Tag: Reviews

Hamada (Eloy Domínguez Serén, 2018)

On By RebeccaIn Documentary, Films
Image from the documentary Hamada
Zaara and Sidahmed in Hamada

I went to Edinburgh for the day at the weekend in order to catch two documentary films with Spanish connections at the Edinburgh International Film Festival: Hamada (Eloy Domínguez Serén, 2018) and La ciudad oculta / The Hidden City (Víctor Moreno, 2018). I’m not going to write about the latter at the moment (I would need to see it again first) – although I would recommend it, if you get the chance to see it (an immersive non-narrative experience into the underground world beneath Madrid, it put me in mind of both Dead Slow Ahead (Mauro Herce, 2015) and Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)).

Hamada is not technically a Spanish film (although the documentary’s subject matter relates to Spain’s colonial past), but Eloy Domínguez Serén is one of the Galician filmmakers whose work I have written about previously – and I’ll be looking out for his name in the future because this is a gem of a film. My Eye for Film review of Hamada can be found here.

Mataharis (Icíar Bollaín, 2007)

On By RebeccaIn Films
Mataharis (directed by Icíar Bollaín)
María Vázquez as Inés in Mataharis

Mataharis is one of the films playing at EIFF as part of their Icíar Bollaín retrospective. My review for Eye for Film is here.

 

Arrebato / Rapture (Iván Zulueta, 1980)

On By RebeccaIn Films

I’ve written about the film on here before, but I’ve now written a review for Eye for Film in relation to Arrebato‘s screening at EIFF 2019. The ***** review is here.

 

Newly Streaming Films

On By RebeccaIn Films, Spanish Cinema

Courtesy of David Cairns signposting that his film Natan (co-directed with Paul Duane) was now streaming online, I discovered a new (to me) streaming platform: IFFRUnleashed. It hosts a veritable cornucopia of esoteric titles from the festival circuit, reasonably priced at 4€ for a feature and 1€ for a short.

There are a number of films that I’ve seen at festivals but not encountered elsewhere, including a range of works by Spanish directors – such as El Futuro (Luis López Carrasco, 2013) and L’Accademia delle Muse (Jose Luis Guerin, 2015 – I might finally get to watch it with English subs!) – but also short films by directors like Radu Jude, Mark Rappaport, and Benjamín Naishtat. I’m going to link to a handful of titles that I’ve previously written about:

In other Spanish film streaming news, Carlos Vermut’s Quién te cantará (2018) has just popped up on Netflix UK, which is unexpected (I may have given an involuntary yelp when I spotted it in ‘Recently Added’) but welcome (the forthcoming Spanish DVD release – which I’ve pre-ordered – doesn’t have any English subs UPDATE: It does have English subs [despite the listings details showing no sign of them]). Netflix UK continues to add very recent Spanish films and TV series, offering a much broader range of Spanish titles than was ever seen in terms of UK DVD releases in the past.

Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings & Stewart McAllister, 1942)

On By RebeccaIn Films

Listen to Britain09

Mubi currently have Listen to Britain in their collection (here), as part of a strand of films recommended by Paul Schrader. I reviewed the documentary short for Eye for Film back in 2016 (when it screened at the AV Festival).

If you don’t have a Mubi subscription, you can watch the 20 minute film for free on the BFI Player.

Vampir Cuadecuc (Pere Portabella, 1971)

On By RebeccaIn Films, Spanish Cinema

‘Experimental making-of’ is usually the basic description of the film Pere Portabella constructed behind the scenes of Jess Franco’s Count Dracula (1970) – next week sees its UK debut on (region free) DVD and Blu-ray, courtesy of Second Run. I reviewed the film in 2015 when it was screening at the Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival as part of their ‘Fact or Fiction’ theme. As I pointed out, Portabella’s repurposing of what Franco was doing creates an interesting dissection of several levels of mythologising:

[…] the mechanics of filmmaking are as much an element of fascination for him as the mythology of Stoker’s Count. The two aspects come together in a sequence where Christopher Lee (who would collaborate with Portabella on another film – Umbracle – the same year) removes the prosthetics and accoutrements (contact lenses, hair, fangs) that transform him into an onscreen monster – a metamorphosis in reverse and a demythologising or deconstruction of both a film star and one of his most famous roles (something that Franco was cashing in on).

