Monthly Archives: September, 2011

Now that Gaspar Noé's Irreversible is distant memory, I'm now ready for rape redux. So far the timeline for Angelina Nikonova's debut film is as follows: summer debut at a local Russian Film Festival were it was dubbed as an "audience dividing" strong first-effort from Variety, onto a showing on the Lido in the Venice Days sidebar and as of next week - an assured jolt (this displays the omitance of artificial lights) at its North American unveiling.

Benning - long ago a math student and currently a professor at Cal Arts - is presently the grandaddy of active avant-garde filmmakers. Churning out almost one feature-length project each year, his rigorous and austere landscape films have defied their minimal descriptions to provide brave viewers unrivalled, transcendent experiences.

First showing in competition in Venice, this newest work from the provocative French filmmaker has already divided riled up audiences on the Lido. Prompting boos and catcalls at the Cannes press screening of his most recent feature Frontier of Dawn, he never the less as a sturdy following of cinephiles who consider him just about the best thing since cherry cheesecake.

Using a familiar backdrop of his native Sicily (sun-bleached islands plus rhythmic aqua blues) this appears (see trailer) less epic in scope than his 2006 film The Golden Door and less fable like than 2002's Respiro -- but Emanuele Crialese still works with the same obsession: free spirit status of the individual. Perhaps more telling, less romantic and more complex within this format, along with Kaurismäki's Le Havre, this Venice selected title only confirms that immigration migration due to the despairing differences between rich and poor and climate change is more than just a trendy topic.

Multidisciplinarian Xu Haofeng is not only a newbie filmmaker but happens to be a novelist, Taoist scholar, martial-arts connoisseur and co-writer for Wong Kar-wai’s The Grand Master. The word on this Venice Film Festival invited title is that it takes the genre into a completely different realm - we Haofeng calling this “inner martial arts“ presented visually and aurally. Count me in!