Harun Farocki
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Fabricated: Petzold’s Astounding Phoenix
Still bearing facial scars from vain attempts to kill her in a concentration camp, the festering infection that followed, and drastic plastic surgery to re-create her (the doctor’s term) in a hospital in her bombed-out hometown of Berlin, the once ravishing Jewish chanteuse Nelly Lenz (Nina Hoss) recklessly saunters out alone into the night to search for the Aryan pianist husband she has not seen since her arrest. Extremely self-conscious, she asks a blind street musician where to even begin looking. Pointedly, he recommends the American sector: That’s where the clubs and the action are. The film’s title is the […]
by Howard Feinstein on Jul 24, 2015 -
Survivor’s Song: Christian Petzold on Phoenix
The more you consider the nuances of German filmmaker Christian Petzold’s latest feature, Phoenix, the more difficult it is to articulate exactly what this mysterious and allusive drama is really about. It’s the director’s seventh feature for cinema (discounting the five he has made for television), and the fifth he has made in collaboration with actress and avowed muse Nina Hoss. While not quite stripped down to Bressonian levels of formal curtness, Petzold’s style is without fuss. As he explains below, his mode of storytelling is generally more reflective and assiduously built through alternating perspectives than it is literal or […]
by David Jenkins on Jul 23, 2015 -
Tracking Changes: The 53rd Ann Arbor Film Festival
One of the unexpected pleasures of the 53rd Ann Arbor Film Festival (AAFF) was, at first, a cringe-inducing annoyance. It began with the first screening on Wednesday morning, a presentation of work by AAFF juror Jesse McLean. The lights dimmed in the Michigan Theater Screening Room, the smaller of two auditoriums used by AAFF in the spectacular Michigan Theater. Just as the audience nestled into their seats and darkness took hold of the room, something interrupted the transfixed environment: a wincing screech from the front of the room. The sound continued for several seconds before halting with a loud thud. Then, […]
by James Hansen on Apr 20, 2015 -
“Is This Line to See the Avant-Garde Show?”: NYFF 2014 Projections
There was an inauspicious start to the New York Film Festival’s inaugural Projections sidebar, a weekend showcase of experimental film and video, which, for 17 years prior as “Views from the Avant-Garde,” had been curated by Mark McElhatten and Gavin Smith. Nearly an hour before the first screening, a long line extended along the exterior glass wall of the Eleanor Bunin Film Center. Having successfully secured my tickets, I scuttled around looking for familiar faces in the crowd. As I began chatting with a friend, an elderly gentleman with a confused expression approached us. “Excuse me. Is this line to […]
by James Hansen on Nov 7, 2014 -
DOCUMENTARIES GO IN BLOOM AND UNDER THE KNIFE
As part of her series “Documentaries in Bloom” at the Maysles Center, curator, critic, and Filmmaker contributor Livia Bloom has assembled a fascinating program this week comprised of three rarely shown films all dealing with plastic surgery and the construction of beauty. The centerpiece is Mitch McCabe’s feature Youth Knows No Pain, in which the filmmaker (and daughter of a plastic surgeon) examines America’s “culture of anti-aging,” juxtaposing her research with an examination of not only her own face but her own attitudes towards her body as a result of being her father’s daughter. I saw the film when it […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 14, 2010
