Ever since the success of “City Of God”, filmmakers in developing countries have been recycling its tropes in less effective imitations. Ian Gabriel’s “Four Corners”, South Africa’s foreign Oscar submission has something new to say and show us. Gabriel (“Forgiveness”) and co-writers Terence Hammond and Hofmeyr Scholtz have produced a taut script filled with surprises. The only scene approaching cliché, a last act shoot-out, packs its own surprise. “Four Corners’ is slang for prison cell. A battle in the prison lunchroom swirls around “28” leader Farakhan (Brendon Daniels) who calmly eats as murder and reprisal play out in an acute…
Author: Robin Menken
Robin Menken
Robin Menken Robin Menken lives in Los Angeles. She was the Artistic Director of the Second City Workshops, taught at UC Berkeley, USC, Barcelona\'s Ateneu and the Esalin Institute. She was Roberto Rossellini\'s assistant, and worked with Yevgeny Vevteshenku, Glauber Rocha and Eugene Ionesco. She sold numerous screenplays and wrote the OBIE winning The FTA SHow (touring with Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland and Ben Vereen.) She was a programming consultant and Special Events co-ordinator for numerous film festivals, including the SF, Rio, Havana and N.Y Film Festivals. Her first news outlet was the historic East Village Other.
The team behind the demented Belgian stop-motion feature animation “A Town Called Panic” have turned to graceful hand drawn images for the wry “Ernest and Celestine”, based on a charming series of books by Gabrielle Vincent.The film, one of 19 animated features submitted for the 2013 Oscars in the Animation category, is an endearing story about marching to your own drum.Two societies, Mousetown and Bearsville live side by side. Teaching their young to fear each other they have worked out an interesting synergy.Both civilizations teach their young survival myths. The Bears teach their young to leave their teeth under their…
Adrian Popovici’s human trafficking drama is Moldova’s first Foreign Oscar submission. The bilingual film, mostly in Romanian (Moldova and Romania have a common language) and English, is a melodramatic look at human trafficking of women and children for sexual purposes.The screenplay by Valeriu Turcanu and Pascal Ilie Virgil centers on Irina (Ina Surdu -“Playing the Moldavans at Tennis”), a young Moldavian mother returning to Moldavia to locate her 8-year old son Pavalas. In Italy, she was forced into prostitution by slick pimp Bruno (Paolo Seganti (TV series “One Life to Live “) to whom she owes 30,00 Euros for “expenses”.…
Documentary filmmaker Georg Maas (“The Buddha Wallah”, “The Real World of Peter Gabriel”) spent years developing his engrossing layered story about the after effects of World War ll on a generation of children, born of Norwegian mothers and Occupying Nazi SS officers, who were stolen from their mothers and raised in Germany. Most were unable to return across the Iron Curtain. “Two Lives” is a portrait of mother and daughter who were “reunited.” Lebensborn was founded by SS Reichführer Heinrich Himmler to increase Germany’s stock of “racially pure” Ayran children. It created birthhomes in Germany and its occupied countries and…
I was shocked and disappointed that Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Groß’s “In Bloom”, Georgia’s Official Foreign Oscar submission, didn’t get shortlisted.Happily, the film, which premiered at Berlin, won the Grand Prize at the 15th Tokyo Filmex, Best Film and Best Actress (for both its stars) at the 19th Sarajevo Film Festival (including a cash award of $21,000) plus the Grand Prix of $20,000 at the 9th annual Eurasia Film Festival, and swept up the premiere awards at Hong Kong (considered a showcase for budding filmmakers), the Firebird Award in the Young Cinema Competition, and the coveted Fipresci prize.Roughly based on…
First time feature director Javier Andrade’s “The Porcelain Horse”, Ecuador’s official Foreign Oscar submission, is an assured piece of work. The edgy family tragedy, laced with punky satire, is set in Andrade’s hometown Portoviejo, a coastal port of 100,000 inhabitants at the time this story unrolls. The title “A Porcelain Horse” refers to a valuable collectable which serves as both an inciting object (which like Desdemona’s handkerchief in Othello, sets off a series of tragedies) and the recurrent tent pole on which Andrade hangs his character study of two over privileged youth, the Chavez boys. Raised in Ecuador’s’ elite, both…
Australian actor turned director Kim Mordaunt’s “The Rocket”, Australia’s foreign Oscar submission, is both a realistic view of rural Laos and a fairy tale of redemption. It’s a narrative feature debut for Mordaunt, whose award-winning documentary Bomb Harvest” followed a team of disposal specialists trying to rid impoverished war-torn Laos of the millions of un-detonated bombs left over after the U.S. Secret War. Laos, used as reprisal staging area by the U.S, is the most bombed nation, per capita, in the world,Mordaunt, returned to Laos to capture some of the realities of the Laotian culture and peoples he had grown…
The winner of Berlin’s GOLDEN BEAR Award, “Childs Pose” is Romania’s official Oscar submission. Călin Peter Netzer’s dark tragicomedy “Childs Pose” is a study in casebook study of toxic mother-son relationships. Domineering mom Cornelia-Luminita Gheorghiu (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”, “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”) exploits her married son’s tragic car accident to regain control of his life.A characteristically new Romanian realism enhances the dark script by Că Peter Netzer and Razvan Radulescu (“The Death of Mr. Lazarescu”). Cornelia, an upper-class middle- aged blond, laments Barbu’s failure to call of visit to all who will listen. As she…
First-time director Iraq Ham’s “I Am Yours, Norway’s official Oscar submission, is a subdued, unvarnished portrait of a young mother unready for her responsibilities. Loose cannon Mina is both seductive and hard to watch, a casebook study of bad decisions. Driven by a desire for immediate gratification, she’s unable to put her son’s welfare first. An overgrown child herself looking for love, the narcissistic would-be actress leaves a string of disillusioned family and lovers in her wake, until the audience itself is ready to dump her. Emotionally volatile, Mina’s on a tightrope throughout the film, ostracized by her family and…
Randall Miller’s “CBGB” is the story of Hilly Kristal’s iconic Bowery club, which became the hive for the nascent punk movement.An antic opening scene that feels like an outtake from “Raising Arizona” shows baby Hilly climbing out of his crib and heading for the hills. His hysterical parents search for the independent tot. Parker Gant (Baby Hilly) or his parents deserve combat pay for the sequence.By 1973, divorced Kristal had lost two bars to bankruptcy, but when he saw the run-down bar at Bleeker and Bowery, he had to try again. Soaking his mother for start up money, he dubbed…