Tag: atrocity

The Most Precious
of Cargoes
(La Plus Précieuse
des Marchandises)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 3 April 2025
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of Cargoes
(La Plus Précieuse
des Marchandises)
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Director – Michel Hazanavicius – 2024 – France – Cert. 12a – 81m

*****

In Winter in a forest, a poor woodcutter’s wife rescues an abandoned baby thrown from a passing train and, despite her husband’s misgivings, raises the girl as her own – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, April 4th

Once upon a time… In the woods through which many trains pass… In a war… Yes, that war… In Winter, when everything is under snow… The wife (voice: Dominique Blanc from La Reine Margot, Patrice Chéreau, 1994; Indochine, Régis Wargnier, 1992) of a poor woodcutter, unable to have children, is outside and prays to the Gods of the Trains. Whether they hear her and look upon her kindly, or whether they even exist, it’s impossible to say. Following her prayer, however, she hears the sound of a baby crying. How did the baby get there? Well, unbeknownst to the woman, a man in a goods wagon threw it out of a passing train. She locates the baby girl, takes it home, feeds it. It’s the child she never had.

Her husband, the woodcutter (voice: Grégory Gadebois from Everything Went Fine, François Ozon, 2021; Redoubtable, Michel Hazanavicius, 2017), on returning home, discovers the baby and is furious.… Read the rest

Tags 2D animation, abandoned baby, adaptation, animation, atrocity, authorities, baby, baby crying, beating heart, bodies into pits, child, chimneys belching smoke, complicit, covered wagons, death camp, Denis Podalydès, Dominique Blanc, drawn animation, face missing, fairy tale, fiction, forest, France, Gods of the Trains, Grégory Gadebois, heartless, history, Holocaust, Holocaust denial, isolated, Jean-Claude Grumberg, Jean-Louis Trintignant, nightmare, Once upon a time, paediatrician, passing train, Poland, poor woodcutter, poor woodcutter’s wife, prayer, rescue, secret, shelter, snow, speaking out, Star of David, the Final Solution, The Most Precious of Cargoes, thrown from a train, towers, truth, war, Winter, woodcutter’s wife

Art Documentary Features Live Action Movies

War Paint
Women at War

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 28 March 2025
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Women at War
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The Crying Game. Between a Rock and a Hard Place 2017 by Marcelle Hanselaar

Director – Margy Kinmonth – 2025 – UK – Cert. 12a – 89m

*****

A look at the output of various women artists who have documented and dissected war, and what they can tell us – out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 28th

Although being promoted, reasonably enough, with an image from World War Two of women working with barrage balloons, right from the start in narration over its opening titles this breaks the mould for anyone expecting it to cover any one specific historical or geographical war. “I’m going to talk to women all round the world”, says director Kinmonth in regard to the concept of war as a catalyst for creativity. “What do women see that men don’t?” Quite apart from her gender, she is well-placed to tackle such a subject having recently made two documentaries on the subject of war artists: Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War (2022), War Art with Eddie Redmayne (2015), and many more before that on the subject of art in assorted social contexts.

The film is a compendium of interviews with living female artists or, in the cases of artists who’ve passed on, their descendants or proponents. Some of the names are familiar, such as Lee Miller, Maggi Hambling or Dame Rachel Whiteread, others much less so.… Read the rest

