f i l m j o u r n e y . o r g

From the City of Lodz (1968)
Krzysztof Kieslowski (whom I’ve written about for Senses of Cinema) had the rare luxury of having US studio sponsorship, no doubt partly because of his savvy use of narrative skills, photogenic stars, and evident polish. But Kieslowski spent roughly half his career making documentaries that have been rarely seen [...]

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The best thing to happen to the Los Angeles film scene in some time is the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s “The Films That Got Away,” an ongoing series they’ve sporadically programmed at UCLA and the American Cinematheque. (Among the gems: Peter Watkins’ La Commune (Paris, 1871) and Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinÈma.) Maybe [...]

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This should wrap up my quick takes on the films I watched at the Toronto International Film Festival. I fully intend to revisit several of these films at length in the future.

Bamako
One of the highlights of the Los Angeles Film Festival this summer was the revival screening of Abderrahmane Sissako’s Waiting for Happiness (2002), a [...]

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I’m pretty excited about our new sales site for Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series of DVD releases, which can be found here.
Among the many essays, trailers, and stills are my essays for the liner notes of two releases, Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968). (And don’t forget Acquarello’s essay for Shindo’s The Naked [...]

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I’m back in Los Angeles, but I’ll be posting the rest of my TIFF impressions this week. Including The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, these are the documentaries I screened:

Manufactured Landscapes
This film introduced me to the work of Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian large-scale photographer whose primary subject is industrial wastelands. From massive technological vistas [...]

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Continuing with the Toronto International Film Festival ‘06 coverage…

Offside
Jafar Panahi–known for his controversial and hard-hitting dramas The Circle and Crimson Gold–has crafted his most vibrantly energetic and entertaining film to date, without compromising his social vision one iota. Various young Iranian women individually attempt to sneak into the 2005 World Cup qualification tournament between [...]

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TIFF has been a fine, blustery week, with temperatures hovering in the 60s with occasional showers. After the heat records in Los Angeles this summer, this feels like paradise, and standing in line at midnight for The Host in a torrential downpour with lighting crashing around us was an atmospheric high point of the [...]

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