Author: Doug Cummings

Cavite

DVD review

Just when we thought reality had lost its capacity to shock us in dramatic films, the threadbare DV production Cavite (2005) has popped out of the indie festival circuit. If you get the chance to see it at all, you’ll probably learn it was made by two film school graduates with a few dubious films under their belt and a website that reads like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Production. But it’s a film that is emotionally streamlined, elliptical in its construction, and morally complex in its suspense, and it offers a visceral look at contemporary life in the Philippines.

Adam, …

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Buffalo Boy and Oxhide

Film review

I’ve recently seen two significant films from Asia, Ming Nguyen-Vo’s Buffalo Boy (Vietnam, 2004) and Liu Jiayin’s Oxhide (China, 2005). While their details differ, similarities abound: both films are feature debuts by their respective filmmakers; both explore the impact of family trades (involving cattle) on the individuals that comprise them; and both are set in specific locales recorded in striking, elliptical ways. And both are available on DVD–Buffalo Boy was released in North America a few weeks ago; Oxhide should be out (with English subtitles?) from MK2’s CinÈma DÈcouverte in France, but it looks as if it might’ve …

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Nathaniel Dorsky

Film review


Threnody…

Last night, the REDCAT screened some works by avant-garde filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky (who was in attendance), and my own pre-show experience set the tone. Hopping out of the downtown Los Angeles subway near dusk, I was only one of a handful of pedestrians walking up the steep hill on 1st Street; suddenly thousands of immigrants began pouring over the crest of the hill a few blocks away, parading joyously past me with flags waving in an endless stream of solidarity. It was an impressive moment, and not unlike the experience of watching a Dorsky film: a heretofore obscure or …

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Dardenne documentaries cont’d

Film review


Falsch

My last day in Toronto was exceptional. Not only was I able to see the two remaining documentaries in the Dardenne series, but James Quandt and his colleagues graciously screened me the Dardennes’ first two features prior to La Promesse (1996). (The Cinematheque will publicly screen the features later this month.) The Cinematheque’s staffers logged 35 hours creating the subtitles for the documentaries, which ultimately only sold a few dozen tickets. By contrast, the Cinematheque’s screening of L’Enfant today, which opens commercially in Toronto next week, sold out. Quandt mused, “The program that takes the greatest effort, money, and …

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NFB Mediatheque

Special event


Things in Toronto I wish were in Los Angeles include heavy snow flurries, pedestrians who leisurely stroll through red light intersections and drivers who do not honk, Smarties chocolate candy, and most of all, the National Film Board’s Mediatheque.  Founded in 2002, the Mediatheque (150 John Street) is something like a cross between a theme park ride and a film archive.  It’s situated in a heavily pedestrian area across the street from a Paramount multiplex and it’s open every day of the week.


I stopped by yesterday and reserved one of their many “personal viewing stations” in the lobby: space-age looking …

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Puiu and Dardenne documentaries

Film review, Special event


For the War to End, the Walls Should Have Crumbled

The Cinematheque Ontario is screening five documentaries by the Dardenne brothers this week–the first time the films have been exhibited in North America (outside of Montreal)–and I’m hanging out for the event. I’ve attended Toronto’s international film festival the last couple years, but this is my first non-fall visit to the city, and its bare trees, icy winds and cloudy skies are a far cry from its warm Septembers. (For a thin-blooded Angeleno like myself, it’s positively freezing.)

But that hasn’t kept employees of the Cinematheque from working hard the …

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