This year’s Deauville American Film Festival is going less for the Hollywood glitz and more for subversive, independent voices with tributes to documentary maker extraordinaire Michael Moore and actor-director-producer James Franco. There are of course lots of stars on the red carpet at Deauville, but Moore and Franco show another side of American cinema. Michael … Continue reading “Michael Moore and James Franco at Deauville”
Rebels, hedonists, social critics… eternal outsiders who have influenced generations of writers and artists that followed. The Beat Generation exhibition at the Paris Pompidou Centre looks at the legacy of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and many more. The Beat poetry movement was born in the wake of World War Two. But its influence … Continue reading “The Beat Generation: On the Road”
A film about life on a Native American reservation is part of an afternoon of events exploring life for Native Americans today at the America Festival in Vincennes on Saturday 10 September. Songs My Brothers Taught Me takes place on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (South Dakota). For her first movie, Chloe Zhao, a young … Continue reading “Songs and Stories of an Indian Reservation”
If there was a prize for the best film title of the year, it would definitely go to Race, the story of Jesse Owens’ victories at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. That single word manages to embody the many facets of a story which encompasses sport, politics and the triumph of the human spirit. The film … Continue reading “Race”
What more fitting way to celebrate Roald Dahl’s centenary than a film adaptation of his favourite of his children’s stories by Steven Spielberg? The BFG (Big Friendly Giant) was published in 1982, the same year as Spielberg was making a name for himself with E.T. It was Dahl’s favourite of his own books, and contains … Continue reading “A Big Friendly Giant of a Film”
In honour of the Roald Dahl’s centenary, and Steven Spielberg adaptation of Dahl’s book The BFG, London and other British cities is playing host to fifty “Dream Jars” representing the dreams of well-known personalities. In The BFG, the titular Big Friendly Giant collects and mixes dreams, which he blows into children’s bedrooms. Celebrities from Steven … Continue reading “Giant Dreams”
In 2016, Britain is commemorating the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare. Kick off the celebrations with the most recent film adaptation of “the Scottish play”, Macbeth, starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard as the ambitious couple who will stop at nothing to gain and keep power. But how accurate is Shakespeare’s portrayal of … Continue reading “Macbeth: Fact and Fiction”
Brooklyn is a beautiful coming-of-age story set in 1950s rural Ireland and Brooklyn, New York. A tale of immigration, family duty and love, it was a modern classic as a novel and now a film. Irish author Colm Tóibín* set half the novel in his home town of Enniscorthy, on Ireland’s south-eastern tip, sleepy, rural … Continue reading “Brooklyn”
It’s not often that you get two national treasures, a lot of laughs and a genuine social debate in one film. The Lady in the Van stars Dame Maggie Smith as a homeless woman who installs herself and her van uninvited in the driveway of playwright Alan Bennett. The Lady in the Van does what … Continue reading “Maggie Smith: The Lady in the Van”
The Suffragette campaign was one of the major civil-rights movements of 20th century Britain. It’s amazing that 100 years after women finally got the vote, there had never been a film made about it! Suffragette, starring Carey Mulligan (The Great Gatsby, An Education), Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep, finally puts the Suffragettes centre stage. … Continue reading “Suffragettes on Screen”
