Tag: cinema

The Sacred Spirit (Espíritu sagrado)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM LOCANO

When the Egyptians built the Pyramids, it was a marvel of engineering so ahead of its time, many conspiracy theorists believe they must have had some extraterrestrial help. Their designs, pointing to the sky or strange sphinxes, have this element of otherworldliness to them, inspiring countless science-fiction tales. José Manuel (Nacho Fernández) is particularly in love with anything and everything remotely occult, his own bar decked out in countless Egyptian symbols.

He attends a weekly Ufology group with a variety of assorted characters, lead by the charismatic sage Julio, who seems to know the secrets of the universe. Meanwhile, his sister has lost her daughter, one of twins, who has been missing for nearly a month. The film takes a measured approach to these dual, intersecting narratives, layering the story and constantly withholding information until the last possible moment, all the while reflecting on the endless pull of conspiracy theories.

Once on the fringes of society, the rise of phenomena such as QAnon — the symbols of which I have scarily witnessed in my own neighborhood — and anti-vaccine nonsense shows how easily people can fall for unfiltered bullshit. CDs, videos and guest lectures in the film drone on about ways of stopping mortality, connecting with the universe and the alien’s grand plan for us, showing there is a lucrative business out there for those willing to peddle random, non-scientifically backed information. For the simple José — played with quiet conviction by Fernández — these various ideas are incredibly convincing, leading him on a path towards possible spiritual fulfilment.

But this is Spain after all, a deeply Catholic country with its own special feast days and rituals and ways that people convince themselves that they will be saved. The Sacred Spirit doesn’t draw any overarching conclusions however, allowing the viewer to analyse the implications of following any kind of ‘spiritual’ leader.

Shot on a mixture of 16mm and 35mm film, utilising a boxy frame and a pastel aesthetic, the world of The Sacred Spirit has a brittle feel that is often ironically detached from its characters. Complemented by spacey new-age music and the occasional trance track, this is the type of film that refuses to quickly spoil its own punchlines. The deadpan approach has a way of holding all moral considerations at bay, building up to a conclusion that makes you rethink everything that has been seen before while also giving justification to the film’s hitherto languid approach.

While this pacing leaves a lot to be desired, certain images, like Julio taking his niece on a fairground ride with the camera remaining in a fixed position, or an inflatable sphinx bouncy castle slowly filling up with air, linger long in the memory, showing off a fine eye for images from Chema García Ibarra with his debut feature. But just like delving into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and looking for a unified message (and I’m speaking from experience having investigated all the theories behind JFK’s death), these numerous images can’t quite lift the film beyond mere fascination and into the realm of the profound.

The Sacred Spirit plays in Concorso internazionale at Locarno Film Festival, running from August 4th to 15th.

Medea

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

This is a movie about deserts, both physically and of the mind. It features a character so fully realised and so compelling, we could easily follow her in and out of her emotional and spiritual turmoil for hours upon end. Georgian actress Tinatin Dalakishvili stars as a Russian woman based on the classic Greek myth, completely in command of her craft as she commits atrocious deeds while attempting to look for redemption for her sins.

The film is structured around an act of atonement, the titular character confessing her wrongdoings in an Orthodox Church somewhere in Israel. We begin in medias res, with her reciting her and her husband’s (Evgeniy Tsyganov) plans to move from Russia to the Holy Land, taking advantage of his Jewish heritage to build a new life together. The Greek Myth is transplanted to the modern phenomenon of post-Soviet immigration to Israel, many Jews from Russia, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine using the opportunity to leave their world behind for a country beset with its own myriad clashes of cultures and ideals.

Is a new life possible or are you always bringing yourself and the baggage of your life with you? Even if you have a home, whether it’s in a settlement or in Jerusalem, can you be fully content? Medea suggests that Russian expats can never leave the past behind, using its mythical structure as a fascinating basis to explore both national identity and wider existential problems.

A rift forms in the relationship. To make up for it, she has sex with other men. Lots and lots of sex. Name a position and you’ll probably see it in this movie. But this is not just sex for the sake of it, but as an exploration of character. This is a woman in search of any way to reduce the natural aging process — whether through sex, religion or chemical solutions, she will stop at nothing in order to find a cure to the void at her centre. In the Holy Land, fulfilment is never far away either, suggesting that religion is basically a form of intercourse for the physically abstinent.

While these sex scenes will make the headlines, far more compelling scenes are found in the quiet conversations she has around Israel, whether its chats with a watch-maker about creating a watch that ticks backwards or a Mossad agent who can predict the future. It’s great to watch a film take its natural time, creating a unique journey of female self-fulfilment with a performance on a par with the likes of Tao Zhao in Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke, 2018) or Isabelle Huppert in Things To Come (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2016).

The ideas are so potent and the central character so fascinating, and the discourse so endless — I’m not getting into the myriad power dynamics at play here — it’s easy to forgive the winding, digressive road Medea takes. It’s not just about dialogue and character either, director Alexander Zeldovich keen to use cinematic language — through vast widescreen tableaus, surveillance-like long shots and primal imagery — to stress his points. This is greatly abetted by (and would be a very different film without) Alexey Retinsky’s score, evoking both Igor Stravinsky and Mica Levi in its experimentation, rhythmic presence and kitchen-sink collection of sounds, spanning choral music, techno rumblings and full-on expressionist orchestra to create a truly epic feel. At times it’s too much, but hey, when you swing for the fences, it’s worth hitting that ball as hard as you can.

