Late British filmmaker Simon Hartog authored a documentary entitled Beyond Citizen Kane in 1993 denouncing the manipulative tactics of the Brazilian TV giant Rede Globo to the world. The film revealed that Globo has a firm grip – virtually a monopoly – over the Brazilian government, local politicians and, most importantly, the opinions of Brazilians. It supported the military coup of 1964 (when it was still a newspaper) and it grew because of its unequivocal support of the regime.

The title refers to the 1941 Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane, about the fictional media tycoon Charles Foster Kane. The character was based on the American publisher William Randolph Hearst, noted for creating yellow journalism, manipulating and exploiting the American press. To say that Globo manipulates the Brazilian press would be an understatement; instead they mandate how Brazilians should live and think. Its viewers are affectionately described as “globotomised”, in a reference to the old medical practice of inserting metal pins in someone’s brain in order to control it.

Globo was furious at the documentary, and it quickly moved its tentacles in order to prevent the film to be seen. The movie was first shown broadcast in the UK in September 1993 by Channel 4. This exhibition was delayed because Globo challenged the director’s right to use extracts from their programmes without permission, for the purposes of critical review.

The first public screening of the movie in Brazil was scheduled for March 1994 at Modern Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro, but the military police confiscated the film and movie posters the day before the screening. Rede Globo had filed a court suit in order to prevent the screening. A few universities, political groups and unions showed clandestine copies of the movie soon after, but it was not until the advent of YouTube that the film became easily accessible. It can be watched below in English (in four parts totalling 90 minutes), and there are also versions in Portuguese available online.

The Stalin of telecommunications

Beyond Citizen Kane reveals through a combination of extracts from Globo’s programmes, interviews with its former employees, Brazilian artists and politicians that the TV empire is highly authoritarian and immoral, and that it is never scared of lying in order to achieve its objective. Its journalism is highly irresponsible and superficial, yet very “slick and seductive”, conveying a “false sense of optimism”, like a “tranquiliser” for the millions of Brazilians toiling in inhuman conditions or even starving daily.

The politician Leonel Brizola, who became governor of Rio de Janeiro in 1982 despite Globo’s continuous efforts to prevent it, described the owner of TV Globo Roberto Marinho as “the Stalin of telecommunications”. The resistance musician Chico Buarque said that he is “more powerful than Kane”, and that no one in Brazil can take a decision without consulting him. He sums it up: “it’s scary”.

Only three TV networks in the world are bigger than Globo, all in the US, but none is as powerful – the movie also reveals. Globo had 15,000 employees at the time, almost the same size of the BBC, and it was never shy about flaunting its supremacy. It hired the country’s best artists and the quality of its content is always cutting-edge. A pundit succinctly described Globo: “it is a third world TV station with first-world requirements”.

The Globo newspaper benefited from its support to a military coup in 1964 and was given a TV concession the following year. It remained supportive of the dictatorship for its entire duration 20 years, until a civil president took office in 1985. It doctored the footage of an unexploded bomb inside a car in the 1970s in order to help the regime to blame the communists for a terrorist attack. It described the large street demonstrations asking for direct elections and the end of the military in the early 1980s as mere “street celebrations” without a purpose. During the large national strikes of the same decade, it removed the voices from the trade unionists, and only their bosses remained audible.

After the end of the military regime, Globo tried to redeem itself by opening doors to previously banned and exiled artists such as Chico Buarque and Gilberto Gil (pictured below). It even broadcast a TV series called ‘Rebellious Years’ celebrating those who opposed the dictatorship, but conveniently omitting its own continuous support of the regime.

In 1989, Globo doctored the summary of last debate before the second round of the first presidential elections in almost 30 years in favour of their right-wing candidate Collor. He was running against the left-wing metal worker and trade unionist Lula.

The documentary also examines the fascination behind Globo’s main programmes: the three daily soap operas, the daily news ‘Jornal Nacional’, the Sunday varieties show ‘Fantástico’, the Sunday talk show ‘Domingão do Faustão’, the children’s ‘Xou da Xuxa’. They are essential staples of Brazilian life, just like rice and beans.

