Every December it bears repeating: Anyone who thinks this was a bad year for movies simply hasn’t seen enough. In an age of binge-viewing, a preponderance of must-see premium cable shows and, hell, even smartphone apps that command far more attention most feature-length achievements, the true range of quality cinema is often obscured by the noise of an ever-cluttered media landscape. To really assess the state of modern movies, one look beyond the obvious. Sure, it was a weak year for movies that stand out mainly due to star power and sizable marketing budgets, but those options represent only a small fraction of the marketplace.
The film festival circuit provides an ideal alternative to conventional channels for discovering movies worth talking about all year long — and, if they’re lucky enough to land distribution, they quality for year-end celebration on lists like this one. This year, every single finalist...
The film festival circuit provides an ideal alternative to conventional channels for discovering movies worth talking about all year long — and, if they’re lucky enough to land distribution, they quality for year-end celebration on lists like this one. This year, every single finalist...
- 12/5/2016
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Sergei Loznitsa’s Austerlitz, a record of tourists visiting the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, could be loglined as a movie about why it’s a transparently bad idea to take selfies at Holocaust sites, but that would be reductive and far too banal a point to need making at feature length. The film is in low-contrast black-and-white, and how could it be in color? The visual language of extant Holocaust footage is B&W, so Loznitsa maintains visual and historical continuity. The opening movement is not that far off from, of all things, In the City of Sylvia, with long shots of tourists milling about in multiple compressed planes the […]...
- 9/11/2016
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Grasshopper Film continues to win brownie points among cinephiles with the upcoming release of “The Academy of Muses,” a festival-circuit favorite that might otherwise have slipped through the theatrical cracks. The trailer for the latest film by José Luis Guerín, who won praise for “In the City of Sylvia,” is now available.
Read More: Locarno Review: Romantic Comedy or Philosophical Debate? Jose Luis Guerin’s ‘The Academy of Muses’ is Both
It begins with a woman recounting a myth about Cupid shooting his arrow, first at Apollo and then at Daphne, each with a different effect: Apollo is fated to fall in love with the first creature he sees, Daphne to run away from the first man she sees. The rest of the conversation-heavy trailer is complemented by a string section and pull quotes from cinephilic outlets like Fandor’s Keyframe and Mubi’s Notebook singing the film’s praises.
Read More: Exclusive: Grasshopper Film Picks Up Robert Greene’s Sundance Winner ‘Kate Plays Christine’
Like fellow Grasshopper selection “Kaili Blues,”Guerín’s film premiered at the Locarno Film Festival last summer. Grasshopper is set to release “The Academy of Muses” on September 2 at Anthology Film Archives in New York.
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Related storiesThe Business of Too Much TV & Six Other Top Longreads of the WeekExclusive: Grasshopper Film Picks Up Robert Greene's Sundance Winner 'Kate Plays Christine'Hong Sangsoo Plays With Time in Backwards 'Right Now, Wrong Then' Trailer...
Read More: Locarno Review: Romantic Comedy or Philosophical Debate? Jose Luis Guerin’s ‘The Academy of Muses’ is Both
It begins with a woman recounting a myth about Cupid shooting his arrow, first at Apollo and then at Daphne, each with a different effect: Apollo is fated to fall in love with the first creature he sees, Daphne to run away from the first man she sees. The rest of the conversation-heavy trailer is complemented by a string section and pull quotes from cinephilic outlets like Fandor’s Keyframe and Mubi’s Notebook singing the film’s praises.
Read More: Exclusive: Grasshopper Film Picks Up Robert Greene’s Sundance Winner ‘Kate Plays Christine’
Like fellow Grasshopper selection “Kaili Blues,”Guerín’s film premiered at the Locarno Film Festival last summer. Grasshopper is set to release “The Academy of Muses” on September 2 at Anthology Film Archives in New York.
Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
Related storiesThe Business of Too Much TV & Six Other Top Longreads of the WeekExclusive: Grasshopper Film Picks Up Robert Greene's Sundance Winner 'Kate Plays Christine'Hong Sangsoo Plays With Time in Backwards 'Right Now, Wrong Then' Trailer...
