and individualism. Perhaps surprisingly, he started out as an opera singer, then studied filmmaking at the prestigious F.A.M.U. in his native Prague between 1957 and 1962. He went on to create documentaries with the Documentary Film Studio in Prague and had an excellent oeuvre cut short by the Russian invasion. End of a Priest was the film he made in the year the tanks rolled in and is testament to his talent and point of view. Read the film review here

Flashback ’68: The Prague Spring and Czech Film

2007-01-31T05:28:00.000-08:00

In light of the 30th anniversary of Charter 77 this month, it was a timely reminder of the events of January-August 1968 which became known as the Prague Spring. Part of the reason for this political upheaval was censorship by the Soviet controlled 'puppet government' in Czechoslovakia which gave rise to the underground movement in the arts, also finding an expression through emerging filmmakers.

The name originated from an annual music festival in the capital of the then Czechoslovakia which had actually begun in 1946 and was known as the Prague Spring International Music Festival. The Prague Spring was in two stages: The first stage was an attempt to liberalise domestic affairs in the Czechoslovak Communist Party with open-minded Slovak Alexander Dubcek replacing the Conservative Antonin Novotny as Party Leader. The second stage was the invasion of the open intervention of the Soviets to suppress this reform which led to the invasion of Soviet armed forces in August 1968 and the replacement of Dubcek by the more Conservative Gustav Husak eight months later.

The films that I feature here are linked to the spirit of Prague at this time and to the freedom of expression that these directors advocated and were to suffer for. The first film is All My Good Countrymen by Vojtech Jasny. Read about it here.

A Personal Best Of 2006

2006-12-30T09:10:00.000-08:00

From the new films that I saw this year, I present a personal best of what I saw at festivals and in Cinemas. It was encouraging to find many different types of films on different budgets still attaining the heights of direction and performance.

To see my favourite films with a few notable mentions for others, click here.

Kiev: The 36th Molodist

2006-11-24T04:37:00.000-08:00

The different sections of the 36th Molodist Film Festival at Kiev were what made the program so excellent because each had a particular strong point. It was not the duty of the festival to premiere the best new films from around the world because Kiev is not an A-list festival and cannot compete in this way. Moreover, it is their prerogative to choose the best films seen at different festivals this year.

However, there is the other side of the festival, the bits that are often left out, the personal reactions and memories outside the film program. Read the flip side of a festival report here.

An Interview with Labina Mitevska

2006-10-19T14:19:00.000-07:00

Interviewed in Athens last year, Labina Mitevska talks about her career as an actor in films as diverse as Before the Rain, I Want You, Loners and How I Killed a Saint, the latter of which sees her as first-time producer in a film directed by her sister. Labina talks about her new family production company, how that will affect her acting career and what she thinks of the difficulties of making films in Europe today.

Read the complete interview with Labina Mitevska here

My Nikifor: Interview with Krzysztof Krauze and Joanna Kos

2006-09-12T09:04:00.000-07:00

An interview with Krzysztof Krauze and Joanna Kos, director and co-writers of My Nikifor.

The full interview can be found on
TARKOVSTE: INTERVIEWS

My Nikifor won the Globe at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in July 2005, but couldn't subsequently be screened for eight months, even in Poland, as it was in a Category A Festival program. This unfortunately meant it couldn’t be shown at Cannes, Venice, Berlin, etc., as the strict rules dictated this. It was not even allowed to be screened in the Polish Film Institutes of other countries.

Exciting News from the Film World

2005-08-21T00:39:00.000-07:00

It may be perceived as a little ostentatious to say that on my blog pages I want to offer something different but I feel it's worthwhile to ensure my free unedited pages are worthy and readable. Therefore, without entering into any personal manifesto I want to devote these pages to films that may not otherwise catch the attention in the U.K. By that I mean films that are the big talk of festivals or film critics but haven't yet had a release in this country, and in most cases may never do, even on DVD.

I will also be drawing attention to directors as well as actors, cinematographers, and so on. In this, I hope that something worthwhile in the Film World can then reach a wider audience by word of mouth.

Greetings Film Lovers

2005-06-28T05:45:00.000-07:00

A big hello to everyone at Kamera, whether a regular or a guest. It's great to be part of this new blogworld and hope we can share opinions, ideas and get involved in some major debates that will help to change the World of Film for the better.