The Empire Strikes Back

Globo has hardly changed its tactics since the British documentary was made more than 20 years ago. Even its main programmes remain the same, with the exception of now defunct ‘Xou da Xuxa’. Most significantly, the TV empire remains a sordid champion of government meddling, ready to topple a democratically-elected government at its convenience. They are now helping to stage and to legitimise a parliamentary coup to overthrow president Dilma Rousseff. Dilma is the successor of Globo’s old enemy Lula from the Workers’ Party PT. Together they have won four consecutive presidential elections, despite vicious and fierce opposition from Globo.

Globo has consistently failed to broadcast any corruption investigations against the rightwing party PSDB and the also former-PT-allies-turned-putschists PMDB, however blatant and serious the claim (such as the Odebrecht list and the Panama Papers). At the same time, they vigorously broadcast any corruption allegations against Lula and Dilma, however frivolous. Both Dilma and Lula (pictured below) do not face any corruption charges, while their opponents promoting the coups have a large list of graft cases against them, with multiple accounts in Switzerland often with eight-digit figures.

Globo also attempted to diminish the street demonstrations against the coup by simply failing to show them, or by broadcasting small concentrations of people. The putschist demonstrations received the opposite treatment, with detailed coverage and celebration of every little development, often with helicopters filming the action.

The British newspaper the Guardian published a piece earlier this month entitled ‘The real reason why Dilma’s enemies want her impeached’ by David Miranda, exposing many of the topics discussed in this article – click here in order to read the article. Globo’s billionaire heir João Roberto Marinho responded with anger by demanding his right to answer. The Guardian, however, snubbed Marinho and published his words in the comment section, instead of publishing an article.

The documentary Beyond Citizen Kane closes with the question “can Globo free itself from that [manipulative and deceitful] reality or should Brazil free itself from Globo”. Sadly it seems that neither one has happened yet.

There have been positive developments in the Brazilian media, though. Various independent media – particularly online – are now growing very fast as a reaction to the coup, and people are demonstrating and questioning the stance of Marinho’s empire. The picture illustrating this piece at the top was created by PIG, a parody political party which roughly translates as “putschist press party”, and it shows Globo’s logo against the word “golpe” (Portuguese for “coup”).

DMovies is a brand new portal discussing topics related to audacious and innovative cinema everywhere in the world. We strongly recommend that Brazilians and democracy-believers everywhere in the world watch Beyond Citizen Kane and reflect upon the role of media in government meddling.

Yes, the title is cumbersome and the movie lives up to its name. Director Anders Thomas Jensen is one of the most outrageous film talents to emerge from Denmark since The Dogme 95 Collective, the cinema manifesto written by Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. Jensen is famous for The Green Butchers (2003), in which a pair of meat men find out that human flesh flies off the shelves of their shop, and Adam’s Apples (2005), where a neo-nazi aims to shake a priest of his faith while striving to make the perfect apple pie. His style is essentially pushing the envelope of absurdity.

In his new film, Jensen offers a transgressive satire about family and eugenics that ends up with a great meditation on what makes us human. Mads Mikkelsen (also in the ‘Hannibal’ television series and The Hunt, Vinterberg, 2012) is almost unrecognisable, and not because of his moustache. He plays Elias, who together with Gabriel (David Dencik) aims to reunite their father to the rest of the family. He is a troubled loner and a bizarre character, just like the rest of his family who live in an uninhabited island. Prepare yourself to bad taste scenes and battles. Jensen is trying to prove how men are close to animals. And not any animal, but hens, which as with most bird species don’t have external genitalia. They procreate using their cloaca and no penetration is involved. Hens are known for letting men touch their organs without fighting. The film touches on how manipulative men can behave while dealing with animals.

Men & Chicken is the kind of movie difficult to review, because it is hardly comparable to other films. It is hard to tell if it is likeable or not, it could easily offend delicate sensibilities. There is no doubt that Jensen is driving a long and winding road to become a cult filmmaker. One can say that his characters resemble the Three Stooges, but it is more than that. They are not only a nice varietal of men; they are deep. The quartet featured in Men & Chicken ponders existential mysteries. They are eccentric but they are also cute and silly. In Jensen’s words: “Civilisation is so, so thin. We have to learn everything in comparison to animals. We are a fragile race and dependent on each other”.