- 6/16/2016
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
I saw The Academy of Muses a month ago and have considered it almost every day since then, turning over in my mind the clearly defined ideas, only-half-understood narrative directions, and documentary-narrative distinctions that mark José Luis Guerín‘s first fiction feature since 2007’s In the City of Sylvia. Those who go into it blind won’t initially find much distinction, though: there might instead be the belief they’ve entered an At Berkeley-esque documentary about European academia — until the movie slowly becomes something much more complicated, and then blossoms into full-on drama.
Grasshopper Film — recently of Fireworks Wednesday and Kaili Blues, and soon to release Right Now, Wrong Then and Don’t Blink – Robert Frank — will begin distributing The Academy of Muses stateside this September, and has let us premiere the trailer. A film with as many moving parts probably couldn’t be captured in a two-minute preview, so the strategy, it seems, is one of general mood and feeling, here communicated in the best way: through Guerín’s mixture of verbosity with light-streaked, reflection-heavy images. If what’s seen herein manages to intrigue, the full experience is certain to captivate.
See it below:
Synopsis:
A university professor teaches a class on muses in art and literature as a means of romancing his female students in this breathtaking new film from Jose Luis Guerín, director of the widely heralded In the City of Sylvia. Part relationship drama, part intellectual discourse, the film centers on a philology professor — played by actual philology professor Raffaele Pinto — and the women surrounding him: his wife and students. But as each and every player engages in debates — concerning, among other things, art, the artist’s perspective, and male-female dynamics — Guerín focuses as much attention on the slippery boundary between documentary and fiction, in turn engaging with an evolving narrative, increasingly complex character dynamics, and an endlessly vivid emotional journey.
The Academy of Muses begins a U.S. theatrical run at New York’s Anthology Film Archives on September 2.
Grasshopper Film — recently of Fireworks Wednesday and Kaili Blues, and soon to release Right Now, Wrong Then and Don’t Blink – Robert Frank — will begin distributing The Academy of Muses stateside this September, and has let us premiere the trailer. A film with as many moving parts probably couldn’t be captured in a two-minute preview, so the strategy, it seems, is one of general mood and feeling, here communicated in the best way: through Guerín’s mixture of verbosity with light-streaked, reflection-heavy images. If what’s seen herein manages to intrigue, the full experience is certain to captivate.
See it below:
Synopsis:
A university professor teaches a class on muses in art and literature as a means of romancing his female students in this breathtaking new film from Jose Luis Guerín, director of the widely heralded In the City of Sylvia. Part relationship drama, part intellectual discourse, the film centers on a philology professor — played by actual philology professor Raffaele Pinto — and the women surrounding him: his wife and students. But as each and every player engages in debates — concerning, among other things, art, the artist’s perspective, and male-female dynamics — Guerín focuses as much attention on the slippery boundary between documentary and fiction, in turn engaging with an evolving narrative, increasingly complex character dynamics, and an endlessly vivid emotional journey.
The Academy of Muses begins a U.S. theatrical run at New York’s Anthology Film Archives on September 2.
- 6/15/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
The dust has settled on the Locarno Film Festival, and L’Accademia delle muse remains. Seen towards the start of the festival in the Signs of Life parallel sections, José Luis Guerín's latest film has already claimed a top spot in Mubi’s retrospective round-up of Locarno, which would make the task of praising it here redundant were it not for the need to explore in more detail the sheer exhilaration that thinking about the film continues to provoke.Daniel Kasman has already touched upon the intricate game of cat-and-mouse that the film plays with documentary form. Starting out as a chronicle upon a philology workshop exploring the figure of the muse, the film quickly (but discreetly, the move only becoming obvious in retrospect) segues into a fiction exploring the network of desires and resentments underlying the teacher’s romantic involvement with his pupils. Debates surrounding literature and reading...
- 9/1/2015
- by Nathan Letoré
- MUBI
"Spanish director José Luis Guerín is best known in the States for his pseudo-fictional love letter to women-watching In the City of Sylvia," begins Daniel Kasman in the Notebook, "but in fact is a prolific documentary filmmaker and has brought with him to Locarno the lovely and elegant pseudo-documentary L’Accademia delle Muse [The Academy of Muses]. Playful and clever as ever, Guerín has collaborated with Professor Raffaele Pinto and several actresses, perhaps students, to stage a false course in philology." We're collecting more reviews and interviews. » - David Hudson...
