Actress-director Maïwenn’s searing ensemble drama “Polisse” follows the day to day lives of the Parisian Police Department’s Juvenile Protection Unit (CPU) Melissa (Maïwenn) plays a photographer assigned by the Ministry of the Interior to document the unit. Married to a powerful man, sheltered Melissa fights her way into the close-knit unit to get her story.The layered mosaic film plays like an entire session of HBO’s “The Wire” or “Law and Order: SVU”, if it had been shot by Robert Altman. Laure Gardette’s nervous edit and Maïwenn & Emmanuelle Bercot’s ambitious script begins with a series of horrific interviews of possible…
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.
LAAPFF unrolls May 10 – 20, 2012 at the Director’s Guild of America (DGA), CGV Cinemas (in Koreatown), and for the first time, the Art Theater in Long Beach. LAAPFF launches the celebration of Asian Pacific Heritage Month, offering a slate of 188 films by both Asian Pacific American and Asian international directors from over 20 countries. 46 feature films and 142 shorts will be showcased throughout the 10-day fest. Over the past 28 years, the Festival has presented over 3,500 films and shorts. This year’s Festival will feature many returning filmmakers and producers who continue to make films holding…
Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, 1945-1980, screening 26 Moving Pictures: Painting, Photography, Film-MAY 12Los Angeles Filmforum continues its remarkable screening series Alternative Projections: Experimental Film in Los Angeles, 1945-1980 on May 12 with Moving Pictures: Painting, Photography, Film, featuring works by John Baldessari, Paul McCarthy, Sam Erenberg, Morgan Fisher, Gary Beydler, Lyn Gerry & Estelle Kirsh, Renate Druks, and more.Movies are made up of many still images, moving rapidly through a projector. And they are among the two-dimensional pictorial arts, along with painting and photography. And here’s a show bringing these ideas front and center, with lively deconstructions…
April 20 – May 6, 2012 American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre 6712 Hollywood Blvd ۰ Los Angeles, CA 90028. Join Eddie Muller “The Czar OF Noir” at the 14th edition of Noir City, featuring a variety of rare Noirs, some in restorations or new 35 mm prints struck for the festival ( Alan Ladd’s rare ‘The Great Gatsby”), some simply unavailable on DVD. ( Although with Muller re-exposing these films to a new audience, hopefully they will become availble.)Fourteen years ago that the American Cinematheque invited Eddie Muller to program the Egyptian Theatre’s inaugural festival of film noir. Back…
Poised between a documentary and a fable, Philippe Falardeau’s impeccable “Monsieur Lazhar” serves up the most satisfying drama of the season. As the oscar foreign campaign moved on, it seemed a toss up whether Canada’s “Mr. Lazahr” or Iran’s “A Separation” would win. As complex and satisfying a dysfunctional family story as “A Separation” is, It’s Falardeau’s delicate story of psychological healing that haunts me.Falardeau’s deft adaptation of Evelyne de la Cheneliere’s one-man play “Bashir Lahzar” explores the grieving process, subtly depicts the dilemmas of immigration, and portrays childhood on the brink of adult realization. Played out against the ironies…
Presented in collaboration with Consulate General of the Republic of Croatia in Los Angeles, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs , HAVC – Croatian Audiovisual Center and Ministry of Culture, with support from E.L.M.A. (European Languages and Movies in America).Only months after the Lumiere Brothers dazzled Paris with their tiny magical moving pictures, cinema arrived in the Croatian capital of Zagreb on October 3, 1896. More than a century later, the Croatian film industry has persevered, and neither political, societal nor financial hurdles were able to silence the voices of Croatian filmmakers. In 1961, Croatia’s first Academy Award went to…
IFFLA plans an ambitious slate to celebrate it’s 10th Anniversary edition, 33 international features, documentaries, and short films will be screened from filmmakers from Canada, Italy, India, Germany, South Africa, UK, and the U.S. Among the offerings are three world premieres, nine U.S. premieres and twelve Los Angeles premieres. Christina Marouda, IFFLA’s founder stated “We look back on our first decade with a sense of exhilaration and pride. From the very beginning, our mission was to establish a film festival that would not only pave the way for a greater appreciation of Indian cinema and culture in the U.S., but…
In “Once Upon A Time In Anatolia,” Nuri Bilge Ceylan (“Distant”, “Climates”) follows a team of policemen, lawyers and doctor as they try to retrieve the body of a murder victim. Three vans full, they carry the murderers around, following the main suspect’s poor directions, searching the Anatolian fields in the failing light. The pecking order of searchers is established early.Flanked by lowly officers the hapless perpetrator, Kenan (Firat Tanis) leads them to spot after spot in what begins to seem like a fruitless search. ” “Everywhere looks kind of the same,” offers one of the team. It becomes clear…
Writer-director Lynn Shelton’s miniature chamber piece “Your Sister’s Sister” takes on sexual boundaries again in a more polished outing than her raunchier “Humpday”.Mumblecore filmmaker Mark Duplass is the hub of an awkward triangle opposite Emily Blunt and Rosemarie Dewitt.The semi -improvised film was shot in under two weeks on Seattle’s San Juan Islands, and the production values flatten out at times, but the performances keep you engaged.What could have been a full out farce plays more like a gentle family intervention, and able performances glide over some trite plot points. It’s not my favorite Emily Blunt performance (I prefer her…
Ismail Ferroukhi’s “Free Men” (Les Hommes Libres) tells the true story of a cell of Algerian resistance fighters (secretly based in the Grand Mosque of Paris) who helped Jews escape the roundups of the Vichy government and the Gestapo.The main character Younes (Tahar Rahim-“A Prophet”)) is a composite character based on the many unknown Muslim agents. The covert rescue work emanating from the Mosque is true, and the wily old Director of the Mosque, the very real Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit (played with nuance and grace by Michael Lonsdale) was awarded the Resistance Rosette in 1947, and directed the Paris…