Tina Satter’s verbatim film about the FBI’s interrogation of US intelligence leaker Reality Winner, played by The White Lotus’s Sydney Sweeney, is a stranger-than-fiction reflection of our precarious times
Legal transcripts have long provided rich source material for authentically gripping movies. Last year, the Tribeca festival showcased The Courtroom, a well-received deportation drama featuring “dialogue taken directly from court transcripts”. But it’s not just courtrooms that provide such inspiration. Think back to the “verbatim theatre” of Clio Barnard’s 2010 feature debut The Arbor, in which actors lip-synced recorded interviews about the troubled life of the playwright Andrea Dunbar. In the 2013 TV show Nixon’s the One, Harry Shearer reimagined Tricky Dicky’s secret audio tapes as video recordings, creating an absurdist black comedy from word-for-word Oval Office transcripts. More recently, James Spinney and Peter Middleton’s documentary The Real Charlie Chaplin (2021) added dramatised visuals to archived...
Legal transcripts have long provided rich source material for authentically gripping movies. Last year, the Tribeca festival showcased The Courtroom, a well-received deportation drama featuring “dialogue taken directly from court transcripts”. But it’s not just courtrooms that provide such inspiration. Think back to the “verbatim theatre” of Clio Barnard’s 2010 feature debut The Arbor, in which actors lip-synced recorded interviews about the troubled life of the playwright Andrea Dunbar. In the 2013 TV show Nixon’s the One, Harry Shearer reimagined Tricky Dicky’s secret audio tapes as video recordings, creating an absurdist black comedy from word-for-word Oval Office transcripts. More recently, James Spinney and Peter Middleton’s documentary The Real Charlie Chaplin (2021) added dramatised visuals to archived...
- 6/4/2023
- by Mark Kermode
- The Guardian - Film News
Click here to read the full article.
Laura Poitras, the Oscar-winning director of Citizenfour, whose latest doc, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, won the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, will be this year’s guest of honor at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).
IDFA will host a retrospective of Poitras’ work, screening all 7 documentaries she has directed, from her 2003 feature debut Flag Wars, made in collaboration with artist Linda Goode Bryant, a cinéma vérité film on the gentrification of a working-class African American neighborhood by white gays and lesbians, to All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which follows the career of photographer and artist Nan Goldin and her campaign to hold Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family responsible for the opioid addiction crisis. Poitras is perhaps best known for her portraits of Edward Snowden (the Oscar-winning Citizenfour) and Julian Assange (2016’s Risk).
Poitras will also curate...
Laura Poitras, the Oscar-winning director of Citizenfour, whose latest doc, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, won the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, will be this year’s guest of honor at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).
IDFA will host a retrospective of Poitras’ work, screening all 7 documentaries she has directed, from her 2003 feature debut Flag Wars, made in collaboration with artist Linda Goode Bryant, a cinéma vérité film on the gentrification of a working-class African American neighborhood by white gays and lesbians, to All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which follows the career of photographer and artist Nan Goldin and her campaign to hold Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family responsible for the opioid addiction crisis. Poitras is perhaps best known for her portraits of Edward Snowden (the Oscar-winning Citizenfour) and Julian Assange (2016’s Risk).
Poitras will also curate...
- 9/20/2022
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
From Billy Liar to My Summer of Love, the county’s moors and mill towns have been fertile ground for film-makers. Clio Barnard’s Bradford romance is no exception
Claire Rushbrook and Adeel Akhtar are the middle-aged lovers defying familial prejudice and cultural barriers in Ali & Ava (arriving on major VOD platforms on Monday), but that’s only one of the romances unfolding in British director Clio Barnard’s gentle, sentimental film. More metaphorically, Ali & Ava extends Barnard’s ongoing devotion to the Yorkshire city of Bradford, not far from her own home town of Otley.
It’s her third film set in the once-booming beneficiary of the Industrial Revolution, and while she doesn’t over-romanticise Bradford’s mixture of Victorian grandeur and contemporary poverty, a palpable affection for its physical and social geography softens the edges of its realism. More so than in Barnard’s previous Bradford-set films,...
Claire Rushbrook and Adeel Akhtar are the middle-aged lovers defying familial prejudice and cultural barriers in Ali & Ava (arriving on major VOD platforms on Monday), but that’s only one of the romances unfolding in British director Clio Barnard’s gentle, sentimental film. More metaphorically, Ali & Ava extends Barnard’s ongoing devotion to the Yorkshire city of Bradford, not far from her own home town of Otley.
It’s her third film set in the once-booming beneficiary of the Industrial Revolution, and while she doesn’t over-romanticise Bradford’s mixture of Victorian grandeur and contemporary poverty, a palpable affection for its physical and social geography softens the edges of its realism. More so than in Barnard’s previous Bradford-set films,...
- 5/21/2022
- by Guy Lodge
- The Guardian - Film News
Maybe she was kidding, but director Clio Barnard recently described “Ali & Ava” as her shot at making a “social-realist musical.” The phrase, which slipped out during an interview from the BFI London Film Festival, struck me as some kind of oxymoron at first: How could a rugged, true-to-life depiction of a struggling working-class English couple possibly coexist with that most surreal of cinematic genres? But in light of the end result, Barnard’s ambition makes perfect sense. The film’s two title characters don’t burst into song out of the blue but rather, listen to music as an escape from their everyday stresses. It’s the force that brings them together.
Embodied with equal parts weariness and good cheer by British Bengali actor Kamal Kaan (“Four Lions”), Ali is a Yorkshire-based ex-radio DJ who gravitates to dance and electronic music. An Irish transplant to the region, Ava (Claire Rushbrook...
Embodied with equal parts weariness and good cheer by British Bengali actor Kamal Kaan (“Four Lions”), Ali is a Yorkshire-based ex-radio DJ who gravitates to dance and electronic music. An Irish transplant to the region, Ava (Claire Rushbrook...
- 10/28/2021
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Actress Carrie Coon joins Josh and Joe to discuss the Best of what she’s been watching during the pandemic.
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
The Nest (2020)
Gone Girl (2014)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Sabrina (1954)
The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Opening Night (1977)
Husbands (1971)
Too Late Blues (1961)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Faces (1968)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)
Gloria (1980)
Mephisto (1981)
The Cremator (1969)
Zama (2017)
Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts (2017)
Wanda (1970)
Blue Collar (1978)
The Lunchbox (2013)
63 Up (2019)
To Sleep With Anger (1990)
Killer of Sheep (1978)
The Glass Shield (1994)
My Brother’s Wedding (1983)
Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987)
Rio Bravo (1959)
Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979)
Cutter’s Way (1981)
Scenes From A Marriage (1973)
The Magician (1958)
The Silence (1963)
The Magic Flute (1975)
The Last House on the Left (1972)
The Virgin Spring (1963)
Summer with Monika (1953)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Wings of Desire (1987)
Black Girl (1966)
Fat Girl (2001)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Parasite (2019)
Jesus of Montreal (1989)
Other Notable Items...
Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode
The Nest (2020)
Gone Girl (2014)
The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Sabrina (1954)
The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
Opening Night (1977)
Husbands (1971)
Too Late Blues (1961)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Faces (1968)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)
Gloria (1980)
Mephisto (1981)
The Cremator (1969)
Zama (2017)
Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts (2017)
Wanda (1970)
Blue Collar (1978)
The Lunchbox (2013)
63 Up (2019)
To Sleep With Anger (1990)
Killer of Sheep (1978)
The Glass Shield (1994)
My Brother’s Wedding (1983)
Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987)
Rio Bravo (1959)
Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979)
Cutter’s Way (1981)
Scenes From A Marriage (1973)
The Magician (1958)
The Silence (1963)
The Magic Flute (1975)
The Last House on the Left (1972)
The Virgin Spring (1963)
Summer with Monika (1953)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Wings of Desire (1987)
Black Girl (1966)
Fat Girl (2001)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Parasite (2019)
Jesus of Montreal (1989)
Other Notable Items...
- 11/17/2020
- by Kris Millsap
- Trailers from Hell
Principal photography has wrapped on “Ali & Ava,” the fourth feature from writer-director Clio Barnard, starring Adeel Akhtar (“Four Lions”) and Claire Rushbrook (“Secrets & Lies”).
The contemporary British love story follows Ava (Rushbrook), a respected matriarch on a predominantly white Bradford estate masking the scars left by an abusive ex-husband, and Ali (Akhtar), a charismatic son, brother, boss and landlord, still living with his estranged wife but hiding their separation from his family. Both lonely for different reasons, Ava and Ali forge an intimate bond with each other, despite their own fears about intimacy and the expectations of their families and communities.
Pic is produced by Barnard’s long-term producer Tracy O’Riordan of Moonspun Films, with financing from BBC Films, BFI, and Screen Yorkshire. Altitude is handling world sales and U.K. and Irish distribution.
Shooting recently took place on location in Bradford, the setting for Barnard’s previous films.
The contemporary British love story follows Ava (Rushbrook), a respected matriarch on a predominantly white Bradford estate masking the scars left by an abusive ex-husband, and Ali (Akhtar), a charismatic son, brother, boss and landlord, still living with his estranged wife but hiding their separation from his family. Both lonely for different reasons, Ava and Ali forge an intimate bond with each other, despite their own fears about intimacy and the expectations of their families and communities.
Pic is produced by Barnard’s long-term producer Tracy O’Riordan of Moonspun Films, with financing from BBC Films, BFI, and Screen Yorkshire. Altitude is handling world sales and U.K. and Irish distribution.
Shooting recently took place on location in Bradford, the setting for Barnard’s previous films.
- 1/17/2020
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
Ruth Wilson And Clio Barnard On ‘Dark River’, Sheep Shearing And Difficult Memories – Toronto Studio
Clio Barnard has been a powerful indie force on the British film scene since her 2010 debut The Arbor, a stunningly unique portrait of playwright Andrea Dunbar. She followed it up with The Selfish Giant, highlighting the poorest parts of England, and now alights on a similar topic—albeit in wildly different circumstances—with her distinct third film, Dark River, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival this week. The drama, led by a blistering performance by Ruth Wilso…...
- 9/16/2017
- Deadline
UK-based Clio Barnard has impressively transitioned from video artist to acclaimed feature filmmaker in the span of just seven years. After making several short films, her feature debut The Arbor, a hybrid documentary about the late playwright Andrea Dunbar, went on to win a bevy of awards, including London Film Festival’s Best British Newcomer award, Tribeca Film Festival’s Jury Award, British Independent Film Awards’ Douglas Hickox Award, and subsequently a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director, or Producer. Her second feature The Selfish Giant, loosely based on Oscar Wilde’s children’s story of the same name, also […]...
- 9/15/2017
- by Tiffany Pritchard
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
George Costigan: ‘I watched the premiere with my wife on one side of me – and my mother on the other’
Rita, Sue and Bob Too really happened. Andrea Dunbar, who wrote the play and the screenplay, had an affair with a married man, having sex with him in his car, along with her friend Eileen. I commissioned the play as a follow-up to her 1980 drama The Arbor. Andrea was the most talented and original young writer I’d ever come across.
Continue reading...
Rita, Sue and Bob Too really happened. Andrea Dunbar, who wrote the play and the screenplay, had an affair with a married man, having sex with him in his car, along with her friend Eileen. I commissioned the play as a follow-up to her 1980 drama The Arbor. Andrea was the most talented and original young writer I’d ever come across.
Continue reading...
- 6/26/2017
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
A very happy International Women’s Day (and, related, Happy A Day Without A Woman those exercising their ability to strike in order to help highlight the important contributions made by women in the workplace and the world at large) to all of our readers! With this important day in mind, we’ve assembled a list of films, all currently streaming online, that would not exist without the female creators (writers, directors, sometime-stars, and more) who crafted them. It’s just a taste — a nibble, really — of some of the industry’s best examples of forward-thinking, female-driven work.
Read More: IndieWire Stands With Women: 27 TV Shows Created by Women, Starring Women, That We Absolutely Love
Take a peek, and appreciate the power of women and their strong-as-hell creativity and drive.
“Paris Is Burning” (Netflix)
Jennie Livingston’s incisive, intimate and wildly entertaining documentary about New York City “drag ball culture...
Read More: IndieWire Stands With Women: 27 TV Shows Created by Women, Starring Women, That We Absolutely Love
Take a peek, and appreciate the power of women and their strong-as-hell creativity and drive.
“Paris Is Burning” (Netflix)
Jennie Livingston’s incisive, intimate and wildly entertaining documentary about New York City “drag ball culture...
- 3/8/2017
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Cannes Film Festival isn’t expected to get underway until early next week, when Woody Allen’s Cafe Society will jump-start the annual celebration of all things film, but casting news is already beginning to surface online ahead of the event.
Deadline has one of the first scoops, revealing that Game of Thrones and The Martian actor Sean Bean is in contention to board Dark River, the British indie drama in the works from Clio Barnard (The Selfish Giant). Opening negotiations with Flim4 and Left Bank Pictures, it’s understood that Mark Stanley is also circling a part in the anticipated flick.
Even at such an early stage in her career, Clio Barnard has fast become one of the most exciting new talents rising through the ranks of the British film industry. In fact, Barnard’s feature-length debut The Arbor – a documentary that centered on Andrea Dunbar’s flailing playwright...
Deadline has one of the first scoops, revealing that Game of Thrones and The Martian actor Sean Bean is in contention to board Dark River, the British indie drama in the works from Clio Barnard (The Selfish Giant). Opening negotiations with Flim4 and Left Bank Pictures, it’s understood that Mark Stanley is also circling a part in the anticipated flick.
