#jane campion: the cinema woman

[ofgreatart]

'If I like my cage...' "Freedom and fatherlessness have split the heroine into two disconnected halves — a partly factitious determination to be her own master, and a dark fascination with images of dominance and submission"

About Henry James & Jane Campion, The Portrait of a Lady

“What Isabel wants is to be initiated: even if it means being attracted to darkness.”

“According to Jane Campion, the key to the film and to the novel lies in Isabel’s psychology rather than in purely technical feats. She considers Alfred Habegger’s study as one of the best keys to Isabel, especially when he writes:

“Freedom and fatherlessness have split the heroine into two disconnected halves — a partly factitious determination to be her own master, and a dark fascination with images of dominance and submission.”

(Sophie Menoux: “We are all Isabel Archers” A “Bonne Femme” Conversation with Jane Campion and Laura Jones)

“You were the last person I expected to see caught.”

“I don’t know why you call it caught.”

“Because you’re going to be put into a cage.”

“If I like my cage, that needn’t trouble you,” she answered.”

… “You must have changed immensely. A year ago you valued your liberty beyond everything. You wanted only to see life.”

“I’ve seen it,” said Isabel. “It doesn’t look to me now, I admit, such an inviting expanse.”

“I don’t pretend it is; only I had an idea that you took a genial view of it and wanted to survey the whole field.”

“I’ve seen that one can’t do anything so general. One must choose a corner and cultivate that.”

“That’s what I think. And one must choose as good a corner as possible.”

Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, Chapter 34

Film: Jane Campion, Nicole Kidman

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week #130 (Year 3/Week 26):

Nobody goes to bed on Sunday night in order to wake up early the next morning and read my weekly film reviews... :(

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My first by Pan Nalin from Gujarat, Last Film Show. Definitely, an Indian love letter to the magic of movie-making, a-la 'Cinema Paradiso'. Semi-autobiographical memories of a boy helping the poor projectionist at a remote, primitive village. Sweet, beautiful and sentimental.

It ends with a surprising recitation of names, a list of directors who inspired this homage: Kubrick, Chaplin, Lean, Maya Deren, Godard, Coppola, King Hu, Zhang Yimou, Ozu, Keaton, Spike Lee, Jane Campion, George Méliès, Bigelow.... 7/10.

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2 Road Movies:

🍿 First watch: Zabriskie Point, my 9th by Michelangelo Antonioi, with a screenplay co-written by Sam Shepard. A symbolic counter-cultural cult experiment, about a young student who steals a small Cessna, flies to Death Valley, where he meets a young woman, participate in a dust-covered orgy with her, and flies back, to be shot by the 'pigs'. (Photo Above).

With music by both Pink Floyd AND The Grateful Dead, as well as Roy Orbison AND The Rolling Stones. Also, with G. D. Spradlin! 6/10.

🍿 There were news that Salvation Mountain and the outcast community at Slab City by the Salton Sea had been sold to some kooky religious cult. So this was a good excuse to see Sean Penn's Road movie Into the wild. The true story of a young individual who rejects the material world, and while searching for meaning and self, is escaping to the edge of the world, to the wildness of Alaska. A long, romanticized homage to alternative lifestyles.

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75 years ago this week, the New Yorker published Shirley Jackson's harrowing story 'The Lottery'. A small New England town observes an annual tradition, in which a member of the community is selected by chance and stoned to death to ensure a good harvest and purge the town of bad omens.

A terrifying tale about mob mentality and blind tradition, the story was adapted to educational television (by Encyclopædia Britannica!) in 1969. At 19 minutes long, The Lottery is just as upsetting and intense as the original story. (With Ed Begley Jr. as a little child.) 9/10.

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My first 2 by Lars von Trier:

🍿 I studied film at the University of Copenhagen at the same time Lars von Trier attended the attached film school there, even though our paths never crossed. When he screened his experimental first feature The element of crime, I thought it was one of the most unusual and mysterious films I had ever seen.

So why did I always resisted seeing any of his other movies? On re-watch, 40 years later, 'Element of Crime' holds up. Multilayered, surrealist, literary and incredibly original. It begs the comparison to heavyweights like Orson Wells in 'The third man', and Fritz Lang's M. Fragmentary, visually masterful, drenched in yellow and red filtering, it's full of dystopian despair, water everywhere, nocturnal rituals and a continent falling apart. Dark and nightmarish, one of the greatest debut films of all time. 7/10.

🍿 Von Trier actually directed another film before that: The 1982, 57-minutes Images of Liberation (Befrielsesbilleder) was his film school graduation film, and it created such a stir, that it was given a regular theatrical distribution, a first in Denmark.

A German officer in 1945 visits his Danish mistress days after the end of the Nazi Occupation. Like the more accomplished 'Element', it's a visually-original manifesto, impressionistic and nearly abstract art, filmed all in sepia and red filters, and again played in a foreign language (German). It's obvious he was a film prodigy even then.

Available on low-res YouTube. 2/10.

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..."Osbourne Cox? I thought you might be worried… about the security… of your shit"...

You stumble across a short clip called What did we learn, Palmer? and immediately you must stop everything you do and re-watch Burn after reading for the umpteen time. Another one of the Coen Brother's infectious, addictive fun rides, where every line of dialogue is memorable, and every single character is unforgettable (Linda Litzke, Manolo, the Tuchman Marsh Man, divorce lawyer, plastic surgeon, David Rasche's CIA guy ...).

Funniest Coen Brothers script + the fantastic dildo machine! 10/10.

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Le Brio ("Brilliance") is a French Comedy about extraordinary law professor Daniel Auteuil who is also a politically-incorrect anti-hero, an old-fashioned racist, misanthropic prick. After he publicly insult a young Arab student, he is being forced to mentor her for a prestigious national debate competition, or lose his tenure. What do you know? In the course of the year of them working together, they learn to respect each other and find humanity in their opposite backgrounds! Lovely with a schmaltzy happy end. 4/10.

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More misogyny! Woman Haters is a short musical 'novelty' by the Three Stooges from 1934. At one point it was acceptable to tailor a casual slapstick routine around "WH", The Woman Haters Club, without betting an eye. Crude, violent and unfunny. 1/10.

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The devil all the time, my first unpleasant film with boring, bland actor Tom Holland. It's an Appalachian Hillbilly Gothic, full of dark incidents and over-powering ugliness. Nearly two and a half hours of badly-played tragedies, suicides, White Trash religiosity, serial killings and despair, with too many confusing bad characters, and none worth caring about.

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..."I’m nothing… I’m naval lint"…

Re-watch: True Lies is one of the few action movies I ever loved. From James Cameron, the undisputed champion of Hollywood box office. 90's action And comedy. Another movie that was structured with a stopwatch, so that exactly every 10 minutes, a 'pinch point' took place (The Swiss prologue 0-15, The DC hotel fight 30-40, The Helen interrogation exactly at 1 hour, 10 min. mid-point, Arriving in Florida, exactly at 1:30. Etc.). 7/10.

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The In-laws, the 1979 "classic" sitcom-style comedy with 'Lieutenant Columbo' and "Sheldon the dentist". Also with David Paymer, James Hong and Ed Begley, Jr. But not as funny as it possibly was 40 years ago.

Also, Kevin Pollak Torments Alan Arkin. RIP, Alan Arkin.

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5 More Don Hertzfeld shorts, again:

🍿 "...That's the thing about the present, Emily Prime. You only appreciate it when it is the past..."

Another constant re-watch, his World of tomorrow. the only science fiction movie I love, and one of my most favorite films - ever. The magic lies in the contrast between the scientific explanations of time-travel, neural networks and end-of-the-world vs. the spontaneous voice of the 4-year-old girl who doesn't care about any of it, and just hums "What a beautiful day it is". 10/10.

[I didn't have the heart yet to watch the following 3 episodes of it, even though they are similarly applauded.]

🍿 "For the love of God and all that is holy, my anus is bleeding!"