Most of the film is set in a former insane asylum an hour outside of Berlin. Originally, it was a German war hospital. Jensen wrote the story on this location which inspired the elements of the narrative. It includes dark comedy, but also drama and horror.

Men & Chicken has already broken box-office records in its native land Denmark and it was part of the vanguard section of the last Toronto International Film Festival. It was part 5th LOCO London Comedy Film Festival in April 2016, and out in cinemas in July. Watch the film trailer below:

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British directors Will Sharpe and Tom Kingsley’s follow-up to their BAFTA-nominated Black Pond (2014) is called The Darkest Universe, a complex and dark drama about relations between partners and family, bickering and the impossibility of communication. The two young directors (Kingsley is 30 and Sharpe is just 29) created a charming tale with an elegant and creative photography set in the canals of London and beyond.

The film follows the young banker Zac (played by the film director Sharpe) on his search for his eccentric sister Alice (Tiani Ghosh), who goes missing on a narrowboat with her new boyfriend Toby (Joe Thomas). Two narratives run in tandem: the arguing and family disintegration that led to Alice’s disappearance and its aftermath. Alice is a irresponsible and invasive person, who does not care to work or look after the space where she dwells – in stark contrast to her diligent and meticulous brother. The strained relationship between the siblings also takes its toll on Zac’s partner Eva, and their relationship begins to break down. The prospect of restoring family harmony is dark and narrow, just like the boat tunnels on the London canals.

A resentful Zac drives throughout the UK in the hope of reuniting with his sister, going as far as Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in North Wales. He leaves search posters and flyers wherever he goes, and he even sets up the website www.FindAlice.com where he posts videos about the latest developments of his seemingly vain endeavour.

The photography of the film is hypnotic. Images of moving water fuse with cloud, and the photography elegantly fading in and out, contrasting nature against urban landscapes. The lighting is gentle and soothing, mixing natural light, red tones, strobe and trivial elements such a lava lamp and a shiny yellow beer to great results, sometimes borderline surreal. A somber soundtrack created at the Hermitage Works Studio is a suitable backdrop to this exquisite cinematographic ballet.

The futility of searching for someone who does not want to be found is the guiding force of The Darkest Universe. Zac is seeking reconciliation and forgiveness from his sister and her partner, but the forces of nature and of time gradually abate and dilute his efforts. At the beginning of the movie Zac cried out to the police: “a boat just does not vanish into thin air, it’s impossible”, but this impossibility seems increasingly likely towards the end of the film. The final disclosure is humbling and sobering, as is most of the movie.

A profound reflection and meditation on human emotions and fallacies combined with rich imagery and music make The Darkest Universe a powerful and engaging experience throughout its 86 minutes, and the movie is never pretentious.

The Darkest Universe is showing on Saturday April 30th as part of 5th LOCO The London Comedy Film Festival. Despite some subtle humorous elements, the film is not a comedy and it is unlikely to elicit much laughter. Click here for more information about the event and watch the film trailer below:

First things first. It is not every day that one has the pleasure to watch an international and stellar cast in roles far away from stereotypical. French dark diva Isabelle Huppert plays Isabelle (pictured above), a veteran war correspondent and mother to two boys: Jonah (Hollywood star Jesse Eisenberg) and Conrad (the newcomer Devin Druid). After tragedy struck, Gene (Irish actor and filmmaker Gabriel Byrne) is trying to rebuild his life and to become a more confident father figure. The main characters are engaged in profound and complex conflicts with each other. It is a very emotional tale in which men are expressing their emotions of loss and maladjustment with erratic and irrational behaviour.

This is the first English-spoken feature by the Norwegian director and writer Joachim Trier. The pressure is on because his two previous films Reprise (2006) and Oslo, August 31st (2011) were very successful. Trier’s style obeys a rule: content and format have to be connected on a fundamental level. Louder Than Bombs is told through flashbacks and it is constantly shifting its narrative focus.

It gradually becomes clear through Isabelle’s confessions what is it that is louder than bombs. Her internal conflict as a mother was much intenser than as a war photographer. Here it becomes evident why Huppert was cast as the mother: usually she is not very maternal.

The details of the routine of the three male characters serve to prove that individuality is above the family structure, a very Scandinavian characteristic. Despite being set in the US, the plot has very little related to American family conflicts. Likewise Festen (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998), it comes a moment when this family has to deal with some unpleasant family truths.