Even at such an early stage in her career, Clio Barnard has fast become one of the most exciting new talents rising through the ranks of the British film industry. In fact, Barnard’s feature-length debut The Arbor – a documentary that centered on Andrea Dunbar’s flailing playwright...
- 5/3/2016
- by Michael Briers
- We Got This Covered
Meet some of the best directors working today, who haven't gone down the blockbuster movie route...
Ever find it a bit lame when the same big name directors get kicked around for every high profile project? Christopher Nolan, Jj Abrams, maybe the Russo Brothers? With so much focus on blockbuster films these days, getting a major franchise job seems like the main acknowledgement of success for a filmmaker. And yes, both the financial and creative rewards can be great. But there are plenty of other directors out there, doing their own thing, from art house auteurs to Dtv action specialists.
Here are 25 examples.
Lee Hardcastle
Even if you don’t know his name, you’ve probably seen Lee Hardcastle’s ultraviolent claymations shared on social media. He first started getting noticed for his two-minute remake of The Thing, starring the famous stop motion penguin Pingu. Far from just a cheap one-joke mash-up,...
Ever find it a bit lame when the same big name directors get kicked around for every high profile project? Christopher Nolan, Jj Abrams, maybe the Russo Brothers? With so much focus on blockbuster films these days, getting a major franchise job seems like the main acknowledgement of success for a filmmaker. And yes, both the financial and creative rewards can be great. But there are plenty of other directors out there, doing their own thing, from art house auteurs to Dtv action specialists.
Here are 25 examples.
Lee Hardcastle
Even if you don’t know his name, you’ve probably seen Lee Hardcastle’s ultraviolent claymations shared on social media. He first started getting noticed for his two-minute remake of The Thing, starring the famous stop motion penguin Pingu. Far from just a cheap one-joke mash-up,...
- 9/30/2015
- by simonbrew
- Den of Geek
Clio Barnard’s stark yet heart-wrenching film The Selfish Giant (2013, UK) offers two fantastic performances from its young stars in their acting debut. Matt Price discusses how his costume design for the film reflects the strong, relatable characters so well…
It is lunchtime in London as costume designer Matthew Price shuffles into the Curzon, Soho. Recently collaborating with Clio Barnard on the Bafta nominated film, The Selfish Giant, reuniting after experimental documentary The Arbour, Price is surprisingly reserved about his work. “I wasn’t really sure if they’d take me on again,” he says of Barnard and producer Tracey O’Riordan. “The Arbour did quite well so I didn’t know if they’d interview designers with more experience but luckily they asked me to do it.”
Connor Chapman as Arbour wearing a pair of rigger boots. These are a commonly worn workwear boot and stereotypically, if accurately, connected with the traveller community.
It is lunchtime in London as costume designer Matthew Price shuffles into the Curzon, Soho. Recently collaborating with Clio Barnard on the Bafta nominated film, The Selfish Giant, reuniting after experimental documentary The Arbour, Price is surprisingly reserved about his work. “I wasn’t really sure if they’d take me on again,” he says of Barnard and producer Tracey O’Riordan. “The Arbour did quite well so I didn’t know if they’d interview designers with more experience but luckily they asked me to do it.”
Connor Chapman as Arbour wearing a pair of rigger boots. These are a commonly worn workwear boot and stereotypically, if accurately, connected with the traveller community.
- 7/25/2014
- by Lord Christopher Laverty
- Clothes on Film
★★★★☆After making a distinguished filmmaking debut with the widely acclaimed The Arbor (2010) - a documentary hybrid portraying the late, Bradford-born playwright Andrea Dunbar, British director Clio Barnard returns with her sophomore feature The Selfish Giant (2013), a fictional work inspired by the Oscar Wilde tale of the same name. Encapsulating the themes and morality lessons of Wilde's original text, Barnard repackages the children-oriented parable and gives it a gritty social realist edge in the mould of Ken Loach, focusing on two unruly boys on the precipices of a dangerously premature adulthood.
- 1/28/2014
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Clio Barnard's affecting take on Oscar Wilde's fable sees a pair of outsiders scrabble to survive on a poor Bradford estate
Director Clio Barnard's first feature, The Arbor, was an extraordinary account of the hard life and times of the playwright Andrea Dunbar which pushed at the boundaries of documentary film-making. A "verbatim drama" which included extracts from Dunbar's work performed on Bradford's Buttershaw estate, the film used audio interviews with the late playwright's friends and family to which actors performed note-perfect lip-synched "readings", creating a haunting and disorienting fusion of fact and fiction. On the surface, Barnard's latest feature is more formally conventional, drawing on the neorealist tradition of Ken Loach (the ghost of Kes hovers overhead) to tell the story of two young boys from Bradford who turn to the scrap metal trade to support their struggling families. Yet scratch the surface and those same cross-generic fluidities are still present,...
Director Clio Barnard's first feature, The Arbor, was an extraordinary account of the hard life and times of the playwright Andrea Dunbar which pushed at the boundaries of documentary film-making. A "verbatim drama" which included extracts from Dunbar's work performed on Bradford's Buttershaw estate, the film used audio interviews with the late playwright's friends and family to which actors performed note-perfect lip-synched "readings", creating a haunting and disorienting fusion of fact and fiction. On the surface, Barnard's latest feature is more formally conventional, drawing on the neorealist tradition of Ken Loach (the ghost of Kes hovers overhead) to tell the story of two young boys from Bradford who turn to the scrap metal trade to support their struggling families. Yet scratch the surface and those same cross-generic fluidities are still present,...
- 10/26/2013
- by Mark Kermode
- The Guardian - Film News
The devastating emotional legacy left by Bradford council estate playwright Andrea Dunbar to her children is chronicled in director Clio Barnard's revelatory docu-drama. Using real actors lip-synching the conversations of Dunbar's damaged kids, a grim picture of neglect, alcoholism, drug abuse and racism slowly emerges. The final tragedy is the death of Dunbar's two-year-old grandson – who she never met – after he unwittingly drinks a teaspoon of his junkie mother's methadone.
- 10/23/2013
- Sky Movies
★★★★☆ British social realism gets a welcome shot in the arm this week with the release of Cannes Director's Fortnight hit (and Lff select) The Selfish Giant (2013), the new feature from The Arbor (2010) director Clio Barnard. Known for her poignant installation work that blends documentary with a variety of other modes and forms, Barnard brought the Bradford of the late playwright Andrea Dunbar vividly to life with The Arbor, returning to the area once again for a more straightforward, though no less compelling portrayal of working-class life, with Oscar Wilde's short story of the same name providing the drama's basic framework.