- 8/18/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
"Spanish director José Luis Guerín is best known in the States for his pseudo-fictional love letter to women-watching In the City of Sylvia," begins Daniel Kasman in the Notebook, "but in fact is a prolific documentary filmmaker and has brought with him to Locarno the lovely and elegant pseudo-documentary L’Accademia delle Muse [The Academy of Muses]. Playful and clever as ever, Guerín has collaborated with Professor Raffaele Pinto and several actresses, perhaps students, to stage a false course in philology." We're collecting more reviews and interviews. » - David Hudson...
- 8/18/2015
- Keyframe
Spanish director José Luis Guerín is best known in the States for his pseudo-fictional love letter to women-watching In the City of Sylvia, but in fact is a prolific documentary filmmaker and has brought with him to Locarno the lovely and elegant pseudo-documentary L’Accademia delle Muse. Playful and clever as ever, Guerín has collaborated with Professor Raffaele Pinto and several actresses, perhaps students, to stage a false course in philology. The class, populated almost entirely by women, discusses the nature, influence and meaning of muses in poetry, and what starts as seemingly a documentary on this classroom, its teacher and a few select students, subtly evolves into a drama of words and unseen actions.The issues at stake as discourse in the class—what desire means, if it has to be sexual, the difference between a woman and a muse, how a lover influences the beloved and vice versa...
- 8/10/2015
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerin, 2007) A city of pedestrian streets, bicycles and terrace cafés, haunted by the image of a woman (Pilar López de Ayala) that the male protagonist (Xavier Lafitte) met six years previously. A city haunted by the traces of memories that fill its corners. In this film—a sublime lesson in montage and one of the most startling studies of the cinematic frame—Strasbourg is a dance of feminine gestures and expressions seizing the man’s look. A city where wall inscriptions evoke the obsessions of Italian poets, where ghostly encounters and partings occur in public space, a city where fugitive bodies and faces become an ever-changing landscape where the hero projects his fantasies. >> - Cristina Alvarez Lopez...
- 11/28/2014
- Keyframe
In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerin, 2007) A city of pedestrian streets, bicycles and terrace cafés, haunted by the image of a woman (Pilar López de Ayala) that the male protagonist (Xavier Lafitte) met six years previously. A city haunted by the traces of memories that fill its corners. In this film—a sublime lesson in montage and one of the most startling studies of the cinematic frame—Strasbourg is a dance of feminine gestures and expressions seizing the man’s look. A city where wall inscriptions evoke the obsessions of Italian poets, where ghostly encounters and partings occur in public space, a city where fugitive bodies and faces become an ever-changing landscape where the hero projects his fantasies. >> - Cristina Alvarez Lopez...
- 11/28/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Tweets and FaceTimes: Pascale Ferran Returns with Uneven But Adventurous Realist-Fantasy
There are a number of films scattered throughout that are intent on depicting how our world communicates and operates today, viz. through web-mediated interfaces. But none of them approached this reality, however glancingly, in such an exuberantly abstract register as did Pascale Ferran in her bonkers, wholly original, yet painfully uneven new film, Bird People. It’s her first project since the now eight year-old Lady Chatterley (2006), and one can imagine that at least half of that hiatus was spent working on the film’s CGI effects alone, which are some of the most subtle but meticulous to be employed in any film yet in existence. The only problem is that so much narrative playfulness and structural innovation gets seriously bogged down by Ferran’s awkward direction and a script filled with lame dialogue — perhaps attributable to English being her second language.
There are a number of films scattered throughout that are intent on depicting how our world communicates and operates today, viz. through web-mediated interfaces. But none of them approached this reality, however glancingly, in such an exuberantly abstract register as did Pascale Ferran in her bonkers, wholly original, yet painfully uneven new film, Bird People. It’s her first project since the now eight year-old Lady Chatterley (2006), and one can imagine that at least half of that hiatus was spent working on the film’s CGI effects alone, which are some of the most subtle but meticulous to be employed in any film yet in existence. The only problem is that so much narrative playfulness and structural innovation gets seriously bogged down by Ferran’s awkward direction and a script filled with lame dialogue — perhaps attributable to English being her second language.
