Many features have dealt with the Mafia that not only influences the financial system but people’s lives as well. Others concern the blatant wretchedness of the “disfranchised” lower classes — the old people, as also the youth and women flung into prostitution and other evils. They focus additionally on the decline in old world graciousness from the otherwise doubtful communist values. Many of these masters have shed a critical eye on the communist period and the submissiveness of the Romanian people throughout that period.
“The revolution of 1989 ended the tyrannical rule of Nicolae Ceausescu, but it was much later that filmmakers ultimately found their tone and tenor. Naturally, the Romanians stand for the most modern national film movement to catch fire,” says Anthony Kaufman, celebrated critic, while talking to TSI.
The cinemas that brought those voices back were “The Death of Mr Lazarescu” (2005), a hilarious send-up of bureaucratic ineptitude by Christi Puiu and Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (2007) which follows the endeavour of two female apprentices to terminate a pregnancy, banned in communist Romania.
Mutually, all these above mentioned directors have offered Romanian cinema a lusciously fresh cinematic dialect glued by loaded elocutionary and insular predilections. Remarkable is their recurrent use of pensive long shots and the acerbic humour which infuses their examination of post-Ceausescu Romania.
“Eager to take to pieces even the most esteemed cultural institutions, this generation has shaped one of the most inventive, impudent and quintessential national cinemas,” adds Andrew James Horton, a cinema critic with Kinoeye, the respected Eastern European Cinema journal, in a conversation with TSI.
If Romania is booming, can Czech Republic be far behind? The “Czech film miracle” was shaped in the 60s by ‘New Wave’ directors like Miloš Forman. However, following Spring of 1968, it came to a sudden end. Since that day, the censor’s scissors determined the directors’ lives.
Following the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, Czech movies underwent a systemic alteration. The state film monopoly was eliminated. The largely evident expression of the influx of market mechanisms was the renovation of the genre formation and fall in number of productions. However, the fall in viewership, combined with the newfound enthusiasm for democracy, absurdly caused a thematic disaster and the lack of fitting subjects. The appearance of political status quo stopped the elevation of the artistic act to a political level.
Here too, the young generation that had adapted to the new social and political realities without the so-called “moral decline” came to its rescue. They brought Czech cinema back to the international stage and the pioneer was Jan Sverák's Oscar-winning film “Kolja” (Kolya, 1995). The film takes a hilarious look at Communist-era tyranny and placing it over a tale of a carefree womaniser who finally has to take care of a five-year-old boy, possibly his own illicit progeny. His next feature, “Dark Blue World” (Tmavomodry Svet, 2001) recuperates Czech pilots who fought for their Western Allies in the World War II and consequently had to endure mental and physical torture under communism.
These filmmakers ultimately found their voice and visuals, made a name and turned their respective nations into an adequation for unsullied cinema on the global scene; much like their Iranian counterparts did before them.
“The revolution of 1989 ended the tyrannical rule of Nicolae Ceausescu, but it was much later that filmmakers ultimately found their tone and tenor. Naturally, the Romanians stand for the most modern national film movement to catch fire,” says Anthony Kaufman, celebrated critic, while talking to TSI.
The cinemas that brought those voices back were “The Death of Mr Lazarescu” (2005), a hilarious send-up of bureaucratic ineptitude by Christi Puiu and Cristian Mungiu’s “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (2007) which follows the endeavour of two female apprentices to terminate a pregnancy, banned in communist Romania.
Mutually, all these above mentioned directors have offered Romanian cinema a lusciously fresh cinematic dialect glued by loaded elocutionary and insular predilections. Remarkable is their recurrent use of pensive long shots and the acerbic humour which infuses their examination of post-Ceausescu Romania.
“Eager to take to pieces even the most esteemed cultural institutions, this generation has shaped one of the most inventive, impudent and quintessential national cinemas,” adds Andrew James Horton, a cinema critic with Kinoeye, the respected Eastern European Cinema journal, in a conversation with TSI.
If Romania is booming, can Czech Republic be far behind? The “Czech film miracle” was shaped in the 60s by ‘New Wave’ directors like Miloš Forman. However, following Spring of 1968, it came to a sudden end. Since that day, the censor’s scissors determined the directors’ lives.
Following the Velvet Revolution in November 1989, Czech movies underwent a systemic alteration. The state film monopoly was eliminated. The largely evident expression of the influx of market mechanisms was the renovation of the genre formation and fall in number of productions. However, the fall in viewership, combined with the newfound enthusiasm for democracy, absurdly caused a thematic disaster and the lack of fitting subjects. The appearance of political status quo stopped the elevation of the artistic act to a political level.
Here too, the young generation that had adapted to the new social and political realities without the so-called “moral decline” came to its rescue. They brought Czech cinema back to the international stage and the pioneer was Jan Sverák's Oscar-winning film “Kolja” (Kolya, 1995). The film takes a hilarious look at Communist-era tyranny and placing it over a tale of a carefree womaniser who finally has to take care of a five-year-old boy, possibly his own illicit progeny. His next feature, “Dark Blue World” (Tmavomodry Svet, 2001) recuperates Czech pilots who fought for their Western Allies in the World War II and consequently had to endure mental and physical torture under communism.
These filmmakers ultimately found their voice and visuals, made a name and turned their respective nations into an adequation for unsullied cinema on the global scene; much like their Iranian counterparts did before them.
it has served as a plot point since ages. Naturally, a subject like an assassination holds great sway over the cinematic medium, with some of the most memorable movies being made with one assassination or the other as a backdrop. An assassination holds intrigue, action, suspense and shenanigans in equal measure and is perfect fodder for a gripping script. And the conspiracy theories don’t hurt either. Look at “JFK”, Oliver Stone’s epic film starring Kevin Costner. The film which examined the JFK assassination through the perspective of a New Orleans District Attorney who discovers there’s more to the Kennedy assassination than the official story and had the tagline ‘The story that won’t go away’. The film, its editing style (it won an Oscar for best editing) puts it right up there on the top of classic movies that treated the subject of an assassination. Shedding light on filmmakers’ fascination for the subject, director Sudhir Mishra tells TSI, “It depends on what the assassination is. It is an event which has a past, which has a story, which can either be the beginning of something or the end of something. There is a dramatic convergence of people, a lot of it will be visual, and a lot of it will be non-verbal so a filmmaker can get interested in a visual way of telling stories. What attracts a filmmaker is an event in which you can say something without dialogues which offers great possibility for sound, for picture, it is an ideal cinematic event in all sorts of ways.” “JFK” fits the description perfectly. So does the Tom Cruise starrer “Valkyrie” which told the story of the plot to kill Adolf Hitler hatched (and then botched) by his own military officers led by the wily Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg.
where the Prime Minister would receive petitioners. People would come to her with problems ranging from mistreatment of sacred cows to cases of police brutality. She picked up this direct contact concept from her father. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru used to meet the public at eight in the morning every weekday. There were no security checks during those days.
from Kerala was sad that the state had only 20 constituencies. As the results came out, he boarded himself up inside Delhi’s AKG Bhavan. Party committees blamed chief minister V.S. Achuthanandan’s remarks, his studied silence on controversial issues and the LDF’s relationship with Abdul Nasser Madani’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the loss of 16 seats. Now, the party faces yet another litmus test. The three Assembly seats, which fell vacant after the representatives got elected to the Lok Sabha, go to polls on November 7.
When the chips are down and you perform under pressure, you feel great. I used to love that type of feeling. I felt that I had done my bit for the team.