Central to Barnard's latest is the friendship between hyperactive 13-year-old Arbor (a superb debut performance from Conner Chapman) and his best friend Swifty (fellow newcomer Shaun Thomas). After one misdemeanour too many at the local secondary school the two boys beg and plead with Kitten (Shameless' Sean Gilder) -...
Central to Barnard's latest is the friendship between hyperactive 13-year-old Arbor (a superb debut performance from Conner Chapman) and his best friend Swifty (fellow newcomer Shaun Thomas). After one misdemeanour too many at the local secondary school the two boys beg and plead with Kitten (Shameless' Sean Gilder) -...
- 10/23/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Clio Barnard's first film The Arbor was a ground-breaking look at life on a Bradford estate. Now she's returned to the area – to chronicle its teenage scrap-dealers. Patrick Barkham joins the set of The Selfish Giant to find out why
Dark clouds are gathering on the horizon, and the air around the substation is full of crackles and hums. Five concrete cooling towers loom over a large hole in the ground. In the hole shiver Conner Chapman, 13, and Shaun Thomas, 15, who are about to rob some cabling from this power station near Derby.
"Conner, you're sawing away," barks the first assistant director, a bit of a drill sergeant.
"Why would I be sawing if I can't see owt?" queries his 13-year-old leading man, who then questions the position of the manhole cover. "I tell you, it would be better if you opened it that side up."
"True," says Clio Barnard,...
Dark clouds are gathering on the horizon, and the air around the substation is full of crackles and hums. Five concrete cooling towers loom over a large hole in the ground. In the hole shiver Conner Chapman, 13, and Shaun Thomas, 15, who are about to rob some cabling from this power station near Derby.
"Conner, you're sawing away," barks the first assistant director, a bit of a drill sergeant.
"Why would I be sawing if I can't see owt?" queries his 13-year-old leading man, who then questions the position of the manhole cover. "I tell you, it would be better if you opened it that side up."
"True," says Clio Barnard,...
- 10/20/2013
- by Patrick Barkham
- The Guardian - Film News
Clio Barnard's The Arbor charted the troubled life of working-class playwright Andrea Dunbar. Her new film, The Selfish Giant, about two boys who scavenge to survive on a Bradford estate, has been called 'a Kes for the 21st century'. Here she talks about the appeal of the margins
Back in 2010, when Clio Barnard was shooting her first feature film, The Arbor, on the Buttershaw estate in Bradford, a young local lad caught her eye. "I first saw him when he was just 14, when I went to Buttershaw to do a workshop at a school," she recalls. "There was just something about him that was different from the other lads I met. He was a bit volatile, but enigmatic too and he really made his presence felt. When I went to Brafferton Arbor [the street on which The Arbor is set] for the first time, there he was, wearing his rigger boots and really dirty clothes. It was pure attitude,...
Back in 2010, when Clio Barnard was shooting her first feature film, The Arbor, on the Buttershaw estate in Bradford, a young local lad caught her eye. "I first saw him when he was just 14, when I went to Buttershaw to do a workshop at a school," she recalls. "There was just something about him that was different from the other lads I met. He was a bit volatile, but enigmatic too and he really made his presence felt. When I went to Brafferton Arbor [the street on which The Arbor is set] for the first time, there he was, wearing his rigger boots and really dirty clothes. It was pure attitude,...
- 10/12/2013
- by Sean O'Hagan
- The Guardian - Film News
In an uncommonly strong first five days, one of the two or three standouts of the festival thus far is Clio Barnard’s sophomore feature, The Selfish Giant. In 2010, the artist filmmaker wowed critics with The Arbor, an experimental documentary about Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar that mixed hard-hitting recreations with lip-synced performances. Again set in Bradford, The Selfish Giant sees Barnard turn her hand assuredly to more traditional filmmaking, though there is nothing run-of-the-mill about her blend of ragged immediacy...
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- 5/19/2013
- by Jamie Graham
- TotalFilm
Clio Barnard, whose film has been described as 'hauntingly perfect', says Brits should be 'very proud' of their native industry
There may be no British film in the main competition for the Palme D'Or this year, but that has not stopped a Yorkshirewoman from becoming the toast of Cannes. Clio Barnard's film The Selfish Giant has already been described as "hauntingly perfect" and "jaggedly moving" by critics as it premieres in the Director's Fortnight section of the film festival, with the director herself hailed as a significant new voice in British cinema.
And, despite gloominess about the complete absence of a UK presence from the main Cannes competition lineup, Britons should embrace their native film industry, according to Barnard. "We should be very proud of, in the same way that we should be proud of the NHS," she said.
While "the rest of the world responds to it", she said,...
There may be no British film in the main competition for the Palme D'Or this year, but that has not stopped a Yorkshirewoman from becoming the toast of Cannes. Clio Barnard's film The Selfish Giant has already been described as "hauntingly perfect" and "jaggedly moving" by critics as it premieres in the Director's Fortnight section of the film festival, with the director herself hailed as a significant new voice in British cinema.
And, despite gloominess about the complete absence of a UK presence from the main Cannes competition lineup, Britons should embrace their native film industry, according to Barnard. "We should be very proud of, in the same way that we should be proud of the NHS," she said.
While "the rest of the world responds to it", she said,...
- 5/18/2013
- by Charlotte Higgins
- The Guardian - Film News
An intensely felt piece of social realism, reinventing Oscar Wilde's story, shows director Clio Barnard growing into one of Britain's best young film-makers
British film-maker Clio Barnard made a sensational debut with The Arbor in 2010, about the troubled dramatist Andrea Dunbar: a brilliant and eerily dreamlike film which won the passionate admiration of David Hare and David Thomson among many others. Actors recreated scenes from Dunbar's life and lip-synched into camera using tape-recorded testimony from Dunbar's friends and family. Now Barnard's intensely anticipated follow-up has arrived at Cannes, showing in the Director's Fortnight strand. It is a variation on a theme by Oscar Wilde, a new secular version of Wilde's children's tale The Selfish Giant, which challenges the audience to rethink how redemption is achieved in a world without Christ and which of its characters the title actually refers to.
This film may not exactly have the sophistication of The Arbor,...
British film-maker Clio Barnard made a sensational debut with The Arbor in 2010, about the troubled dramatist Andrea Dunbar: a brilliant and eerily dreamlike film which won the passionate admiration of David Hare and David Thomson among many others. Actors recreated scenes from Dunbar's life and lip-synched into camera using tape-recorded testimony from Dunbar's friends and family. Now Barnard's intensely anticipated follow-up has arrived at Cannes, showing in the Director's Fortnight strand. It is a variation on a theme by Oscar Wilde, a new secular version of Wilde's children's tale The Selfish Giant, which challenges the audience to rethink how redemption is achieved in a world without Christ and which of its characters the title actually refers to.
This film may not exactly have the sophistication of The Arbor,...