The film also touches on the ethical questions about photographing people and their misery. Trier says that he took the subject from Susan Sontag’s book Regarding the Pain of Others, that discusses the representation of other people’s grief and how to convey them without being patronising and vulgar. In this sense, Louder Than Bombs echoes Redacted (Brian de Palma, 2007). The mockumentary reenacts some episodes of the US Army soldiers killings in the Iraq war. The way he portrays the rape of an Iraqi girl and its consequent anti-American sentiment reveal eventually a piece of anti-war propaganda. Both movies question how to broadcast war and pain.

Disillusionment guides the narrative, sometimes there is a sense that the dialogues are too intellectualised and that the film is a little self-conceited. Louder Than Bombs is still an effective movie: in the end it is poetry that speaks louder.

Louder than Bombs is out in cinemas on Friday April 22nd. You can watch the film trailer below:

This is a very British comedy about the refusal to accept the health and financial limitations of old age. Retired couple Arthur (Bernard Hill) and Martha (Virginia McKenna) lead a comfortable house in a middle-class neighbourhood of Bristol. They seem to have all they need, except that Martha does not get to do her desired trips, such as visiting national parks.

Suddenly, they see their life savings and pension pot dwindle due to an unforeseen technicality. Martha’s health is also jeopardised as she suffers from Chron’s disease, and the NHS’s postcode lottery mandates that the old couple have to pay for the treatment themselves. Also, their beloved social club is seriously under financial threat. This predicament triggers the couple and their friends to take matters into their hand embarking on a spree of bank robberies. Ironically, they choose to use masks of old people while engaging in the criminal act.

Golden Years deals with very urgent and pertinent social themes such as the shortcomings of the health and the pension system – in a country which is ageing very quick – in a very lighthearted and humorous way. While cute and easily digestible, this movie is not a very enticing experience throughout.

The film has several screwball elements, such as a door repeatedly hitting someone’s nose and a pensioner seemingly having a heart attack while emulating the sound of a machine gun. At times it feels like Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton, 1951) or another Ealing comedy. But here the humour feels trite and hackneyed, and it does not gel together with the dramatism of the plot. Golden Years might make you smile, but it will neither elicit copious laughter nor make you cry.

The acting is touching and convincing, but the plot has so many loose ends – such as the Chron’s aspect, which is never explored further. The script does not allow for the actors to develop their characters to the full. All in all, the film lacks vigour and cheek.

The film Golden Years has many similarities with The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997), where a bunch unemployed men in Sheffield resort to stripping in order to make ends meet. The difference is that the characters here are older and instead of flashing their bits, their sport bananas disguised as weapons. There is yet another problem with John Miller’s film: Bristol and the Cotswolds – where most of the action takes place – hardly feels like the impoverished North of England.

Golden Years is out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 22nd.

“What you are about to see, is beyond your worst nightmares” – with this prescient line, Alec Baldwin’s husky voice introduces the documentary Meet Your Meat (Bruce Friedich, 2002; pictured below), a hellish ride through the most egregious abuses in various industries that draw from the bodies of animals their raw material. Welcome to the world of undercover animal rights video, an increasingly popular genre that borrows heavily from the gory semantics of fiction horror. The difference is that what they show is real.

The prime goal of such films is to shock people into action and stop buying products from these industries that include meat, fur, eggs, dairy, experimentation, entertainment and any other ones that involve enslaving and killing animals.

The tactics worked for me. I went vegan 10 years ago because of this horror video, which, like fiction horror, is designed to draw a physical reaction from viewers. In my case, it was a fat stream of tears and a life-long repulsion for meat, eggs and dairy. Like when I watch horror movies, especially the ones involving possession, at points I felt compelled to cover my eyes with my hands, but I made an effort to keep my eyes glued to the screen and not flinch.

The increasing number of those videos, which U.S. heads of animal enterprises want to ban by lobbying for legislation that labels undercover agents capturing the footage ‘terrorists’, is a consequence of the rise of animal NGOs with a global reach and a vegan message. Those charities appeared in the 1980s, influenced by the book Animal Liberation (by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, 1975). They represented a new school of animal activism, one that called for true liberation with vegetarianism, and later veganism, as their moral baseline.

