FILM ... with Tim Milfull
This is Not a Film (G)
Rating: 4/5
75-minutes, now screening
Ask your average punter to name an Iranian film director, and chances are you’ll receive a blank stare in return. If you’re lucky, someone might mangle the pronunciation of the grand old men of Iranian cinema, Abbas Kiarostami or Mohsen Makhmalbaf, or even the latter’s beautiful protégé daughter, Samira.
But those punters with a firm finger on the cinematic pulse will undoubtedly reply with the name Jafar Panahi, not simply because the fifty-year-old has made sublime but controversial films like The White Balloon and The Circle, but also because the unfortunate writer-director has been the subject of a long-running campaign of harassment and repression at the hands of the Iranian government and its religious collaborators.
Late last year, Panahi was sentenced to six years in jail and banned from making, directing, or writing any films, after being prosecuted for “assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic”.
Released from jail in mid-2010, but confined to house arrest, Panahi refused the easy route of exile, choosing to defend his right to be Iranian. I
n his well-appointed apartment in Tehran, the director and friend Mojtaba Mirtahmasb recently sat down to discuss their predicament – Mirtahmasb is also a victim of political harassment – and turned on their iPhone camera and a small HD film to record their frustration.
The resulting product, defiantly labelled This is Not a Film to pre-empt accusations of violating their bans, documents the despair that these men and other filmmakers face while trying to practice their craft in their own country.
Against the backdrop of a city celebrating Iranian New Year with fireworks that eerily echo the violent demonstrations that formed part of the Arab Spring, Panahi’s not-film is a heartbreaking exercise in self-reflexivity and angst.
Despite Panahi’s hopes in the film that the ban and jail sentence might be lifted, both filmmakers recently lost appeals against their sentences. Film-lovers around the world hope that this will soon change.
Some sillyness adds spice to Mexican fare
Hola Mexico Film Festival
Screening from 1 December
Screening at Tribal Theatres, Hola Mexico Film Festival once again gives us a taste of Central American film.
The Opening Night Fiesta features the quite silly but endearing Acorazado, which sees Mexican Silverio (Silverio Palacios) set out to circumvent strict US border controls by sailing his taxi to Florida and pretending to be a Cuban political refugee. Unfortunately, a dodgy sense of direction leads Silverio to land in Cuba rather than the US, and suddenly he has to reassess his plans.
Also very silly is Beto Gómez’s Saving Private Perez, in which ruthless Mexican drug kingpin, Julian Perez (Miguel Rodarte) is shamed by his ailing mother into heading off to Iraq with a handpicked team of assassins to rescue his brother, a US soldier who has been taken hostage by local insurgents.
If you like action movies that feature ridiculous posturing and unlikely scenarios, this one might be for you.
In The Cinema Hold-Up >(pictured below) , after four teenagers decide that the only route out of their individual circumstances involves entering a life of crime, they settle on the local multiplex as the perfect target for a robbery. Iria Gómez Conchiero’s slow-burning thriller offers yet another side of Mexico that we haven’t seen before, and an ending that we might not have expected.
Finally, in The Open Sky, director Everado Gonzalez takes us to the troubled country of El Salvador, where decades of US-sponsored state terrorism has left its population traumatised. Essentially a moving hagiography to Catholic Archbishop, Oscar Arnulfo Romero, Gonzalez’s documentary uses archival footage and first-person testimonials to tell the story of the efforts of Catholic priests and nuns to galvanise their flocks into resisting the repression of a brutal regime.
• For more information about the Hola Mexico Film Festival, visit www.holamexicoff.com/australia/
THE BINGE
The Slap screening from 1 4 December at Tribal Theatre X (MA15+) now screening
Attack the Block (picturede below)(M) screening from 1 December
Bill Cunningham New York (PG) now available through Madman
Adapted from Christos Tsiolkas’s award-winning novel of the same name, the ABC’s The Slap opens a window into one of the more sordid domestic dramas recently shown on television.
Stemming from the titular confrontation at a suburban barbeque – where a rowdy child is disciplined by another parent – each of this series’ eight episodes adopts a new adult viewpoint—very disturbing and controversial viewing.
Also controversial is Jon Hewitt’s latest feature, X, which plunges into the grubby world of Kings Cross, where disillusioned call-girl, Holly (Viva Bianca) decides to take on one last job before giving it all away. Somewhat reluctantly, the desperate and naïve Shay (Hanna Mangan Lawrence) agrees to accompany Holly on a call-out that quickly goes horrendously pear-shaped. Like his first film, Acolytes, Hewitt’s X is ugly, exploitative, and undeniably well-made. Meanwhile, halfway around the world in Joe Cornish’s debut feature, Attack the Block (pictured above), a mini-gang of South London teenaged thugs follow up a mugging with a hunt for what turns out to be a newly arrived alien. As London gradually succumbs to an extra-terrestrial invasion, the boys realise that they might just have an answer to Earth’s salvation.
Featuring some very low-budget aliens that are surprisingly effective, Attack the Block is a whole lot of fun. A
nd despite my ignorance of his entire existence, I found Bill Cunningham New York, Richard Press’s documentary about the octogenarian New York Times photographer, absolutely engaging. Completely dedicated to his craft and his passion for fashion, Cunningham has ridden a succession of almost thirty bicycles around New York over the last sixty years charting the most astonishing sartorial patterns.
Finally, if you’re a film critic, or even aspiring to be one—not that there are any film critic positions coming up any time soon at The Independent — perhaps you’d like to enter some of your work in the Australian Film Critics Association Film Writing Awards. For more details, go here: www.afca.org.au/film_writing_awards.php