- 5/17/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The Margaret Thatcher era left an indelible mark on British cinema – not all of it negative. Here we select some key films that distilled the essence of Thatcher's Britain, for better or worse
My Beautiful Laundrette, 1985. Dir: Stephen Frears
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The spirit of free enterprise underpins the Hanif Kureishi-scripted, Stephen Frears-directed comedy – mordant but forward-looking in its equation of immigrant thrift with modern conservative values. Omar, son of a campaigning journalist-in-exile, turns to launderette-management, drug-stealing and inter-ethnic gay sex to boot. Genuinely groundbreaking in its subtle and empathetic portrait of a British Asian community, My Beautiful Laundrette was a teasing provocation to the mindset of the 70s old left. Daniel Day Lewis, of course, made a massive impact as punk rocker Johnny, a stereotype confounder who deserts his street-fighting confreres for Omar's charms. Kureishi's prescience even ran to the...
My Beautiful Laundrette, 1985. Dir: Stephen Frears
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The spirit of free enterprise underpins the Hanif Kureishi-scripted, Stephen Frears-directed comedy – mordant but forward-looking in its equation of immigrant thrift with modern conservative values. Omar, son of a campaigning journalist-in-exile, turns to launderette-management, drug-stealing and inter-ethnic gay sex to boot. Genuinely groundbreaking in its subtle and empathetic portrait of a British Asian community, My Beautiful Laundrette was a teasing provocation to the mindset of the 70s old left. Daniel Day Lewis, of course, made a massive impact as punk rocker Johnny, a stereotype confounder who deserts his street-fighting confreres for Omar's charms. Kureishi's prescience even ran to the...
- 4/8/2013
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
“Let’s start before we kill the term,” joked Jakob Hogel during the opening moments of “The Future of Hybrid Films,” a panel that took place last week at Copenhagen’s Cph:dox. Preempting musty debate about the so-called hybrid genre, where various forms — usually documentary and fiction — are combined in single works, Hogel said, “We should be beyond the point of whether hybrid films exist, are dubious or morally wrong. They exist and who cares?”
Hogel’s dismissal of hybrid handwringing doesn’t mean that the issues posed by such films aren’t being debated in the film industry. It’s just these debates are more likely now to concern issues of funding, marketing and production rather than storytelling ethics or artistic viability. Indeed, the question of just how to promote the hybrid film took center stage as commissioning editors and funders discussed the hybrid films they’ve been involved with.
Hogel’s dismissal of hybrid handwringing doesn’t mean that the issues posed by such films aren’t being debated in the film industry. It’s just these debates are more likely now to concern issues of funding, marketing and production rather than storytelling ethics or artistic viability. Indeed, the question of just how to promote the hybrid film took center stage as commissioning editors and funders discussed the hybrid films they’ve been involved with.
- 11/15/2012
- by Scott Macaulay
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The backlash against the Academy’s recent changes to its nomination policies for documentary films contrasted with the casual atmosphere of last night’s Cinema Eye Honors. In an intimate theater at the Museum of the Moving Image, the pillars of the documentary community gathered to celebrate the breadth and diversity of their craft. In attendance were Frederick Wiseman, Al Maysles, Steve James, Alex Gibney, Michael Moore, Joe Berlinger, Bruce Sinofsky and many more. Founder and co-host Aj Schnack spoke of the Cinema Eyes evolution prior to the awards:
“Some things about Cinema Eye are the same as they were that first time that we gathered together at the IFC Center in 2008 – that sense of community, a feeling that we are honoring our community’s values of respecting artistic craft and recognizing the entire collaborative team. What’s changed is that instead of just a couple of us making the event happen,...
“Some things about Cinema Eye are the same as they were that first time that we gathered together at the IFC Center in 2008 – that sense of community, a feeling that we are honoring our community’s values of respecting artistic craft and recognizing the entire collaborative team. What’s changed is that instead of just a couple of us making the event happen,...
- 1/13/2012
- by Daniel James Scott
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
I tossed. I turned. I Excel'ed. I Worded. I laughed at myself. I laughed at everyone else and their equally crazy assertions during top ten season. I worried what y'all might think. I worried about how I do think! And then I cast it all aside and just started typing and getting real with myself. You see, in earlier drafts of this Hugo and The Tree of Life, for example, were much higher but you know what? This is not consensus. This is me. Year End "Best" naming rituals are meant to be personal even though they're communal. Gather 'round my fire. There are plenty of places to keep warm, this being just one of them. (If you must skip ahead a few pages The Tree of Life dropped a few notches and Hugo no longer appears at all; I do not miss it all and, thus, made the right call.
- 1/1/2012
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Countdown to Top Ten 2K11 is a column with one simple goal: to help you decide what films you need to see before making your end of the year top ten list. Each installment features my thoughts on a critically acclaimed 2011 movie, a sampling of other critics' reactions, the odds of the film making my own list, and the reasons why it might make yours.
This time we're covering "The Arbor," an unusual blend of documentary and fiction techniques. But is it more than the sum of its unique formal parts? Let's find out.
Movie: "The Arbor"
Director: Clio Barnard
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%
Plot Synopsis: A documentary about the life of English playwright Andrea Dunbar, who died at the young age of 29, and the children she left behind.
What the Critics Said: "Ingenious," Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club
"Tough, worthy stuff," Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
"Make[s] us...
This time we're covering "The Arbor," an unusual blend of documentary and fiction techniques. But is it more than the sum of its unique formal parts? Let's find out.
Movie: "The Arbor"
Director: Clio Barnard
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95%
Plot Synopsis: A documentary about the life of English playwright Andrea Dunbar, who died at the young age of 29, and the children she left behind.
What the Critics Said: "Ingenious," Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club
"Tough, worthy stuff," Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
"Make[s] us...
- 11/28/2011
- by Matt Singer
- ifc.com
by Vadim Rizov
The late British playwright Andrea Dunbar's main claim to fame was her 1982 play "Rita, Sue and Bob Too"—or, rather, the 1987 film version of it, which attracted viewers not necessarily interested in the social problems of life on council estates. Dunbar's unsparing ear for life among disenfranchised citizens in the middle of the U.K. analogue to housing projects was tempered by director Alan Clarke's endless tracking shots, which give momentum and verve to lives lacking either. Followed for 50 feet at a time at remarkable speed, Rita's characters are turned into energetic leads despite a background where thick, Yorkshire-accented variants on "You bastard!" are the most commonly heard refrain. The sheer degree of free-floating hostility is unexpectedly comical in its excess: these are people who clearly enjoy yelling at each other.
Though Rita's view on social problems came via energetic tracking shots, The Arbor director...
