Jimmy's Hall

Jimmy's Hall
La salle de danse

Drama

England, Irland, France, 2015, 109 min.

Director: Ken Loach
Writers: Paul Laverty (screenplay), Donal O'Kelly (play)

Actors:  Barry ward, Francis Magee, Alleen Henry

Distribution:  Métropole Films Distribution

This film is based on a true story of Jimmy (James) Gralton, the only Irish citizen who was ever deported from Ireland in 1933 and was permanently banned from returning back to his country. He died in New York after the end of World War II, in December 1945. The film recounts events leading to his deportation.

The film shows the Ireland's political and social tensions, as well as the general moral and power issues in the late 20th early 30th of the last century. Jimmy returns from America and opens a Hall where people dance, learn Irish-Gaelic language, recite poetry and discuss various issues. Do come and see the film and decide for yourself whether his deportation was justified. The fim has a very touching and quite innocent love story. Whether true to life or invented, it plays a major part in the film.

The film is presently shown at the Montreal's Cinema Excentris. To find more about the scheduling, visit the cinema's website.

Jimmy's Hall Official Trailer 1 (2015) - Barry Ward, Simone Kirby Movie HD

Top photo courtesy of Cinema Excentris.
Film Review © 2015 Nadia Slejskova

Le Sel de la Terre - The Salt of the World

The Salt of the World
Le Sel de la Terre

Documentary
Brasil, Italy, France, 2015, 110 min.

Realisation: Wim Wenders, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado
Distribution: Métropole Films Distribution

This is a remarkable film, a tribute to life and work of the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. The scope of the film is truly epic. It covers 40 years of the photographer's life and takes the spectators through all the major recent events in history, trough international conflicts, starvation, involuntary exodus-migrations and mass death. Salgado's photography reveals the extend of misery millions of people were made to suffer, most of it largely not in the vision-focus of the prosperous nations' populace. The film makes a statement that all the people, each individual person is the salt of the world of this Earth, each equally deserving life, respect, dignity and basic means and conditions for peaceful living.

Salvado's constant work on documenting extreme human suffering, of creating his visual stories of it, caused him to become ill in his body and spirit. He stopped taking pictures for quite a while. What helped him to come back to his art was changing his focus from portraying human misery to concentrating instead on the beauty and power of nature, its ability to regenerate itself, especially when helped by a carrying human hand which rebuilds what was previously destroyed. His latest photographic project is called Genesis. It documents those parts of the world which look like they did at the times of the biblical Genesis, with its pristine vistas, wild flora and fauna, and grandiose landscapes. 

Salvado's photographs are black and white. He works masterfully with many shades of greys to brings depth and expression to his images. His photographs are true works of art with many layers of meaning. I highly recommend everybody to see this film.

Film's trailer

The film is presently shown at the Montreal's Cinema Excentris. To find more about the scheduling, visit the cinema's website.

Film Review © 2015 Nadia Slejskova

Le bruit des arbres - The Sound of Trees

Le Bruit des Arbres
The Sound of Trees
Drama
Québec, 2015, 78 min.

Director: François Péloquin
Actors:  Roy Dupuis, Antoine L’Écuyer, Rémi Goulet
Distribution: K-Films Amérique

This Quebec film is presently in competition at the Karlovy Vary film festival in the Czech Republic. Its contemporary North American setting only intensifies the ages-long universal themes of a father-son relationship, and of a young man coming of age, as well as portraying the general existential dilemma. The conflicts presented are specific to this family and their way of life, but the turmoil the young man feels and the intensity of his feelings and reactions are clearly recognizable as an adolescent's angst, as is his solution out of it - to leave his parents home and to go into the "big" world. And although one might conclude that at the end the young man rejects his father's way of life, not wishing to continue in his footsteps, this might be a precipitated opinion. The son does not burn his bridges with is father just before leaving the town, but rather, with a grand gesture, rebuilds their relationship by placing it on a solid ground. Since he is only 17 years old, his life and experiences might still one day bring him right back to his native town, when the perspective of owning and running a family business and being one's own boss might be much better appreciated. At his present young and rebellious age, he simply is not able to work for his father.

