Smuggled Film from Iran Echoes "Ceci n'est pas une Pipe"

Arguably, René Magritte's most famous painting is Ceci n'est pas une Pipe (1929). The Belgian painter was simply making a statement that the painting itself is not a pipe.  It is merely an image.  In this documentary of dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi, the film explores the difference between describing a film and the film itself.  “This Is Not a Film” promises to test our idea of what form a film can take. Required to play all the roles, Panahi is overcome by emotion and interrupts himself, asking, “If we could tell a film, then why make a film?” The way he sees it, description cannot possibly do justice to the power of cinema. Think of the pipe.  Panahi frequently worries that the footage is turning out to be a lie.

Much of the film is shot through an iPhone except where fellow cinematographer Mojtaba Mirtahmasb shoots through a professional camera.  Panahi is aware that under house arrest, it is better to let others direct.  This film is a courageous act of nonviolent protest.  The film was smuggled into France by hiding a flash drive in a cake for a last-minute submission to Cannes. The documentary is a veritable "Message in a Bottle" (The New York Times).

Panahi is under house arrest awaiting the result of appeal of a 6-year prison sentence.  On the day of shooting we hear fireworks on the street below from the Chaharshanbe Suri festival, which unsettles the filmmaker.  As “This Is Not a Film” unspools, Panahi’s involvement comes to feel more and more like direction in the traditional sense (Peter Debruge, Variety). At first, he is careful to remain the only character on camera, ostensibly a precaution in case others might be punished for colluding with him on the project. Then his pet Iguana, Igi, makes a cameo, followed by a yappy dog belonging to Panahi’s downstairs neighbor, Shima (she remains out of frame). A delivery man hands a bag of food through the door, unaware that he’s guest-starring in Panahi’s non-film. Finally, a friendly college student drops by to collect his trash, temporarily subbing in for the building custodian. Panahi can’t help making an actor out of him, with the lad reminiscing about the day the authorities came to arrest Panahi as the two share an elevator ride together....Standing at his balcony, filming the firecracker  revelry with his iPhone, he seems to be saying that directing is more defiant an act than lighting a firecracker or two. Debruge comments: Truth be told, Panahi’s poignant “Film” is infinitely more explosive.

Julia Loktev Transcends in The Loneliest Planet

Julia Loktev, born into Jewish family in St. Petersburg, had visited the dramatic topography of the Georgian Caucasus.  Filmed in the Kazbegi and Juta regions of Georgia, the landscape takes on the role of character, perhaps the most dramatic in comparison to the adventure-seeking couple, Nica (Hani Furstenberg, Israeli-born American) and Alex (Gael García Bernal).  Their guide is played by Georgian mountaineer Bidzina Gujabidze), who has summitted Everest twice.  The film's title evokes the Lonely Planet travel guides for the backpacking set, but there is a deeper meaning.

This is a film filled with tension, both from external forces as well as the sexual dynamic between the three travelers.  Loktev is a minimalist director.  You can hear a pin drop on the set and she wants you to dial in to every sound.  The film dwells on the unsaid and the unsayable.  We may indeed all be fundamentally unknowable, but perhaps more damningly, to quote from the passage Nica reads aloud, “we are overwhelmed and remain silent” (Jay Kuehner in Cinema Scope).

The director injects an amazing sensuality into the film, the sex scenes are hyperealistic.  Have you ever seen a man pull out his lover's tampon ?  It happens all the time, but not in front of the camera. There's not much dialog other than the practicing of Spanish verb conjugations.  But ultimately, this is a film about what us not said.

Avoiding a spoiler, let us say that Nica is confronted by crisis in an incident with a man that might have killed her and another who hopes to exploit the situation.  The couple's bond is corroded by crisis.  Alex and Dato represent the polar opposites heterosexual women feel they must choose between (Garcia, Film Review, 10/25/2012).  Nica is effectively "the loneliest planet."  Nica feels her invincibility is the equal of the other men around her.  After the incident, Nica falls victim to two other sexual assaults.  The real intimacy exists between Nica and Dato because the setting for Nica's individuation is Dato's home ground of perilous landscape. Loktev explores the savagery of a world in which our spiritual needs are undermined by physical reality (Garcia, ibid.).

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi Brilliant in Human Capital

Human Capital is a 2013 Italian film directed by Paolo Virzì. The film is based on the American novel Human Capital by Stephen Amidon. For her performance in the film Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (Carla Bruni's sister) was awarded Best Actress at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival^. It was selected as the Italian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards, but was not nominated.  The film is based on Steven Amidon's novel with Brianza (near Milan) replacing Connecticut.