The late British playwright Andrea Dunbar's main claim to fame was her 1982 play "Rita, Sue and Bob Too"—or, rather, the 1987 film version of it, which attracted viewers not necessarily interested in the social problems of life on council estates. Dunbar's unsparing ear for life among disenfranchised citizens in the middle of the U.K. analogue to housing projects was tempered by director Alan Clarke's endless tracking shots, which give momentum and verve to lives lacking either. Followed for 50 feet at a time at remarkable speed, Rita's characters are turned into energetic leads despite a background where thick, Yorkshire-accented variants on "You bastard!" are the most commonly heard refrain. The sheer degree of free-floating hostility is unexpectedly comical in its excess: these are people who clearly enjoy yelling at each other.
Though Rita's view on social problems came via energetic tracking shots, The Arbor director...
- 9/6/2011
- GreenCine Daily
Release Date: Sept. 6, 2011
Price: DVD $24.99
Studio: Strand Releasing
Natalie Gavin portrays playwright Andrea Dunbar in The Arbor.
The critically lauded 2010 documentary The Arbor follows Lorraine Dunbar, eldest daughter of the acclaimed British playwright Andrea Dunbar, as she and her siblings seek to understand the struggles their late mother faced. Well-known for her three unflinchingly honest play about her distressing upbringing on the Arbor, a notoriously underprivileged residential area in West Yorkshire, Andrea Dunbar died tragically in 1990 at the age of 29 from a brain hemorrhage.
One of Dunbar’s plays, Rita, Sue and Bob Too, was adapted into a movie in 1986 by Alan Clarke.
Directed by first-time feature helmer Clio Barnard, The Arbor is comprised of personal letters, interviews with Andrea’s family and friends and a reading of her first play, which also happens to be entitled The Arbor. Uniquely, there are sequences wherein actors mouth the words of pre-recorded interviews of the Dunbar family,...
Price: DVD $24.99
Studio: Strand Releasing
Natalie Gavin portrays playwright Andrea Dunbar in The Arbor.
The critically lauded 2010 documentary The Arbor follows Lorraine Dunbar, eldest daughter of the acclaimed British playwright Andrea Dunbar, as she and her siblings seek to understand the struggles their late mother faced. Well-known for her three unflinchingly honest play about her distressing upbringing on the Arbor, a notoriously underprivileged residential area in West Yorkshire, Andrea Dunbar died tragically in 1990 at the age of 29 from a brain hemorrhage.
One of Dunbar’s plays, Rita, Sue and Bob Too, was adapted into a movie in 1986 by Alan Clarke.
Directed by first-time feature helmer Clio Barnard, The Arbor is comprised of personal letters, interviews with Andrea’s family and friends and a reading of her first play, which also happens to be entitled The Arbor. Uniquely, there are sequences wherein actors mouth the words of pre-recorded interviews of the Dunbar family,...
- 8/9/2011
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
This year seems to be off to a slow start but here's what I'd choose as the best of the year thus far. I've excluded films that are still waiting for their proper release like Andrew Haigh's finely tuned miniature gay drama Weekend (which has been collecting festival trophies and which I loved) and Paddy Considine's discomfiting abuse drama Tyrannosaur which I did not love but which boasts impressive acting.
Top Ten Pictures (alpha order)
The Arbor, Beginners, Bridesmaids, Certified Copy, Jane Eyre, Midnight in Paris, Poetry, Rango, The Tree of Life and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. You can see a complete list of what I've seen here.
[Notable films that I did plan to see but will have to catch on DVD include: Hanna, The Housemaid and Win Win]
Director
Clio Barnard - The Arbor
Lee Chang-dong - Poetry
Abbas Kiarostami -Certified Copy
Terrence Malick -The Tree Of Life
Mike Mills -Beginners
notes: I gave Barnard the slight edge over Apichatpong Weerathesakul...
Top Ten Pictures (alpha order)
The Arbor, Beginners, Bridesmaids, Certified Copy, Jane Eyre, Midnight in Paris, Poetry, Rango, The Tree of Life and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. You can see a complete list of what I've seen here.
[Notable films that I did plan to see but will have to catch on DVD include: Hanna, The Housemaid and Win Win]
Director
Clio Barnard - The Arbor
Lee Chang-dong - Poetry
Abbas Kiarostami -Certified Copy
Terrence Malick -The Tree Of Life
Mike Mills -Beginners
notes: I gave Barnard the slight edge over Apichatpong Weerathesakul...
- 7/5/2011
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
The Arbor
Directed by Clio Barnard
2011, USA
In her video instillation piece Trauma 2000, the British conceptual artist Gillian Wearing placed want ads in various newspapers, seeking individuals willing to be taped while detailing their most painful, intimate stories. Of those who volunteered, many opened up about the emotional, physical and sexual abuse they had suffered as children and as spouses. To make the telling bearable – indeed, possible – Wearing employed a device: each volunteer donned a cheap, near-featureless plastic mask that hid the entire face except for the eyes. The masks add an additional layer of aesthetic distance, erecting a second artifice between subject and viewer, this one more readily visible than the camera itself. Like the camera, the eye slits focus both attention and expressive intent. We are drawn to the way the pupils dance in the white of the sclera, the blinks and darts moving in time with the timber of the voice.
Directed by Clio Barnard
2011, USA
In her video instillation piece Trauma 2000, the British conceptual artist Gillian Wearing placed want ads in various newspapers, seeking individuals willing to be taped while detailing their most painful, intimate stories. Of those who volunteered, many opened up about the emotional, physical and sexual abuse they had suffered as children and as spouses. To make the telling bearable – indeed, possible – Wearing employed a device: each volunteer donned a cheap, near-featureless plastic mask that hid the entire face except for the eyes. The masks add an additional layer of aesthetic distance, erecting a second artifice between subject and viewer, this one more readily visible than the camera itself. Like the camera, the eye slits focus both attention and expressive intent. We are drawn to the way the pupils dance in the white of the sclera, the blinks and darts moving in time with the timber of the voice.
- 5/26/2011
- by Louis Godfrey
- SoundOnSight
Melissa Anderson for Artforum: "After last year's glut of bumptious, high-profile nonfiction films — some of which were revealed to be hoaxes (Casey Affleck's I'm Still Here), possible hoaxes (Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop), or artless, witless pseudohoaxes (Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman's Catfish) — Clio Barnard's Brechtian documentary The Arbor stands out all the more for its seamless hybridization of fact and fiction. Barnard, an artist making her feature-length directorial debut, traces the troubled life and legacy of British playwright Andrea Dunbar (1961–1990), whose highly autobiographical work chronicled her grim existence on the Bradford, West Yorkshire, council estate where she grew up. (And which she never left: Dunbar died of a brain hemorrhage at age 29, shortly after collapsing at her local pub.) Though widely acclaimed for her three plays — her first, The Arbor, premiered in 1980 at London's Royal Court Theatre; her second, Rita, Sue and Bob Too, was made...
