Currently playing at New York’s Film Forum before what one hopes will be a successful national release, Sergei Dvortsevoy’s Cannes award-winner Tulpan is a cinematic rarity, and truly a wonder to behold. A story of nomadic shepherds living on the brutal, gloriously beautiful steppes of Kazakhstan, Tulpan’s as unforced and graceful as a Renaissance oil, and it deftly avoids all the potential traps of exoticization a narrative like this opens up. If you fear yet another international co-production exercise in dusty impoverished tedium, or a twee ethnography filled with mooning children and extraneous animal cameos, think again—Tulpan, for all its kids and camels, is also a mystical love story, a complex family drama, a veterinary medical mystery capped by a miracle and a sideways portrait of a new nation undergoing birthing pains. From poor places comes one of the richest films of the year.
Click here to read Jeff Reichert’s interview with director Sergei Dvortsevoy.
Though the word remains untranslated in the film’s English subtitles, Tulpan—the title of Sergei Dvortsevoy’s first dramatic feature—means “tulip.” It is also, of course, the name of the object of protagonist Asa’s desire, a beloved glimpsed only once, through the slats of a goat-pen (and not at all by the viewer). “God, is she beautiful!” exclaims Asa, a former sailor who dreams of being a shepherd with a flock, family, and yurt of his own on the vast flatlands of the Betpak-Dala (also known as the Hunger Steppe) of southern-central Kazakhstan. No tulip will grow here, so Asa scratches a crude drawing of one into the dry earth of the steppe, and later, with a ballpoint pen, he draws one on the underside of the collar of his sailor’s uniform, where he has similarly depicted all the things he longs for.
Click here to read the rest of Leo Goldsmith’s review.
from RS correspondant brotherfromanother:
BWAAHHAAAAHAHAHAHANICOLASCAGEDRUNKALLTHETIMEBWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHUMANLEAGUEALIENSBWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAROSEBYRNESCREAMINGALLTHETIMEBWAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAMISMATCHEDSHOTSALLTHETIMEBWAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAERIKVONDANKIENBWABAHAHAHASOLARFLAREAPOCALYPSEHAHA
HAISWEARTHEENDINGISFUNNIERTHANTHEFOUNTAINHAHAHAHA
HATREEOFLIFETHEMOVIEISAPREQUELTOTHEBIBLEHAHAHAHA
HAHAI’MNOTKIDDINGHAHAHAHAKNOWING.
(I would see any movie with this image in it. - Ed.)
On March 9th, Flaherty NYC will screen two films on the theme of the 2008 Robert Flaherty Film Seminar, The Age of Migration. The program will feature Stranger Comes to Town by 2006 Flaherty filmmaker Jacqueline Goss and Flying on One Engine by local filmmaker Josh Weinstein. Jacqueline Goss and Josh Weinstein will be participating in a post-screening discussion with filmmaker Scott Nyerges.
To purchase your tickets and ensure your seat for the event please visit www.flahertyseminar.org.
Mark Holcomb of Time Out Magazine calls Stranger Comes to Town “A rich ambiguous contemplation of identity and the arbitrariness of geopolitical borders.” Pamela Cohn of Still in Motion says of Flying on One Engine “It’s a gem of a film—deeply moving, funny and charming. I can’t wait to see what Weinstein does next.”
Films and videos to be screened include:
· Stranger Comes to Town (Jacqueline Goss, 28min, 2007, USA) They say there’s only two stories in the world: man goes on a journey, and stranger comes to town. Six people are interviewed anonymously about their experiences coming into the US. Each then designs a video game avatar who tells their story by proxy. Goss focuses on the questions and examinations used to establish identity at the border, and how these processes in turn affect one’s own sense of self and view of the world.
· Flying on One Engine (Joshua Weinstein, 52min, 2008, USA/India) Explores the life of the quirky, funny, and sometimes difficult Dr. Sharadkumar Dicksheet, who overcomes his own ailments by curing others. Wheelchair bound, without a larynx, and diagnosed with a life-threatening aortic aneurysm, the eight time Nobel Peace Prize nominee now lives to travel to India to perform free operations in marathon-like surgery sessions where up to 700 children receive treatment for their cleft lips and other deformities.
Flaherty NYC, March 9, 7:30pm, Anthology Film Archives
The Flaherty/International Film Seminars, Inc.
6 East 39th St. 12th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Tel: 212.448.0457
Fax: 212.448.0458
E-mail: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
http://www.flahertyseminar.org
Ice, ice baby.
You’ve probably looked away from the poster for Crossing Over any number of times—the ghastliness of the monochromatic, pupil-less Harrison Ford at its top is matched in fright factor only by the paunchy, lipless Ray Liotta cut-out staring over at Ford full of longing (to round it out, Ashley Judd and Jim Sturgess seem to cringe off into the background). Forget entirely the noxious, nonsensical tagline (“Every day, thousands of people illegally cross our borders . . . only one thing stands in their way. America.” Huh?) and the poor stab at deconstructing the American flag into ribbons of red and white freeways—this thing screams “tossed-off” to its very core. It’s nice when a piece of marketing material inadvertently reveals the truth of the product at hand; given the law of averages, it was only a matter of time before a film came along that managed to out-stupid Crash, and, now we have it.
Click here to read the rest of Jeff Reichert’s review.
Woo hoo! Scanning the week’s box office results, I realized I ‘ve officially seen one—yes one—movie out of the top ten currently playing at multi-craps all around the country. I won’t say which. All our devoted readers need to know is that we really have our (big, orange) finger on the pulse of the moviegoing public.
1- Prom Night, not starring Jamie Lee Curtis, not screened for critics, not watched by me
2- Street Kings, from the director of Harsh Times
3- 21: watching people play cards isn’t fun (remember Celebrity Poker Showdown?); plus you have to look at Kevin Spacey
4- Nim’s Island, not co-starring Jodie Foster’s “beautiful Sydney”; instead we get Little Miss Sunshine and the asshole from 300
5- Leatherheads: Note to George: fast-talking, self-consciously witty, Howard Hawks-esque banter now seems ossified, not spontaneous; America doesn’t want it. Stop…trying…to…make….it.
6- Horton Hears a Who!: I’m supposed to want to see it because it’s not as bad as Cat in the Hat?
7- Smart People: too soon, Ellen Page, too soon!! Come back in 16-18 months, and preferably not in a movie with a title that reminds me of how the makers of your last movie (wrongly) thought of themselves
8- The Ruins: Little Shop of Horrors....much….much…..much…..much better.
9- Superhero Movie: really? they made this? Wasn’t Meet the Spartans, like, three weeks ago?
10- Drillbit Taylor: From the DUDES that brought you all those DUDE movies about DUDES acting like cool but self-protectively dorky DUDES and pretending to be all DUDERIFIC with their straight male DUDE friends and open and comfortable about their DUDE sexuality but who never ever have gay friends, comes another movie about sad, wan Owen Wilson. Awesome.
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