Authors — Ashley Clark
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Polish Progress: American Indies in Wroclaw
If any one moment encapsulated the fervor for U.S. independent cinema among the young cinephiles of Wroclaw (pronounced Vrot-swof, by the way), it arrived at around 11:00 PM on my final night of attendance at the 4th edition of the city’s American Film Festival (22-27 Oct, 2013). I was strolling back to my hotel in the company of Killer Films honcho Christine Vachon and Tennessee-based producer Ashley Maynor when a lissome young Polish fellow with rosy cheeks, Kurt Cobain hair, and a T-shirt bearing the legend ‘Hipsters Don’t Wear Frames’ suddenly appeared. With a shallowness of breath that suggested he’d […]
by Ashley Clark on Nov 4, 2013 -
Venice International Film Festival 2013
To get to the Lido — the strip of beachy land upon which the Venice Film Festival is held every year — one must take the vaporetto (or water taxi) from the Marco Polo Airport. While waiting for the transport to arrive, one is stuffed into a rectangular holding pen that sways and jerks with the current, provoking a mild but unmistakable seasickness in the more sensitive among us. Little did I know I was to experience almost exactly the same feeling the following morning while watching festival opener Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón’s first since 2006’s Children of Men. It’s an […]
by Ashley Clark on Oct 21, 2013 -
Venice 2013 Critic’s Notebook: A Means of Escape — African Cinema on the Lido.
At this year’s Venice Film Festival, there was a conspicuously sparse showing in the programme for native African and African-themed cinema. However, although the majority of these slim pickings were tucked away toward the end of the festival when attendance had thinned considerably (many journalists had either headed home or departed to Toronto), their quality was largely impressive. To varying degrees, these films broached an historically enduring theme in African cinema: the attempts of young people to escape straitened circumstances. The only sub-Saharan representative at the festival — and the most harrowing film I saw overall — was Berlin-based Israeli […]
by Ashley Clark on Sep 9, 2013 -
Venice 2013: 6 Lessons from At Berkeley Director Frederick Wiseman
The great American documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies, La Danse) arrived at this year’s Venice Film Festival along with his latest work, At Berkeley. A monumental, 244-minute exploration of the famous California university, it emerges as a rigorous, deeply insightful institutional study, and a hymn to the power of open communication, particularly in the context of modern-day America. Following the film’s world premiere on September 2nd, Wiseman, looking spry at 83, took to the stage to address the audience. Filmmaker Magazine was on hand to capture the highlights. On motivation “I made the movie because I have been making […]
by Ashley Clark on Sep 4, 2013 -
Venice 2013 Critic’s Notebook: Palo Alto, Parkland and Joe —To Live and Die in the USA
In the year of our Lord, 2013, the chances are that if you stand in any one place for long enough, some or other cultural product bearing traces of the involvement of prolific polymath James Franco will drift into your orbit. This general rule of thumb goes treble for festivals, and this year’s Venice has been no exception. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if my festival flatmates’ vituperative reactions were anything to go by) I missed the Franco-directed, necrophilia-laced Cormac McCarthy adaptation Child of God, and I also spotted his name in the written credits, presumably as a talking head, for the […]
by Ashley Clark on Sep 3, 2013 -
Venice 2013 Critic’s Notebook: Gravity and Sorcerer, a Strange Alchemy
While international film festivals, especially those of the calibre and history of Venice (this year celebrating its 70th edition), are most commonly seen as a golden opportunity to catch new cinema from contemporary filmmakers, many offer meaty and mightily tempting repertory programmes loaded with restorations. This year’s Cannes festival, for example, featured restored prints of Vertigo, Hiroshima Mon Amour and Borom Sarret (the first film by a black African: Ousmane Sembene), among sundry others. Venice, as ever, has its own Classics strand, with 29 restorations (and documentaries on cinema), including works by Chantal Akerman, Nagisa Oshima and Satyajit Ray. However, the […]
by Ashley Clark on Aug 31, 2013