- 4/29/2011
- MUBI
Weekend Preview: Fast Five Pumps Testosterone, Prom Tween Fantasy, 13 Assassins, Cave 3-D, The Arbor
It's a weekend of extremes, with the Fast Five testosterone-fest, a Prom tween fantasy, not one but 13 Assassins and a Hoodwinked Too! that no one asked for. Several indie gems are mixed in with some less-inspiring releases: we recommend Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3-D and Clio Bernard's documentary on playwright Andrea Dunbar, The Arbor, a film that turns the term 'documentary' on its head but "once you settle in, [Bernard's technique] proves enormously effective," writes ThePlaylist. "Barnard is able to expertly weave the narrative, dropping hints of the darkness early on while never quite giving the game away." Reviews, pictures, trailers and details on this weekend's offerings are below: Our own Anthony D'Alessandro writes that "gas-strapped Americans are expected to break ...
- 4/29/2011
- Thompson on Hollywood
Opening in limited release this week is an eclectic batch: Clio Barnard's unique exploration of playwright Andrea Dunbar, "The Arbor," Werner Herzog's 3-D history lesson, "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," Benjamin Heisenberg's German bank robber flick "The Robber," Takashi Miike's Japanese import, "13 Assassins," television producer Philip Rosenthal's doc on bringing his "Everybody Loves Raymond" to Russia, "Exporting Raymond," and Mark Ruffalo's directorial debut, "Sympathy For Delicious." The clear critics' pick ...
- 4/28/2011
- Indiewire
Raised in a housing project in Bradford, Yorkshire, British playwright Andrea Dunbar was only 15 when her first semi-autobiographical work, The Arbor, attracted attention by expressing her hardscrabble life with authentic grit and dark humor. Her screenplay for Alan Clarke’s 1987 film Rita, Sue And Bob Too! brought her to a wider audience, but her career was cut short three years later when she died from a brain hemorrhage at age 29. She left behind three children with three different fathers, each of them dealing with sour memories of their mother and a crippling legacy of poverty, neglect, sexual ...
- 4/27/2011
- avclub.com
Raised in a housing project in Bradford, Yorkshire, British playwright Andrea Dunbar was only 15 when her first semi-autobiographical work, The Arbor, attracted attention by expressing her hardscrabble life with authentic grit and dark humor. Her screenplay for Alan Clarke’s 1987 film Rita, Sue And Bob Too! brought her to a wider audience, but her career was cut short three years later when she died from a brain hemorrhage at age 29. She left behind three children with three different fathers, each of them dealing with sour memories of their mother and a crippling legacy of poverty, neglect, sexual ...
- 4/27/2011
- avclub.com
Raised in a housing project in Bradford, Yorkshire, British playwright Andrea Dunbar was only 15 when her first semi-autobiographical work, The Arbor, attracted attention by expressing her hardscrabble life with authentic grit and dark humor. Her screenplay for Alan Clarke’s 1987 film Rita, Sue And Bob Too! brought her to a wider audience, but her career was cut short three years later when she died from a brain hemorrhage at age 29. She left behind three children with three different fathers, each of them dealing with sour memories of their mother and a crippling legacy of poverty, neglect, sexual ...
- 4/27/2011
- avclub.com
Raised in a housing project in Bradford, Yorkshire, British playwright Andrea Dunbar was only 15 when her first semi-autobiographical work, The Arbor, attracted attention by expressing her hardscrabble life with authentic grit and dark humor. Her screenplay for Alan Clarke’s 1987 film Rita, Sue And Bob Too! brought her to a wider audience, but her career was cut short three years later when she died from a brain hemorrhage at age 29. She left behind three children with three different fathers, each of them dealing with sour memories of their mother and a crippling legacy of poverty, neglect, sexual ...
- 4/27/2011
- avclub.com
Raised in a housing project in Bradford, Yorkshire, British playwright Andrea Dunbar was only 15 when her first semi-autobiographical work, The Arbor, attracted attention by expressing her hardscrabble life with authentic grit and dark humor. Her screenplay for Alan Clarke’s 1987 film Rita, Sue And Bob Too! brought her to a wider audience, but her career was cut short three years later when she died from a brain hemorrhage at age 29. She left behind three children with three different fathers, each of them dealing with sour memories of their mother and a crippling legacy of poverty, neglect, sexual ...
- 4/27/2011
- avclub.com
It's the one-year anniversary of Clio Barnard's big win for Best New Documentary filmmaker at Tff '10 for her pseudo-doc The Arbor, and it's celebrating with a New York release. The film will screen at Film Forum for a two-week engagement, so if you missed it at Tribeca last year, now's your chance! Since its Tff premiere and win, The Arbor has continued to reel in the awards, receiving 5 Bifa nominations, including a Best Debut Director win for Barnard; 3 nominations from the London Critics Circle Film Awards; a BAFTA nomination for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer; and the Guardian (UK) First Film Award. The Arbor tells the tragic story of Andrea Dunbar, a British playwright who found fame in her teens during the '80s with works such as Rita Sue and Bob Too (also a film), before her sudden death at age 29. Barnard spent...
- 4/27/2011
- TribecaFilm.com
Although Clio Barnard’s new film The Arbor chronicles the rough-and-tumble life of celebrated British playwright Andrea Dunbar (Rita, Sue and Bob Too), an alcoholic who died from a brain hemorrhage at age 29, it is anything but conventional in its aims and methodology. Shot in and around Brafferton Arbor, a street on the Buttershaw Estate in Bradford, Yorkshire, where Dunbar lived and worked while raising her three children, The Arbor reconstructs the late writer’s gritty milieu through the testimony of her eldest daughter Lorraine and other family members, whose words are lip-synched by professional actors in evocative set-designed environments. Barnard, an installation artist and filmmaker who used the technique previously for a 1998 short film called Random Acts of Intimacy, also cuts in scenes from Dunbar’s heavily autobiographical play The Arbor, performed outdoors by a mix of actors and estate residents, as well as bits of archive.
Though embraced...
Though embraced...
- 4/27/2011
- by Damon Smith
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
“Time heals all wounds,” goes an old adage with which everyone involved in The Arbor would likely take issue. Clio Barnard’s cinematic assemblage on English playwright Andrea Dunbar is certainly a document of sorts, but to call it a documentary would be to slight it: The Arbor is equal parts fact, reenactment, and archival footage. Adding to the genre-blending is a series of audio interviews recorded with Dunbar’s siblings, children (particularly Lorraine, in many ways the main “character” of the film), and acquaintances which Barnard then had actors lip-synch onscreen. The result is at first off-putting, eventually immersive, and unlike any other film that comes to mind. Barnard’s created artifact constantly blurs the line between its component parts and, in so doing, refuses to be pigeonholed as it relates the unresolved questions of its subjects. Cathartic revelations are in short supply here, but saying the film concludes...