Peta, producer of Meet Your Meat, is the best example of this new crop of animal NGOs. From a small group of activists to a global force with Hollywood actors amongst their supporters, the NGO grew into a powerhouse that was quick to grasp the potential of the internet to spread its message and grab headlines.

It understood the power of shock tactics in order to reach the public (later it added sex to the mix, but that’s a different story). Other U.S. nonprofits followed suit, such as Mercy For Animals, whose extraordinary growth in recent years also hinges on its steady stream of horror videos revealing the gory facts of animals farming.

The early years

There are many earlier examples of documentaries revealing the reality of production animals before any modern concept of animal rights had entered mainstream awareness.

In 1949, filmmaker Georges Fanju made the documentary Blood of the Beasts, in which he surveys the gory conditions of the slaughterhouses in the bucolic outskirts of Paris. Despite being shot in black and white, its formal precision, ultra-realism and candid observation hit the viewer hard.

Even a few years earlier, Walt Disney Studios had already started to imbue human children with sensitivity towards animals with the film Bambi (1942), which was decried as anti-hunting by the gun-loving, blood-shedding lobby. It remains a seminal film with a lasting impact on the way the world perceive wildlife and nature. The mere anthropomorphisation of animals helps closing the imaginary gap that separates man from other species and nature. This sort of approach has influenced a crop of animal-friendly contemporary films aimed at children, such as Babe (Nick Park/Peter Lord, 1995) and Chicken Run (2000).

In the 1976, the American documentarist Frederick Wiseman also made a film depicting the production entitled Meat. Like all Wiseman films, his observational, impartial style creates a sense of truth that allows the viewer to arrive at their own conclusions. Even so, Meat is a not an easy watch, which perhaps proves that no matter how distanced the film is, when it comes to the showing the backstage of the livestock business, the facts are always dirty and painful to see.

The roaring ‘80s

Film activism for animals and veganism started in earnest in the 1980s with the release of The Animals Film, a 1981 British production that was released in cinemas and also broadcast on Channel 4. Directed by Victor Schonfeld and narrated by the vegetarian actress Julie Christie, the film was a landmark. It got behind the dirty business of all types of animal exploitation, from factory farms to the military, fur trade, hunting and the pet food industry. It was the first time that kind of imagery hit the big screen. Musician Elvis Costello ditched meat after watching it.

Fast forward to the internet age and the film most widely credited as the biggest vegan-making film of all time is Earthlings (Shaun Monson, 2005). Narrated by Hollywood vegan Joaquin Phoenix, it uses archive footage to create a terrifying essay on all forms of animal exploitation, some of which is almost too hard to endure. It’s a sobering, heart-wrenching experience teeming and burning with horror, thrown at the viewer like a hot rod. It is also a call for humans to learn how to co-exist with other species more peacefully.

Giving you goosebumps

But there’s humor in the world of animal rights moving images, too. One of them is the ironically trashy Poultrygeist (Lloyd Kaufman/ 2006; pictured at the top of the article). Clearly made from a vegan point of view, this horror pastiche updates the zombie genre and pokes fun at American famously bad food habits. The film is set around a fast food restaurant built on an ancient burial ground. The chickens they cook are coming back to kill them.

Year of the Dog (Mike White/ 2007) is the type of dark and awkward comedy for which White became famous. It describes the process of a woman that goes from having one pet dog at home to becoming a vegan and an animal rights activist. It is a social comedy that contains accurate references to contemporary veganism, its challenges and emotional turmoil. The light, sitcom-ish cinematography is as far removed from horror as it gets, but underneath its hipster fluffiness, it is serious about the vegan view of the world.

Looking forward, films and videos with a vegan and animal rights message are likely to become increasingly numerous and sophisticated. The horror genre will always be a strong influence in response to slaughterhouses, fur farms and dirty laboratory testing on helpless animals, to name but a few examples. However, the diversity of the vegan community will influence filmmakers to expand their repertory on the topic.

British filmmaker Ben Charles Edwards shows a melancholic and dystopian London in a story about friendship and hope in a dark environment. Set The Thames on Fire is divided in three acts – ‘Blue Moon, Black River’, ‘The Stars Are Beginning to Divide’ and ‘This Town is Like Jericho’. London is flooded, and happiness goes down with the ship. Ironically, it is hunger that gives the people a sense of purpose and direction.

Its structure is similar to a play and there is plenty of space for dark comedy dialogues. Two guys move in together and make plans to spice up their sad life, thereby travelling to Egypt. The film echoes with the play ‘Two Guys Lost in a Dirty Night’ by Brazilian playwright Plínio Marcos, where Paco e Tonho share the same hostel room and discuss their lack of perspective in life and at work. Paco is a musician, as well as Art (Michael Winder) in the British film. Both duos are like stray cats, looking for a way to survive without money. Marginal subsistence is a nice backdrop to benches of the grey River Thames, in a skilfully reconstructed dark London.

Set The Thames on Fire also establishes a dialogue with Terry Gilliam’s work, particularly Brazil (1985) and The Zero Theorem (2013), with colourful tyranny and absurdity spicing up the movie. Announcements spread by speakers are common resources in all three movies and the costume design shows a pretentious futuristic fashion with influences by the European Renaissance. Fortunetellers and magicians come to clarify what chaos and decay mean, explaining: “the news are old”.

The film, however, is not funny throughout. The visual image of Art and his companion Sal (Max Bennett) is clownish but it resonates with the absurdist play ‘Waiting for Godot’, by Samuel Beckett. There is a deep dark side in tragedies that makes audiences laugh, but it is not a liberating act.

The film stars Sadie Frost (also co-producer), Noel Fielding and Gerard McDermott. Set The Thames on Fire is showing this week as part of LOCO The London Comedy Film Festival. Watch the film trailer below and click here to order the film on Amazon:

This weekend Peter Greenaway’s latest flick Eisenstein in Guanajuato finally hit the cinemas in the UK. The film has already been shown in much of the world. It’s not unusual that a British production takes so long to reach its home market.

The eccentric London filmmaker has once again concocted a colourful, boisterous and imaginative film. Eisenstein in Guanajuato portrays the 10 days in Central Mexican state of Guanajuato that allegedly changed the life of the iconic Russian helmer Sergei Eisenstein. The director who invented montage travelled to Mexico in 1931 in order to shoot a new film, but he was soon distracted by a gay love affair and other ironic twists of fate – such as unusually rainy weather and an unexpected letter from Stalin denouncing him as a deserter. As a result, the project entitled ¡Que Viva México! was never completed, and the director left the country earlier than he expected.

The aesthetics and idiosyncrasies of Peter Greenaway are conspicuous throughout the movie. The frenetic opening music is similar to the opening of A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), the overt sexuality and male nudity has traces of Pillow Book (1986), while the hammy acting and humour are not dissimilar to The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989). Even the rain is strangely reminiscent of Prospero’s Book (1991), and at one point he lists out dead people and the reason of their death, just like in Death in the Seine (1989).

Greenaway deftly combines classical music, energetic acting and innovative camera movements in order to create a film that is both intellectually-engaging and fun to watch. Finnish actor Elmer Bäck (seen above with the white suit and messy hair) delivers a charming performance of Eisenstein: he’s flamboyant, talkative and electrifying; his accent is delectable, while his body is ugly, yet peculiarly sexy and cuddly. Luis Alberti plays his lover Palomino Cañedo (pictured below on the left), who also has a wife and children (the actor also played the sexually ambiguous Modesto in the dirty Mexican film Carmin Tropical, made last year by Rigoberto Perezcano).

The camera moves are also bold and inventive, with a wide angle slowly morphing into a medium shot, and abundant dizzying movements, a little bit like an illustration from MC Escher. The colours are tropical, plush and vibrant, while mirrors and profuse lighting render the indoors bright and spacious. There is a very creepy and beautiful scene where Eisenstein walks among cased mummies (they are the same ones as in the opening of Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu, 1979). Such creative ingeniousness is a fitting tribute to Eisenstein’s groundbreaking montage style.

The film, however, might be hard for Russians to relate to it. While Bäck is very likable, he doesn’t seem very Russian at all. He doesn’t even utter a word in Russian throughout the movie and even speaks to his wife on the telephone in English. Peter Greenaway is well aware of this. Bäck’s character claims: “I am a caricature, I cannot smoke fast, but I can talk fast”.

