Doug Cummings – Page 27

Kieslowski’s documentaries, Part 1

September 30, 2006 Doug Cummings DVD review

From the City of Lodz (1968)

Krzysztof Kieslowski (whom I’ve written about for Senses of Cinema) had the rare luxury of having US studio sponsorship, no doubt partly because of his savvy use of narrative skills, photogenic stars, and evident polish. But Kieslowski spent roughly half his career making documentaries that have been rarely seen outside Poland; fortunately, a recent traveling retrospective and a newly released 2-disc Polish DVD offer opportunities to catch up.

The region-2 DVD from Polish Audiovisual Publishers is subtitled in English and French, and comes with an 18-page booklet in Polish and English. Browsing the …

The Animated Films That Got Away

September 25, 2006 Doug Cummings Special event

The best thing to happen to the Los Angeles film scene in some time is the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s “The Films That Got Away,” an ongoing series they’ve sporadically programmed at UCLA and the American Cinematheque. (Among the gems: Peter Watkins’ La Commune (Paris, 1871) and Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinÈma.) Maybe my expectations are impossibly high at this point, but the series’ latest installment–“The Animated Films That Got Away,” programmed this weekend at the Cinematheque–was somewhat disappointing.

It began Friday with a mediocre collection of shorts that, with the exception of FrÈdÈric Back’s All Nothing (1980), were …

TIFF ’06 Diary #4

September 23, 2006 Doug Cummings Film festival

This should wrap up my quick takes on the films I watched at the Toronto International Film Festival. I fully intend to revisit several of these films at length in the future.

Bamako
One of the highlights of the Los Angeles Film Festival this summer was the revival screening of Abderrahmane Sissako’s Waiting for Happiness (2002), a beautifully elliptical film about a teenager drifting through a coastal Mauritanian town and encountering various local inhabitants. What I most appreciated about the film was its silence and ambiguity; what I most appreciate about Bamako, Sissako’s newest film, is its passionate voice. …

New Masters of Cinema microsite

September 21, 2006 Doug Cummings Site news

I’m pretty excited about our new sales site for Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series of DVD releases, which can be found here.

Among the many essays, trailers, and stills are my essays for the liner notes of two releases, Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968). (And don’t forget Acquarello’s essay for Shindo’s The Naked Island.)…

TIFF ’06 Diary #3

September 19, 2006 Doug Cummings Film festival

I’m back in Los Angeles, but I’ll be posting the rest of my TIFF impressions this week. Including The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, these are the documentaries I screened:

Manufactured Landscapes

This film introduced me to the work of Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian large-scale photographer whose primary subject is industrial wastelands. From massive technological vistas to mountains of debris to oily vistas stretching off into the horizon, Burtynsky’s photos are startling in their scope and dystopian detail.

The film also provided my first look at one of the unexpected motifs at the festival this year, the Three Gorges …

TIFF ’06 Diary #2

September 15, 2006 Doug Cummings Film festival

Continuing with the Toronto International Film Festival ’06 coverage…

Offside

Jafar Panahi–known for his controversial and hard-hitting dramas The Circle and Crimson Gold–has crafted his most vibrantly energetic and entertaining film to date, without compromising his social vision one iota. Various young Iranian women individually attempt to sneak into the 2005 World Cup qualification tournament between Iran and Bahrain but are arrested and detained because of an Islamic convention that only allows men to attend sporting events. (Ostensibly, the fear is that women might be exposed to harsh language.) What proceeds is a film shot with great immediacy with …