- 4/27/2011
- by Michael Nordine
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
In this deeply bleak documentary, director Clio Barnard looks to explore the life, works and impact of Andrea Dunbar, a British playwright known for shining a light on and giving voice to the impoverished and hardened people of Bradford, England.
Andrea Dunbar was just 15 when she wrote her first play, The Arbor, for a class assignment. Three years later, she was a single mom with a show at the Royal Court Theater in London, drawing notice for a relentless and raw look at her own life, telling the story of a girl from a tough part of town who falls for a seemingly sweet Pakistani man despite the racism of her environment. But things turn from bad to worse when her unintended pregnancy exposes her to the vitriol of her abusive father and the dark side of her lover. In real-life, this short-lived love affair resulted in Dunbar’s first-born,...
Andrea Dunbar was just 15 when she wrote her first play, The Arbor, for a class assignment. Three years later, she was a single mom with a show at the Royal Court Theater in London, drawing notice for a relentless and raw look at her own life, telling the story of a girl from a tough part of town who falls for a seemingly sweet Pakistani man despite the racism of her environment. But things turn from bad to worse when her unintended pregnancy exposes her to the vitriol of her abusive father and the dark side of her lover. In real-life, this short-lived love affair resulted in Dunbar’s first-born,...
- 4/27/2011
- by Kristy Puchko
- The Film Stage
Reviewed by Randee Dawn
(from the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival)
Directed by: Clio Barnard
Starring: Manjinder Virk, Christine Bottomley, Monica Dolan, Neil Dudgeon, Danny Webb and Jimi Mistry
There are documentaries and there are narrative features; “The Arbor” is a little of both, but first and foremost it is a documentary. Just how it goes about presenting itself is either a brilliant stylistic interpretation or a gimmick , and perhaps, by the end of the film, it’s a little of both of those things, too.
So back up a bit: “The Arbor” is in large part the story of playwright Andrea Dunbar, who wrote about growing up in a West Yorkshire, England, housing project (the “arbor” refers to the green common area in the project, which was also the title of her first play) in the 1960s-1980s. By the time she died suddenly in 1990, she had three children by three fathers,...
(from the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival)
Directed by: Clio Barnard
Starring: Manjinder Virk, Christine Bottomley, Monica Dolan, Neil Dudgeon, Danny Webb and Jimi Mistry
There are documentaries and there are narrative features; “The Arbor” is a little of both, but first and foremost it is a documentary. Just how it goes about presenting itself is either a brilliant stylistic interpretation or a gimmick , and perhaps, by the end of the film, it’s a little of both of those things, too.
So back up a bit: “The Arbor” is in large part the story of playwright Andrea Dunbar, who wrote about growing up in a West Yorkshire, England, housing project (the “arbor” refers to the green common area in the project, which was also the title of her first play) in the 1960s-1980s. By the time she died suddenly in 1990, she had three children by three fathers,...
- 4/25/2011
- by admin
- Moving Pictures Network
Reviewed by Randee Dawn
(from the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival)
Directed by: Clio Barnard
Starring: Manjinder Virk, Christine Bottomley, Monica Dolan, Neil Dudgeon, Danny Webb and Jimi Mistry
There are documentaries and there are narrative features; “The Arbor” is a little of both, but first and foremost it is a documentary. Just how it goes about presenting itself is either a brilliant stylistic interpretation or a gimmick , and perhaps, by the end of the film, it’s a little of both of those things, too.
So back up a bit: “The Arbor” is in large part the story of playwright Andrea Dunbar, who wrote about growing up in a West Yorkshire, England, housing project (the “arbor” refers to the green common area in the project, which was also the title of her first play) in the 1960s-1980s. By the time she died suddenly in 1990, she had three children by three fathers,...
(from the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival)
Directed by: Clio Barnard
Starring: Manjinder Virk, Christine Bottomley, Monica Dolan, Neil Dudgeon, Danny Webb and Jimi Mistry
There are documentaries and there are narrative features; “The Arbor” is a little of both, but first and foremost it is a documentary. Just how it goes about presenting itself is either a brilliant stylistic interpretation or a gimmick , and perhaps, by the end of the film, it’s a little of both of those things, too.
So back up a bit: “The Arbor” is in large part the story of playwright Andrea Dunbar, who wrote about growing up in a West Yorkshire, England, housing project (the “arbor” refers to the green common area in the project, which was also the title of her first play) in the 1960s-1980s. By the time she died suddenly in 1990, she had three children by three fathers,...
- 4/25/2011
- by admin
- Moving Pictures Magazine
Documentaries often toy with the conventions of non-fiction storytelling to the detriment of their content, but Clio Barnard's innovative "The Arbor" provides a welcome exception to the norm. Tracking the experiences of British playwright Andrea Dunbar and her children, Barnard uses actors to lip-sync the words of their real life counterparts, creating an unexpectedly engaging narrative device. Dunbar, whose fleeting existence ended in 1990 at the age of 29, lived ...
- 4/25/2011
- Indiewire
When I first saw Clio Barnard’s The Arbor a year ago at the Tribeca Film Festival I thought it was hands down the best film there, if not one of the best films I saw all year, but also an incredible challenge from a marketing point of view. How do you sell an experimental biopic of an obscure British playwright—or more exactly of the obscure British playwright’s daughter—a film mired in racism and drug abuse on a forlorn English council estate, let alone encapsulate it in a poster? Strand Releasing’s one-sheet, which I like a lot, does a good job of drawing your attention. Though I tend to dislike posters with too many press quotes, The Arbor needs them. Though the poster is intriguing, what does it exactly tell you? That the film is set in a British working class area (if you recognise the...
- 4/22/2011
- MUBI
Age: 46 Hometown: Santa Barbara (but she grew up in the North of England) Why She's On Our Radar: "The Arbor" is a remarkable new entry into Britain's tradition of social realism. It portrays the life of the late Andrea Dunbar, a troubled playwright who wrote about her experiences in working-class Northern England. Barnard took hundreds of hours of tape recordings with Dunbar's family and friends and hired actors to ...
- 4/15/2011
- indieWIRE - People
Age: 46 Hometown: Santa Barbara (but she grew up in the North of England) Why She's On Our Radar: "The Arbor" is a remarkable new entry into Britain's tradition of social realism. It portrays the life of the late Andrea Dunbar, a troubled playwright who wrote about her experiences in working-class Northern England. Barnard took hundreds of hours of tape recordings with Dunbar's family and friends and hired actors to ...
- 4/15/2011
- indieWIRE - People
Age: 46 Hometown: Santa Barbara (but she grew up in the North of England) Why She's On Our Radar: "The Arbor" is a remarkable new entry into Britain's tradition of social realism. It portrays the life of the late Andrea Dunbar, a troubled playwright who wrote about her experiences in working-class Northern England. Barnard took hundreds of hours of tape recordings with Dunbar's family and friends and hired actors to ...
- 4/15/2011
- Indiewire
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