After all, a film like Medea needs to be an epic. This is a proper myth of the desert, as resonant as any action-adventure or melodramatic journeyman story, a woman with a vast void at her centre trying anything that sticks to fill that hole. Made with true urgency and a sense of inevitability, Medea is cinema at its most spiritually probing. Just make sure to look past all the shagging.

Medea plays in Concorso internazionale at Locarno Film Festival, running from August 4th to 15th.

Locarno 2021 preview: a return to the magic of in-person discovery

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Festivals are constantly evolving, having to adapt to new forms of cinematic languages and formats. I’ve covered London, SXSW, Berlinale and several short film festivals from the comfort of my own bedroom, all the while craving the intimacy and distraction-free nature of a proper event. While digital festivals are great for expanding accessibility, they miss the same sense of immersion and discovery, creating moments that stick with you due to the context within which they’re seen.

Newly-appointed artistic director Giona Nazzaro, previously General Delegate of Venice’s International Film Critics’ Week, has a huge challenge ahead to defend Locarno’s claim as one of the most fascinating international arthouse film festivals in the world.

It’s great to see that Locarno is screening over 200 films in cinemas perched on the gorgeous Lago Maggiore. Nazarro agrees, but to a more orthodox degree, telling DMovies that: “If a festival takes place online, it’s not a festival… a festival is an expression of the community.”

Locarno
Vortex, Gaspar Noé

And what a great community Locarno is — look past the extortionate prices and you see a cosy bustling town filled with cute cafés, homely grottoes and stunning vistas, all without the queuing stress typically found in a festival of this magnitude. It’s tempting to call it my first “post-pandemic festival,” yet this wouldn’t be entirely accurate. I’ll expect more vigilance, less handshakes, and a constant checking of vaccination documents. It’s an unnerving world right now, with international cinema caught between commerciality and artistic integrity, accessibility and glamour, safety and community.

Nonetheless, the flashy headlines of Cannes or the Oscar-bait of Venice or Toronto, Locarno still appeals to the more discerning cinephile. The Concorso internazionale is the main event, featuring the much hyped gay drama Cop Secret from Iceland, legendary Serbian director Srđan Dragojević (best known for The Wounds) with Nebesa, the return of Russian director Alexander Zeldovich after 10 years since Mishen with tragedy Medea, and Zeros and Ones, the new film from auteur Abel Ferrara starring Ethan Hawke that concerns, because of course it does: “A war between history and the future.”

For those really interested in cinema that breaks down conventions, Concorso presente is one of the most vital film programmes in European cinema. I was particularly impressed last time by those visions which expertly blended the line between documentary and fiction. While I can’t claim to know the names of any of the directors featured this year, this programme promises to provide new films that redefine the capabilities of what cinema can achieve, given past entries such as Space Dogs (Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter, 2019) and Ivana the Terrible (Ivana Mladenovic, 2019).

Free Guy

Nazarro has also talked about expanding the popular aspects of the festival, with this year offering crowdpleasers in the form of the Ryan Reynolds-starring (and smirking) Free Guy (Shawn Levy, pictured above),everyone’s favourite shlock-auteur Gaspar Noé with Vortex and even reruns of National Lampoon’s Animal House (John Lanfis, 1978) and The Terminator (James Cameron, 1985) to provide those popcorn pleasures on the Piazza Grande screen (pictured at the top). Those looking for under-appreciated directors from ages past will enjoy the retrospective of the late Alberto Lattuada, a genre-hopping auteur described as a master of Italian cinema. Meanwhile, the three-year focus on Asian cinema continues with the Open Doors features and shorts, spanning films from Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia.

I am very excited, but due to a combination of lockdown, the Euros and an adorable new dog, I haven’t actually been to a cinema since February, making me a little trepidatious about jumping right in. In an attempt to reacquaint myself with the physicality and tactile nature of the cinema screen, I’m avoiding the soul-and-mind-destroying direct flight to Milan in favour of a slow train and bus journey via Baden-Württemberg, Austria, Liechtenstein and Zurich; my Berlin-accented Hochdeutsch becoming more useless with every further destination until switching to my non-existent Italian at the festival proper. I have absolutely no doubt that both trip and final destination will serve up a buffet of different cultures and ideas, with the new leadership more than capable of reaffirming the magic of in-person discovery. Forza cinema!

Dmovies will be at Locarno Film Festival from 9-13th of August. Check our page regularly for live reviews from the event.

The Scary of Sixty-First

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM BERLIN

I am not thrilled to say hat the scariest thing about this horror movie is the acting. It’s so bad it brings back suppressed memories of watching student plays in people’s basements. While everyone is forgiven for their first experiments in literature and movie-making, it’s another thing to bring work this terrible to a platform like the Berlinale. While the role of a festival is to provoke and inspire, to put strange and challenging work onto the screen, this film barely registers on an intellectual level either, hampered by amateur dramatics so poor they wouldn’t pass in a panto. It seriously puts into question the credibility of the festival, kowtowing to fake American culture wars that have no basis in the real world.

Whatever The Scary of Sixty-First is trying to do, you have to first be invested in extremely online American pop culture theories to glean any meaning out of its horrors. It’s about billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who died in the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York on August 10th 2019. The official verdict is that he killed himself, yet the evidence surrounding his death is so screwy that many people on the internet claim he was murdered to cover up a larger conspiracy involving the likes of Prince Andrew and the Clintons.