Rejected, his first Oscar nominated short from 2000. A simple, surrealist collection of anti-consumerist diversions. 9/10.

🍿 Wisdom tooth, a 5-minutes nightmare in mock-Swedish, about a guy trying to help another guy who has a toothache. 9/10.

🍿 His 2014 Simpson Couch Gag, an out-of-this-world dadaist riff on the Simpson opening routine. Mind-bending. I wonder what people thought of it when they sat down to watch the show.

🍿 Watching grass grow, a short time-lapse short of him as he animates his short 'The meaning of life'. Crude homemade animation, low-low-low-tech.

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Wrestling X 2:

🍿 Twenty-five years ago, The Undertaker damn near killed Mankind in one of the greatest 'Hell In a Cell' matches in the history of professional wrestling. Mark Calaway and Mick Foley sat down to re-watch the infamous match that came to redefined each of their careers. [I know it's hard to believe it, but in the mid-90's, I loved watching WWE!]

Calling u/shittymorph!

🍿 Man on the moon, directed by Miloš Forman (so it features his colleague Vincent Schiavelli, but without the subtlety of his early films). A standard biopic about a weird comic with the 'different' sense of humor. Misunderstood genius or an obnoxious prankster? Jim Carrey's Andy Kaufman came across as unlikable, self-centered and uninteresting. With Norm Macdonald. 3/10.

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3 X "So-Bad-I-Couldn't-Finish-Them-Films”:

🍿 Giva't Halfon Eina Ona / "גבעת חלפון אינה עונה" is a classic Israeli "Bourekas-film", which later became a cult film. Bourekas films (Like Spaghetti Westerns) were low-brow, broad comedies based on ethnic stereotypes, and often dealt with conflicts between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews. This one starred the iconic trio 'Hagashashim'. Maybe if somebody saw it first time in 1976, it would be funny, but it aged badly. I lasted 13 minutes.

🍿 While you were sleeping, the apex of 90's romantic comedies and my first by Jon Turteltaub. Most of the chick flicks from that era did not age well, using cliched TV sitcom tropes throughout, from newspaper boys to cute voice mail messages to Christmas gifts. Cringy, saccharine, formulaic.

🍿 A Million Ways to Die in the West, a Seth MacFarlane western comedy, a riff on Blazing Saddles, with bad writing and terrible acting. I lasted for about 45 minutes.

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Throw-back to the "Art project”:  

Adora at Salvation Mountain and at Salton Sea (from 'Into the wild').

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(My complete movie list is here).

[kevrocksicehouse]

Shelley Duvall

1949-2024.

Shelley Duvall a skinny, buck-toothed, eccentrically beautiful actress whose style was so quirkily naturalistic that it seemed like no style at all, was one of the major actors of the 70s and early 80s. She was discovered by Robert Altman and cast as one of cinema’s weirder femme fatales in Brewster McCloud (1970), then appearing so regularly in his films – as a young prostitute sharing an unexpected idyll with farmboy Keith Carradine in McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), reteamed with Carradine in the lyrical crime drama/romance Thieves Like Us (1974),  an amoral groupie (and 70s fashion plate) in Nashville (1975), President Cleveland’s wife in Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1975), co-starring with soul sister Sissy Spacek in 3 Women (1977) and delivering one of the best comics-to-live action performances of all time as Olive Oyl in 1980’s Popeye – to qualify as his muse. 1980 also brought arguably her best-known performance as the terrorized wife of Jack Nicholson in Stanley Kubrick’s version of Stephen King’s The Shining (one of the great women-in-peril horror performances). She also appeared in small character roles for Woody Allen in 1977’s Annie Hall (“Sex with you is really a Kafkaesque experience. I mean that as a compliment.”), Terry Gilliam (Sharing a running gag with Michael Palin as hapless lovers in 1981’s Time Bandits) Fred Schepisi (counseling “godbrother” Steve Martin in 1987’s Roxanne), Tim Burton (the mother of a mad-scientist child in the 1984 short Frankenweenie) and Jane Campion (playing Cassandra to Nicole Kidman in 1996’s Portrait of a Woman). She was one of the best. This one hurts.

[somecutiewithabooty]

In recent years, the film industry has seen an impressive surge in the recognition and success of female directors. Their work spans a wide range of genres and styles, showcasing unique perspectives and storytelling prowess. Here are ten notable female directors who have made significant contributions to cinema:

1. Greta Gerwig - Known for her authentic coming-of-age story in “Lady Bird,” Gerwig has emerged as a leading voice in Hollywood, blending humor, heart, and keen insight into the human experience.

2. Jane Campion - A respected filmmaker with a career spanning over three decades, Campion is celebrated for her poetic visuals and nuanced performances, particularly in her Oscar-winning film “The Piano.”

3. Nora Ephron - Ephron left a lasting impact with her smart, witty, and heartwarming romantic comedies like “When Harry Met Sally” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” capturing the complexities of modern love.

4. Agnès Varda - Known as the “mother of the French New Wave,” Varda’s films often tackle subjects ranging from feminism to social justice, leaving a profound legacy on cinema.

5. Amy Heckerling - Heckerling made her mark with iconic comedies like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Clueless,” capturing the pulse of youth culture.

6. Mary Harron - Best known for her work on “American Psycho,” Harron creates thought-provoking films that resonate with audiences, making significant contributions to cinema.

7. Patty Jenkins - With “Wonder Woman,” Jenkins broke box office records and became a prominent voice in the superhero genre, known for combining emotional depth with thrilling action.

8. Jodie Foster - Transitioning from a child actor to a director, Foster has made her mark with films like “Little Man Tate,” bringing a deep understanding of character development to her directorial work.

9. Lynne Ramsay - Ramsay is recognized for her bold storytelling and distinct visual style, exploring psychological themes in films like “We Need to Talk About Kevin.”

10. Julie Taymor - Renowned for her innovative approach to theatre and film, Taymor has directed projects like “Frida” and the Broadway production of “The Lion King,” pushing creative boundaries.

Additionally, the 2024 Oscars highlighted the achievements of female directors with three films directed by women—Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” and Celine Song’s “Past Lives”—nominated for Best Picture. Triet also received a nomination for Best Director, marking a significant moment in the Academy Awards’ history .

These directors, among others, are not only breaking barriers within the industry but also inspiring future generations of filmmakers with their groundbreaking work and unique visions.

[modorama]

cinema | Venice Film Festival : the participants

The participants of the competition program of the 80th Venice Film Festival have become known. Among them: the picture of Luc Besson "Dogman", the film by Sofia Coppola "Priscilla" about the relationship between Priscilla and Elvis Presley, their family life and divorce, as well as the second directorial work of Bradley Cooper - the biographical film "Maestro" about the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (in Cooper himself will play him in the film).

Main Competition

The Commander Directed by Edoardo De Angelis Promised Land Directed by Nikolai Arcel Dogman Directed by Luc Besson Premonition directed by Bertrand Bonello "In the Off Season" Directed by Stefan Brize Aeneas Directed by Pietro Castellitto Maestro Directed by Bradley Cooper Priscilla Directed by Sofia Coppola Dawn at Last Directed by Saverio Costanzo "Lubo" Directed by Giorgio Diritti Origin Directed by Ava DuVernay The Killer Directed by David Fincher "Memory" directed by Michel Franco I'm the Captain Directed by Matteo Garrone "Evil Doesn't Exist" Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi Green Border Directed by Agnieszka Holland The Theory of Everything Directed by Timm Kroeger "Poor Unfortunates" directed by Yorgos Lanthimos The Count Directed by Pablo Larrain Ferrari Directed by Michael Mann Adagio Directed by Stefano Sollima "Woman" directed by Malgorzata Szumowska and Michal Englert Holly Directed by Fin Troch

The film festival this year will be opened by the film "Commander" directed by Edoardo de Angelis. The opening film was originally supposed to be The Pretenders by Luca Guadagnino, starring Zendaya, but the premiere was delayed due to a cast strike. The closing film will be Juan Antonio Bayona's thriller "The Society of the Snow".