The name of the film Le bruit des arbres, which literally translates as "The Noise of the Trees",  does not refer to the sounds the trees make when swayed by the winds, but rather to the noise produced when they are cut down and processed in the family lamber business. The father hears this noise, the son does not. His ears are plugged with earphones as he listens to a very loud music instead. The word "noise"  most likely also refers to all the external and internal "noise" one creates in one's life and in others who surround him.

The acting is superb. Both Roy Depuis as well as Antoine L’Écuyer who plays his son portray their characters exceptionally well. The scenery of the Gulf of St. Laurence river, where the town is located, is the perfect setting for this film.

The film is presently shown at the Montreal's Cinema Excentris. To find more about the scheduling, visit the cinema's website.

Film's trailer

Top photo courtesy of Cinema Excentris.
Film Review © 2015 Nadia Slejskova

Master of the Universe: Documentary 2013

Master of the Universe


PRODUCTION TEAM:

Director: Marc Bauder

PRODUCERS: Marc Bauder, Nikolus Geyrhalter, Markus Glaser, Michael Kitzberger, Wolfgang Widerhofer

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Borres Weiffenbach
EDITING: Rune Schweitzer, Hansjorg Weilbrich
SOUND: Michel Klöfkorn
MUSIC: B. Flesihmann

LANGUAGE: German
SUBTITLES: English
COUNTRY: Germany, Austria
YEAR: 2013
RUNTIME: 88 min.

WEBSITE: http://www.bauderfilm.de

Official Site: http://www.geyrhalterfilm.com/en/master_of_the_universe

Production Company: Bauderfilm, NDF Geyrhalterfilm, Hessischer Rundfunk, Sudwestrundfunk, arte

International Sales: Autlook Films

The film won the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at the Locarno festival.

This is a very powerful documentary with only one protagonist, a former investment banker Rainer Voss who talks about the financial system and his career in an empty and eerie office tower in Frankfurt's financial district. An initial reaction of many people to this type of a topic would be a disinterest. They might think such a film could not be artistic and would be simply boring. Yet this is certainly not the case of Master of the Universe. This film's way of presenting its subject, its stark cinematography, as well as the choice of sound and music, frame perfectly the subject matter and the protagonist. All of these elements reveal to the viewers a world they have never believed is as sordid as it is. All film's elements help little by little to reveal the dark side of the banker's financial stratosphere, a universe of its own, completely devoid of any social reality or responsibility, a predatory world only concerned with growing its wealth and profit. The film also reveals the protagonist's inner struggle with himself and his past, of which he does not seem at first to be aware.

I question whether Reiner Voss had agreed to be filmed and interviewed as a means to exorcise his inner "financial demons". At the beginning of the film he speaks at times quite boisterously and even with some degree of pride about his financial life and success, about his sky-rocketing career which assured him making 100,00 Euros per month. But the energetic notes eventually fade away, especially in the last third of the film. Whereas at first the spectator might have marvelled at the man's meteoric success, climbing up so quickly and accomplishing so much, towards the end of the film the same spectator will start to understand how the rarefied, sterile, and impersonal world of high finance has moulded this man into becoming an anonymous peg in the huge financial machine so he would serve and promulgate this quite absurd and unreal monster-machine into the never-ending growths and expansion. The financial world has used Voss, has chewed him up and made him do what it wanted, and than it spat him out (he was downsized), thus finally leaving him to face his own humanity and his personal troubling consciousness. In a sense, it seems that participating in the film has helped him to come back to his inner human core faster, and to come face to face with the deep remorse and sorrow he has held hidden inside him.