You can read the full review here.

Portabella has had a long and varied career and is still (occasionally) making films. His most recent was documentary Informe General II: El nuevo rapto de Europa (2016), which is a sequel of sorts to his 1976 epic Informe general sobre algunas cuestiones de interés para una proyección pública – I’ve seen the latter but not the former (yet), and the two are available together in a boxset that has optional English subtitles. [UPDATE 11/10/2017: Mubi are showing those two films for the next 30 days – here]. I watched Vampir Cuadecuc from a career-spanning boxset of Portabella’s work (it covers 1967 – 2009, containing all of his films apart from Informe General II), which is produced by Intermedio (I bought my boxset directly from them) and likewise has optional English subtitles on all of the films. I particularly recommend his short films (Poetes Catalans (1970) is my favourite – I wrote about it on the old blog in a 2014 ‘best of the year’ post).

Under Sandet / Land of Mine (Martin Zandvliet, 2015)

On By RebeccaIn Films

I reviewed Land of Mine in 2015 (I saw it at the Gijón International Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award) – and I mentioned it in one of my festival diary posts – but it finally goes on theatrical release in the UK today (after receiving an Oscar nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film category earlier this year). It’s a well-made film; although conventional in its narrative structure and character arcs, it adeptly pulls the audience into the story, constructs multiple sequences of high tension, and shines a light on a little-known event from the end of WW2. It also boasts several very fine performances. My 2015 Eye for Film review is here.

 

Stella Cadente (Lluís Miñarro, 2014)

On By RebeccaIn Spanish Cinema

stella-cadente2

Lluís Miñarro’s opulent and riotous Stella Cadente (which means ‘falling star’) is being released on DVD in the UK next week courtesy of Second Run.

On the surface an account of the short reign of King Amadeo I of Spain in the early 1870s – although this is a film where surfaces can be deceptive – Stella Cadente also functions as a metaphor for contemporary Spain and its ongoing state of crisis. But this is far from being a fossilised heritage drama – the afore-mentioned deceptive surfaces are manifested via a state of Wonderland-like limbo within the walls of the palace, and Miñarro laces the film with perverse humour and surreal juxtapositions (if I recall correctly, Àlex Brendemühl’s Amadeo is dancing to the anachronistic sound of 1970s French chanson in the above image). I was rather bemused by the ‘busy-ness’ of the film when I saw it at EIFF in 2014 (my Eye for Film review can be found here) but liked it sufficiently to import the Spanish DVD the following year – its chief pleasures are sparky performances by Brendemühl and Bárbara Lennie (who plays Amadeo’s wife, María Victoria), and the sense of reality being challenged by illusion in the layered theatricality created by Miñarro (for me, this confusion of reality versus illusion – in combination with the royal milieu – brought Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño / Life is a Dream to mind, although the director didn’t seem overly keen on the comparison when I asked about it during the Q&A). As I noted in my review, the film also includes my favourite subtitle of that year: “Set these rabbits free!”

Second Run’s presentation also includes one of Miñarro’s documentaries, Familystrip (2009) – while his parents have their portrait painted, the director converses with them about their lives, respective childhoods, raising a family in post-War Spain, and the social changes undergone by the country during their lifetimes. It combines oral history with a deeply affectionate cine-portrait of his family. You can buy the DVD directly from Second Run (it is also available from other retailers).