The other thing to know is that it’s directed by Dasha Nekrasova, one half of the Red Scare podcast, who say cool stuff like Putin is their “daddy” and that climate change is a “bourgeois eschatology”. Their podcast is pretty sad, containing only minimal interest if all you do is care about in-fighting within tired leftist American politics.

Together its the perfect provocation (for Americans) — but take away the context, focus entirely on the film itself, and what you are left with is a giallo homage that falls flat on almost every level. It starts promising enough, with a rising synth score and a fast-paced survey of New York’s streets that drain it of any charm. But when the characters, odd-ball friends Addie (Betsey Brown) and Noelle (Madeline Quinn) start talking, my heart sunk, both actors talking like they’re just about to pause, swear and ask for their lines again.

They have just moved into a new apartment, which gives off a strong Polanski-vibe, with weird entrances and exits. It’s downright peculiar, confirmed when The Girl (Dasha Nekrasova) turns up saying that it used to be a flophouse where Epstein either raped or killed his victims. Soon the spirit of the notorious pedophile is everywhere, turning the film into an orgiastic feast of depravity and death. At many times, in its writhing, gesticulating, shouting and screaming, it feels like it’s trying to channel the masterpiece Possession (1981). That film starred Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill. This film doesn’t. It shows.

It doesn’t help that these characters are also extremely annoying. They’re edgy in a kind of 12-year-old-with-a-big-brother way, saying “faggot”, “retarded” and “cuck” with absolute glee, barely hiding the sophomore smugness of the screenplay. I wasn’t offended — cause there’s nothing offensive in the film, despite its attempts to challenge cultural norms — just tired. Very, very tired.

Ultimately, the film suggests that Epstein is now the new big bad of our modern society. In actuality, he was a sad and pathetic man and very few people will mourn his death. It’s this kind of American-centric view in a world containing leaders such as ‘daddy’ Vladimir Putin, Alexander Lukashenko, Xi Jingping and Mohammed bin Salman, that make you realise how much of the culture war is a pathetic distraction. And if that was the aim of the film, then I guess it actually succeeded!

It’s fun to delve into and even satirise conspiracy theories: something expertly rendered in the loop shaggy comedy Under The Silver Lake, Adam Curtis documentaries and even Oliver Stone’s JFK. It’s not fun, however, to have Reddit facts quoted to you, along with repeats of YouTube videos that are easily available to the public. It’s a bit like being cornered in party with the biggest boor imaginable, unable to pivot the conversation to something jovial like football or the weather.

Maybe there’s another extra joke layered in there about the nature of easily believing conspiracy theories. Maybe the bad acting is another post-ironic joke. Maybe I missed the point entirely. Whatever it is, I’m not going to waste my time finding out.

The Scary of Sixty-First plays in the Encounters strand of the Berlinale, running digitally from 1st to 5th March.

The light shines on first-time directors!

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Tallinn was already meant to save cinema this year. The setting of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020), Estonian locations were thrust into the limelight at a scale perhaps not seen since Tarkovsky made Stalker (1979) all those years ago. Talking to people here, it seems that every film professional in Estonia was involved in Nolan’s film. I also learned here that the city is already offering Tenet tours, showing off those key locations that gave the film its autumnal aesthetic. Where else, I was told, could you shut off a motorway for three weeks?

But while Tenet didn’t manage to get as many bums in seats as self-proclaimed-saviour-of-cinema Nolan personally hoped, the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival keeps the flame of cinema alive when so many theatres across the world remain closed. Masks on, social distancing encouraged, hands sanitised, it was a pure thrill to be able to return to the film festival circuit after so many barren months.

This was especially true of the First Feature Competition, which proved the power of theatrical projection to provide the best possible environment for debut filmmakers. The strong curation, with plenty more hits than misses, and no outright bad films, provided a variety of fascinating and marked aesthetic visions and plenty of new directors to watch as they progress and hopefully become big names in their respective home countries.

The physical presence of Tallinn’s screenings, as well as the opportunity to socialise with the filmmakers and actors in person, reminds one of the importance of connecting cinema to their environments. Films cannot be extricated from their location or situation, the context of where you see the film providing crucial insight into its perspective that a streaming service or online release simply cannot provide.

Great happiness

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Aesthetics meets commentary

In total, there were 21 films in the First Feature Competition (including three non-competitive entries). We reviewed every single one of them exclusively for you. You can find all of these reviews in our film archive.

A film like the sold-out Goodbye Soviet Union (Lauri Handla), which told the story of an Ingrain Finnish boy’s last years in Estonia during the 80s before the fall of the Berlin Wall, resonated far more after learning a little about Estonia and their complex relationship with Russians and their Soviet legacy.

Inspired by the directors own youth, the film provided a fresh take on the indie teen drama. On the other side of the spectrum, 25 Years of Innocence. The Case of Tomek Komenda (Jan Holoubek) played like a Polish version of The Shawshank Redemption, a ripped from the headlines tale of injustice and the need for true accountability. Realism and international significance also permeated the melancholic tone of Should the Wind Drop ( Nora Martirosyan) set in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh just before it descended into conflict.

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Cinema speaks to national traditions

This is an Armenian film about a country that exists in reality, but not in the eyes of the wider international community, providing necessary context for the region. Other first features were also in conversation with national issues. The epic sociological tone of Great Happiness (Wang Yiao) brought to mind Jia Zhang-ke in its exploration of the new capitalist Chinese generation; Poppy Field (Eugen Jebeleanu) was made in a classic minimalist Romanian New Wave style while exploring homophobia in Bucharest society; and Sententia (Dmitry Rudakov) bore the mark of the Moscow Institute of Cinematography style while investigating the dark world of Soviet censorship.