Here we have a sublime collision between aspiring parvenu Dino (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) and hedge fund boss Giovanni Bernaschi (Fabrizio Gifuni). Dino's son is boyfriend to Giovanni's daughter.  In the opening scene of workers cleaning a banquet hall, we know the party is over in Berlusconi's Italy.

Yahoo Chief Marissa Mayer too Sophisticated to Gauge her Audience.

The New York Times Magazine ran an insightful article on Yahoo's downfall by Nicholas Carlson. Suffice it to say that Yahoo lost ground in a big way to the big four - Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.  Mayer, who cut her teeth at Google inherited a company with a $37 billion stake in Alibaba, but if you sold off that position, what was left was negative $4 billion !  Mayer, avid reader of Town & Country magazine and used to wearing Oscar de la Renta couture was a poor match for Yahoo, a middle-America brand.  She lacked instincts of a media executive.  Anna Wintour, Vogue editor in chief, was appalled at Mayer's suggestion they join forces with Yahoo's site for women, Shine.  Wintour was making money focused on a narrow affluent audience, not 500 million monthly page views. 

Funniest anecdote - at major advertising event in France, Martin Sorrell, media mogul (WPP), asked Mayer on stage why she didn't return his phone calls.

Alison Klayman documents Ai Weiwei Collision

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is a documentary film (2012) about Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, directed by American filmmaker Alison Klayman.  A Brown Univ. graduate, she met Weiwei in 2008 while producing TV features for PBS, NPR, and AP TV.  Ai Weiwei is son of renowned poet Ai Qing.

In between gallery openings, we see him beat up by Chengdu police (leading to a trip to Germany to repair cranial hemorrhage), we see the Government raze his $1 million Shanghai studio (he responds with a demolition party serving river crab, whose name is Mandarin homonym for "harmony"), and his April 2011 detention at Beijing airport.  The film captures his rise to one of the best known political dissidents in China.  Klayman basically filmed the subject in real time, not knowing where it was going, like the Maysles did in Gimme Shelter (and caught a murder).  Critics say that his confrontations with authorities is a form of performance art.

In 2009, Weiwei posts over 5,000 names of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake victims.  Chinese authorities shut down his blog, two days later, he joins Twitter.  This effort in transparency recalls the publication of the Bosnian Book of the Dead.

Klayman didn't set out with any intention as to how she wanted to portray the State, "But I do think they wrote their part into the film themselves."

Weiwei is very outspoken about not supporting the 2008 Beijing Olympics.  The movie poster depicts one "flipping the bird" at Tiananmin square, but Mr. Ai no doubt flipped the bird at the Bird's Nest ! After all, he was hired as the stadium design consultant.

Novelist Biyi Bandele Debuts as Director on Half of a Yellow Sun

Biyi Bandele and Anika Noni Rose

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's literary masterpiece Half of a Yellow Sun (2011) has been captured by UK-based Nigerian (Yoruba descent but brought up in Hausa community in northerrn Nigeria) novelist and debuting Nollywood director Biyi Bandele. Adichie insisted it be filmed in Nigeria. It is the biggest production in the history of Nigerian film and was filmed at Tinapa Studio, Calabar and Creek Town against all odds (logistical like electricity and water for 200 people as well as malaria and typhoid cases) over a five week period in 2013.  Arguably, it is the first feature film from Nigeria.  Born in Bloomfield, Connecticut, Anika Noni Rose plays the lead sister Kainene.  Rose also starred in Dreamgirls (2006). 

Much of the novel's artistry and detail escapes the film.  Adichie's novel is not chronological, a choice for dramatic effect.  Also, only 4 characters relate the story from the first person vantage point, in the novel.  The atrocities of the Biafran war and the seige of this Ibo nation are downplayed in the film although news clips work well.  In particular, Ugwu's participation in a gang rape is omitted.

It is compelling that a Yoruba director can portray an Ibo clan with such empathy.

Gabi Trinkhaus' "LO SE MON" Tricks the Mind

From a distance, no one could be faulted for thinking this was an aerial view of L.A.  Closer inspection reveals that this is a collage of a supposed web of streetlights and highways that dematerializes into a collage of advertisements found in pop culture magazines.  The brightness of the city is merely consumer glitz and brand names.

Gabi Trinkhouse calls the work "LO SE MON," an acronym for love, sex, money - what makes the world go round.  The media domination of urban society is totally evident here.