Thursday, February 27, 2014
Thursday, February 20, 2014
New Empress Magazine: Berlinale Roundup
For seven days this February, I found myself in Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz, the architectural glass and steel heart of the 64th annual Berlinale . It’s a surprisingly subdued centre for a city as bohemian as Berlin and for a festival so concerned with giving a platform to the most provocative, inventive, and marginalised voices in cinema. Nonetheless, it was the location for the festival’s gala venue, Berlinale Palast.
The Palast screened all the Competition films of the festival, including the Chinese Silver Bear winner, Black Coal, Thin Ice. Many felt the Competition was rather lukewarm, though one of my personal favourites was in the running, shown at the charmingly art deco Friedrichstadt Palast. Stratos (dir. Yannis Economides) is a Greek neo-noir about a hitman turned vigilante. With a wide-angle lens capturing the craggy Mediterranean backdrop and oblique references to the nation’s economic woes, Economides seems to indict a wide-ranging portion of Greek society. His lead actor, Vangelis Mourikis, gives a performance of solemnity and existential suffering in the vein of Jean-Pierre Melville’s contract killers.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Berlinale Talent Press
Myself, Derek Malcolm, fellow Talent Press critic Karla Loncar, and The Village Voice's Stephanie Zacharek
© David Ausserhofer, Berlinale 2014
I am very proud to have been chosen as one of eight young film critics chosen to take part in Berlinale Talent Press, a critics' talent campus which allows us to cover Berlinale as press. One of the most exciting aspects for me was being able to meet and work with veteran Guardian/London Evening Standard critic Derek Malcolm, who has worked in the field for over 40 years and come across all the greats, from John Ford to Robert Altman to Rainer Werner Fassbinder. I was able to soak in all the chaotic glee of Berlinale, and review several films throughout the week for the Talent Press website, as well. You can find links to the work I did here:
Professional Intimacy: An Interview with Anja Marquardt
Noam's Arch: A Review of Is The Man Who is Tall Happy
Big Fish, Little Fish: A Review of Yannis Economides' STRATOS