- 9/8/2014
- by Blake Williams
- IONCINEMA.com
It's 100 years since the first volume of À La Recherche du Temps Perdu was published, but a definitive cinematisation of Proust's epic novel has so far proved elusive
This year has been punctuated by a rash of anniversary-themed books and articles anticipating the first world war centenary, and indeed attempting snapshots of how Europe looked and felt in 1913, eerily poised on the precipice. The other centenary is similar in many ways: on 8 November 1913, Marcel Proust published the first volume of À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, his monumental novel about memory, mortality and art, the belle époque, and the leisured and aristocratic classes of Paris, a city crammed in Proust's pages with the most vivid and extraordinary personalities, destined to be swept away by the Great War.
Fourteen years ago, at Cannes, I saw Raúl Ruiz's superlative screen adaptation of the final volume: Time Regained, in which the narrator,...
This year has been punctuated by a rash of anniversary-themed books and articles anticipating the first world war centenary, and indeed attempting snapshots of how Europe looked and felt in 1913, eerily poised on the precipice. The other centenary is similar in many ways: on 8 November 1913, Marcel Proust published the first volume of À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, his monumental novel about memory, mortality and art, the belle époque, and the leisured and aristocratic classes of Paris, a city crammed in Proust's pages with the most vivid and extraordinary personalities, destined to be swept away by the Great War.
Fourteen years ago, at Cannes, I saw Raúl Ruiz's superlative screen adaptation of the final volume: Time Regained, in which the narrator,...
- 11/7/2013
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Jem Cohen's left-of-centre treatise on art history and the pleasure of looking might just change the way you see the world
Jem Cohen's quiet, strange and compelling hybrid film uses a brief encounter between wizened souls – Johann (Bobby Sommer), a genial guard at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, and Anne (singer Mary Margaret O'Hara), a Canadian tourist – to frame an inquiry into art history and the pleasures of looking. Inspired by Brueghel's busy tableaux, Cohen is drawn to museum minutiae: a canvas's unnoticed details, yawning schoolchildren, cigarette butts gathering outside the entrance. As the relationship progresses, he ends up cataloguing Vienna itself, transforming even its banal or throwaway features into a kind of art. It sounds impossibly rarefied, but the leads map out something unforced and charming between them, and Cohen's left-of-centre perspectives, juxtapositions and sight gags really do grow on you. Like José Luis Guerín's brilliant 2007 curio In the City of Sylvia,...
Jem Cohen's quiet, strange and compelling hybrid film uses a brief encounter between wizened souls – Johann (Bobby Sommer), a genial guard at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, and Anne (singer Mary Margaret O'Hara), a Canadian tourist – to frame an inquiry into art history and the pleasures of looking. Inspired by Brueghel's busy tableaux, Cohen is drawn to museum minutiae: a canvas's unnoticed details, yawning schoolchildren, cigarette butts gathering outside the entrance. As the relationship progresses, he ends up cataloguing Vienna itself, transforming even its banal or throwaway features into a kind of art. It sounds impossibly rarefied, but the leads map out something unforced and charming between them, and Cohen's left-of-centre perspectives, juxtapositions and sight gags really do grow on you. Like José Luis Guerín's brilliant 2007 curio In the City of Sylvia,...