Other films were more aesthetically restless, such as standout Fortuna — The Girl and the Giants (Nicolangelo Gelormini) ,which used a dual narrative to excellent, haunting effect, and The Penultimate (Jonas Kærup Hjort),which bucked conventional Danish, dogme-realism in favour of parable and kafkaesque absurdity. While there is inevitably some showboating and underdeveloped ideas throughout a lot of these films — even in the very good ones — they show first-time directors with boatloads of flair and acres of potential.

Fortuna — The Girl and the Giants

This sense of flair came through strongest in the genre films. Hopefully out-of-competition entry Kindred (Joe Marcantonio) is a hopeful breakout horror hit in the UK, tackling the gaslighting of black women while showing a great eye for old-school craftsmanship. Likewise The Flood (Victoria Wharfe McIntyre),a rape revenge thriller set in tropical Australia, was filled with greatly rendered suspense scenes. Both films provided necessary genre relief against austere and taxing arthouse.

The varied work, spanning social naturalism, pure fantasy and even magical realism, was neatly handled by the curators, providing personal introductions that showed their passion for cinema and their joy at presenting films in their best possible environment.

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The miracle of Tallinn

The fact that I am writing this piece at all feels like a minor miracle. In addition to seeing live music and drinking in bars, watching films — a commonplace act in a normal year — feels like living on an alien planet. Yet the diverse and international selection of films showed us the connections that run throughout the globe, providing a rosy picture (uncharacteristic for 2020) of cinema’s future.

The Award Ceremony will take place on Friday, November 27th.

The three images on this article are stills from the first-feature entries: Frédéric Hambalek’s Model Olimpia (top), Great Happiness (middle) and Fortuna – the Girls and the Giants (bottom).

Two journalists from DMovies, Redmond Bacon and Victor Fraga, attended the 24th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival for the entire duration of the event. A full wrap-up including reviews of all 21 First Feature Competition and 26 Official Competition movies will be published next Monday.

The Flood

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TALLINN

Django Unchained goes down under in the well-meaning but ultimately misguided The Flood, a cartoonish buffet of overwrought outback violence. While making huge leaps in terms of representation — putting aboriginal people front and centre in a story uncovering the systemic racism of post-WW2 Australian society — the film’s juggling of various tones can’t cohere into a meaningful revenge story.

The Flood starts by telling us the great betrayal of aboriginal people after the Second World War. Despite being told that they would receive equal rights after fighting for their country, they find that very little has changed. This is stressed in an early scene when Waru Banganha (Shaka Cook) is refused service in a pub when he comes back from the war.

Meanwhile his wife Jarah (Alexis Lane) is ripped from her daughters Maggie (Dalaria Williams) and Binda (Simone Landers) by the hands of the brutal and savage whites, who barely see their black compatriots as human. They are headed up by a brutal preacher and his three large sons, who basically see these woman as an extension of their property. But when Waru rushes to save his daughters, killing one of the sons in the process, it triggers a feature-length chase that recalls classic Westerns as well as the acidic work of Quentin Tarantino.

All manner of transgressive human behaviour is here, including gang rape, torture and mass murder, first shot in a deliberately jokey style before often looping back on itself and stressing the mental and physical consequences of such actions. But trying to have it both ways is an incredibly difficult tightrope to walk, something The Flood simply can’t pull off.

It does look amazing. Shot in the tropical Kangaroo Valley, it creates an unusual type of ‘rainforest Western’ that makes full use of the gorgeous and green landscape — much of it destroyed by the bushfires this year. Yet key components of the Western, such as the horse chase and the shootout, are shot in a confusing fashion, robbing the viewer of the genre’s keenest pleasures.

In fact, director Victoria Wharfe McIntyre uses a full array of cinematic techniques that distract us from the story. The film is awash in flashbacks, filter-changes, screen-wipes, ahistorical musical choices and moments shot and reshot from different angles. While showing flair for staging certain tense scenes which do evoke the best of Tarantino, the film misses the same sense of moral righteousness; muddying its message through a surfeit of style just when it should be focusing on a clarity of purpose.

Responses may differ in Australia, which has been crying out for a film of this type that uses pop culture signifiers to criticise its racist history and start some difficult conversations; yet the mixed approach to the cycles and consequences of violence lacks a proper thesis for people to really work with. Entertaining in certain moments, and displaying obvious talent from debut director McIntyre, it’s a shame this powerful story cannot get the powerful telling it deserves.

The Flood plays as part of the First Feature competition at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 13th to 29th November.

Enfant Terrible

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

Before his death at the age of 37, Fassbinder directed more than 40 films, as well as producing several plays and TV shows. His cocaine and sex-fuelled career made him the true provocateur of German Cinema, helping to give birth to a New Wave of cinema while challenging cinematic conventions and German’s collective national shame. But you don’t get to make that many films in such a short space of time without being a unique type of character: Fassbinder worked because he couldn’t think of doing anything else, making his entire life a type of film.

Director Oskar Roehler shoots his biopic Enfant Terrible in a Brechtian style, with deliberately artificial lighting, mannered acting and painted-on props and sets. This is a particularly clever method for a biopic of a filmmaker, as it shows little difference between the world around Fassbinder and the films he is trying to shoot, giving a great demonstration of how life and art can so easily blend into one another.

