Time for space

MP here

As the AV Festival finishes today, I thought I'd post a piece I wrote for its website's blog, on which, for whatever reason, it never appeared. In it, I argue that "slow cinema", the focus of the festival's film programme and especially its Slow Cinema Weekend, has as much to do with the spatial as it does the temporal, using two examples from the festival as illustration. It's by no means exhaustive, and there's certainly room to explore these initial assertions further. More important, I think, are the suggestions toward the end of the piece that if "slow cinema" is to be meaningfully discussed, it can't be championed as inherently more qualified to treat life seriously as its "faster" counterparts. We should treat the term with a healthy scepticism and in constant re-evaluation, because artistic seriousness is not precluded or better facilitated by any particular style. As I wrote here, too much film criticism is overwhelmed by formal considerations - often at the expense of meatier ends of discussion...

AV Festival: some coverage

MP here (and 'Stalker' above)

This post brings together all of my AV Festival coverage for Front Row Reviews so far. A second part will follow in a fortnight or so. [April 7: second part here.]

Michael (2011)

MP here

"This is my knife and this is my cock. Which do you want in you?" So says Michael (Michael Fuith), a thirty-something paedophile, as he stands at the dinner table, knife in hand and penis poking out of his unzipped jeans. Across from him sits ten-year-old captive Wolfgang (David Rauchenberger), who responds, without looking up: "The knife." It's the first time something explicit is seen or said in an otherwise restrained film involving paedophilia and child abduction, and it speaks wonders for both characters.

Once upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)

MP here

Today sees the theatrical release of Once upon a Time in Anatolia, the new film directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, co-scripted with him by wife Ebru Ceylan and Ercan Kesal. I saw Ceylan's previous film, Three Monkeys, at the BFI upon its release, and thought there were positive signs of him branching out and away from the more autobiographical territory of Distant (2002) and Climates (2006). Anatolia extends the turn further, bringing to the police procedural a keen sensitivity for ordinary human beings. I saw it at the beginning of this week as part of the AV Festival, and reviewed it here, at Front Row Reviews. Ambitious and challenging, for me it's Ceylan's best film yet.

A Dangerous Method (2011)

MP here

David Cronenberg, North America's finest director, came to prominence in the 1970s with such a singular style of filmmaking that, at some point long after a string of masterpieces throughout the '80s, the followers who elected him the head of their cult - obviously knowing his interests and strengths better than he does - were inevitably going to suffer feelings resembling betrayal. As a result, with his last three films in particular, hardcore fans have bent over backwards to either deride his apparent defection to what they perceive to be the mainstream or forge links to his earlier golden age by way of clever, insistent auteurism.

Carnage (2011)

MP here

Short and sour, Roman Polanski’s return to filmmaking – following justified assumptions that what turned out to be a temporary incarceration would be indefinite – masterfully milks all it can from a scenario that has in its backbone the potential for farce, avoided thanks to at least two great performances and a consistently biting wit.

March attacks!

MP here

To cushion the fright of how fast March crept up on us, the 2012 AV Festival: As Slow as Possible has arrived. Since I previewed it back in January, its film programme has been an attraction overriding the more formal commitments of study and so on. Click on the image surmounting this piece to see the films I plan to attend (add Eternity to the 25th and Independicia to the 28th) Exceptions are Stalker on the 4th, which I watched again last night to compensate for the work shift with which it clashes; The Turin Horse on the 10th, which screens at the same time as Lav Diaz's Melancholia (read Srini's review of the Béla Tarr film here); Exhaustion on the 11th, which clashes with Century of a Birthing; Finisterrae on the 18th, which clashes with work; and Syndromes and a Century on the 26th, which clashes with a campus screening of Police, Adjective that I'm introducing.