Here’s my contribution to the indieWIRE & Industry Top Tens for 2009 with some related links to previous blog posts.
1. Bright Star by Jane Campion
2. Cherry Blossoms by Doris Dörrie
Echoing Ozu’s “Tokyo Story,” this surprisingly overlooked film is the transcendent tale of a German widower who travels to Japan to fulfill his wife’s lifelong dream. Aya Irizuki is spectacular as his chimera-like young friend.
3. The Beaches of Agnès by Agnès Varda
Here’s a blog post with my photos of Varda and a link to an interview/feature I did on her.
4. The Hurt Locker by Kathryn Bigelow
5. 35 Shots of Rum by Claire Denis
6. Rage by Sally Potter
Here’s a blog post with my photo of Potter and notes on the highly innovative film created for cell phones.
7. Coco Before Chanel by Anne Fontaine
Here’s a blog post with my photo of Fontaine and notes on the film.
8. The Headless Woman by Lucrecia Martel
9. Julie & Julia by Nora Ephron (For the Julie Powell portion. Sorry, haters.)
10. Afghan Star by Havana Marking
Yeah, the guys made some good films, too, but not better than these.
I could have added Sophie Barthes’ Cold Souls to the list. I enjoyed Christine Jeff’s Sunshine Cleaning. I was underwhelmed by Lone Scherfig’s An Education and Ondi Timoner’s We Live in Public. I look forward to catching up with Karyn Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body and Ursula Meier’s Home.
One of the highlights mentioned in my dispatch from the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, published last Monday in indieWIRE, was a multimedia exhibit on Werner Herzog in the port city’s old Ice Chambers. Here’s what I wrote:
“Legendary German director Werner Herzog was the attending luminary in this year’s edition of the festival, with a comprehensive retrospective of his work….As befits a filmmaker who has worked in unusual environments, from Antarctica to the jungles of Peru, the festival staged a parallel multimedia exhibit in the Ice Chambers on the docks, a former fish-storage warehouse with many architectural details intact. Named for the debut feature he shot on the island of Kos in 1968, “Signs of Life,” the standout show included stills taken by Lena Herzog on her husband’s recent films, as well as companion projections and videos. The original exhibit was created for a traditional gallery space by the Italian Cinema Museum in Turin, and reformatted for Thessaloniki.”
Here are some photos, including the port, the outside and inside of the Ice Chambers, Herzog with festival brass and curators, the director’s brother Lucki Stipetic (with orange sweater), and grandson.
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The covered market near the Thessaloniki Film Fest is a welcome respite from days of watching movies and filing stories. Here are just a few of my pics.
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The university city of Thessaloniki is full of students in casual garb, but at the film festival, actors and filmmakers wear a range of looks.
11-15-09: Jane Birkin, star of Jacques Rivette’s Around a Small Mountain said her luggage was lost, so she borrowed a dress off the back of young festival staffer Chloé, and boots from director Despina Mouzaki. Birkin is known in fashion circles for the Hermès bag named for her.
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When I arrived in Greece earlier this week for the 50th Thessaloniki Int’l Film Festival, I was greeted with a big surprise. In past years, this was a smoker’s paradise. Now, in line with the rest of the EU, public smoking is banned in Greece (except for designated areas in eating/drinking establishments), including all of Thessaloniki’s festival venues. To illustrate the rule, clever shots of actors smoking feature the “banned” symbol. Here are some examples:
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