Oliver Masucci plays the late German director. The actor is 51 years old, three decades older than the German filmmaker in the 1960s. There is no de-aging in sight. Masucci embodies the director’s intense physicality, strength and outspoken nature. In an early scene in Enfant Terrible, he sprays the audience with a hose, claiming that it’s the only way to make them experience the real world. Almost immediately he lights up the Munich theatre scene, bringing in an entourage who will follow him through initial bemusement at his Berlin Film Festival debut through to his eventual international success with masterpieces such as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) and The Marriage of Maria Braun (1978).

Despite all the stylistic window-dressing, this is a very conventional biopic in terms of narrative, covering Fassbinder’s career from his first film, Love is Colder Than Death in 1969, to his cocaine and barbiturate-filled death in 1982. This is a long and piteous look at his failed relationships, mostly with foreign men, touching on themes of homophobia and racist attitudes, as well his controversial, physically abusive behaviour on set, which would never hold up today. Masucci provides a truly boisterous performance, showing us the complexity of a man who hits people on set but cries after sex, is cruel and dismissive of his lovers one moment, and desperately pleading for them in another.

For those new to Fassbinder’s work and unacquainted with this particularly artificial strain of German theatre-inspired filmmaking, they may find themselves a little lost. But for Fassbinder fans this film is a fascinating look into arguably Germany’s greatest ever director, a wunderkind so inspired he makes Xavier Dolan look like Ron Howard. For the average person, maintaining such a prolific career while rarely sacrificing quality is simply a cinematic miracle that cannot just be chalked down to cocaine use. And while Enfant Terrible can’t quite unravel what made Fassbinder live in such a constant state of inspiration, it serves as a fine portrait of a man who never left the set, even when he stopped filming.

Enfant Terrible opened the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in November 2020,when this piece was originally written. It had been originally selected to show at this year’s Festival de Cannes (which was cancelled). It premieres in the UK in March 2021, as part of the virtual edition of BFI Flare. On BFI Player on Friday, April 2nd.

Stream the finest Latin America cinema here!

Posted on by victorfraga

Latin America cinema is rich and diverse. The 33 nations have a regular output of audacious and non-mainstream films, with countries such as Brazil and Mexico releasing more than 200 films a year. Sadly, however, most of these films never reach cinemas and streaming platforms outside the continent. That’s why we have cherry-picked the films below for you, in a real explosion of colour, flare and Latin passion.

The films are listed in alphabetical order, and streaming is available in specific countries only (all of these movies, however, can be viewed in our home market, the UK). And don’t forget to click on the movie title in order to accede to our exclusive film review, where available:

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1. Alba (Ana Cristina Barragán, 2016), from Ecuador:

Alba, 11 years old, passes her days in silence. She loves little animals. She has learned to cope with her mother’s illness, helping her to use the bathroom. Alba plays silently so that her mother can rest during the day. One night Alba’s mother gets worse, and has to be taken to the hospital. With no one else to take care of her, Alba is sent to live with her father, who she hasn’t seen since she was three years old. Living with her father is almost unbearable. Embarrassment, her first kiss, visits to mother in the hospital, Edgar’s tender efforts to get close to her, and bullying at school. These are some of the experiences that pave Alba’s journey to puberty and to self-acceptance.

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2. Cassandro, the Exotico (Marie Losier, 2018), from Mexico:

After 26 years of spinning dives and flying uppercuts on the ring, Cassandro, the star of the gender-bending cross-dressing Mexican wrestlers known as the Exoticos, is far from retiring. But with dozens of broken bones and metal pins in his body, he must now reinvent himself.


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3. Everybody Leaves (Sergio Cabrera, 2015), from Colombia/Cuba:

In Cienfuegos in the 1980s, a poetic young girl tries to make sense of her parents’ volatile separation while keenly observing the reality of Cuba’s dilemmas.

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4. Good Manners (Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas, 2017), from Brazil:

Outstanding Brazilian horror blends the tender with the bizarre, in a very original story about motherhood, pregnancy and reclusion from society. Try not to find out too much about this film before you watch it. You’ll be in for a very dirty surprise. For starters, the movie title is very misleading. If you are expecting a comedy about social customs, etiquette or some sort of period drama about class struggles, you are heading in the wrong direction. In reality, Good Manners is a horror movie. A very unusual, bizarre and, at the same time, extremely tender one.

Good Manners is also pictured at the top of this article.

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5. Jésus (Fernando Guzzoni, 2017), from Chile:

Disturbing Chilean drama uses a famous real-life homophobic crime as a gauge for the strained relationship between a father and a son. This is Jesus like you’ve never seen before: he’s in an amateur k-pop band, he’s arrogant, he’s insecure, he’s violent, he’s bisexual and he has a very stormy relationship with his father. And unlike the Christian Messiah, he does not save and redeem people. Quite the opposite: he murders instead. Our protagonist here is the antithesis of the citizen any society would cherish and value.

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6. Just Meet (Fernanda Romandía, 2019), from Mexico:

One of the most influential and recognized architects in the world, Tadao Ando, will guide us through an intimate journey from his studio in Japan to the construction of Casa Wabi in the Pacific coast of Mexico. While we see his magnificent work coming to be, we will be welcomed into his world and learn his way of appreciating life, the arts, and his passion for architecture.