The last third of the film is the most fascinating. It is stated there that nobody really has a total overview of everything that is going on in a single financial institution such as a bank, and nobody therefore takes a responsibility for the financial outcomes that might shake up the whole world. The blame for some failure is often passed on to the lower echelons of the institution, such as a trader, and the management comes out of it clean. Therefore, nobody really has an overview of the financial system that is running our collective lives. Moreover, what is indeed quite horrific, some financial instruments even such as bonds are set up in such a way that they can be used improperly and even destroy the financial base of entire countries. There is an allusion to that in the film's Trailer bellow. My only regret is that the film does not explain more in detail how that destruction and robbing of the countries is made to be legal,  how is it possible to buy a bond for only a fraction of the price and demand from the impoverished government such as Greece to pay more than 3 times of what was invested, to pay back the 100% face value of the bond. Who approves such bond transactions knowing their destructive power? Are only German banks profiting in such a shady way with bonds, or some other institutions and even private individuals as well?  

The insufficient explanation of the above subject might be due to some legal concerns. Right at the beginning of the film it is stated that both parties - the film makers and Mr. Voss - had consulted their lawyers as to what can be discussed in the film and what should be avoided, as not to bring any harm to themselves and others. 

Film's Trailer




To see - à voir:  

The film will be show as part of RIDM's Docville series at the Cinéma Excentris in Montreal on February 27, 2014, at 8 pm.

http://cinemaexcentris.com/Docville-Master-of-the-Universe

MWFF 2011: House of the Wind

Montreal World Film Festival

House of the Wind

Дом ветра

Production company : Maxim Khusainov, Kinematograph Tretye Tisacheletie, Eniseyskaya ul. Str. 3, # 3402-03, 129344 Moscou
Director : Viatcheslav Zlatopolsky
Script : Alexey Timm
Photography : Radik Askarov
Editor : Zhanna Berger
Cast : Polina Kutepova, Denik Neverov, Valerij Barinov, Elena Morozova, Alexander Ilyin, Alexey Zavyalov
Russia, 106 min.

Official description of the film:

House of the Wind

"An ordinary woman, Taisya Levshina -- a yard cleaner at a children's infectious diseases hospital -- gets bad news: her son, who had gone missing on the violence-ridden southern Russian border, ten years earlier, and for whom she had never given up hope of finding alive, has been confirmed dead. Her hopes dashed and to fill the painful cavity in her soul, Taya takes -- practically kidnaps -- from the hospital, a seven-year old Asian child Timur, who, considering all his diagnoses and medical history, is doomed to a premature demise."

"Two years ago Alexei Timm, the screenwriter, told me that in some newspaper he had read an amazing story: a grandmother had brought her grandson suffering from AIDS to a monastery, they lived there for a long time, and prayed, and eventually the boy recovered. I immediately suggested to Alexei that we do a movie about this, and it turned out that he had already written the script. We only had to find the money. The project was supported by the Ministry of Culture, but there was this condition -- a debutant should make this movie. I sent the script to Slava Zlatopolsky. And I did not regret it." -- Maxim Khusainov (producer)

The film has a spiritual essence that is not immediately obvious. It would be too simplistic to interpret it only from the psychological point of view: a woman receives a news about the death of her son, 10 years after he was lost in action. And she finds a substitute in a seven-year old terminally ill orphan. Such a basic interpretation of the film would still deliver a solid human interest and emotional value. Yet the film conveys much more than that. The main theme is love that sustains life, devoid of any regular material values or relationships.

The main personage is not thinking of herself, or of establishing a future private life for herself. She is not looking for a man, for money, for a better job, or any material advancement. All she aspires to is to sustain life in a small dying boy, who is not related to her and is not even Russian, as she is. For that she abandons her house, her job, and at a desperate moment is even open to commit acts outside of the established laws. Yet despite all that, she never betrays the basic human value – to maintain her unofficially adopted son alive at all costs. At the end, her spiritual essence prevails…

Trailer in Russian