American director Damien Chazelle ("La La Land") became the chairman of the international jury of the Venice Film Festival this year, the jury of the festival also included director and screenwriter Jane Campion ("Power of the Dog"), director Laura Poitras ("All Beauty and Bloodshed" ), director Mia Hansen-Löw (Bergman's Island) and playwright and director Martin McDonagh (Banshee Inisherina).

The film screening will be held on the island of Lido (Italy) from August 30 to September 9.

[goonsinging]

Hi I've been summoned by my good friend and paisano @jar-jar-ate :)

I'm not reaaally an expert in explicitly queer films but there's homoeroticism EVERYWHERE in classic westerns and spaguetti westerns (the italian 60's version of what a western should be) and I happen to be a huge classic cinema nerd so here you have it.

So, my recs in this matter:

Homoeroticism and queer coding in Hollywood westerns:

Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948)

It's a well-known fact that Montgomery Clift was queer; his character and the relationship between him and John Ireland's character in this movie is considered very much queer-coded.

The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1942)

In this one there's a interesting subtext about what is to be considered "weak" and queer in a toxic masculine culture (and viewers are put in the queer POV, so sided with the queer people).

Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)

This one is weird, it's not about gay or lesbian relationships BUT there's plenty of queer and gender-non-conforming themes (i wouldn't call them "subtle" as well) because it's about two woman in the prototypical masc roles in the classic western and a man being merely a love interest. It's a freaking GOOD movie. One of my favs.

Calamity Jane (David Butler 1953) is also very gender-non conforming and lesbian coded (and a musical...!) but i've heard (this one is still on my watchlist) that is a little bit bended into appear heteronormative in the end.

Homoeroticism and gay representation in spaguetti westerns:

Well, many people think that italian cinema in the 60s and 70s is pretty homoerotic by hollywood standards. People nowadays ship Clint Eastwood's Man with no Name character with almost every masc character in the Dollars Trilogy. But, if I may, the best example is:

Quien sabe? (AKA A bullet for the general, Damiano Damiani, 1966)

Oh boy this isn't just vibes. Niño and Chuncho have really SOMETHING between them. And I have a huuge crush in Gian María Volonté who portrays Chuncho so I'm not completely neutral about this movie but I'm pretty sure you're gonna love it.

Also I've not seen this one but I've been told that in Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot! (Giulio Questi, 1967) there's plenty of (unhinged i think? Not really sure but that's what they say) gay rep. It's also in my watchlist! (Tomas Milián portrayed a lot of queer coded characters in his career much like Montgomery Clift)

More modern westerns:

I'm sure somebody have already told you about Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005 )and about Strange way of Life (2023), a short by Pedro Almodovar with Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal. It's nice, not my favourite but well made.

More in the not-explicit-but-queer-coded side of the scale there's this 90s flick, Ravenous (Antonia Bird, 1999). If you enjoy (or tolerate) gore and canibalism metaphors you're gonna love this one. If you liked Hannibal I would give this a chance rn.

I also enjoyed The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, 2022) and the complex power dinamics between queer characters in a more late western age.

I hope you find something you like in this list! Enjoy!

does anyone have any queer western recs? I'm having very specific media cravings lately and I need this.

[mtonino]

17° Festa del cinema di Roma

10 giornata

Era ora di Alessandro Aronadio A quanto pare gli italiani sono diventati bravissimi a rifare sempre lo stesso film, in questo caso anche benino. Telefonato

In a land that no longer exist di Aelrun Goette Il sogno di libertà dei giovani nella DDR dell'89 avrebbe meritato una rappresentazione meno consolatoria e patinata. Menzione speciale per la colonna sonora.

Jane Campion: the cinema woman di Julie Bertuccelli Paure, dubbi, incertezze ma anche tanta forza, convinzione e ironia in questo bel ritratto di una grande regista. Recuperatelo

Klondike di Maryna Er Gorbach L'occupazione del Donbas vista dal di dentro, dal fronte, non quello militare ma quello dei civili per i quali, come citato nel film, è vitale sapere chi è il nemico.

[fuckyeahfightlock]

Someone asked me the other day what I thought of The Power of the Dog. I watched it last night, so now I can answer. I’ll put it under a cut so as not to spoil latecomers like me.

First of all, Jane Campion’s movies are so beautiful it almost hurts to look at them, and that was my experience of The Power of the Dog. Just. . .as a film buff and fan of Jane Campion, all I can say is, omg so beautiful.

One thing I thought quite a bit in the early part of the film was that Bendy fans must have had a very hard time reconciling their affection for Bendy to the fact Phil Burbank had exactly zero redeeming qualities.

Anyway, from the perspective of Benedict Cumberbatch being one of his generation’s most talented, thoughtful, interesting actors (superhero movies aside), of course this was just a magnificent performance. Very restrained. I was so unsettled by Phil. . .is there a more highbrow word for skeevy? He skeeved me.

Campion handled brilliantly the explanation for Phil and why he is the way he is, without making it into an excuse for the way he is. I had insight but no sympathy, and I think that was purposeful and deftly crafted.

I felt like this was a film with no protagonist, but also not an ensemble piece; it was almost like very subtly intertwining stories. So either there was no protagonist, or three or four protagonists. It made me curious to read the novel, to see how much of that was Campion and how much was in the original text. Then again, I don’t know that I want to read a whole novel written by a man about this awful man and the destruction he wreaks on everyone around him. I might just skim-read it, to satisfy intellectual curiosity.

Kirsten Dunst was stellar, as well. I am always shocked to see she is now a woman close to my own age; I always think of her as a girl. Anyway, she underplayed every scene, to great benefit.

The “oh, of course. . .” moment at the end--realising that the very intelligent Peter was also crafty and endlessly loyal to his beloved mother--was brilliant, quiet and powerful. Satisfying. I felt like I could exhale.

Jane Campion is a genius and I hope she doesn’t wait another ten years to make another film. (Very interesting that she chose this male-centered material for her return to cinema)

One final note. Why was every strike of a match so goddamn sexy? Just me?

[pynkhues]

🙄😌🙊🥹🥵 but I want romcoms or romantic dramedies pls and thx

Thank yoouuu, and oh man, this was actually surprising hard, haha.

Eyeroll emoji - Adam's Rib (1949). You can never really go wrong with a Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy romcom, they're both excellent actors with chemistry for days (like, god, there was a reason they were in nine romances together) and this one is probably my favourite. In it, they play a married couple who are both lawyers who end up working on opposite sides of the same case - a case where a neglected woman attempts to kill her husband. At the time of it's release, it was a bit of a grenade and it actively tackled conversations of changing gender roles in post-WWII America, and the social and relationship pressures a lot of people felt. You really feel the fact that it was co-written by a woman too, and even beyond the great premise, it's genuinely really funny. Eyeroll emoji only because - - well, it did come out in 1949 so some of the gender politics are outdated to say the least, haha.

Relieved emoji - Bright Star (2009). Yes, sure, this movie is technically a 'tragedy' or whatever, but it's totally a comfort film for me too. It's so exquisitely made, and is probably my favourite Jane Campion film. The story of the poet John Keats' romance with Fanny Brawne is just really tenderly told, and the cinematography is to die for.

Don't speak emoji - The Children's Hour (1961). This movie never seems to feature in conversations of early lesbian cinema, which is a real shame, because it's genuinely very good and I think features possibly both Audrey Hepburn and Shirley Maclaine's best performances. At an all-girls school, a vindictive student accuses two of her teachers of lesbianism, and it trickles out in ways most of them couldn't imagine.