- 9/5/2013
- by Mike McCahill
- The Guardian - Film News
Updated.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's newly restored Despair (1978) "was one of the hottest tickets in the Classics sidebar" in Cannes this year, notes Dennis Lim in his Los Angeles Times review of the new DVD out from Olive Films, which has also issued Fassbinder's I Only Want You to Love Me (1976). "The relative obscurity of Despair is surprising given its pedigree. It's based on a Vladimir Nabokov novel, adapted by Tom Stoppard, and starring the English actor Dirk Bogarde. Nabokov's story of a Russian émigré, written in the 30s, takes place in Prague. Fassbinder changed the setting to early-30s Berlin, teetering on the abyss of the Third Reich…. Despair is perhaps the most explicit elaboration of one of Fassbinder's recurring themes: the alienation of someone who not only 'stands outside himself,' as Hermann [Bogarde] puts it, but also wants to escape himself and indeed flee the trap of identity altogether.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder's newly restored Despair (1978) "was one of the hottest tickets in the Classics sidebar" in Cannes this year, notes Dennis Lim in his Los Angeles Times review of the new DVD out from Olive Films, which has also issued Fassbinder's I Only Want You to Love Me (1976). "The relative obscurity of Despair is surprising given its pedigree. It's based on a Vladimir Nabokov novel, adapted by Tom Stoppard, and starring the English actor Dirk Bogarde. Nabokov's story of a Russian émigré, written in the 30s, takes place in Prague. Fassbinder changed the setting to early-30s Berlin, teetering on the abyss of the Third Reich…. Despair is perhaps the most explicit elaboration of one of Fassbinder's recurring themes: the alienation of someone who not only 'stands outside himself,' as Hermann [Bogarde] puts it, but also wants to escape himself and indeed flee the trap of identity altogether.
- 6/14/2011
- MUBI
by Vadim Rizov
In the City of Sylvia stars Xavier Lafitte as a nameless young man who wanders through a Strasbourg summer with a notebook and a perpetually glazed look on his face. He sits in cafés and sketches, but really he's trying to get girls to contemplate his glossy hair and wispy mustache, though it's unclear if even he's aware of his obvious motivation. Later, he spends a lot of time following a poor young woman (Pilar Lopez de Ayala) he thinks might be Sylvie, a potential soulmate he met a few years ago and has been trying to find ever since. That, however, isn't an acceptable excuse for stalking, as the she tells him when he finally has the nerve to ask if she is who he thinks she is. Nicely but firmly, she tells him she isn't and he just scared the hell out of her. Suitably chastened,...
In the City of Sylvia stars Xavier Lafitte as a nameless young man who wanders through a Strasbourg summer with a notebook and a perpetually glazed look on his face. He sits in cafés and sketches, but really he's trying to get girls to contemplate his glossy hair and wispy mustache, though it's unclear if even he's aware of his obvious motivation. Later, he spends a lot of time following a poor young woman (Pilar Lopez de Ayala) he thinks might be Sylvie, a potential soulmate he met a few years ago and has been trying to find ever since. That, however, isn't an acceptable excuse for stalking, as the she tells him when he finally has the nerve to ask if she is who he thinks she is. Nicely but firmly, she tells him she isn't and he just scared the hell out of her. Suitably chastened,...
- 5/24/2011
- GreenCine Daily
"Margot Benacerraf, now in her 80s, only ever made one feature-length film," begins Josef Braun, "but that film remains so extraordinary, so very nearly singular, that it merits an admiration on par with many more prolific and esteemed bodies of work. After studying and gathering numerous influential allies in France and elsewhere, Benacerraf returned to her native Venezuela, specifically to an island no one had heard of, though when was discovered by the Spanish 450 years earlier it was deemed a sort of paradise on account of its abundance of one resource: salt, as valuable back then as gold. We can see the ruins of colonial fortresses erected to protect the island and its salt marshes, once the center of piracy in the Caribbean, during the prologue of Araya (1959). But historical context quickly gives way to the seeming timelessness of hard labour, to Benacerraf's lyrical approach to depicting the life of a community that was,...
- 5/17/2011
- MUBI
From a remake of the 1969 western True Grit to a delirious movie-melodrama about a ballerina hoping to play the lead in Swan Lake, there's something for all tastes here
127 Hours
Watch from between your fingers, or hide under the seat: James Franco plays a mountain climber with an awful decision to make when his arm gets trapped under an enormous boulder. This true story, directed by Danny Boyle, has had cinema audiences wincing, yelping, moaning and rocking back and forth in distress.
Out on 5 January.
The King's Speech
Awards bait it may be, but this movie is carried off with terrific panache. Colin Firth plays the unhappy George VI in 1930s Britain, crucified with shame at his stammer; Geoffrey Rush is Leonard Logue, the outspoken Australian speech therapist who is the only man who can help. Helena Bonham Carter is Queen Elizabeth (to be known, decades later, as the Queen Mother).
Out on 7 January.
