Film Journey – Page 43 – world cinema in Los Angeles and beyond

Who’s Camus Anyway?

November 1, 2006 Doug Cummings DVD review

On the surface, Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s Who’s Camus Anyway? (2005)–recently released on DVD by Film Movement–is a breezy, playfully cineliterate account of a group of Tokyo university students making a movie. And while it’s chock full of film references (Altman, Tarantino, the French New Wave), colorful characters, and social eccentricities, its true sophistication emerges gradually, posing complex questions about the roles of fantasy, identity, and volition in modern life.

The film is Yanagimachi’s first after a ten-year hiatus; in the interim he taught a university course for three years, an experience that informs the sociological fabric of the film. And while …

La Commune (Paris, 1871)

October 26, 2006 Doug Cummings DVD review, Uncategorized

British filmmaker Peter Watkins’ nearly six-hour film, La Commune (Paris, 1871), made in the year 2000, is without a doubt one of the best and most important films of the decade, and it was just released this week on DVD by First Run Features. Count yourselves lucky–the film, which commemorates the short-lived working class attempt to turn France into a socialist republic following its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, has rarely been screened in France or elsewhere, although I’ve had the French DVD on hand ever since I first saw the film at a special screening in Los Angeles …

Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?

October 10, 2006 Doug Cummings DVD review

Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (2001)

The news is spreading that DaniËle Huillet–the personal and filmmaking partner of Jean-Marie Straub for over half a century–passed away this week, ending one of the most acclaimed filmmaking teams of the New German Cinema (though Huillet and Straub were both French and lived in Rome). If you’re unfamiliar with their work, you can be forgiven–only their first feature, the exquisite Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968) is available on DVD in North America, and co-director Huillet isn’t mentioned once in its liner notes by Armond White or the excerpts from Richard Roud’s …

Magic Lanterns

October 5, 2006 Doug Cummings Special event

“Those who had the least confidence in the future of the cinema were precisely the two industrialists Edison and LumiËre. . . . As for the real savants such as Marey, they were only of indirect assistance to the cinema. They had a special purpose in mind and were satisfied when they had accomplished it. The fanatics, the madmen, the disinterested pioneers, capable, as was Bernard Palissy, of burning their furniture for a few seconds of shaky images, were neither industrialists nor savants, just men obsessed by their own imaginings. The cinema was born from the converging of these various

Kieslowski’s documentaries, Part 2

October 4, 2006 Doug Cummings DVD review

The following reviews cover the films included on Disc Two of the Polish region-2 DVD release of documentaries by Krzysztof Kieslowski. (Disc One reviews and other relevant info can be found here.)

First Love (1974)

Of the twelve films included on this DVD release, this is among Kieslowski’s most emotionally compelling works, and also an early hint of his strong intuition for narrative. The film follows the lives of two youths–Jadwiga, pregnant at the age of 17, and her boyfriend, Romek (19)–as it carefully reveals their struggles (finishing school, getting married, finding an apartment in a city with multi-year …

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 …