Author: Robert Koehler

THIERRY’S CANNES, OLIVIER’S QUINZAINE

By ROBERT KOEHLER

If you happen to be at a film festival in March or April–as I was this year in Guadalajara (March) and Buenos Aires (April) (sorry, Film Journey readers, no BAFICI blog this year, but I promise a soon-to-come rehash/overview)–the conversation inevitably turns to what films can be expected to appear in Cannes (May). It’s part of the seasonal spring chatter/gossip/speculation/informed insider talk, and it’s partly generated by the fact that in pre-Cannes festivals, “The Cannes Effect” is fully felt. This is especially true in festivals in emerging market countries like Argentina and Mexico, …

Jose Avellar

MOMENTS OF GUADALAJARA

By Robert Koehler

Good stuff….Brian De Palma was here with Redacted, but unlike almost any director who ever attends a festival with his/her own film–exceptions include Lisandro Alonso, Pedro Costa, Jose Luis Guerin, the other “Joe,” Lav Diaz, Raya Martin, Albert Serra, Monte Hellman and the late Curtis Harrington–he actually went to see movies….This whole film-viewing thing proved too much for De Palma at one point, when he had to leave a botched screening of the even more botched Cuban film Personal Belongings, since the Cuban print source forgot to send the …

GUADALAJARA’S MEXICAN PROBLEM

By Robert Koehler

Sure enough, as Guadalajara wound down, Lake Tahoe was one Mexican film in the competition that mattered, and as the paltry and fairly pathetic lineup played out, proved its value as a way out of the dead-end of what often passes for “comedy” in Mexican film….even if, as I noted before, Eimbcke’s film isn’t properly a comedy. (His ability to shift from comedy to tragedy only demonstrates Eimbcke’s confidence in his own comic abilities; oddly for a young man, like late Chaplin, he has the toolkit firmly in hand so that when drama and …

FROM BERLIN TO GUADALAJARA, CONT.

By Robert Koehler

By my count, although there are several films here direct from Berlin, only one is from Berlin’s most interesting section, the Forum: Ishtar Yasin’s astonishing debut, El Camino. This is the kind of film Forum was built for, and that Guadalajara would do well to show more of–intensely committed personal cinema that brooks no compromise, and expects an audience that demands no less. Yet El Camino is made of, and about, simple things. The opening sections seem to blow right out of the head of Lino Brocka, with warm images of …

FROM BERLIN TO GUADALAJARA

By Robert Koehler

The Guadalajara festival’s position on the calendar–besides being at a blissfully moderate time of year for the weather–allows it to pluck Latin American films from the various sections of Berlin. Last year, that meant for instance that Chico Teixera’s brilliant feature debut, Alice’s House (which recently played at the Nuart and with the most exquisite lead female performance, by Carla Ribas, in any film I’ve seen in the past two years at least) could go straight from Berlin’s Panorama to Guadalajara’s Iberoamerican feature competition. Lucia Murat’s newest, Mare, Our Love Story (or curiously …

GUADALAJARA: SEARCHING FOR A FESTIVAL

By Robert Koehler

So…. the idea with attending the Guadalajara film festival is to survey what’s popping up on the Mexican cinema horizon. The 23-year-old mission here has been to serve as a Mexico showcase, and it still is. Now, there are added layers, creating a slightly unwieldy superstructure of Latin American films–some of which are going places (or have already been) and some that will go nowhere.

Here’s the catch: I can’t blog about the films I’m reviewing here for Variety (and variety.com), so that means no Mexican films. Except Sergio Tovar Velarde’s …