10,000 Km (Carlos Marques-Marcet, 2014)

On By RebeccaIn Spanish Cinema

10000km

Carlos Marques-Marcet’s feature debut, 10,000 Km (also known as Long Distance), won him the ‘Best New Director’ award at the Goyas in 2015 – the film is available to view on Mubi UK for the next month. The use of social media and new technology onscreen is often cringeworthy but Marques-Marcet and co-writer Clara Roquet on the whole manage to utilise familiar forms of online interaction in a naturalistic way, and create an immersive experience – technology becomes both a point of connection and something that heightens different kinds of distance when a couple (Natalia Tena and David Verdaguer) try to maintain a relationship over the course of a year apart. The film is essentially a two-hander, and I wrote in my review from 2014 that:

Tena and Verdaguer make what could have been an inert series of monologues (we often see them as the other character would, meaning that they are talking direct to screen) into conversations with dramatic and emotional heft. […] That we see neither of them outside of their respective domestic spaces illustrates both the hermetically-sealed nature of Alex and Sergi’s relationship (they are each other’s world) and the limits of their interactions when they are so far apart. The time difference means that their communications are rarely spontaneous, instead becoming a rote series of appointments that make the lack of physical contact glaringly apparent – it is difficult to slow dance with a laptop (although they do try).

The rest of my review can be found at Eye for Film. Take advantage of the film’s appearance on Mubi because a) it’s a well-made romantic drama that is imbued with emotional veracity, and b) there is no UK DVD (although the Spanish DVD has optional English subtitles).

My Name Is Salt (Farida Pacha, 2013)

On By RebeccaIn Documentary

my_name_is_salt_sisyphus

The rather dry synopsis of ‘a documentary about salt production’ doesn’t really do justice to (or offer enticement to see) Farida Pacha’s documentary, which closely observes the rhythms and motions of one family on the salt marshes of Gujarat in India, following their routines during the eight months of the year that they spend cultivating and harvesting salt crystals before the annual monsoon season washes everything away. I like films that show the mechanics and processes of work / creation and this stark but beautiful film (a reflection of the landscape in which it takes place) was one of my favourites at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2014. By chance, I’ve just spotted that it is available to rent on BFI Player. My Eye for Film review from 2014 can be found here. You can also find further information on the film’s website.

Review: Black (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, 2015)

On By RebeccaIn Films

Black

Out in the UK (cinemas and VOD) on 19th August, Black is a Romeo and Juliet-style tale of rival street gangs and immigrant communities in contemporary Belgium. I saw the film last year in Gijón and although I felt strongly (negative) about its depiction of sexual violence, it nonetheless has an undeniably strong sense of visual style and energy – its duo of Morrocan-Belgian directors demonstrate cinematic flair in abundance and an adept deployment of music – and two engaging performances from the non-professional leads, Aboubakr Bensaïhi and Martha Canga Antonio. My review from Gijón for Eye for Film:

 

Review: Queen of Earth (Alex Ross Perry, 2015)

On By RebeccaIn Films

Queen of Earth_poster

Queen of Earth was one of my favourite films last year (I saw it in April 2015 at the D’A Festival in Barcelona) and I’d been hoping that it would get UK distribution – as I said back in December, “this kind of film should be catnip to independent cinemas”. It is on limited release and VOD from today but if it’s not showing at a cinema near you (it isn’t showing anywhere near me), a Masters of Cinema dual format DVD/Blu-ray release will also be available from the 11th July. Prior to seeing Queen of Earth I was only familiar with Elisabeth Moss via Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake (I haven’t seen Mad Men), but between those two performances she marks herself out as someone whose work should be followed. She and Katherine Waterston (also excellent) clearly relished the opportunity to be put through the emotional wringer on camera – both deliver nuanced performances in a psychologically astute and darkly funny look at the deep bonds of female friendship and the damage that can be wrought by those closest to you. My 2015 Eye for Film review:

Nobody Knows Anybody will be relatively quiet for the rest of the summer. Back in May – when I decided that I would change my approach to the Carlos Saura Challenge – I made reference to the upheaval that my place of work undergoes like clockwork each summer. Three days later I discovered that this year the upheaval would be more unsettling than I had anticipated. I am one of the lucky ones because my job is intact – although my team has been reduced by 20% through existing vacancies being written off and some of my colleagues reducing their hours – but there are a lot of ongoing job cuts here and morale is low. Between that and the spectacle of my country deciding to flush itself down the toilet in slow motion, I’m not much in the mood for watching films at the moment – or writing about them.