The overt homosexuality in the film is also problematic in Russia, a country that has recently embraced homophobia as a statement against the West, refusing thereby even their own homosexual figures (such as Eisenstein) and community. Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov recently described those who saw any homosexual hints in his profoundly homoerotic Father and Son (2003) as “perverts”. Russia is not prepared to discuss homosexuality.

The movie is not too concerned about historicity and authenticity. Greenaway displays the photographs upon which the film is based. There is little doubt that much of the rest was imagined by the British filmmaker. He took Eisenstein’s “long protracted adventure leading to nowhere” and set it off in a brand new direction.

Eisenstein in Guanajato is out now in UK cinemas, or you can view at home it with BFI player. Watch the film trailer below:

The controversial New York photographer Robert Mapplethorpe changed the way people looked at photography and placed it firmly at the heart of the art world before his untimely death of the age of just 43 in year. He was a bold, controversial, subversive and success-driven artist who toiled to be remembered long after his death. These are the main revelations of Robert Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, a convincing new HBO documentary about the photographer.

Mapplethorpe became famous around the globe for his artistic courage and boldness. He depicted sexuality in graphic detail with a flare and candidness rarely seen before. His most emblematic pieces include ‘Man in Polyester Suit’ – where his lover Milton Moore is famously showing his large black genitalia through his trousers -, and ‘Self-Portrait with Bullwhip’ – where the artist in a backward position inserts a whip in is anus while facing the camera.

The documentary examines Mapplethorpe’s obstinate, manipulative and career-driven personality, from his early days living, through his rapid rise to fame until his Aids-related death in 1989. It combines statements from the artist himself with interviews with his family, his various lovers and subjects in order to paint a detailed and accurate picture of a picture-maker.

In the film, Mapplethorpe’s eyes are described as “penetrating”. He used both the naked eye and the camera as a pungent art devices, often penetrating his subjects in more than one way. His photographs include fisting, the inserting of a finger in the penis and very graphic sadomasochism. He was very intimate with subjects, many of which were his lovers. Mapplethorpe was bisexual and the American rocker Patti Smith was his first big love (they are pictured together below). He authored the photography in the cover of the legendary album ‘Horses’, where Smith holds a leather jacket.

The imperative “Look at the Pictures” in title of the film is an invitation to look at Mapplethorpe’s audacious work without cringing or closing your eyes. The viewers of this film must face up to sexuality in all of its integrity, in the same way that people attending Mapplethorpe’s exhibitions had to engage with the pictures hanging on the wall of the art galleries.

Mapplethorpe’s work was highly dual, the film also reveals. On one hand, the sexuality was crude and brutal, shocking even for today’s standards. In fact, much of his work would still be considered illegal in the UK today, given the country’s strict pornography laws. On the other hand, he elegantly photographed flowers and celebrities, and soon became a favourite amongst Hollywood artists and millionares (such as Brooke Shields and Carolina Herrera).

The controversial artist had a passion for the mainstream. He wanted to become as rich and famous as possible before his death, and he often resented Andy Warhol because he was more commercially-successful than him.

Mapplethorpe helped to shape modern gay culture, with all of its daring sexuality but also sometimes ideologically-conservative and exclusionary elements. His work is highly self-centred, phallocentric and body-fascist, with prominence given to large penises and shiny muscles. He is also celebrity and fashion-driven, just like some of the gay world.

Mapplethorpe’s awareness of his impending death made him more prolific than ever. He timed his final exhibition ‘The Perfect Moment’ to coincide with his death, similarly to how the musician David Bowie recently did with his album ‘Black Star’. Both artistic geniuses wanted to give their fans a departing gift. The difference is that, in the case of Mapplethorpe, people were very much aware of his tragic predicament throughout.

The film fails to explore, however, Mapplethorpe’s influences and predecessors, like illustrator Tom of Finland and photographers Bob Mizer and Tom Eakins. Mapplethorpe importance in breaking the boundaries between art and pornography is undeniable, but Robert Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures sometimes gives the false impression that there was nothing prior to the artist, as if no one had endeavoured to portray sexuality in a honest way before Mapplethorpe.

Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures is out now in cinemas in the UK and other countries, or you can buy it now on iTunes (just click here in order to find out more). Don’t forget to watch the film trailer below: