Tag: Holocaust

Letter to a Pig

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 27 February 2024
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Director – Tal Kantor – 2022 – France, Israel – 17m

*****

Under the watchful eye of an authoritarian teacher, as a class of bored teenagers listens to a visiting Holocaust survivor recount his experiences, one of their number daydreams about the pig with which the survivor shared a barn – nominated for Best Animated Short at the 2024 Academy Awards, VoD details below review

A figure (voice: Indra Maharik) with one shoe flees, running through a forest. “Nothing mattered”, says the old man sitting, his hands clasped together on the desk, in front of the schoolroom of bored Israeli teenagers. Haim (voice: Alexander Peleg) is recounting his experiences under the Nazi regime, but the teenagers would rather be somewhere else. Haim tells how he fled to a barn, where the pig there effectively saved his life. The severe teacher (voice: Ayelet Margalit) ejects one of them for remarking, “oink, oink”. Haim, recounting the past, talks about people capable of hate not deserving to live; he has clearly been unable to forgive those who acted on behalf of the Nazi regime.

Drifting off into a reverie, in her mind’s eye, one girl (voice: Moriyah Meerson) sees the SS send a pig to pursue the boy through the forest.… Read the rest

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Anselm
(Anselm
– Das Rauschen
Der Zeit)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 11 October 2023
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(Anselm
– Das Rauschen
Der Zeit)
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Director – Wim Wenders – 2023 – Germany – Cert. PG – 93m

****

An exploration of the work of German artist Anselm Kiefer and the influences which lie behind it – 3D documentary plays the 2023 London Film Festival which runs from Wednesday, October 4th until Sunday, October 15th, and will be out in UK cinemas on Friday, December 8th

Wim Wenders seems to step effortlessly between narrative and documentary feature films, and you never feel that he considers one or the other more important. To him, they are all movies. As with his earlier Pina (2011), similarly about an artist – the choreographer Pina Bausch – this is another portrait of an artist shot in 3D. Wenders’ subject here, again eponymously designated by Christian name, is Anselm Kiefer, a practitioner of the plastic rather than the performing arts.

From the outset, it’s clear that the film needs to be seen in 3D. Wenders’ camera moves deliberately and formally around maquettes that resemble life-sized women wearing dresses, but without the women in them so that they stand as empty objects, often with strange constructions in the space where you would expect their neck and heads to be. The forest setting in which Wenders films them seems almost as significant as the maquettes themselves as we slowly pass by an upright tree trunk between the sculpture and us.… Read the rest

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Getting Away
With Murder(s)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 9 September 2021
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With Murder(s)
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Director – David Nicholas Wilkinson – 2021 – UK – Cert. 15 – 175m

*****

Most of the perpetrators of the Holocaust were never prosecuted: this documentary attempts to understand why not – on BD/DVD combo from Monday, March 27th following its debut on various streaming platforms UK, USA, Canada and Australia on Friday, January 27th 2023 (Holocaust Memorial Day)… Full details below review:

There’s something about the enormity of the issues involved here that makes this a very tough watch. (If it wasn’t, there would be something wrong. The Holocaust is not an easy issue to deal with. Films about it can consequently be tough to watch. And so they should be.) That combined with the near three-hour running time (this is not a complaint, honest) means it sat on my pending review pile for quite a while before I finally sat down and watched it.

I suspect Wilkinson is aware of this problem. As the film starts, he takes you (as it were) gently by the hand as he walks into Auschwitz and matter-of-factly discusses its horrors, helped by a man who works in the museum there and has probably helped numerous people before and since to come to terms with the implications of the place as they go round it.… Read the rest

Animation Features Live Action Movies

Where Is Anne Frank

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 7 August 2022
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Director – Ari Folman – 2021 – Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Israel – Cert. PG – 99m

*****

In Amsterdam, a year from now, her imaginary friend Kitty sets out to discover what happened to Anne Frank – out in cinemas on Friday, August 12th

Amsterdam, Holland, about a year from now. Early in the morning, the usual tourist queues are assembling outside the Anne Frank House, passing a tent housing refugees on the pavement. Inside, something strange happens as a glass case shatters and the original copy of Anne’s diary is exposed to ink from a pen, affecting the ink writing on the pages and materialising Kitty (voice: Ruby Stokes), the imaginary pen-friend to whom Anne addressed her diary.