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7. Memory Exercises (Paz Encina, 2016), from Paraguay:

Families in Paraguay are still mourning and healing from the brutal acts and murders carried out as part of the infamous Operation Condor. The Paraguayan politician Agustín Goiburú disappeared without a trace while living in exile in the Argentinian province of Entre Ríos. He was the most prominent and vocal opponent of Alfredo Stroessner, the military dictator that ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989. The documentarist Paz Encina found a very inventive way to recreate the Paraguayan political context through the memories of three children. These young desaparecidos (missing) reveal intimate memories of a country for the past 35 years without ever appearing on-screen.

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8. Minotaur (Nicolás Pereda, 2015), from Mexico:

Minotaur takes place in a home of books, of readers, of artists. It’s also a home of soft light, of eternal afternoons, of sleepiness, of dreams. The home is impermeable to the world. Mexico is on fire, but the characters of Minotaur sleep soundly.

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9. Seashore (Marcio Reolon, 2016), from Brazil:

A lonely beach on the southernmost coast of Brazil is the scene for two friends, on the brink of adulthood, to explore their understanding of themselves and one another. Martin (Mateus Almada) has been sent by his father to retrieve what appears to be an inheritance-related document from the family of his recently deceased and estranged grandfather. Tomaz (Mauricio Jose Barcellos) accompanies him, seemingly hoping to regain some of their former closeness. The two boys shelter themselves in a glass house, in front of a cold and stormy sea.

From the director of the acclaimed dirty movie Hard Paint (2018).

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10. Three Women (or Waking up from the Bosnian Dream) (Sergio Flores Thorija, 2017), from Mexico:

Ivana, Clara and Marina are three women from different backgrounds living at the same time in Sarajevo. Ivana dreams about moving to the USA, Clara works during the night to save money for her studies and Marina is in love with her best friend who is moving to a different country. Each one fights to achieve her own goals, but most of the time society doesn’t accept what’s not in accordance with its norms.

Cinema and fashion: a graphic and vivid partnership

Posted on by victorfraga

Fashion has never moved this fast before. At 24 frames per second, to be more precise.

Doesn’t Exist is a publication that merges cinematic elements with a fashion landscape. They become are translated into intricate fashion stories, pictorial written pieces, interviews and filmic illustrations. The objective of the publication is to create a new space to be used by both fashion and film industries, and a mutual feeding of references in all their aesthetic and intellectual fields. The magazine seeks to develop a visual dialogue between the two industries, thereby generating a fully cinematic fashion content.

The first issue is a tribute to the iconic Japanese fashion designer Rei Kawakubo, and the impressive work for the her fashion brand Comme des Garçons. Our writer Redmond Bacon has drawn parallels between the fashion artist and the late Greek filmmaker Theodoros Angelopoulos, arguing that both embrace austerity and reject the mainstream in very assertive and yet different ways.

There is a visual fashion story stylised with archive pieces from Kawakubo’s Paris debut, complementing the words by Redmond. The minimal, groundbreaking collections from the 1980s and 1990s are all there to be savoured.

The first print edition of Doesn’t Exist also features an article about the elusive and mysterious American-born and London based filmmakers the Quay Brothers, and their connection with the fashion world through the means of fragrance. The words were penned by our journalist Jeremy Clarke, and the piece is also embroidered with a set of stylised images, once again straddling between the wondrous world of cinema and clothes.

Two pieces are available exclusively online for readers of DMovies: an article on twisted motherhood, and an interview with the magnificent actress Izabél Zuaa.

The shiny first edition of Doesn’t Exist has 244 pages, and it is available to purchase in four different front covers from various stockists across the UK, Portugal and Italy, both on the high street (once the lockdown is over) and online. You can see the full list by clicking here, or by visiting their Instagram.

In order to celebrate the partnership between DMovies and Doesn’t Exist, and the enduring connection between the movie and the fashion worlds, we are giving away five copies of the magazine entirely for free posted to you. Just send us an email to info@dirtymovies.org, and let us know the title of your favourite movie by Theodoros Angelopoulos. The promotion is valid for readers anywhere in the world!

All images in this piece are taken from the first print edition of Doesn’t Exist. Find out more on their website by clicking here.

The Kingmaker

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

There’s one word you never hear in documentary The Kingmaker: “sorry”. Profiling the rise and fall and potential rise again of Imelda Marcos — former First Lady to the brutal dictator Ferdinand Marcos — it’s quite extraordinary that she still can’t see the consequences of her actions. This is a woman who assumes that she has done nothing wrong, determined to restore her family to their former glory.

Lauren Greenfield follows her for three years, providing a mixture of historical footage, talking heads and fly-on-the-wall campaigning as her son Bong Bong runs for Vice President. The result is truly compelling; kind of like The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2013) without the catharsis, a deadly warning that vast amounts of money has the ability to wipe away the sins of the past.

It begins with Imelda driving around the slums of Manila, handing out wads of cash to begging children and mothers. They know her by name, suggesting that this is a common occurrence. She later visits a children’s hospital built during her husband’s administration and complains that it looks nothing like it used to be. She hands out more money to mothers with dying children. The self-proclaimed “mother” of the Philippines and the world, the late octogenarian wants to be in charge of the country again. The question is how much cash should be handed out to make this a reality.

You’d think she’d know when to shy away from the limelight. Ferdinand established a deadly coup in the early 70s to consolidate power, killing thousands of people and torturing thousands more. Meanwhile, the family plundered the wealth of the country, holding the Guinness World Record for Greatest Robbery of a Government. She was a great believer in beautiful things, dubbed the “Marie Antoinette” of the Philippines due to her love of extravagant jewellery and her collection of over 3,000 shoes. Still, if you have vast wealth, anything can be possible. With the Marcos’ fortune estimated to be around $30 billion, and many in the country nostalgic for Ferdinand’s administration, they still possess the immense power to get things done.