Tags 1066, 1979 Iran revolution, 1992, 2005 Darfur genocide, 2022-3, AC/DC, Afghanistan, Agent Orange poisoning, air raid, air raids, aircraft, American Pavilion, Ami Bouhassane, amplifying stories, annihilation, anti-aircraft guns, architect, artist, atrocity, ATS searchlight women, Austria, Balloon Command, barrage balloons, Bayeux Tapestry, Bletchley Park, Blitz, bombed houses, bombed out, burka, burned, ceasefire, Changi, Changi prison quilt, children’s drawings, consequences of war, creativity, crimes against humanity, crucifixion, culture, Dame Laura Knight, Dame Penelope Lively, Dame Rachel Whiteread, Darfour, Donetsk, drawing, Dutch, enigma, European Court of Human Rights, factory, factory girl, Falkland Islands, fashion model, freezing conditions, Galahad, Gladys Hines, history, Holocaust memorial, homeless, horse head impaled, hospitality, identity, Lee Miller, Linda Kitson, London, London Vogue, Luftwaffe, m Assil Diab, m searchlight beams, Maggi Hambling, Marcelle Hanselaar, Margaret Thatcher, Margy Kinmonth, martyrs, Maya Lin, miscarriage, missile, morality police, Mozambique, mural, Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York City, Nigeria, Nina Berman, nineteenth century, official war artist, painting, Palestine, Palestinian Women, Pallanytsia, password, Patricia Thorncroft, photographer, plane, postage stamp, production line, propaganda, protest, protester, quilt, RA Summer Show, Rachel Reckitt, rape as a weapon of war, rape scene, Royal Academy, Russia, Second World War, Shirin Neshat, Singapore, social media, soldiers as rapists, spray paint, Sticker Project, stitched by nuns, Sudan, Sudan war, tiles, travelling car window, twentieth century, UK, Ukraine, US economy, US support for WW2, veil, Venice Biennale, Vietnam War, Vietnam War Memorial, violence and death, war and militarism, war crimes, War Paint, war photographer Lee Miller, war reportage gender imbalance, war zones, war-making, warplanre, wartime fashion photos, wartime propaganda, Washington DC, welcome bread, window sicker, witness, Women at War, women discarded after rape, women in the workforce, women in war zones, Women Life Freedom, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2, Zhanna Kadyrova

Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Kurt Vonnegut:
Unstuck In Time

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 22 July 2022
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Unstuck In Time
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Directors – Robert B. Weide, Dan Argott – 2021 – US – Cert. 15 – 127m

*****

A warm and compelling look at the life of writer Kurt Vonnegut, the influence upon him of the bombing of Dresden, and his decades-long friendship with director Weide – out in cinemas and on digital platforms from Friday, July 22nd, BFI Player Rental from Monday, August 22nd

Read my shorter review for Reform magazine.

The documentary Weide eventually made about Vonnegut took him the best part of four decades to complete. Weide opens with a statement about Vonnegut walking in the woods, feeling a tree and seeing the bombing of Dresden before it occurred. There seems no reason to doubt Vonnegut. He was unstuck in time, jumping around the years and decades. Weide first contacted him in 1982, never imagining that it would take him anything like as long to complete the film as it did. He starts looking at interviews of himself (“who wants to see a documentary in which a filmmaker appears as himself?”, he asks) – defined by where they were shot or what shirt Weide was wearing at the time.

Whatever else Vonnegut and his writing are, they are not conventional.… Read the rest

Tags adaptation, advent of television, advent of TV, animation, atrocity, author, Bernard Vonnegut, bestseller, bodies, bombing, bombing of Dresden, can’t finish, cancer, celebrity, collateral damage, community, corpses, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Dan Argott, drawing, Dresden, extended family, family, fan, Germany, husbands and wives, idol, interview, Kurt Vonnegut, Linda Weide, marriage, meat locker, Mother Night, Nick Nolte, novel, obscurity, obsession, passenger train, poverty, POW, prisoner, razed to the ground, rejection letters, Robert B. Weide, ruins, Second World War, short stories, Slaughterhouse-Five, student protest movement, survival, talking head, television, the Depression, time, train crash, tree trunk, TV, Unitarian church, US, Vietnam War, war, war atrocity, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, writing, WW2

Animation Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Kurt Vonnegut:
Unstuck In Time

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 18 July 2022
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Unstuck In Time
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Transformed by an atrocity

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck In Time
Directed by Robert B. Weide, Dan Argott
Certificate 15
Released 22 July (cinemas and digital platforms)

Full review published in Reform magazine.

The late Kurt Vonnegut claims that after touching a tree trunk he saw the bombing of Dresden before it actually happened, and it’s easy to believe him. His whole life, he says, has been unstuck in time. Born in Indianapolis in 1922, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 and was shipped off as a POW to Dresden, a bustling metropolis unlike anything he’d previously seen. He survived the Allied bombing of that city inside an underground meat locker and emerged to see it razed to the ground. The Germans had him and fellow prisoners search for bodies amongst the ruins.

Back in the States… [Read the rest at Reform magazine]

Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck In Time is out in cinemas and on Altitude Film digital platform in the UK from Friday, July 22nd.

Read my longer review.

Adaptation of Vonnegut’s Mother Night (writer-producer Robert B. Weide, 1996) – review.

Never Look Away (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2018) also covers the bombing of Dresden – review.… Read the rest