Holding back tears emoji - Hold Back the Dawn (1941). Another teacher-themed one just for youuuu. The synopsis of this movie always sounds a little silly, but it has so much heart and is inherently a film about kindness. A Romanian male sex worker is trying to get into the US to meet up with his lover who's recently married a man there in a green card marriage. He gets stopped at the border though and ends up stranded in Mexico. While he's there, he meets a teacher from America who's out with her school group, and plans to marry her for the green card, only to actually fall in love with her in the process. Olivia de Havilland is always my #1, and she's just so, so sweet in this, as are Charles Boyer and Paulette Goddard. It's really a movie about how to find and build a home, and I just love it a lot.

Hot emoji - The Handmaiden (2016). Oh man, what can I say about The Handmaiden? In Japan-occupied Korea in the 1930s, a young Korean woman is hired to be handmaiden to a reclusive Japanese heiress, only the handmaiden is actually a pickpocket recruited by a swindler posing as a Japanese Count who's trying to rob the heiress blind. And that's basically just the first ten minutes. I know you're going to hate this, haha, but the best way to go into The Handmaiden is without knowing much about it, because it is a ride. It's also a deeply intimate and compelling love story and while I do think some of the sex scenes can be a bit much, on the whole it's a movie that oozes sensuality and I love that for it and for me.

Send me an emoji + a genre and I’ll send you a movie rec

[justforbooks]

Lina Wertmüller, Italian Director of Provocative Films, Dies at 93

Lina Wertmüller, who combined sexual warfare and leftist politics in the provocative, genre-defying films “The Seduction of Mimi,” “Swept Away” and “Seven Beauties,” which established her as one of the most original directors of the 1970s, died overnight at her home in Rome, the Italian Culture Ministry and the news agency LaPresse said on Thursday. She was 93.

The culture minister, Dario Franceschini, said in a statement that Ms. Wertmüller’s “class and unmistakable style” had left its mark on Italian and world cinema, The Associated Press reported. “Grazie, Lina,” he said.

She was the first woman to receive an Academy Award nomination for best director, for “Seven Beauties” (1975).

Ms. Wertmüller, an Italian despite the German-sounding last name, burst onto the cinematic scene with a series of idiosyncratic films that propelled her to the front rank of European directors. All had screenplays written by her, and most relied on the talents of her two favorite actors: Giancarlo Giannini, usually cast as a hapless male chauvinist victimized by the injustices of Italian society and baffled by women, and Mariangela Melato as the always difficult and complicated love interest.

In the broad sense, Ms. Wertmüller was a political filmmaker, but no one could ever quite figure out what the politics were. A lively sense of human limitations tempered her natural bent toward anarchy. Struggle was noble and the social structure rotten, but the outcome was always in doubt.

Antiquated codes of honor undo the title character in “The Seduction of Mimi,” a dimwitted Sicilian laborer, played by Mr. Giannini, whose neglected wife stages a sexual revolt. In “Swept Away” (1974), Ms. Wertmüller upended the Italian power structure by giving the humble deckhand Gennarino (Mr. Giannini again) absolute power over the rich and arrogant Raffaella (Ms. Mercato) after a shipwreck.

After being dominated and abused, Gennarino turns the tables, and Raffaella becomes his adoring slave — until the two are rescued, and the old order reasserts itself. Feminists objected. With a characteristic bit of obfuscation, Ms. Wertmüller explained that since Raffaella embodies bourgeois society, “therefore she represents the man.”

In “Seven Beauties” (1975), Ms. Wertmüller again courted outrage by using a German concentration camp as the setting for a grim comedy, with farcical overtones. This time, Mr. Giannini played Pasqualino Farfuso, a craven Neapolitan deserter and two-bit charmer who, determined to survive at all costs, seduces the camp’s sadistic female commandant and, directed by her, murders other prisoners. Critics were divided over the merits of the film, but it earned Ms. Wertmüller the Oscar nomination. Not until 1994, when Jane Campion was nominated for “The Piano,” would another woman be nominated.

Ms. Wertmüller’s reputation, always more elevated in the United States than in Europe, remained uncertain. With “Seven Beauties,” the critic John Simon wrote, Ms. Wertmüller ascended “into the highest regions of cinematic art, into the company of the major directors.” The critic David Thomson, on the other hand, ascribed her American popularity in the 1970s as “probably inevitable in a country ravenous for a female purveyor of smart cultural artifacts.”

And her brand of sexual politics encountered hostility from critics like Pauline Kael, Molly Haskell and Ellen Willis, who called her “a woman-hater who pretends to be a feminist.”

Tiny and voluble, with a fierce smile and instantly recognizable white-framed eyeglasses, Ms. Wertmüller disarmed criticism by unleashing verbal torrents of explanation in a gravelly alto. Vincent Canby, after listening to her hold forth during a publicity tour for her first English-language film, “The End of the World in Our Usual Bed on a Night Full of Rain” (1978), wrote in The New York Times that she spoke “with enthusiasm and at such length and so articulately that (to vary an old Hollywood joke) it seems Warner Brothers might do better to scrap the film and distribute the director.”

Arcangela Felice Assunta Wertmüller von Elgg Spañol von Braueich was born in Rome on Aug. 14, 1928, to a family of noble Swiss ancestry. Her mother was the former Maria Santamaria-Maurizio; her father, Federico, was a successful lawyer and a domestic tyrant with whom she quarreled constantly. After obtaining a teaching certificate she hedged her bets by enrolling simultaneously in law school and a Stanislavskian drama academy in Rome. Theater won out.

During the 1950s, Ms. Wertmüller toured with a puppet theater, wrote musical comedies for television and worked as an actress and stage manager. Her best friend, married to Marcello Mastroianni, introduced her to Federico Fellini, who hired her as an assistant director on “8½,” a life-changing experience that opened the world of film to her.

In 1963 she directed her own film, “The Lizards,” a study of provincial life in the vein of Fellini’s “I Vitelloni.” It was followed by the quirky “Let’s Talk About Men” (1965), a study of sexual politics that foreshadowed her later explorations of the subject.

Ms. Wertmüller’s long collaboration with Mr. Giannini began in television, when she directed him in the musical “Rita the Mosquito” (1966) and its sequel “Don’t Sting the Mosquito” (1967), whose art director, Enrico Job, she married in 1968.

Mr. Job died in 2008. Information on survivors was not immediately available.

The 1970s presented Ms. Wertmüller with two of her richest subjects: the changing sexual politics brought about by feminism, and increasing political turbulence in Italy, as old social structures and attitudes buckled under the pressures of modernity. “The Seduction of Mimi,” chosen as an official entry at the Cannes festival in 1972, immediately established her as an important new filmmaker. “Love and Anarchy” (1973), with Mr. Giannini playing a bumbling country boy who tries to assassinate Mussolini, and the social satire “All Screwed Up” (1974), solidified her reputation for idiosyncratic political films blending tragedy and farce.

Somewhat paradoxically her career went into steep decline after the Academy nomination, although in 2019 she received an honorary Oscar for her work, and in 2016 she was the subject of a documentary, “Behind the White Glasses.”

“The bubble seemed to burst,” the British critic Derek Malcolm told The Guardian, adding that “she could do nothing right.”

The titles of the films grew even longer, and the critical response more uniformly hostile. “The End of the World,” with Candice Bergen as an American photographer and feminist engaged in marital struggle with an Italian communist played by Mr. Giannini, was roundly dismissed as raucous and incoherent. Each succeeding film seemed to bear out Michael Wood’s observation, in The New York Review of Books, that Ms. Wertmüller’s work displayed “a stunning visual intelligence accompanied by a great confusion of mind.”

By the early 1990s she had qualified for inclusion in Variety’s “Missing Persons” column. “Ciao, Professore” (1994), about a schoolteacher from northern Italy mistakenly transferred to a poor school near Naples, suggested a return to form, but on a small scale, and with an unexpected sweetness. For perhaps the first time in her career, Ms. Wertmüller faced the charge of sentimentality.

To this, as to all criticism, she responded by invoking the ultimate authority: herself. Her films, she liked to say, were made to please an audience of one, and her methods were intuitive.

