Never Coming to a Theater Near You - Arthouse Cinema 2016

That Venezuelan Golden Lion winner, From Afar. It's actually really good guys, even though Guillermo Arriaga is involved. Great as an aesthetic portrait of the isolation felt in a society with nothing inbetween the utmost private and the completely public, shades of Pablo Larrain and even Lucretia Martels great The Headless Woman, I think. As a gay film it's admittedly more problematic, though. Still, worth seeing.

Diaz wins top prize at Venice with a short one - hope this gives it a chance of a wider release

http://variety.com/2016/film/news/the-woman-who-left-by-filipino-auteur-lav-diaz-wins-venice-film-festival-golden-lion-complete-list-of-winners-1201856697/

Diaz wasn't who I was rooting for originally - probably Larrain or Konchalovsky - but I kinda love how it played out. Filmtwitter was just an echo chamber for the first week, when all the American prestige films came out before Toronto. Tom Ford? Stylish genius! Damien Chazelle? Better than Demy! Villeneuve? Sci-fi masterpiece. Malick? Hum... Then came the second week, and it all died down. I didn't even see anyone talk about Konchalovsky, and he was considered a frontrunner, ended up winning a Silver Lion, and his Postman's White Nights was a great great award winner a few years back. So to see the jury - led by Sam Mendes - give out the main award to the four hour b/w low-budget one, that's great.

There's no hope of a release in Denmark, though. I really hope that both Diaz' 2016 films will be shown at CPH:PIX next month, but I'm kinda worried they're going completely mainstream. The opening film is Dr Strange...

So has anyone seen FuoccoAmare, the winner from Berlin? It's pretty fucked up. I was quite surprised to find it's not the humanistic documentary I was promised, in fact, it's one of the most inhumane documentaries I've seen in a long time (the Italians live pointless and banal lives, while the Africans are depicted only as this swarm on the periphery of the continent, I think they're compared to a squid fisherman's catch at one point. It's quite explicitly racist, though that's the point (that they're denied their humanity)) It's not really about immigrants, as much as it's about European pathologies, I think. I'm a bit shellshocked, actually.

it's playing NYFF next week, opening NY/LA later in October

https://www.kinolorber.com/film/fireatsea

hoping to catch this a/g thang this weekend

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/deborah-stratmans-illinois-parables