127 Hours
Watch from between your fingers, or hide under the seat: James Franco plays a mountain climber with an awful decision to make when his arm gets trapped under an enormous boulder. This true story, directed by Danny Boyle, has had cinema audiences wincing, yelping, moaning and rocking back and forth in distress.
Out on 5 January.
The King's Speech
Awards bait it may be, but this movie is carried off with terrific panache. Colin Firth plays the unhappy George VI in 1930s Britain, crucified with shame at his stammer; Geoffrey Rush is Leonard Logue, the outspoken Australian speech therapist who is the only man who can help. Helena Bonham Carter is Queen Elizabeth (to be known, decades later, as the Queen Mother).
Out on 7 January.
- 1/3/2011
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
“I am not an ideologue,” José Luis Guerín says matter-of-factly. “I need characters.” Judging by the lukewarm response that has greeted his latest film, Guest, it’s a dicey stance for a director of art house cinema to take these days. Early reviewers have praised Guerín’s images but questioned the structure of the film, which often finds him wandering through Third World cities and inviting conversations about hot-button topics like immigration, colonialism, and religion. That he does so without any pretense of deep sociopolitical analysis makes Guest something of an anachronism: it’s a politically-interested film in an observational mode, more humble and curious than didactic.
In 2006, after premiering his previous film, In the City of Sylvia, Guerín decided to spend a year traveling the world by accepting every festival invitation he was offered. He carried a consumer-grade Dv camera with him wherever he went and very gradually built...
In 2006, after premiering his previous film, In the City of Sylvia, Guerín decided to spend a year traveling the world by accepting every festival invitation he was offered. He carried a consumer-grade Dv camera with him wherever he went and very gradually built...
- 12/15/2010
- MUBI
"Hitting the film festival circuit for a year with In the City of Sylvia, José Luis Guerín wanders the streets to catch glances of human bustle in a variety of locations," writes Fernando F Croce, reviewing Guest at the House Next Door. "The trouble with Guerín's evocative two-hour diary is that, attempting to convey a feeling of life continuously swarming away from the confines of festivals, it reveals a dearth of concern for specific subjects that turns the faces and places into an amorphous mass. Touching without exploring, it still showcases enough of Guerín's warm touch to make one wish more visiting filmmakers would stray from their hotel rooms, camera in hand." More from Jonathan Holland (Variety), Daniel Kasman (The Daily Notebook), Karina Longworth (Voice) and Eugenio Renzi (Independencia, 4.3).
- 9/24/2010
- MUBI
0845 Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (Tsui Hark, China)
In marked contrast to Takashi Miike’s staunchly assignment-like, termite-filled genre epic 13 Assassins, Tsui Hark shows the other side of the coin, a once-maverick, now-regular filmmaker whose flourishes are as inspired as always but whose cinema profoundly misses the hunger, the perspicacity, the preciousness, the by-any-means-necessary sense of attack energy of his youth. Fine. Detective Dee runs on its genre engine well enough nevertheless—an imprisoned Andy Lau is taken out of jail by the soon to be the first female empress of China to solve, as the title so honestly puts forth, the mystery of people spontaneously, hideously, and in great computer generated cindery detail, bursting into flames and burning to death. Tsui centers the beginning and the end on a mammoth Buddha skyscraper built in the Forbidden Palace’s backyard (circa 650 A.D.), which obtains a conceptual grandeur and abstract,...
In marked contrast to Takashi Miike’s staunchly assignment-like, termite-filled genre epic 13 Assassins, Tsui Hark shows the other side of the coin, a once-maverick, now-regular filmmaker whose flourishes are as inspired as always but whose cinema profoundly misses the hunger, the perspicacity, the preciousness, the by-any-means-necessary sense of attack energy of his youth. Fine. Detective Dee runs on its genre engine well enough nevertheless—an imprisoned Andy Lau is taken out of jail by the soon to be the first female empress of China to solve, as the title so honestly puts forth, the mystery of people spontaneously, hideously, and in great computer generated cindery detail, bursting into flames and burning to death. Tsui centers the beginning and the end on a mammoth Buddha skyscraper built in the Forbidden Palace’s backyard (circa 650 A.D.), which obtains a conceptual grandeur and abstract,...