“I am sure of things only because I love them,” she said. “I am born first. Only then do I discover.”

📷 Photo above:  Lina Wertmüller on the set of “Summer Night” on the island of Sardinia.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[lesbiancolumbo]

i saw your post about seeking out art made by women.. do you have any recs?? ik its a hard q to answer so i understand if you dont have time!!! <3

absolutely! this is such a broad question so i’m going to go with the films that i like/want more people to watch, but if you want a more specific genre or time period let me know.

a new leaf (1971, elaine may) is the funniest film of all time and my favorite film. jeanne dielman (1975, chantal akerman) is the greatest film that has ever been made. these are my two favorite films by women and i think everyone should see them.

in no particular order, these are the films that have had a huge impact on me and came to me at the right time in my life: mikey and nicky (1976, elaine may), pariah (2011, dee rees), but i’m a cheerleader (1999, jamie babbit), wendy and lucy (2008, kelly reichardt), cameraperson (2016, kirsten johnson), obvious child (2014, gillian robespierre).

these are the films that i think everyone should watch, aka “my canon”: any short films by alice guy-blaché (youtube is your friend!) but especially falling leaves. shoes (1916, lois weber), mabel’s strange predicament (1914, mabel normand) (we wouldn’t have the charlie chaplin we know today without mabel normand!), the adventures of prince achmed (1926, lotte reininger), the smiling madame beudet (1923, germaine dulac), merrily we go to hell (1932, dorothy arzner), mädchen in uniform (1931, leontine sagan), meshes of the afternoon (1943, maya deren), mary ellen bute’s animated shorts, outrage (1950, ida lupino), shirley clarke’s dance films, le bonheur (1965, agnès varda), the house is black (1963, forugh farrokhzad), wings (1966, larisa shepitko), daisies (1966, vera chytilova), wanda (1970, barbara loden), i am somebody (1970, madeline anderson), lady with a sword (1971, kao pao-shu), betty tells her story (1972, liane brandon), hester street (1975, joan micklin silver), dyketactics (1974, barbara hammer), illusions (1982, julie dash), losing ground (1982, kathleen collins), blood diner (1987, jackie kong), near dark (1987, kathryn bigelow), the piano (1993, jane campion), daughters of the dust (1991, julie dash), the watermelon woman (1996, cheryl dunye), and SEE WE ARE NOT EVEN INTO THE 2000S YET!

this list may seem overwhelming. do not let it. i went long and detailed to prove a point, which is that we have been making films in every decade and on every continent, in every genre. my lists have blind spots! i have my own biases.

my advice to you and whoever else reads this is to ask yourself what genres you gravitate towards and what kinds of films you like, what decades you love, what international cinema you find interesting, and then start googling! go to letterboxd! watch some of my recs, or completely disregard them. you know your taste the best, and i guarantee there’s a million films by women you’ll love. for every film i put on here i left out FIVE similar ones.

i’m happy to give more tailored recommendations if you’d like, but this is a really broad list covering a lot of film history. dig in! see what you like and let me know what speaks to you! godspeed and have a blast! i wish i could see all these films again.

[ofgreatart]

'He wanted to do something for her and wished she would ask it of him. She would ask nothing but questions.' (The Portrait of a Lady)

Video: 'a general impression of life' Nicole Kidman, Jane Campion, Henry James

films7 on x/twitter

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week # 155 (Year 3/Week 51):

My first Singaporean film, Anthony Chen's award-winning debut feature, Ilo Ilo. There is a new sub-genre emerging in recent years, realistic dramas about live-in maids and domestic workers (Many from South America and from South-East Asia: 'Lina from Lima', 'The second mother', 'La Nana', 'Roma', 'La cieniga', 'A simple life', and also others I haven't seen). Most are terrific, and so is this one, with 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

[That Wikipedia list of movies with 100% score on RT is often a reliable indicator for the type of fair I like to spend my time with]. Highly recommended - 9/10.

🍿

2 more by Aki Kaurismäki:

🍿 My 10th tragic feature by him, and possibly my favorite, The match factory girl. The great Kati Outinen is a sad and lonely young woman who has a one-night stand. Minimalist, bleak and unrelenting, this was no Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. Considered by some as the "Best Finnish film". 9/10.

🍿 To Each His Own Cinema, a 2007 anthology of 34 3-minute shorts by different directors about how movies inspired them. Takeshii Kitano, the Dardenne brothers, Zhang Zimou, Jane Campion, Atom Egoyan, Gus Van Sant, Lars von Trier, Roman Polanski, Michael Cimino, David Cronenberg, Wong Kar-wai, Ken Loach, Claude Lelouche, David Lynch, Etc. It was commissioned to celebrate 60th anniversary of The Cannes Film Festival.

The often-repetitive stories were about old cinema houses out in the country, ticket taking, projectionists, watching Bresson and Fellini in small villages, and similar wet dreams for cineastes. A nice touch was that the credits were shown only at the end of each short, so you could try to guess who directed it while watching.

Most of the films were not very good. Among the few stand outs were Hou Hsiao-hsien (A family in 1940s Taiwan goes to see a film in a suddenly decrepit theater), Aki Kaurismäki (Foundry workers on lunch break enjoy a Lumiére silent film of workers on lunch break), Abbas Kiarostami (Iranian women watch 'Romeo and Juliet' and cry), Wim Wenders (The inhabitants of a remote Congo village watch Black Hawk Down) and The Coen Brothers (A cowboy resembling Llewellyn Moss at a repertory art house, debating if he should see Renoir or Nuri Bilge Ceylon).

🍿

Ridley Scott's first stream-of-consciousness film, Boy and Bicycle. Made in 1962, when he was 23, and starring his 16 year old brother, Tony [who would jump to his death from the San Pedro Bridge exactly 50 years later]. A boy skips school, and wanders round the empty docks of his West Hartlepool industrial seaside town. Like a working class scene from 'Dubliners'.

It took Ridley 15 years before he was able to direct his next movie, during which time he specialized in producing commercial advertising. His most famous one, The bike Ride, an advert for bread, also featured a boy on a bike. It was later voted as the 'Best British Advert of all time'.

🍿

My 7th and 8th films by Sofia Coppola:

🍿 Priscilla, another pretty young woman living in a privileged gilded cage (like Coppola's herself did). A beautiful romance without sex, and with an oppressive power imbalance. "The Elvis" and the 14 year old girl [and without a single Elvis song]. 7/10.

🍿 In her shallow The Bling Ring, a group of celebrities-wannabes Valley Girls burgles from Hollywood celebrities homes, and become mini-celebrities themselves. It was pretty, but I couldn't find any deeper meaning there.

🍿

Danish cinema produced dozens of 'Danish Noir' works in the 1940's, during the Nazi occupation, and the 1950's. Mordets melodi ("Melody of murder") is considered Denmark's first horror film, and is my first movie directed by the great Bodil Ipsen. [The Danish "Oscars" are actually called "The Bodil's" after her and the other female influencer, Bodil Kjer].

Like Fritz Lang's 'M', a crazed, ambi-sexual killer continues to strangle women while singing a luring French cabaret song, and the dark, dramatic sets are visually stark.

🍿

Bradley Cooper's new adulatory bio-pic Maestro, about the larger-than-life, overbearing genius that was Leonard Bernstein. Uncanny recreation of his life, but mostly his bisexuality vs. his love for his wife and family. Carey Mulligan was tremendous in it. So was Gustav Mahler. This is the year of the “Great Man” in movies, Napoleon, Oppenheimer, Ferrari, Bernstein… (Photo Above).

🍿

First-watch earlier Buñuel X 2:

🍿 Nazarin, Buñuel‘s own favorite work, about a saintly priest, who mistakenly tries to follow in Christ's footsteps. But all his literal interpretations of the dogmas are proven to lead him, as well as his small coterie of freaks and miscasts, into misfortunes. One of the last of his Mexican films, this religious parable is the one that convinced the Spanish censors to allow him to return from exile.

