Authors — Christopher Small
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“My Parents Supported Me Making This Art about Them”: Nira Burstein on Charm Circle
After appearing in the international competition at Sheffield DocFest 2021 (where I then worked as a programmer) and being hailed by press, juries, and audiences alike as one of the major highlights of the festival, Nira Burstein’s Charm Circle went on to international festivals around the world. I finally caught up with Burstein in Lisbon, after the film’s premiere at Doclisboa, one of Europe’s finest documentary festivals. After COVID prevented me—but not Nira!—from attending Sheffield in June, and with that incarnation of the festival now decisively a thing of the past, I was eager to catch up with her to […]
by Christopher Small on Nov 12, 2021 -
“My Production Costs the Same as a Digital Film”: Philippe Garrel on The Salt of Tears
Philippe Garrel is in recognisably a “late” stage of his career as a filmmaker. He has moved past the point of going for broke. His characters, avatars for any given idea he may be preoccupied with, border on the archetypal. The settings are stripped down, reduced to their essence. His concerns, by this stage, are variations on a few basic themes. He is a commanding narrative presence, the authorial space in which he is most free to assert himself idiosyncratically. With all this in mind, viewers’ mileage may vary. Those of us who take pleasure in the relaxed vibes of […]
by Christopher Small on Sep 22, 2020 -
“People Tend to Push the Film Away”: Cristi Puiu on Malmkrog
There was nothing at Berlinale quite like Malmkrog. I say this first with the authority of having seen it almost immediately after my train arrived on the first of what would be ten disappointing days at the 70th edition of the festival. Relative to Malmkrog, the other big directors at the festival mostly played it safe. And having this behemoth—an adaptation of a 1900 Russian text by Vladimir Soloviev entitled War and Christianity: Three Conversations—as the inaugural film of the new Encounters section at the festival was one of the boldest decisions undertaken by the festival’s new artistic team. That the […]
by Christopher Small on Sep 18, 2020 -
“There’s Really No Plan for This Film at All”: Tsai Ming-Liang on Days
Speaking to Tsai Ming-liang is itself like a Tsai scene. On the day of my interview with the Taiwanese director, the whole of Potsdamer Platz—the main hub for the Berlinale—feels emptied out of its inhabitants. His new film Days has premiered in the competition late into the festival, after the industry presence has largely packed up and flown out. By this point, the grand space of the Berlinale Palast in midday is like a shopping mall in a zombie movie, abandoned to a splintered cadre of bodies shuffling under an eternity’s worth of exhaustion and weariness. The revolving lights in […]
by Christopher Small on Mar 5, 2020 -
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020: The Gaze of the Old Filmmaker
Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? — William Blake As one of the centerpiece programs at the 49th edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), “The Tyger Burns” was a canny display of un-hipness. What a joy it was to pay repeated witness to such a mammoth series of movies so gleefully, so wilfully out of touch. What better way to undercut the widespread love of emerging voices, new talents and young geniuses than to turn to aging, even senile artists who have either fallen […]
by Christopher Small on Feb 20, 2020 -
“Can’t Tell That to the Landlord”: Abel Ferrara on The Projectionist, Tommasso and Crack City Terminator
Abel Ferrara is a hurricane. And like a hurricane, it is close to impossible to anticipate where he’s going to go at any given time. More than that, any hope of influencing the outcome of either is well beyond the limits of human control. Admirers with the good fortune to spend some time with the man can attest that getting Ferrara to stick to the script is largely a fool’s errand. In my case, it was because he had two new movies (The Projectionist, Tommasso) playing at consecutive festivals (Doclisboa, the Viennale) I happened to attend. At a certain point […]
by Christopher Small on Feb 11, 2020 -
Viennale 2019: Liberation and Squalor
I had been waiting years to see Sílvia das Fadas’ movies. Whatever the circumstance, I knew it would be a waiting game. By implicitly “limiting” her audience in only showcasing the work in 16mm, Fadas gives her movies a second life. She puts the brakes on the consumption machine. Perhaps fewer people will see them. Perhaps. “Accessibility” itself is a vague, even dubious premise in a rarefied festival world dominated by powerful distributors with the means to withhold movies for different audiences at will. For many of those with the desire to seek out her movies, the individual films, in […]
by Christopher Small on Feb 10, 2020 -
Dive In: Doclisboa 2019
Let’s state the obvious: attending a film festival for a prolonged period is a privileged experience. Few can boast that they got to spend a week sitting and watching movies all day. You have two options on your hands in attending any festival. There is the Indiana Jones approach: run in, grab the treasure and bottle it out the door. Assuming you have the inclination, this is your ticket to compile a gratifying best-of-the-year list in a relatively bloodless fashion. In this case, movie festivals become a convenient service with a practical goal: better to see this stuff here than […]
by Christopher Small on Dec 18, 2019 -
Spectacle, Controversy and the Septic: Pingyao International Film Festival 2019
This is a strange place to have a revelation. I’m sitting in a movie theatre in Pingyao, Shanxi Province, China. I have shrunken into a cosy corporate space which, once the house lights are put out, is soothingly anonymous. I’m briefly hidden from the startling and imposing hubbub of the Pingyao International Film Festival, a “boutique” film festival founded by the great Jia Zhangke in 2017; hiding, as it were, in plain sight. All this festival’s state-sponsored glitz, its overproduced sleekness, the ubiquity of its many, many attendees, the drone of voices in the street, the scooters caroming by—all of […]
by Christopher Small on Nov 27, 2019 -
“I Chose to Yell, You Chose to Whisper:” Zhang Yimou and Jia Zhangke at Pingyao International Film Festival
I was loitering around the ticket office of the Pingyao International Film Festival, waiting for the day to begin. This was the second morning of the festival and, like all international delegates, I was still adjusting to being in China. That adjustment is at least threefold: to the time zone, to the food and to the place. Already I had seen Jia Zhangke, festival founder and one of the greatest of all directors, mobbed by legions of fans. I had seen Zhao Tao standing tall and beautiful in the queue for the opening film, apparently invisible to those around her. […]
by Christopher Small on Nov 26, 2019
