Tag: art school

Categories
Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Catching Fire:
The Story of
Anita Pallenberg

Directors – Alexis Bloom, Svetlana Zill – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 113m

***1/2

The chaotic life of the archetypal rock chick, told through her own words and those of her children – out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 17th

After her death in 2017, Anita Pallenberg’s two surviving children Marlon and Angela discovered a manuscript; she had written an autobiography. Marlon worked his way through it as part of his bereavement process and was so taken with the articulate text that he sought out producers to turn it into a film. (He is one of the film’s executive producers himself, while both directors are credited as among the producers). Numerous clips from an interview with him are used in this resultant documentary, along with excerpts from Anita’s manuscript voiced by an actress, along with interview footage with Angela and verbal audio from Rolling Stones band member Keith Richards, Anita’s partner for a decade and the father of her children.

Like many of the young generation who rose meteorically to cultural prominence in the swinging sixties, Anita Pallenberg was a war baby. Her first years were accompanied by the sound of falling bombs; as she puts it, she didn’t learn to walk, but to run.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Afire
(Roter Himmel)

Director – Christian Petzold – 2022 – Germany – Cert. 12a – 102m

*****

Two male friends’ plans to stay in his mother’s woodland house are disrupted by first a car breakdown, then a female guest of his mother’s, and finally forest fires – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 25th

Summer. Leon (Thomas Schubert from Breathing, Karl Markovics, 2011) and Felix (Langston Uibel) are driving to the latter’s mother’s holiday home on the Baltic coast when their car breaks down. Felix knows a short cut so they go through the woods,. When they reach the cottage, after getting lost, a guest is already there, a young woman Nadja (Paula Beer from Transit, Christian Petzold, 2018; Frantz, François Ozon, 2016), the daughter of a friend of Felix’s mother. At least, her belongings – underwear strewn around the big bedroom, cereal in the kitchen – are there.

Felix phones his mother to learn there’s a double booking. Not to worry – the pair can stay in the small bedroom. Except, Leon can’t sleep at night because of the sound of Nadja enjoying sex with someone through the paper-thin walls.

He doesn’t know how to confront her about this.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Inland Empire

Director – David Lynch – 2006 – US – Cert. 15 – 180m

*****, *, or somewhere in between

Immersing herself in the role she plays in the movie she’s currently shooting, an actress loses herself in it as she becomes increasingly divorced from reality – 4K remaster is out in UK cinemas on Friday, May 26th then Blu-ray / DVD on Monday, June 19th

I first watched this when it came out in 2007. I wasn’t sure what to make of it then and, revisiting it for the first time in roughly a decade and a half, I’m still not sure what to make of it now. It’s a Hollywood film in the sense that Lynch is highly respected in Hollywood, yet it’s not a Hollywood film in the sense that it steadfastly refuses to play by any rules other than Lynch’s own – and whatever those rules are, they are almost certainly made to be broken.

To attempt to impose a plot on the film is probably a mistake. Most commercially produced movies have a script, characters, a plot and can be judged on their narrative coherence, technical expertise and the actor’s performances. Technical expertise may be a good place to start.… Read the rest

Categories
Animation Art Features Live Action Movies

Hilma

Director – Lasse Hallström – 2022 – Sweden – Cert. 12a – 119m

****

Late in her life, Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, today considered the world’s first abstract painter, remembers her life – out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 28th

As Swedish artist Hilma af Klint (Lena Olin) takes a tram journey, she remembers key events and moments within it: she is haunted by the memory of her little sister Hermina (Emmi Tjernström), who tragically died when Hilma (Tora Hallström) was 18 and with whom she often played hide and seek.

Interested in drawing and painting from nature as a form of scientific inquiry – at her art school interview panel she lists mathematics, geometry, biology and astronomy as interests other than flowers – she meets up with other women studying technical painting and drawing in Stockholm, among them the wealthy Anna Cassel (Catherine Chalk) who becomes her lover and finances her as an artist – and becomes part of their group of five women artists interested in spiritism. She also studies the Theosophical writings of Madame Blavatsky and makes a particular connection to the Anthroposophist ideas of Rudolf Steiner.

Acknowledging these interests, the film infuriatingly refuses to explore them at any great depth, perhaps because it fears such ideas might prove controversial and perhaps because they might prove boring to a contemporary audience, it’s impossible to tell.… Read the rest

Categories
Features Live Action Movies

Never Look Away
(Werk Ohne Autor)

Director – Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck – 2018 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 189m

*****

A German boy wishes to become an artist, but his desire is affected by the events of WW2 and its aftermath, in possibly the best narrative piece you will see this year – twice Oscar-nominated film is now available on VoD

What is art? Why do artists make art? These questions lie behind Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s latest film, like his earlier The Lives Of Others (2006) a German story exploring that country’s history and identity. It clocks in at over three hours, but don’t let that put you off because it needs that time to cover the considerable ground it does. Never Look Away spans the bombing of Dresden by the Allies in WW2, the liquidation of people considered by the Nazis inferior and therefore unfit to live and the very different worlds of post-war art schools in first East and later West Germany. This means it also spans two generations: those who were adults during the war, and those who were children at that time and became adults in post-war Germany… [Read the rest at DMovies.org…]

Never Look Away is out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 5th 2019.… Read the rest