For a man whose personal mission has been to “build bridges through cinema,” as he told La Repubblica newspaper in an interview just published this week, his latest film may prove the most important peace-making link yet.
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'Being Maria' Cannes Review: A problematic woman or simply someone who dared to call it like it is?
Cinematic, albeit scandalous history was made in 1972 when Bernardo Bertolucci’s ‘Last Tango in Paris’ was first screened. Now French filmmaker Jessica Palud, with the help of a book written by Maria Schneider’s cousin, retells the story to finally bring out the heroine in a woman who simply stood up for herself. And, as is often the case for strong women, lost.
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Re-evaluating the power of cinema: Amos Gitai's 'Shikun' at Berlinale
If you’d asked me a year ago did I believe cinema could change the world, I would have answered you with an enthusiastic “yes!” Now? Read on to find out…
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'High & Low: John Galliano' London review
There are so many layers to filmmaker Kevin Macdonald’s film that it would take more than a few hundred words to get to them all. At the core of this stunning must-watch documentary is a fashion hero turned antihero who could be a poster child for explaining our current times.
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Emilia Derou Bernal and Julien Debard in a still from Anaïs Volpe’s ‘Indemnes’
Anaïs Volpé's 'Indemnes' reinvents the palette of tragedy at the International Film Festival Rotterdam
How do you personally survive tragedy, when it hits close to home?
It’s a question that has played in my mind over and over in the last few months. Each of us has a distinct and very human way of dealing with personal tragedy, and none of it is wrong or right, I’ve figured out. It just is.
Filmmaker Anaïs Volpé says that her way of coping with terrorist attacks, which have hit very close to home, literally for the Parisian, is to turn blood into glitter and imagine that the victims have gone to a better place. We hear that time and time again, “they have gone to a better place now,” but in Volpé’s exquisite ‘Indemnes’ (which translates to “Unharmed”) that better place is filled with color, beauty, peace and harmony. It’s a beautiful view into the afterlife, complete with stylish golden jackets, from an artist who has had her own creative style from the get-go.
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Ralph Fiennes directs Oleg Ivenko during the filming of ‘The White Crow’
Perfection: Ralph Fiennes' 'The White Crow' at the Cairo Film Fest
Rudolf Nureyev must be the most selfish man who ever lived!
That statement came from a woman in the audience, at the “In Conversation with Ralph Fiennes” that I was fortunate enough to moderate during this year’s Cairo International Film Festival. It was followed by a question about Fiennes’ latest directorial project, ‘The White Crow’, a moving, elegant film about Russian dancer extraordinaire Rudolf Nureyev’s defection to the West — and the events leading up to it.
But the question itself didn’t leave with me as lasting an impression as her statement, probably because in the very moment the woman uttered the above words, I stopped listening. I was too busy working out deep inside me why I hadn’t felt that way at all about Nureyev, and his decision depicted in the film. In the following days, I’ve worked out the answer. It’s a response I’ve probably been leading up to my entire life and career.
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Hédi Jouini and Ninette in 1946
A chat with Claire Belhassine about 'The Man Behind the Microphone' as the film prepares to screen at Manarat in Tunisia
English-born filmmaker Claire Belhassine didn't know, for most of her young life, that her grandfather was Hédi Jouini, who is recognized as the Godfather of Tunisian music and the “Tunisian Frank Sinatra.” She spent summers in the company of her Tunisian extended family, yet they never talked of his historic past — and this is a man who was even featured on a Tunisian postage stamp! Until, one day in the back of a Paris taxi, she learned that her grandfather Hédi was a superstar.
So how is that possible, you may be thinking right about now? Well, I won't give the details of Belhassine's spellbinding and utterly pleasant to watch documentary away, but I will tell you that the filmmaker takes us on a personal journey with her, accompanied by Jouini's music and her own soothing narrative.
This coming week, 'The Man Behind the Microphone' premieres in Tunis at the Manarat Film Festival of the Mediterranean in Tunisia, a passion project by another wondrous woman, producer Dora Bouchoucha. The film originally world premiered at the Dubai International Film Festival where I watched it and it was probably the most interactive film there, complete with an impromptu concert on the beach by some of Belhassine's talented family.
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