The Kingmaker

Lauren Greenfield has scored a real coup here. Simply put, you’re unlikely to see a more fascinating subject interviewed all year. She would be a sympathetic figure if all you heard was her side of the story, yet Greenfield needfully speaks truth to power: she allows Marcos to say what she pleases, undercutting her lies by bringing in the testimony of activists, journalists and opposing politicians. It is the very opposite of Oliver Stone’s The Putin Interviews (2017), which albeit fascinating in their own way, inadvertently made the Russian leader seem even stronger. The depressing part is that nothing in this film will actually make a difference; it only lets us observe as the country struggles in vain to stop history from repeating itself.

And it probably will: Bong Bong narrowly missed the Vice Presidency in 2016 by just 0.64% of the vote to Leni Robredo. He appears to be a nice man, but he still cannot find a way to apologise for his father’s actions, even venerating him as a great figure. Yet they have an ace in their pocket with strongman Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency, which was partly funded by their money. Duterte and his Vice President Rebredo — who was elected separately — do not get on, with him stating that he wants Bong Bong to be Vice President with the expectation he will step down and let Bong Bong replace him. In The Kingmaker, the raw power of money has rarely looked so strong.

The Kingmaker is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, December 13th. On VoD in March.

Film should brighten up our imminent dark future!

Posted on by victorfraga

To paraphrase a statement made by the late British cultural theorist Mark Fisher, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of Hollywood”. As someone who was raised on Hollywood movies and is still enthralled by the creative industry of filmmaking and film story-telling, I also find it hard to imagine a moment in time when film, for reasons we’ll explore below, will not exist and will not be made in the same manner that it is currently.

The nature of film is changing and is now in decline. Attendance to movie theatres has been dropping for decades as home entertainment has shifted audiences’ collective bums from theatre seats to sofas. First it was the revolution of VHS cassettes, then DVD, now the epoch is online streaming. Only the spectacle of a franchise cinematic event – a Marvel film, a Star Wars episode – brings the masses out. On occasion an oddity might rise above the din and become a hit, a recent example of which would be Jordan Peele’s Us (2018) and Todd Phillips’s Joker (2019, pictured below), though these are few and far between. Hollywood’s reliance on domestic audiences to recoup has also dwindled. Hollywood now looks towards foreign markets such as China for return-on-investment. And investment is key to understanding the current state of mainstream filmmaking, as the new online studios of Amazon, Netflix and now Disney produce mid-priced dramas and comedies to keep their consumers at home and in Amazon’s and Disney’s case, keep purchasing their products.

Is this the future of mainstream film? A two-hour-plus exercise in product placement designed to shift toys, clothes and lifestyles. But, if (or as) capitalism unravels, or catastrophe strikes, film may be unleashed from this undesired future and become something of a savoir to those that remain.

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The end is nigh

Whilst never envisioning its own demise, Hollywood has envisioned the end of the world by spectacular means over its short history. In an essay titled Disaster Movies and the Collective Longing for Annihilation, published in early 2013, I argued that the disaster movie genre plays out our fears of mass death and the end of humanity, but also gives us permission to enjoy the destruction from a safe distance and the utopia of a renewed version of humanity that often comes Post-catastrophe. The payoff was to witness the end of the world so we could witness the renewal. Whilst elements of that essay may still be justifiable, the world we live in now is different and more divisive to that of the time the piece was written. A lot has happened in the space of only a few years. Some of it feels like tropes from a comedy film, too ridiculous to contemplate, some of it has been drawn from tragedy and is too heartbreaking to imagine.

With the aid of CGI, it was easier to envision the catastrophic death tolls and the mind-blowing damage of end of the world scenario. In the blockbuster films Deep Impact (Mimi Leder, 1998, pictured below) and Armageddon (Michael Bay, 1998) ocean waves caused by crashing asteroids rise up and wash over towering cityscapes. In Independence Day (Roland Emmerich, 1996) and Independence Day: Resurgence (Roland Emmerich, 2016; pictured at the top of this article), populations are wiped out in minutes by invading alien technology. In 12 Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, 1995), a virus infects and kills billions. In Twister (Jan de Bont, 1996), a series of tornadoes tear up a fractured landscape. In Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1998), an army of invading insectoids demolish entire buildings and kill countless. In The Day After Tomorrow (Roland Emmerich, 2004), the Earth is plunged into a new global Ice Age. In Hollywood, the future can be cancelled easily.

But even then, Hollywood continued to find more elaborate ways to offer screen-based destruction for audiences to joyously lap up.

In most of these disaster films, the world was reset. After the devastation, life was renewed yet continued in much the same way. For example, in Deep Impact, despite the death of possibly millions and the exhaustive costs associated with global destruction, the man who is President of the United States – President Beck (Morgan Freeman) – remains the U.S President and continues the work of that office even through the structures that held the senate and congress is physically decimated. We later learn that Bill Pullman’s President Whitmore in Independence Day serves a second term as U.S President after the initial invasion. The structures of the worldwide system of organisation, i.e capitalism and democratic governance, remain.

