Authors — Brandon Harris
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Once Upon a Time
As the late ’60s wore on, African and African-American filmmakers began to descend on UCLA’s campus, recruited as part of a concerted effort by the university’s School of Theater, Film and Television to include more students of color. Among them were Charles Burnett, who arrived at UCLA to pursue a degree in film after thinking he’d become an electrician, and Haile Gerima, the son of an Ethiopian poet who had briefly studied drama in Chicago. They would be the lynchpins of a group of politically engaged black film students who ended up forming a subgenre of alternative cinema all their […]
by Brandon Harris on Oct 23, 2012 -
Andrea Arnold, Wuthering Heights
Occasionally a period piece comes along that feels neither like the gauzy, ignorantly rendered, idealized versions of the past churned out by the Hollywood of yesteryear nor like the product of our grim, cynical and corporatist postmodern times, the maddening ideological manifestations of which are usually filtered through the perspective of some stooge director. I’m about to tell you about one such film. As stark and unforgiving as her previous works, Andrea Arnold’s new film finds her pondering the aftermath of a mysterious, multi-pronged trauma for yet another soulful, alienated loner. That this shatteringly potent adaptation of Emily Brontë’s too-often-filmed […]
by Brandon Harris on Oct 4, 2012 -
Steve James, Head Games
In my early teens, I played football at Moeller High School. Like most of the children who sought to play for the school that had for decades fielded one of the country’s preeminent high school football teams, the game consumed my life. For a brief period, I would have sacrificed anything to be a starting Crusader footballer. For a time, on the freshman team, I was. A mammoth child (I’ve slimmed a bit since then), although not nearly as mammoth as some of my peers, I played offensive line, where one’s head normally rams, time after time, against that of a […]
by Brandon Harris on Sep 21, 2012 -
Sophia Takal, Green
In Sophia Takal’s Green, a couple of young, New York sophisticates travel upstate in order to research a book on sustainable farming, but when a working-class local woman becomes the object of their affection, jealousy and sexual gamesmanship threaten to ruin their relationship. Mining the insecurities that persist amongst young lovers is not necessarily new ground, but Takal, working with her fiance Lawrence Levine and roommate Kate Lyn Sheil, invests the storytelling with a moody disquiet, an emotional honesty and a jarring sense of foreboding that elevate the film above so many of its predecessors. Widely deploying the color of envy in […]
by Brandon Harris on Sep 7, 2012 -
Kleber Mendonca Filho, Neighboring Sounds
One of the year’s most startling debuts, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Neighboring Sounds is a queasily effective portrait of a society undergoing dynamic change. Unfolding over the course of a few weeks in the perpetually sunny Brazilian metropolis of Recife, the film centers on several families in one upscale block which is surrounded by new development. Yet the perpetual noise of high rise construction isn’t the only thing haunting the denizens of this seemingly comfortable and manicured urban space. Fear of crime and just-under-the-surface racial tension takes its toll on everyone in unspoken ways. Even as fading reminders of Brazil’s ever-present […]
by Brandon Harris on Aug 23, 2012 -
Richard Trank, It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl
Studiously researched, It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodore Herzl reveals the life that informed Austro-Hungarian journalist-playwright Theodor Herzl’s creation of the Zionist Movement, which ultimately led to the founding of the state of Israel. Directed by Richard Trank, the film uses Herzl’s diaries and photographs, correspondence and drama, as well as a limited but effective pool of other historical artifacts to recreate the dynamic world of central European Jewry that Herzl sprang from, while explaining the rapid development of his politic cause in a way that will resonate with both laymen and history buffs alike. Narrated by Ben […]
by Brandon Harris on Aug 9, 2012 -
Mikkel Norgaard, Klown
Long considered one of the funniest shows in Scandinavia, the television series Klown features Danish comedians Casper Christensen and Frank Hvam playing Curb Your Enthusiasm-style variations on themselves, getting into hysterically awkward encounters with friends and strangers, loved ones and frenemies, including other Danish celebrities such as actress Iben Hjejle (High Fidelity, The Boss of It All) and Jørgen Leth (the co-director, with Lars von Trier, of The Five Obstructions). Running for six seasons, it propelled the comic duo to the heights of Danish celebrity and mainstream popularity. Now there is a film version of Klown directed by Mikkel Nørgaard, who conceived and directed much of […]
by Brandon Harris on Jul 25, 2012 -
Benoit Jacquot, Farewell, My Queen
The court intrigue that animates Benoit Jacquot’s Farewell, My Queen — set during the final days of Marie Antoinette’s reign — could be the stuff of so many costume dramas. To his great credit, however, the 65-year-old Parisian director, best known on this side of the pond for his 1995 hotel chamber drama A Single Girl, offers an elliptical, accumulative account of the events, keeping them tightly focused on the experience of the Queen’s private reader Sidonie (Léa Seydoux) as the storm clouds of revolution gather from outside the corridors of Versailles and the regime’s demise very quickly becomes inevitable, even […]
by Brandon Harris on Jul 11, 2012 -
Jonathan Paley, Ballplayer: Pelotero
Although its population is just 2% the size of the US’, the tiny, impoverished Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic accounts for a fifth of all the young men who go on to become Major League Baseball players. How such an astounding share of pro baseball players come from the DR was what Jonathan Paley and his co-directors Ross Finkel and Trevor Martin set out to explore in Ballplayer: Pelotero. However, what they discovered was that, in addition to being a country ripe with baseball talent — one that the MLB has spent considerable resources mining for the past 50 […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 28, 2012 -
Director Matthew Akers on Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present
The self-described “grandmother of performance art,” Marina Abramovic has for almost 40 years been one of the leading lights of a still-marginalized form. Born to ex-partisan parents in 1946, in the early days of Tito’s Yugoslavia, she is the fascinating subject of Matthew Akers’ new documentary, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. Despite her international renown, the Belgrade-born, New York-based Abramovic failed to enter the public consciousness in the States until her blockbuster 2010 MoMA retrospective. Akers’ film is a sinewy tour through Abramovic’s peculiar life and working process as she embarks upon her most high profile performance yet, one […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 13, 2012
