‘Countries’ Archives
Wajda in New York
Truth or Dare: The Films of Andrzej Wajda is playing in New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center from October 17 to November 13 - and offering a much more extensive programme than the recent BFI Southbank retrospective. In fact, a quick glance down the line-up suggests they're offering almost everything, including some made-for-television [...]
Skolimowski returns
Of all the important European filmmakers, Jerzy Skolimowski has been one of the most shabbily treated by distributors, with many of his films still nearly impossible to see - but the situation has improved dramatically with the release of a four-disc box set of his four major Polish films - apparently with English subtitles. Hopefully, I'll be [...]
Polish Posters revisited
One of the first posts I ever made on this blog enthused about Polish posters (one of the most underrated authentically great art forms of the last century), so I'm delighted to see that Andrew Lindstrom's design resource Well Medicated is hosting a superb online exhibition of fifty Polish film posters, plus the option to leave comments. And I [...]
Kanal For Beginners
Tangentially related to the previous post, Time Out's new Classic Film Club series (currently on part two) sees writer Tom Huddleston review a classic film that he's never seen before - the only selection rule being that it must be considered a masterpiece by some. This week's entry is Andrzej Wajda's Kanal - and here's what he thought.
The Firemen’s Ball
I'm just taking a quick break from Sarajevo Film Festival reviews to recommend this exhaustive, heavily illustrated and multi-authored discussion on Miloš Forman's The Firemen's Ball (Hoří, má panenko!, 1967) in the Film of the Month Club blog. It's in several sections, so here are quick links: Introduction (by Marilyn Ferdinand) 'I Laugh at [...]
Delta
Hungary, 2008, colour, 93 minsBy some distance the most sheerly beautiful film I saw in the 2006 Sarajevo Film Festival was the Croatian short Delta, directed by Stanislav Tomić - an almost wordless study of the lives of people who live and fish by the mouth of the Danube. Kornél Mundruczó’s feature has the same title, is set in a [...]
We’ve Never Been to Venice
Nikoli nisva šla v Benetke Slovenia, 2008, colour, 62 mins The only world premiere in the 2008 Sarajevo Film Festival competition, Blaž Kutin's debut feature was sadly also its biggest disappointment, a study of bereavement that offers so little dramatic meat to chew on that it barely sustains even 62 minutes. While it's unfortunate that [...]
The Fourth Man
Četvrti čovjek Serbia, 2007, colour, 107 mins Director: Dejan Zečević Screenplay: Dejan Zečević, Boban Jevtić Photography: Goran Volarević Editor: Marko Glušac Music: Nemanja Mosurović, Slobodan Negić Producers: Željko Mitrović, Slobodan Jocić, Dénes Szekeres, Nikolina Vučetić Production Company: Viktorija film Cast: [...]
Sarajevo Snapshot 3
It's only when I actually visited Sarajevo for the first time that I realised just how peculiarly susceptible the city is to being beseiged, surrounded as it is by hills and forests offering ample opportunities for snipers. The recent capture of Radovan Karadžić led many British newspapers to offer what turned out to be well-timed crash-courses [...]
Tractor, Love and Rock’n’Roll
Traktor, ljubav i rock'n'roll Slovenia/Bosnia-Herzegovina, 2008, colour, 105 mins Boasting not just the most self-parodically ‘Eastern European’ title of anything playing in the 2008 Sarajevo Film Festival but also arguably this entire blog, director/co-writer/star Branko Đurić’s film is an extremely broad comedy set entirely in a [...]