The materialised Kitty is perplexed. Where is Anne Frank? What has happened to her, to the house? The staff, too, are perplexed. They can’t let the waiting crowds in with the case broken, but those people have been queueing for hours and it seems wrong not to open up for them. After a brief debate a solution is found and the diary moved to Anne’s room where it is placed on the desk where it naturally sits. The concerns of the house staff seem trivial compared to those of Kitty.… Read the rest

Tags 1945, 2D animation, 3D model sets, Aardman, Albert Dussel, Amsterdam, Andrew Woodall, Anne Frank, Anne Frank House, Anne Frank’s diary, Ari Folman, attic, attic hideout, Auschwitz, authority figure, capture, Clark Gable, crowds, defeat, dentist, dissolve, Edith Frank, Emily Carey, execution, fathers and daughters, German Occupation, German soldier, glass case, Greek mythology, Greek underworld, handbags, hidden, hidden attic hideout, hide, hiding, Holland, Holocaust, illegal immigrants, imaginary friend, imaginary pen-friend, immigrants, ink writing, invisibility, it can’t happen here, Jew, Jewish, Jewish ethnicity, Jews, Margot Frank, Michael Moloney, migrants, mothers and daughters, museum, Nazi Occupation, Nazis, Nell Barlow, Otto Frank, parents and children, pavement, pen and ink, pen-friend, Peter Van Daan, pickpocket, Ralph Prosser, refugees, Ruby Stokes, Samantha Spiro, Sebastian Croft, Second World War, sheltering, siblings, sisters, Skye Bennett, squat, Stuart Miligan, tent, the Allies, The Third Reich, thief, tourists, Tracy-Ann Oberman, trial, Tristan Oliver, UK, Van Daan, Veronica Lake, visibility, visitors, war crimes, war zone, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Movies

Where Is Anne Frank

Hiding from deportation

Where Is Anne Frank
Directed by Ari Folman
Certificate PG, 99 minutes
Released 12 August

Amsterdam, about a year from now. Inside the Anne Frank House, Anne’s imaginary pen-friend Kitty (voiced by Ruby Stokes) materialises out of the ink from the pages of Anne’s diary. The perplexed Kitty wants to know what happened to Anne, and starts reading her diary to find out, taking it with her when she leaves the premises where she is invisible. Outside the house, she becomes visible.

Asking police ‘Where is Anne Frank?’ she is shown the bridge, hospital, school and theatre bearing Anne Frank’s name and is told, Anne Frank is all around you. [Read the rest at Reform magazine…]

[Read my longer review…]

Trailer:

Tags 1945, 2D animation, 3D model sets, Aardman, Albert Dussel, Amsterdam, Anne Frank, Anne Frank House, Anne Frank’s diary, Ari Folman, attic, attic hideout, Auschwitz, authority figure, capture, crowds, defeat, dentist, Edith Frank, Emily Carey, execution, fathers and daughters, German Occupation, hidden, hide, hiding, Holland, Holocaust, illegal immigrants, imaginary friend, imaginary pen-friend, immigrants, ink writing, invisibility, it can’t happen here, Jew, Jewish, Jewish ethnicity, Jews, migrants, mothers and daughters, museum, Nazi Occupation, Nazis, parents and children, pavement, pen and ink, pen-friend, Peter Van Daan, pickpocket, Ralph Prosser, refugees, Ruby Stokes, Sebastian Croft, Second World War, sheltering, siblings, sisters, squat, the Allies, The Third Reich, thief, tourists, trial, UK, Van Daan, visibility, visitors, war crimes, war zone, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, WW2

Features Live Action Movies

Bad Luck Banging
or Loony Porn
(Babardeală
Cu Bucluc
Sau Porno
Balamuc)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 26 November 2021
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or Loony Porn
(Babardeală
Cu Bucluc
Sau Porno
Balamuc)
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Director – Radu Jude – 2021 – Romania – Cert. 18 – 106m

*****

A teacher becomes the subject of controversy after her husband’s private sex tape is posted online – on BFI Player Subscription from Friday, April 1st

Park your prejudices at the door! The opening three or so minutes of this will surprise or possibly even shock you – basically, hard core, live action genital sex images of a man and a woman, no holds barred. Real, not simulated. And real in other senses too – banging… knocking… (oh God, double entendres, can’t see how to avoid them here) on the door as our couple go at it… Her mother, one imagines, heard through the wall… “Emi, are you asleep” – Emi’s reply, “please leave us alone” – her mother again, “the little one hasn’t sanitised”…

Yes, it’s the world of immediate, post-lockdown pandemic, with people wearing masks and social distancing (or not, if they don’t get it). That wasn’t in the script but when director Jude was shooting in Bucharest: Romania was coming out of lockdown, and he decided to incorporate that into his film. Most contemporary films pretend we’re in a world where Covid-19 never happened or isn’t happening, so we just carry on as normal.… Read the rest

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

Getting Away
With Murder(s)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 1 October 2021
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With Murder(s)
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State-sanctioned killing

Getting Away With Murder(s)
Directed by David Nicholas Wilkinson
Certificate 15, 175 minutes
Released 1 October

The industrial extermination of the Holocaust included most infamously some six million Jews but also smaller numbers of other groups including Poles, gay men, the disabled and political dissidents, some 11 million people in all. It remains a stark reminder of the evil of which human beings at their worst are capable.

Getting Away With Murder(s) is a consistently compelling documentary which approaches this atrocity from an angle we’ve not really seen before: why were 99% of the perpetrators never held to account for their crimes?

The filmmaker David Wilkinson takes his camera to the sites of specific events, from the Auschwitz death camps… [read more]

Full review published in October 2021 issue of Reform.

See also my alternative review on this site.

Trailer: