10 films of the London film festival: from van Gogh to “the Jabberwocky”
242 full-length feature films, 28 world premieres, nine international premieres and 34 European — that is the statistics the next, 61 th London film festival.
To view all of the picture is hardly possible, I venture to offer ten of our choice.
“24 frames” (24 Frames) (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran-France)
The great Iranian Director died last summer. His latest work is in fact a will, and the rest of her drove already the son of the master.
In this film Kiarostami has combined painting, photography and cinema. The film consists of 24 miniatures, each for 4.5 minutes.
The basis of each painting, drawing or photograph Kiarostami comes alive on screen through animation.
Themes characteristic of his previous films: snow, trees, birds, water, wind, and occasionally people: tourists in Paris, where he lived the last years and where he died.
‘Foxtrot’ (Foxtrot) (Samuel Maoz, Germany-Israel-France)
International recognition of the Israeli Director has brought awarded the Golden Lion in Venice film “Lebanon” (2009) — based on his own experience the hard, closed in claustrophobic space of the tank is the story of four Israeli soldiers during the Lebanon war of 1982.
“Foxtrot” continues the same theme — Israel war. The war, however, we do not see, and the soldiers themselves — only a short episode in the almost two-hour picture.
The focus of the vision of the Director is shifted to a “peaceful” life, like war, with all its inevitable cruelty and injustice, mercilessly hits those who are for this war, at first glance, absolutely not involved.
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“Happy End” (Happy End) (Michael Haneke, France-Austria-Germany)
The master of European art-house elegant and inventive method embodied in the new film themes of almost all their previous. Sarcastic, though not without the sympathy of the opinion of the Director the failing human connection in a typical bourgeois family.
The action takes place in seaside Calais, and although the refugee camp “the Jungle” we do not see main to Europe in the past years, the theme of migrants invisibly but tangibly present in the film. Constellation French actors: Isabelle Huppert, Mathieu Kassovitz and Jean-Louis Trintignant.
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“Jabberwocky” (Jubberwocky) (Terry Gilliam, UK, 1977)
Restored by the British film Institute from the original negative and included in the program of the London film festival “solo” debut Gilliam is the only new picture that we have included in this list.
Included because of cult fame comedies “Monty Python” for the resounding success of “the Twelve monkeys”, “the Fisher King” and “the Brothers Grimm” the first picture of Gilliam as an independent Director was firmly forgotten. It is in vain!
It’s amazing how only a few years earlier arrived in Britain, the American grabbed (of course, not without the help of their colleagues in the “Monty Python”) the essence of sparkling absurdist British humor, and steeped in mythological English folklore.