occupation 101

mo
Described as a must to see: … almost a year ago the film occupation 101 got its first – very positive – reviews (see imbd, my space ) by interested and some occasional movie goers on festivals. The documentation focuses on the palestinian-israeli conflict, and was done as their first film project after a visit […] Read More

Hamburg Lessons

mo
Finally I found an english online review which relates to the recently much reviewed film ‘Hamburger Lektionen’ (Hamburg lessons) by Romuald Karmakar. This film makes a certain way of thinking visible: …. by opting for extreme asceticism. The only thing you see in the actor Manfred Zapatka. Wearing a black suit and dark shirt, he […] Read More

control / out of control

mo
Currently a film about the legendary post-punk group Joy Division gets a lot of attention in Britain and elsewhere, which now swaps also slowly over here: On May 18, 1980 the world was the target of two natural disasters. Mt. St. Helens blew her top, spewing a pyroclastic cloud miles into the air and laying […] Read More

insufficient interest and invisible films

mo
… Given the present reality, however, Melik Ohanian’s art project, where he travelled to the California desert where Punishment Park was filmed, and projected the film onto the sky there, was a brilliant idea. As a statement about the place of critical film in today’s society, I can’t imagine a more disturbing – and useful […] Read More

Children of dystopia

mo
Via media mindfulness I discovered a few days ago a nice composite review on the film ‘Children of Men‘. The Children of Dystopia entitled post starts with a short link-collecting intro and continues with a longer excerpt of Zizek’s review on the film. Zizek’s reading is quite opulent and assoziative as usual, but also like […] Read More

new religions ..

mo
.. or the escape from staging the self: But cinema for me is like a kind of secular, western version of an ecstatic space. And there’s a ‘communality’ to it. You tend to lose your little, miniature empire. The enjoyment comes from letting go of this construction of yourself that you’ve got to keep staging […] Read More

Catch a Fire

mo
…. any similarities, assoziations, …? … whatever comes to mind … This film about Southafrica sounds interesting enough and it’s not at all just posted for the accumulation of similar post titles, even though there seems to be a line … Fears of terrorism. Demonization of an “other.” Suspects detained without explanation, held in isolation, […] Read More

life in 3D

mo
.. for a sleepy sunday and to abbreviate the waiting phase for a chance to see Gondry’s ‘The science of Sleep‘ it is quite entertaining to explore the official website (french) and already exsisting excerpts at you tube .. Sweet, crazy, and tinged with sadness, Michel Gondry’s new feature The Science of Sleep is a […] Read More

a film about invisible people

mo
What war and displacement at any time does to people is the underlying theme of Andrea Å taka’s film ‘Das Fräulein‘. The film’s central characters are three women, each of them in a different way connected to a different part of the former Yugoslavia – nevertheless I understand these relations as a more general background as […] Read More

in cinema now: Grbavica

mo
This year’s Berlinale Golden Bear winner ‘Grbavica‘ is starting this week in the cinemas here. The film unfolds its story around the traumatic impact of war rape for a muslim mother, who tries to hide that fact as well to herself and her daughter, as to the surrounding society, which equally tries to ignore post-war […] Read More

chronicles of Tehran city life

mo
Emilie Bickerton’s article ‘Squaring the Circle‘ in the recent issue of Vertigo focuses on the work of iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi who won with his film ‘Offside’, about women illegally entering football stadiums by dressing up as men, a silver bear at Berlinale this year. Drawing a wider circle on the circles the filmmaker’s narrative […] Read More