- 9/18/2010
- MUBI
In every major city in the world there are squares much like the one in José Luis Guerín‘s Guest. Like Union Square in New York City, Yonge-Dundas Square is an area where you’ll find hippies, 9/11 “truthers,” performance artists and those allied to whatever cause is worth calling attention to at the time. Guest, following in a video diary sensibility pioneered by Jonas Mekas and stolen by American ad agencies to sell us Coca-Cola, calls attention to the fringe focusing his lens away from what we commonly associate with the film festival world.
Subjectivity is traded for formalism, as it should be in a video diary. It is impossible to achieve the realism of a Fredrick Wiseman film even in a Fredrick Wiseman film: decisions must be made. Guerin’s film is beautifully shot in black and white mini-dv, a perfect medium for self-exploration. Often times Guerin presents a...
Subjectivity is traded for formalism, as it should be in a video diary. It is impossible to achieve the realism of a Fredrick Wiseman film even in a Fredrick Wiseman film: decisions must be made. Guerin’s film is beautifully shot in black and white mini-dv, a perfect medium for self-exploration. Often times Guerin presents a...
- 9/16/2010
- by John Fink
- The Film Stage
#16. Guest Director: José Luis GuerínDistributor: Rights Available. Buzz: To preem at both Venice and Toronto, this might be the first film to measure the impact and utility of film festivals on the perspective of the filmmaker which in this case was Guerín 2007's In the City of Sylvia. I imagine that sitting in an audience watching this film in the context of Tiff will be a very "meta" experience. The Gist: Filmmaker Jose Luis Guerin documents his experience during a year of travelling as a guest of film festivals to present his previous film. What emerges is a wonderfully humane and sincere portrayal of the people that he meets when he goes off the beaten track in some of the world's major cities. Tiff Schedule: Friday September 10 8:30:00 Pm AMC 4 Sunday September 12 8:30:00 Pm Varsity 7 Saturday September 18 3:00:00 Pm AMC 3 ...
- 9/7/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
I'm adding the make-up of the Venice Film Festival Horizons sidebar selections a little late to the site, I'm mostly curious to see the low ratio of films that'll be picked up from this section for the upcoming Tiff announcements. Deemed as re-branding of the section, a more eclectic melange of titles mixing short, medium length pics, documentaries film and feature length items, of the items that will generate the most interest are the opening and closing titles which were revealed the week before, but we should see media coverage mentions on Paul Morrissey's News From Nowhere, Jose Luis Guerin's docu Guest (I've yet to see 2007/2008's In the City of Sylvia) and Sion Sono's Cold Fish and short film offerings from Guillermo Arriaga, Isaac Julien and Clara Law. Horizons: Feature-length Works "Sleeping Beauty," Catherine Breillat (France, opener) "Oki's Movie," Hong Sang-soo (South Korea, closer) "The Nine Muses,...
- 8/2/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
This is the season for critics to turn out lists of the best mov ies of the year. Un fortunately, many consist of highly publicized, big-budget movies that opened between Thanksgiving and the end of the year, while ignoring earlier films.
In other words, critics let studio publicists tell them which movies deserve to be on their lists. As usual, I try to avoid this end-of-year syndrome. Here it goes:
1. "In The City Of Sylvia" (Jose Luis Guerin, France/Spain): Follow that woman! Minimalist romancer riffs on "Last Year at Marienbad."
2. "Wendy And Lucy" (Kelly Reichardt,...
In other words, critics let studio publicists tell them which movies deserve to be on their lists. As usual, I try to avoid this end-of-year syndrome. Here it goes:
1. "In The City Of Sylvia" (Jose Luis Guerin, France/Spain): Follow that woman! Minimalist romancer riffs on "Last Year at Marienbad."
2. "Wendy And Lucy" (Kelly Reichardt,...
- 12/21/2008
- by By V.A. MUSETTO
- NYPost.com
Venice International Film Festival
VENICE, Italy -- Virtually a silent movie apart from the everyday sounds of the French city of Strasbourg, Spanish director Jose Luis Guerin's lyrical tale of forlorn love, In the City of Sylvia, is a treat for romantics and people watchers.
