Livia Bloom
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Courage of Conviction: A Conversation with Ida Director Pawel Pawlikowski
Although state-side cinephiles may not be familiar with the work of filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski or the nuances of Polish history, here at Filmmaker Magazine we suspect you’re about to find both deeply compelling. In Ida, a beautifully wrought gem of a film, the writer/director brings audiences the story of Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), a young orphan raised by Polish Catholic nuns who meets her next of kin — the hard-drinking and cynical Wanda (Agata Kulesz) — on the eve of joining the convent, and learns that her family is Jewish. Together, the women set off on a road trip seeking the truth about their family’s past. In this conversation, Pawlikowski discusses his […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on May 5, 2014 -
The Luxury of Unhappiness: Director Hany Abu-Assad Talks Omar
In 2002, Palestine made its first Best Foreign Language Film submission to the Academy Awards. Despite accepting films from Puerto Rico, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not accept their submission. But by the next year, the policy had changed: the Palestinian Ministry of Culture’s submission, Divine Intervention by Elia Suleiman, was accepted. Three years later, Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now, the acclaimed and controversial story of two Palestinian men planning a suicide attack on Tel Aviv, was not only accepted as Palestine’s submission, it was also one of the final five nominees competing […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Feb 24, 2014 -
Hot to the Touch: Abdellatif Kechiche on Blue is the Warmest Color
When Adèle eats spaghetti, it’s a sensual affair. The camera studies every move of her mouth, every lick of her fingers and knife. Her eyes are saucers. Her full lips pout. Unlike the slurpy absurdity of noodle-eating in Juzo Itami’s Tampopo, in Blue is the Warmest Color, spaghetti is no laughing matter; it’s a matter of love. And, since it’s directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, it’s also a matter of class: Adèle’s comfort food indexes a working-class background that cannot be left behind. “That is a theme that one could say is central across all my films,” Kechiche said to me […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Oct 21, 2013 -
Permanent Vacation: Harmony Korine on Spring Breakers
HARMONY KORINE goes wild with Spring Breakers, a sun-drenched, candy-colored tale of teen queens on the run.
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Jan 21, 2013 -
Angela Davis on Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners
“When the doors slid open, furious flashes of light jolted me out of my reflections. That’s why they had cuffed by hands in front. As far as I could see, reporters and photographers were crowded into the lobby. Trying hard not to look surprised, I lifted my head, straightened my back and between the two agents, made the long walk through the light flashes and staccato questions toward the caravan waiting outside.” These lines from Angela Davis’s 1974 autobiography, written at the age of 28 and edited by Toni Morrison, describe the way she remembers a humiliating perp walk four […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 15, 2012 -
Actress Nathalia Acevedo on Post Tenebras Lux
Post Tenebras Lux, the film that won Mexican auteur Carlos Reygadas the Best Director award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, has a story. But what it’s really about, first and foremost, isn’t narrative but texture: The grainy wetness of mud in an open field. The harsh bristle of matted dog fur. The wet steam of a tiled sauna. It’s also about sound, from the giggle of a boy being tickled by his father to the thunder of rugby cleats on a hard floor. Shot in a box-y 4:3 aspect ratio with intermittently hazy edges, Post Tenebras Lux (the title translates […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 13, 2012 -
DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE: A TORONTO 2012 PREVIEW
The optimist and the contrarian may find common ground in anticipation; to be a festivalgoer at the Toronto Film Festival is to be a bit of both. Particularly when preceded by negative reviews trickling out of earlier festivals in Cannes, Locarno, Venice and Berlin or less-than-enticing trailers, the debut of new work from filmmakers who have proven themselves capable of greatness can have cinephiles’ hearts in their throats. What if the hype is true, and your favorite living director is no longer creating essential work? Yet with reports of boos just might come a sneaking desire to go to that movie anyway. See […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 4, 2012 -
Todd Solondz on Career Longevity and Dark Horse
Todd Solondz just scored one of the best reviews of his career with A.O. Scott’s New York Times rave for Dark Horse, opening today. Favorably comparing it to Death of a Salesman (!), Scott writes: But Mr. Solondz brilliantly — triumphantly — turns this impression on its head, transforming what might have been an exercise in easy satirical cruelty into a tremendously moving argument for the necessity of compassion. Again and again — in the ’90s indie touchstones Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, and more recently in Life During Wartime — this director has blurred the boundary between misanthropy […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 8, 2012 -
Writer/Director Todd Solondz on Dark Horse
“I want to want you,” says the cripplingly depressed Miranda (Selma Blair) to her suitor with excruciating honesty. The coddled, overweight Abe (Jordan Gelber), a compulsive collector who still lives at home with his parents (Mia Farrow and Christopher Walken), will take what he can get. “That’s enough for me,” he breathes. In Todd Solondz’s Dark Horse, the queasy tale of a 35-year-old man-child who decides to add a wife to his possessions, the writer-director’s dialogue is as sharp as ever, each line an arrow poisoned with sincerity. Known for colorful, stylized, cynical films including Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Jun 7, 2012 -
TORONTO 2011: “WAVELENGTHS” PART II
The adventurous Wavelengths experimental film programs at the Toronto International Film Festival, curated first by Susan Oxtoby and then, in recent years, by Andréa Picard, are a true festival highlight. 2011 was exemplary in this regard, its five experimental programs marked by a diverse range of aesthetics and artistic projects. An eerie mood pervades the smart, surprising Sea Series #10 by John Price, one of the only films in the 2011 Wavelengths experimental program at the Toronto International Film Festival explicitly inspired by world events. An intertitle explains that the film was made “10,190 km from Fukushima” on May 21, 2011, two months after the deadly Japanese […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 20, 2011
