Joonas Berghäll & Mika Hotakainen’s “Steam Of Life” is a beautiful freak, the sort of film Robert Koehler of Cinemascope dubbed an “in- between-film.” In this case it’s a doc that feels like a narrative. (Reviewed in “Best Films Of 2010” and “The 12th Scandinavian Film Festival-Scandinavian Oscar Submissions.”)Saunas have always been a spiritual place for Finns. In Finland, before electricity, saunas were used for birthing and for washing the dead. Saunas offer a womb like refuge to the cold, a place where class distinctions are washed away.”Bathing in a sauna performs for a Finn the same function as seeing…
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 12th Scandinavian Film Festival L.A. (SFFLA) returns to the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills with a strong selection of Scandinavian Oscar Submissions and a baker’s dozen of handpicked films highlighting Nordic Cinema at its best. Founder- Director James Koenig (classical singer, poet, author was decorated as a Knight of the Order of the Finnish Lion for his work with the American Scandinavian Foundation of Los Angeles. Koenig’s boutique festival is my favorite festival of the year, two weekends packed with great films, great guests, a Scandinavian Cafe and the gracious, humorous Koenig himself.This year’s selection Includes Thomas Vinterberg’s…
“Little Rose”, the gripping Polish post-war intelligence drama will play at the 2010 Palm Springs International Film Festival. Considered for the 2010 Golden Globes Best Foreign film. It failed to make the Shortlist. It would have made mine.Inspired by the life of Paweł Jasienica (A.K.A.Leon Lech Beynar) a Polish historian and journalist who was persecuted by the Polish Communist government as a political dissident), Jan Kidawa-Blonski’s powerful “Little Rose” details the government’s total infiltration of the lives of private citizens-artists and members of the intelligentsia during the Soviet bloc years in Poland. Ironically Beynar, a member of the Polish underground,…
The Museum Of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), with Pacific Design Center, and Charles S. Cohen presented Counter Culture, Counter Cinema: An Avant-Garde Film Festival, a three-day celebration of films focusing on the long-term alliance between experimental cinema and counter-culture activity. The SilverScreen Theater at the Pacific Design Center at 8687 Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood. October 14-16, 2010,Co-curated by David E. James and MM Serra, the festival presented films selected from the collection of the New American Cinema Group/New York’s Filmmakers’ Cooperative. A half-century of films and videos from the early 1960s to the present explored sexuality, politics, communal…
Margarethe von Trotta’s “Vision: From the Life of Hildegard Von Bingen,’’ portrays the practical minded 12th-century Benedictine nun, mystic, botanist, healer, playwright and composer, whose “visions” won her freedom from the structured confined world of her medieval convent.Margarethe von Trotta was one of the founding filmmakers (actress and director) of the New German Cinema of the 1970s (along with Herzog, Fassbinder, Rosa von Praunheim and her former husband Volker Schlöndorff. Von Trotta won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for “Marianne and Juliane” (1981.)Barbara Sukowa, one of von Trotta’s frequent collaborators, plays the tough-minded nun who fought corruption…
The 24th Annual AFI FEST returns with its popular “See A Film On Us!” program initiated last year by then fest director Rose Kuo (currently the executive director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center.) AFI Fest 2010 will offer free daytime screenings and a limited number of free tickets to evening screenings and galas, including Opening and Closing Night. Jacqueline Lyanga, an AFI veteran programmer and key architect in the planning and implementation of AFI FEST and other AFI events since 2005, was named Festival Director for AFI FEST 2010, Lyanga, a graduate of the world-renowned AFI Conservatory, was…
First-time director Jeff Malmberg’s “Marwencol” explores trauma and creativity in this stunning portrait of one man’s homemade therapy.In April of 2000, one time alcoholic and part-time cross dresser Mark Hogancamp was attacked by five teenagers outside a local bar in Kingston New York. Brutally beaten, he sustained permanent brain damage, a loss of memory and was so traumatized that he had to relearn most of his basic functions. Released from the hospital without benefits, fearful Hogancamp devised his own form of art-therapy. For him, recovering his Imagination meant recovering his most important faculty.Building a 1/6th scale model of Marwencol, an…
Any new film from Doc-master Frederick Wiseman (“Titicut Follies”) is cause for celebration. Wiseman, at 80, is still a one-man crew, serving as Producer, director, editor and sound person. (John Davey is the D.P).Wiseman’s 36 fascinating documentaries eschew narration, allowing the viewer to discover his well-observed truths.”Crafting dramatic structure out of daily life”, Weisman’s fly on the wall humanism has influenced a generation of international minimalist stylists like Cristi Puiu, Jia Zhangke, as well as Kubrick and Scorcese.Over the years he has focused on many of America’s institutions: ” Juvenile Court “, “High School”, mental hospitals (“Titicut Follies”), the US…
Based on J.R. Ackerley’s 1956 portrait of his gleefully trangressive, unspayed pet Tulip, “My Dog Tulip” is a special treat for adult lovers of animation (not to mention dog lovers.) World War l veteran Ackerley, openly gay, was the arts editor of The Listener, the weekly magazine of the BBC, from 1935-59. His sly memoir “Hindoo Holiday” detailed his experiences as the secretary to the Maharaja of Chatarpur, when India was still under British rule.Paul and Sandra Schuette Fierlinger’s hand-drawn and painted animation creates a whimsical world reminiscent of early New Yorker illustrators like Saul Steinberg as well as Polish,…
Pedro González-Rubio’s “Alamar”-A photo-slide show of romantic scenes between Roberta (Roberta Palombini) and Mexican tour guide Jorge (Jorge Machado) celebrate their sensuous incompatible relationship of opposites. Roberta’s narration celebrates their dissolved marriage but, as she says “I’m unhappy in your reality, as you are in mine.” Roberta has decided to move back to Rome and sends their five year old son, Natan, on a last visit his grandfather’s palafitte, a fishing shack set on stilts in the crystalline waters of Banco Chinchorro, off the Yucatan Peninsula. (Quintana Roo, the world’s second-largest coral reef is an intact eco-system.)Roberta wakes sleepy Natan…