It's a simple tale of an artistic young man (Xavier Lafitte) who returns to Strasbourg in search of a woman named Sylvia with whom he had a brief affair six years earlier. He spends his time at cafes in the vicinity of their first meeting, writing notes and sketching images of the people he sees. In due course he spots someone (Pilar Lopez de Ayala) he thinks is Sylvia and follows her.
Slow moving and filled with tiny observed moments, the film is wonderfully crafted by director Guerin and cinematographer Nathasa Braier. Screened in competition at the Venice International Film Festival, it could be in line for awards and with its beautiful players and universal appeal it should do well internationally.
The anonymous young man who sits down one day at the Cafe du TNS-Theatre National de Strasbourg has the looks of Byron and an eye for human expression. The camera goes with him as he unobtrusively gazes at a range of mostly young people talking animatedly or sitting in silence; lovers kissing; couples disagreeing and individuals sitting, thinking, and staring at something or nothing.
It's a full 35 minutes before anyone speaks and that's when the young man calls out the name Sylvia. But the woman ignores him and follows a wandering course through the city's Old Town with the man in gentle pursuit. In other circumstances, the young man's behavior would be odd or threatening, and there comes a time when the object of his attentions makes that point.
But Lafitte is so assured in his portrayal of honest yearning and De Ayala is such a radiantly beautiful mystery that the film is more succulent than piquant. Filled with small eye-pleasing images, it's a picture that audiences may wish to see more than once in order to relish it all.
IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA
Eddie Saeta S.A., Chateau-Rouge
Credits:
Director, writer: Jose Luis Guerin
Producers: Luis Minarro, Gaelle Jones
Director of photography: Natasha Braier
Production designer: Maite Sanchez
Costume designers: Valerie-Elder Fontaine & Miriam Compte
Editor: Nuria Esquerra
Cast:
Pilar Lopez de Ayala, Xavier Lafitte, Laurence Cordier, Tanja Czichy, Eric Dietrich, Charlotte Dupont
Running time -- 84 minutes
No MPAA rating...
VENICE, Italy -- Virtually a silent movie apart from the everyday sounds of the French city of Strasbourg, Spanish director Jose Luis Guerin's lyrical tale of forlorn love, In the City of Sylvia, is a treat for romantics and people watchers.
It's a simple tale of an artistic young man (Xavier Lafitte) who returns to Strasbourg in search of a woman named Sylvia with whom he had a brief affair six years earlier. He spends his time at cafes in the vicinity of their first meeting, writing notes and sketching images of the people he sees. In due course he spots someone (Pilar Lopez de Ayala) he thinks is Sylvia and follows her.
Slow moving and filled with tiny observed moments, the film is wonderfully crafted by director Guerin and cinematographer Nathasa Braier. Screened in competition at the Venice International Film Festival, it could be in line for awards and with its beautiful players and universal appeal it should do well internationally.
The anonymous young man who sits down one day at the Cafe du TNS-Theatre National de Strasbourg has the looks of Byron and an eye for human expression. The camera goes with him as he unobtrusively gazes at a range of mostly young people talking animatedly or sitting in silence; lovers kissing; couples disagreeing and individuals sitting, thinking, and staring at something or nothing.
It's a full 35 minutes before anyone speaks and that's when the young man calls out the name Sylvia. But the woman ignores him and follows a wandering course through the city's Old Town with the man in gentle pursuit. In other circumstances, the young man's behavior would be odd or threatening, and there comes a time when the object of his attentions makes that point.
But Lafitte is so assured in his portrayal of honest yearning and De Ayala is such a radiantly beautiful mystery that the film is more succulent than piquant. Filled with small eye-pleasing images, it's a picture that audiences may wish to see more than once in order to relish it all.
IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA
Eddie Saeta S.A., Chateau-Rouge
Credits:
Director, writer: Jose Luis Guerin
Producers: Luis Minarro, Gaelle Jones
Director of photography: Natasha Braier
Production designer: Maite Sanchez
Costume designers: Valerie-Elder Fontaine & Miriam Compte
Editor: Nuria Esquerra
Cast:
Pilar Lopez de Ayala, Xavier Lafitte, Laurence Cordier, Tanja Czichy, Eric Dietrich, Charlotte Dupont
Running time -- 84 minutes
No MPAA rating...
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