Short film nominees for the European Film Awards 2022
All the nominees and eventual winner of the short film award at the 2022 European Film Awards.
Our country needs to see this: the early documentaries of Zhao Liang
Zhao Liang is best known to contemporary audiences for Behemoth (2015) which employs extraordinary imagery, lyricism, and the structure of Dante’s Inferno to document the human and environmental cost of unchecked industrialisation in modern China. At the Open City Documentary Festival (4-10 September), Zhao was the subject of a dedicated strand that included a masterclass with the director alongside screenings of three of his earlier non-fiction feature films…
10/10
Inspired by Grasshopper Films' ongoing series, 10/10, in which they ask cinephiles to name their ten favourite films from the last ten years, I've listed mine. I've picked the film from each year that the memory of, or the thought of revisiting, makes me most excited. In square brackets is the film I chose as my definite #1 from that year at the time (originally by UK release dates, more recently by world premieres). Interesting to see how much these diverge.
Out of Frame
In the latter part of 2016 there were a couple of articles shared online that caused me to think a lot about my movie-watching habits. The first was a fantastic piece that appeared in issue 7 of the online film journal, LOLA. It is called Two Dollar Movie and involves editor Adrian Martin asking sixty friends and associates from across film, art and literature to watch a previously unseen and unknown film that cost $2…
Through a Glass Darkly: on Under the Skin
It begins with a pinprick of light amidst the darkness of the unfeeling void. The coronas of some unidentified astral flare begin to converge; aligning, by way of a Kubrickian orchestra of motion and sound…
Natural Frequency: on Dog Lady
Even before there is anything discernible on the screen, Dog Lady is evidently a film with the rhythms and sounds of nature at its patient heart. Opening deep in the undergrowth, the apposite snuffling of a canine precedes our introduction to an unnamed woman (played with quiet humanity by co-director Verónica Llinás) stalking the forest with a slingshot. The level of her success is hard to ascertain, but a later scene in which she memorably knocks an abusive youth off his bike with a rock from quite a range would suggest that her aim is true.
Mixed Martial Arts: on The Grandmaster
What strange beast is this? Cantonese auteur and arthouse cinema darling Wong Kar Wai’s long-awaited martial arts epic, The Grandmaster made its first bow at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival, and still bearing the visible scars of an infamous Weinstein pruning, it finally receives a general release in the UK.
Absolute Corruption: on Welcome to New York
There’s a gloriously seething heart to Abel Ferrara’s latest feature Welcome to New York. While the city may provide the focus of the title, it is Gerard Depardieu’s protagonist — a thinly veiled rendering of the disgraced Dominique Strauss-Kahn — that is the target of this caustic takedown.
Not quite horseplay: on Of Horses and Men
Jean-Luc Godard once famously asserted that Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar was “the world in an hour and half.” On that occasion, human nature was presented courtesy of the stoic, noble gaze of that film’s eponymous donkey and the same conceit is adopted — quite literally — in the wonderfully unusual slice of life that is Of Horses and Men.
Hard-boiled Dude
As is doubtless true with many a reader, I’ve been known to exchange quotes with friends – especially if we ever find ourselves out bowling. “I’m throwin’ rocks tonight.” What has become more apparent on revisiting the film, however, is just how clever and loving a spoof and homage to Film Noir, and particularly The Big Sleep, it actually is.