🍿 Bunuel's only documentary (pseudo-documentary rather), Land Without Bread, describing (exaggerated) misery in a remote Spanish town. Extreme poverty, hunger and destitute rarely seen on film.

🍿

Dil Dhadakne Do is an Indian soap opera, staged on a first-class Turkish cruise ship in the Mediterranean, directed by a woman, and narrated by a dog. It's a 3-hour long American-style 'Rich and famous' sit-com of a large family, full of expected love intrigues of bland characters.

I was hoping for another hopping Song and Dance story, but there were only 3 dance numbers in it, Gallan Goodiyaan, Girls like to dance and the final credit scene.

🍿

3 atypical Christmas fairy tales:

🍿 My second unusual anime by Satoshi Kon, Tokyo Godfathers (after 'Paprika'). An imaginative Christmas Miracle parable of The Three Magis. Except that here they are three unlikely homeless heroes, an alcoholic, a trans woman, and a teenage runaway who likes to spit on people from above. They discover an abandoned newborn while searching through the garbage for presents. Emotional and unorthodox. 8/10.

🍿 The Bloody Olives, a Belgian meta Film Noir of a husband, his wife and her lover who keep murdering each other again and again while decorating their Christmas tree. Full of twists and double crosses.

🍿 "One morning, as Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a giant banana..."

Malcolm Tucker's Oscar-winning parody Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life was not too convincing: It's too easy to parody Kranz Fuckfuck.

🍿

First watch: Truffaut's second installment of the Antoine Doinel's saga, Antoine and Colette. The boy of '400 Blows' is now 17, and awkwardly falls in love for the first time. Youthfully charming.

🍿

2 by Norwegian Kristoffer Borgli:

🍿 The first half of Dream scenario had me in stitches: Such an original thought experiment, and so unhesitatingly fresh. But exactly at mid-point, when everybody's dreams turn into nightmares, the story progressed into a underwhelming flirtation with broader contemporary themes, fame, cancel culture, public perception. The only anchor left in Paul's life is memories of his lovely wife, Julianne Nicholson. 6/10.

🍿 Checking out his only previous feature, Sick of Myself: That too was a story with an intriguing premise that opened very strong, end completely fizzled halfway. A young barista lives anonymously and unnoticed, being ignored by her self-centered boyfriend and acquaintances. One day at work, a woman is being mauled by a dog and she's the only one jumping to help her. While covered in blood, she is suddenly the center of attention. The rush causes her to start an insane dive into self-mutilation. The second half centered on narcissism, influencers, victimhood and social media, and was highly disappointing. My 5th film with Anders Danielsen Lie. 4/10.

🍿

"Chip, you know how I hate the brown word"...

My first black comedy from John Waters' commercial period, Serial mom.

With Waters regulars Chesty Morgan, Tracy Lords, Mink Stole, Patty Hearst and Ricky Lake [But it could do better with less Fat jokes]. Also, with a lawyer named Nazelrod and a panties-sniffer named Marvin Pickles. The hot rock and roll girl band is called Camel Lips. So the anti-establishment humour is very elementary.

🍿

“I Didn’t Come To Rescue Rambo From You. I Came Here To Rescue You From Him”…

First watch: I did not expect Rambo: first blood to be that watchable, with such excellent Jerry Goldsmith score. A traumatized Vietnam vet feels spat on and maligned. And all the years I thought it but a thoughtless, jingoistic violent flick.

🍿

3 more stand-ups:

🍿 Trevor Noah: Where Was I, his latest stand-up opens with his best line upfront: "I really enjoy every day in America right now. The same way you'd enjoy your last day on earth". It has a few other good jokes, but otherwise it's pretty tame. The venue, The Fox Theater in Detroit, looks magnificent. 4/10

🍿 Sane man, my first stand-up with heavy-smoker, politically incorrect Bill Hicks. I heard the name before, but never seen him perform.

🍿 So, for the second time in a week, I re-watched Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure, a contagiously funny presentation.

🍿

4 Shorts:

🍿 Agnès Varda's Les Fiancés du pont Mac Donald, a Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton-inspired silent comedy from 1962. With JL Godard and Anna Karina.

🍿 Re-watch: From David Firth's, the creator of 'Salad Fingers', the unsettling Cream. Inventing a single solution to all of the world's problems.

The credit page at the end is just as hilariously expansive as the bitter story itself.

🍿 Figs, a gentle 81-year-old black woman who survived a life of oppression, from the cotton fields of Louisiana to becoming a teacher in South Los Angeles.

🍿 The girl with the yellow stockings, a light German story of a young man asking his girlfriend to marry him again and again.

🍿

One I couldn't finish even after trying hard for nearly 20 minutes: The toothless, 1990's Clintonite-lite, political romance Speechless. Trying to cash in on the then real-life hookup between James Carville and Mary Matalin, it was awful on every level.

🍿  

(My complete movie list is here).

[annoyingthemesong]

SUBLIME CINEMA #267 - SEVEN BEAUTIES

Lina Wertmüller was a wonderful director, who possessed an incredible artistic range and eye for detail. Seven Beauties, which she both wrote and directed, is still a shocking, glorious statement. She was the first woman to be nominated for an Academy Award in directing, and the sole nominee until Jane Campion came around.

Seven Beauties is a beautifully expressive work, both following in Italian cinema tradition and smashing through it into new territory.

[msclaritea]

"It takes a special kind of cold-blooded sadism to wield a banjo as a psychological weapon, but Phil Burbank pulls it off with almost casual cruelty.

Here’s the setup. In 1925 Montana, the widow Rose (Kirsten Dunst) has married the gentleman farmer George Burbank (Jesse Plemons) and has moved into the ranch mansion George shares with his brother Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch), who is horrified by the woman’s mere presence and couldn’t be bothered to disguise that. As the nervous, tentative Rose practices playing Strauss’ “Radetzky March” on the piano, striking the wrong keys time and again, she gradually becomes aware of an echo of the same song, coming from upstairs. There’s Phil in the shadows, expertly playing the song on his banjo, finishing with a flourish — and leaving Rose trembling and terrified..."

Netflix presents a film written and directed by Jane Campion, based on the book by Thomas Savage. Rated R (for brief sexual content/full nudity). Running time: 126 minutes. Opening Wednesday at the Music Box Theatre and the Landmark Renaissance Place Cinema in Highland Park, and available Dec. 1 on Netflix.

[letterboxd]

The Eyes of TIFF.

Programmers for the 46th Toronto International Film Festival chat about the degrees of intensity they look for in a festival film, and help us zoom in on the gems from TIFF’s 2021 program, by genre and region.

“Intensity can be achieved in so many different ways. I know it when I feel it. You feel it in your gut.” —Cameron Bailey

It’s almost business as usual for TIFF this year. In-person events and red carpets return, but a healthy virtual program is also available for Canadian-based folk unable to travel, as the Covid-19 pandemic continues its onslaught.

TIFF co-head and artistic director Cameron Bailey has been with the festival for just over half its life, and says while some of the technology has changed in that time—“you’re no longer sitting in front of a TV monitor with VHS tapes… or waiting for 35mm prints to be spooled up and projected for you”—the “basic process of falling in love with movies” has not.

It’s a challenge, Bailey says, to winnow down the films he falls in love with for the final TIFF lineup. And even then, it is an annual challenge for film lovers tight on time to narrow down their own selections. So, ahead of the fest, Bailey joined fellow TIFF programmers for a Twitter Spaces conversation with our editor in chief Gemma Gracewood, in order to help Letterboxd members make some watchlist decisions.

Joining Bailey were Thom Powers (TIFF Docs), Peter Kuplowsky (Midnight Madness), Robyn Citizen (senior programming manager), Diana Sanchez (Special Presentations, Spain, Latin America, Portugal and the Caribbean), Diana Cadavid (International Cinema) and Nataleah Hunter-Young (Africa, “the Middle East” and the Black Diaspora).