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The saga never ends

This has been made more explicit in the 23-film Infinity Saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With each movie the threat increased and although most of the saga was Earth-based, the perception of the threat widened to include villains that were demi-gods, actual Gods, intergalactic warlords, and legions of armed warriors from other realms. In most cases, cities are wiped off the map, yet, the populace of Earth seemed to continue on regardless of the dramatic loss of life and the demolition of the cities they live and work in. The faith placed in The Avengers to reset the standards was absolute.

In Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2018), half the population of the universe is snapped out of existence by the tyrant Thanos, and this event is reversed by The Avengers five years later in Endgame (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2019),when all those who were “snapped” out of existence are “returned”. There is no permanence, and as seen in the first MCU post-”return” film Spider Man: Far From Home (Jon Watts, 2019), life more or less continues on very much the same.

Now the reset can now happen again and again within a single franchise. No threat is sustainable but dangers continue to come that can be swept aside by a team of superheroes.

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Reality imitates fiction?

But this is not the world we live in. We’ve no superheroes among us and the people we put in charge of our daily lives, the leaders, politicians and representatives we elect, are mediocre at best, tyrants and imbeciles at worst. In the near future our own world might succumb to the scenes of destruction that prevail in Hollywood cinema. The threat won’t come from mad tyrants from space, but from circumstances of our own doing. It will very likely be less dramatic than the scenario we see in Hollywood’s version of events. There will be no swelling music to accompany the scenes, no brave muscular superhero to swoop down and save us. We’ll live or die and the after effects of any disaster for the survivors will be just as devastating. No reset or utopia, just continued hardship and survival.

We’ve seen this play out at various times in the past decades. The terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001 felt, and were meant to feel like a scene from a Hollywood disaster movie. The Indian Ocean Tsunami that struck the coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India and the Maldives with an estimated body count of 227,898 people could have been ripped right out of a disaster film. The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan in 2011 was a real-life disaster and footage of the first wave sweeping across the country had cinematic overtones. Hurricane Katrina that struck New Orleans in 2005 offered a post-apocalyptic landscape of submerged city streets and dead bodies floating in the waters.

These are the most news-worthy examples that come to mind, but on a day-to-day basis, people are facing what we might perceive as miniature – personal apocalypses. Climate disruption is frying the forests, melting the ice caps and the burning of fossil fuels continues to pollute our air. The devastation to land means a desperate wave of displaced people. War and unrest in places such as Syria (pictured below, in this year’s For Sama, by Waad Al-Kateab, Edward Watts) and Libya have pushed an exodus of people to take extreme measures in migrating to safer environments in Europe. These civil conflicts are having wider repercussions throughout the world as governments retract decades of assistance and refocus themselves nationally and dismiss the wave of migration as another regions problem.

These are prolonged events that will play out and worsen over decades. But these events are not Hollywood material. The slowness softens the impact. Like climate disruption, we only heed the warnings when disaster impacts us in the immediate moment. But people are subject to even smaller waves of devastation brought on by capitalism and the impact of greedy corporations that inflict themselves of the landscape and then abandon without remorse when the buck and the labour becomes cheaper elsewhere. These pockets of economic devastation exist across the globe and are the end times in miniature.

Catastrophe happens on an almost daily basis and is nudging us at various intervals towards bigger cycles of devastation. There will be survivors of any large-scale natural or man-made disaster. In the harshest of circumstances pockets of existence will continue and may even be able to thrive under these new environmental conditions. The end of civilisation is not always the end of humanity. How we rebuild, or prolong our existence depends on the stories we will recall and stories we choose to pass down.

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Can film save the world?

Today the stories that reveal our contemporary culture are locked within literature, novels, short stories, popular culture, games, apps, social networks, and film. The naivety of that statement becomes apparent when written down, and maybe the fact we have allowed our culture to be locked within these realms is perplexing, but this is the situation we find ourselves in and the direction of societies has always been informed by the stories of the past and present. Film cannot be excluded on the basis that it is considered entertainment. Film has always been a form of education and an apparatus for personal and societal change and progression. It can guide us towards a world we want or away from a world we don’t. This is in line with DMovies’ vision that cinema is a tool for personal and social liberation.

In any post-catastrophe world, film will still be available to those that we’ll call survivors. The means of how it will be made and how it will be screened and distributed will have to be explored in more depth elsewhere, but my initial thinking is the potential hacking of the discarded technology that will litter a post-catastrophe world. Why it must be made is quite simple. We will need to tell stories to starve off hardships and to strive for betterment. We will need creativity to overcome the predicament we find ourselves in.

Humankind has a need to express itself, a desire to explain its times, a longing to record its moments. Anything to overcome the trauma of living in dark times, but even in the light.

Our societies now have film and popular culture ingrained within its very essence. This will not change and will stay ingrained for a very long time to come regardless of our predicament. Show a young child an image of a popular culture artifact, a character from a popular show, a sports logo, a TV theme song, and its recognition is almost instantaneous. There is enough access in any form, physical or digital, to know that film will continue, and must continue beyond any doubt. What type of film comes after collapse is anyone’s guess.

Film, or at the very least its mainstream variant, is tied to capitalism and globalisation, and with any measured catastrophe, capitalism and globalisation will collapse. One must assume that this kind of film will be impossible to make and maybe that is for the best anyway. In post-catastrophe times, humanity will divert, disperse and regroup into smaller, more localised forms, film will most likely do the same after the collapse and instead of needing to communicate on a global scale, film should become the engine of change to smaller pockets of society. It would be nice to consider film and its current audience implementing this before a catastrophic event, but like the climate, we’ll probably have to wait for a full disruption before we even consider it.