Edited highlights of the conversation follow, so have your watchlists close at hand.

‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’, written by Abe Sylvia and directed by Michael Showalter.

Thank you all for joining me today. You watch a lot of films as you’re going through the selection process. How does one make itself stand out to you? Cameron Bailey: For every programmer it’s going to be something different. For me, it comes down to an intangible quality of intensity. That can be emotional intensity, it can be the intensity of formal elements, the cinematography, the performances, the writing. Some sense of concentrated emotion and momentum, where you get the sense that a filmmaker is trying to find a way to distill the essence of what they’re trying to do and communicate it to an audience through all of the tools that cinema provides. That doesn’t mean the movie has to be fast-paced or have a lot of dramatic jolts, as intensity can be achieved in so many different ways. I know it when I feel it. You feel it in your gut.

What would you say are some of the performances that have struck you the most this year? CB: Jessica Chastain is the lead in a film we’re premiering called The Eyes of Tammy Faye, directed by Michael Showalter. If you were watching TV in the ’80s and ’90s, you will remember Tammy Faye Bakker, and her husband, Jim Bakker, who were TV televangelists. You couldn’t miss Tammy, as she had these giant eyes and makeup with giant eyelashes, and this is essentially her story. It’s hard to know at first that it’s Jessica Chastain underneath all of that makeup, but she gives a performance that’s not just about the exterior. It’s about a woman who is shaped by a difficult upbringing, shaped by this incredibly deep need she has for affirmation, to be on TV, to be in front of the camera, and that guides her decisions into extremes. She’s fantastic in it.

Benedict Cumberbatch is back with two films. He is the lead in Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog. It’s an understated, slow-burn performance in some ways, which he can do so well. He’s also in a film that’s on the opposite end of the dramatic spectrum, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain. It’s based on a real person, and when you watch the film you will be amazed that this person actually existed. Wain, in the early part of the twentieth century, was a prodigious painter who turned his talent towards painting thousands of cats. Cute cats, big eyed cats, fuzzy, adorable cats. He’s largely responsible for cats becoming as big as they are as domesticated pets. It’s a wild story.

I’m still recovering from watching The Power of the Dog’s trailer earlier today, and had to promise myself that I wouldn’t take up this entire time talking about Jane Campion’s obsession with hands. The Spencer trailer dropped as well, which has a lot of buzz around it. CB: Yes, Spencer is a remarkable portrait. Some of us remember Princess Diana, some of us have watched The Crown, and so have a very recent image, but this is a completely different performance that Kristen Stewart gives. She’s remarkable in it. I think everybody’s going to want to see this film.

‘Charlotte’, written by David Bezmozgis and Erik Rutherford, directed by Tahir Rana and Éric Warin.

Are there any other titles you’d like to get the buzz started for, Cameron? CB: On the animation side, I would say people should look out for a film called Charlotte, by Tahir Rana and Éric Warin. It’s a Canadian film telling a story based in World War II Europe about a woman in a Jewish family [exiled] in France during the occupation of France by the Nazis. She can feel what is coming. She decides to paint everything about her life, and her family’s life, trying to document what she feels is going to be very fragile, and what she might lose altogether.

As it turns out, before the end of the war she was taken away to a death camp by the Nazi regime, and she didn’t survive, but her paintings have survived and they were turned into a book, along with the story of her family. The animation is just gorgeous. I think that’s one that awards bodies are going to be paying attention to. It’s one of the best animated films I’ve seen in quite a while.

Thom, what are some of the documentary titles that you and the team think those awards bodies will have their eyes on? Thom Powers: A big one to pay attention to is The Rescue, by Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, who won the Oscar for their last film, Free Solo. Their new film is looking at the Thai cave rescue [in 2018], when a group of young soccer players and their coach got trapped by monsoon floods in a cave. When we were watching the news, we were seeing the journalists reporting from outside the cave. What this film does is bring you inside that rescue using footage that’s never been seen before. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin are masters at the documentary adventure genre, and also [at] bringing a real human side to the people involved, which they do again here.

I’ll also mention Becoming Cousteau, by Liz Garbus, and Julia, a film about Julia Child, directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, who made the Oscar-nominated documentary RBG a few years ago. So many of us during the pandemic had to rediscover ourselves in the kitchen, and Julia Child’s life was about making people feel more comfortable in the kitchen, which makes it a terrific film to watch at this time.

‘Saloum’, directed by Jean Luc Herbulot.

Peter, what’s a movie from this year’s Midnight Madness lineup you’d love to recommend? Peter Kuplowsky: We’ve got a lot of firsts at Midnight this year. We have Saloum, the first time a West African film has ever been in Midnight. We’ve also got Zalava, which is the first Iranian film to play in Midnight. Our opening film for Midnight Madness is Julia Ducournau’s Titane, which is playing at the Princess of Wales theater, and will be a spectacle to behold. When I’m looking for Midnight Madness, I like hearing the audience make certain noises in the room, whether that’s a gasp or screams or laughter. I feel that every note on the scale is going to be played during Titane by the audience.

Brilliant. Now, we’re going to bring in some audience questions. First up is Vincent, who says that one of their favorite films is Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, and asks if there are any films in this year’s TIFF lineup you could recommend for a fan of that film? PK: I’ve really been encouraging people to check out the films I just mentioned, Zalava and Saloum, and I think Zalava especially would fit here, as it’s more of a horror-drama. It begins as something that is steeped in the supernatural, but as it escalates it becomes something of a pitch-black comedy while still maintaining a gravitas to it. I think it’s one of the most fascinating discoveries in the genre space this year.

CB: I’d also add Good Madam, by Jenna Bass, from South Africa. It is a chilling movie, with a bit of an Eyes Without a Face vibe. If you like that sort of approach to cinema, I think you’ll like that.

PK: Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash just won the Golden Leopard at Locarno. With a title like that, this is a film that feels like it’s going to be sort of a strictly pulp crime film, but it’s so much more. It’s deeply romantic, incredibly eclectic, and beautifully shot on 16mm film. It feels like a film that was hidden away, shot in the late ’70s or early ’80s. It’s a throwback to 1980s Hong Kong action films, while also, I can’t stress this enough, being one of the most romantic films in the festival. You’ll fall in love with this relationship while it’s also working in fight sequences and magical realism.

Nataleah, what’s something you would recommend from your TIFF selections from Africa, “the Middle East” and the Black Diaspora? Nataleah Hunter-Young: One I’d highly recommend is Costa Brava, directed by Mounia Akl, from Lebanon. Even amidst what’s going on in Lebanon right now, the film offers a beautiful and engrossing portrait of a family that includes a grandmother who’s a non-actor, but has impeccable comedic timing (that travels through the subtitles if you don’t speak Arabic).

‘Snakehead’, written and directed by Evan Leong.

Robyn, what’s a movie that surprised you most during your selections this year? Robyn Citizen: I always recommend that people check out our Discovery section because that’s where we find new talent and nurture new voices. The film that really surprised me this year was Snakehead, by Evan Jackson Leong. Some people will know him from a documentary called Linsanity, and he did another documentary about evangelism in Korea. Snakehead has been a ten-year labor of love for him. He had to do a Kickstarter for the film, which is loosely based on the life of a woman named Sister Ping, who had a human trafficking ring that was the biggest trafficking ring for about 20 years.

The film tackles what’s going on now with vulnerable populations being trafficked into America, in particular Chinatown in the US, and the main character, played by Shuya Chang, has to fight to find her daughter. It’s an exciting film, and very moving. It’s extremely tightly edited, and it looks fantastic.

We’ve got our next question here from a member who says their favorite genre is science-fiction. While Dune is at the top of their watchlist, are there any other sci-fi selections you could recommend? PK: I would recommend After Blue (Dirty Paradise), which is a perverse science-fiction by Bertrand Mandico. It reminds me a lot of the French animated film Fantastic Planet. This one is about a planet which is inhospitable to men because of the way hair grows. The plot follows a young teenage girl who accidentally unleashes a notorious criminal that she and her hairdresser mother have to stalk through the alien landscape that is full of bizarre creatures and liquids and gases. I feel it’s kind of like the inverse of Dune, and an opportunity to explore a bizarre ecosystem.

NHY: I would totally insist that this member see Neptune Frost, from Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman. It’s a difficult film to put into words, but I’ve been summing it up by calling it an Afro-sonic sci-fi musical.

Whoa, that sounds like a whole new subgenre. NHY: That’s just the beginning. There’s a lot to experience in this film. It’s a cosmic romance that follows an intersex hacker and a coltan miner who make their way to this kind of dream space where they connect with others as they travel through these lush mountainous regions of Rwanda and Burundi. It’s a beautiful anti-narrative that is impeccably colored and totally consuming. It’s a must-see for anybody who loves cinema.

Diana, what would you say is the best debut feature that you’ve seen among this year’s international selections? Diana Cadavid: There are so many wonderful new talents, but I think I’ll go with an Argentinian filmmaker named Agustina San Martín. Her film, To Kill the Beast, is a co-production between Argentina, Brazil and Chile, and she worked for nine years to put this all together. She started working on it when she was 21, and we were actually having a conversation yesterday about her process, and how it’s a film that deals with the growth of a woman, and female desire. There’s this idea of the beast, something that’s either from inside or from outside forces, trying to control the human mind and body. It’s a very interesting film, gorgeously shot and very atmospheric.

‘Yuni’, written by Prima Rusdi and Kamila Andini, directed by Andini.

We’ve got another question here from David, who says their favorite films are humanistic dramas, citing Hirokazu Kore-eda as one of their favorite directors. Would anybody have any recommendations for David? CB: I can recommend at least one film, called Yuni, an Indonesian film from Kamila Andini. This is a naturalist drama about a high-school girl who is one of the top students in her class, and has a great group of friends. We slowly begin to see that her life is being constrained by one man after another, and then something happens at school, which begins to narrow her possibilities for her future. She’s trying to figure out things like sexuality and romance and what she wants to do with her future, and all of these obstacles keep getting placed in her path. It’s told in a very gentle way, but very incisive as well. Each scene really matters, taking you deeper inside this girl’s life.

RC: Our senior programmer Giovanna Fulvi programmed a film called Aloners, a South Korean film by Hong Sung-eun. This is her first feature, and it’s very much a film of our time. It is about a woman who works in the gig economy at a credit-card customer-service call center. It’s a very transient existence. She doesn’t talk to anybody, she eats by herself, she doesn’t really want to associate with the people in her apartment building. One day, one of her neighbors who has tried to talk to her many times passes away, and she has to re-interrogate the way that she’s been living her life, and figure out if it’s worth starting to form some human connections.

Next up is a question from Matt Neglia, from the Next Best Picture podcast. Matt says that he’s a massive fan of epics, whether they’re three hours long or just telling an expansive story with lots of world-building. Apart from Dune, are there any other films in the lineup that you would describe as epic? CB: While Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World might not strike you on reading its synopsis as an epic, I think it actually is an emotional epic. It’s the story of a young woman who’s trying to figure out her life. Her romance with one boyfriend doesn’t quite fit the bill for her, and she begins this looking and exploring. Trier and his writer and lead actor do remarkable work, blowing open the idea of a person trying to define who they are at this turning point in their life. They make these stakes massive and they have all kinds of interesting, innovative, formal elements in [the film] as well. It’s incredibly cinematic. If you’ve seen Joachim Trier’s other films, this is kind of the conclusion of a trilogy that he’s made.

‘Listening to Kenny G’, directed by Penny Lane.

Next up, we have Sarah, who is looking for movies about music, and also some body horror. CB: We’ve got a number of great music docs this year. I have to mention Dionne Warwick, the queen of Twitter, who is the subject of Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over. It tells the story of this incredibly talented, determined and glamorous musician who broke so many barriers. She toured in the south during the Jim Crow era, making gains as a Black woman in the music industry and in the pop-music industry, not the so-called race-record or Black-music industry, which simply wasn’t done at the time. This documentary tells that story, and also shows her later work in the ’80s contributing to the fight against stigma and hysteria during the AIDS crisis.

PK: I’ll follow up Cameron by mentioning the Alanis Morissette film Jagged. We’ve also got a film about the great jazz pianist, Oscar Peterson, called Oscar Peterson: Black + White. Lastly, there’s a film about Kenny G, called Listening to Kenny G.

Diana Sanchez: For the body horror, I’d like to mention the debut film by Ruth Paxton, titled A Banquet. It’s about a young woman who insists her body is no longer her own, and is a service to a higher power. Her mother has no idea what to think. She stops eating, and her mother doesn’t know [whether] to believe her or not. I love Ruth Paxton’s work, the way she shoots the film, the way she shoots the food. It’s almost, as she refers to it, pornographic. It looks delicious and gross all at the same time.

I’d also like to flip to comedy quickly to mention Official Competition. The film stars Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Oscar Martínez. Cruz plays a filmmaker who puts together a well-known theater actor and a well-known box-office glamor guy, played by Banderas. The film speaks to the tension between high art and more popular art, testing those boundaries. It’s incredibly funny.

We’d love to squeeze a few more films out of everyone for our watchlists. Could you each recommend one film and try to sell it in ten words or less? CB: Let me try. Sundown, by Michel Franco. Tim Roth falls apart beautifully in Mexico.

TP: I’m going to go with the Mexican documentary, Comala. Filmmaker Gian Cassini explores the legacy of his father, who was a Tijuana hitman.

PK: I’ll go with Saloum, which is basically From Dusk Till Dawn in West Africa.

RC: I’m going to say The Wheel, a movie by Steve Pink. If you like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, this is like that with a younger couple in a much more humane, intimate key.

DS: I’ll say I’m Your Man, a sci-fi where Maren Eggert dates a robotic Dan Stevens.

PK: I know Diana has been recommending a film called OUT OF SYNC, about an artist who begins to experience the sound of the world going out of sync. She starts hearing sounds from the past because people and things are out of sync with their surroundings.

NHY: I’ll go with The Gravedigger’s Wife, directed by Khadar Ahmed. It showcases the horn of Africa unlike you’ve ever seen it on screen.

Finally, for Cameron: with fall coming, what is the best TIFF 2021 movie to watch under a blanket, either because it’s cozy or because you’re terrified, or both? CB: Great question, which gives me a chance to talk about Earwig, the new film by Lucile Hadžihalilović. If you’ve seen Innocence or Evolution, her two most recent films, you’re prepared in terms of tone, but you’ve not even seen Lucille make a film quite like this. It’s eerie, disturbing, hypnotic, mesmerizing. You can’t stop watching, but you’re always afraid that something awful and horrifying is about to happen… and maybe it might.

‘Night Raiders’, written and directed by Danis Goulet.

To bring it all back home, what would you say is the Canadian film of 2021? CB: It’s always hard to say, but I think in a year where we have Danis Goulet’s feature Night Raiders, that’s got to be the one. Danis has made some exceptional short films over the last few years that people might know. Her feature takes on the horrific, devastating story of residential schools and children torn from Indigenous families and put in institutions where the goal was to erase their Indigenous identity. She takes that terrible, real history that we’re grappling with right now in Canada, and turns it into a piece of speculative fiction, a kind of propulsive thriller.

By turning it into fiction rather than reality she can use all of the tools of cinema to tell a terrific story that’s exciting and has high stakes, but also has this deep resonance of a truth that we are, I hope, coming to terms with in this country.

The Toronto International Film Festival runs from September 9 to 18. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Follow TIFF on Letterboxd, and follow our Festiville HQ for regular festival updates.