Perhaps Berlin’s main achievement was to reveal the progress of the young Iranian director Sohrab Shahid Sales, with A Simple Event (reviewed from last year’s Tehran Festival) in the Forum and Still Life in competition. The new film continues his preoccupation with the lives of inarticulate people—in this case, an elderly railway signalman who receives news of his retirement with utter incomprehension— developed through lengthy scenes in which the characters are simply observed going about their daily chores. Without Sales’ extraordinary control, the result could be intolerable, but for me the film’s exact placing and timing of shots, rather like a slow symphony scored pianissimo throughout, was entirely hypnotic.
Wednesday, 30 August 2023
Monday, 28 August 2023
Sven Klangs kvintett (Stellan Olsson, 1976)
Playing at Close-Up Cinema in London on September 24, 2023. – EK
Voted by Swedish film critics as one of the "25 greatest Swedish films ever", Stellan Olsson's tender drama is based on a play by Henric Holmberg and Ninne Olsson, about the failed transformation of a dance band, formed by a group of young friends, into a proper jazz band in southern Sweden of the late 1950s. Excited by the discovery of a new musical language, they discuss Charlie Parker, and one of them, the saxophonist Lars Nilsson, goes as far as imitating his idol not only in his saxophone sound but also in his wild lifestyle. Shot in stunning black-and-white, many traces of the tableau-like compositions that Swedish cinema through figures like Roy Andersson became known for are already established here. So is the cracking humour. This gem of Swedish films is ripe for rediscovery.
Wednesday, 23 August 2023
San Sebastian Film Festival Retrospectives
Year Retrospective
1959 René Clair
1960 Masters of Nordic Cinema; Jean Grémillon
1961 Emilio Fernández; Georges Méliès; Japanese Cinema
1962 Florian Rey; Greta Garbo; The Cartoon World
1963 Bulls and Bullfighters on the Screen
1964 Elia Kazan
1965 Horror Cinema
1966 Buster Keaton; Science-Fiction Cinema
1967 New Spanish Cinema
1968 New American Cinema
1969 Josef von Sternberg
1970 Fritz Lang
1971 King Vidor
1972 Howard Hawks
1973 Rouben Mamoulian
1974 Nicholas Ray
1975 Henri-Georges Clouzot
1976 Dolores del Río; Humphrey Bogart; Film Noir
1977 Luis Buñuel; Pier Paolo Pasolini; Spanish Cinema from the 2nd Republic
1978 Cinema We Haven't Seen for Decades; Cinema as an Expression of National Culture; Cinema by Women
1979 The Cinema of Nationalities
1980 Stanley Kubrick; José María Berzosa
1981 Brazilian Cinema; Spanish Cinema from the 40s; Spanish Cartoons
1982 Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Leopoldo Torre Nilsson; Roberto Rossellini
1983 The Other Road 2; The Door of the Orient 2
1984 Richard Burton; Cinema and Video
1985 Roman Chalbaud; Ashes and Diamonds; The Vietnam War on Screen
1986 The Guys in the Photo; Luise Rainer
1987 Robert Siodmak; Forgotten Films; Chile
1988 Jacques Tourneur; ABC of Latin America; You Only Live Once
1989 James Whale; All Kieslowski; Great Latin American Melodramas
1990 Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast
1991 Richard Attenborough; Every Way… or Some Way? (5th Centenary of Ignatius of Loyola); Kurier
1992 The Other Shore; Welcome, Mr. Cassavetes
1993 William A. Wellman; The Best 100 Years; Chicano Cinema
1994 William Dieterle; The Best 100 Years (and 2): The European Adventure; John Sayles
1995 Gregory La Cava; The Best 100 Years (and 3): The Shop Around the Corner; Hou Hsiao-Hsien
1996 Tod Browning; The Red Nightmare; Eloy de la Iglesia
1997 Mitchell Leisen; A Long Absence; Getting to Know Peter Bogdanovich
1998 Mikio Naruse; Hunger, Humour and Fantasy; Terry Gilliam
1999 John M. Stahl; The Boom Italian-Style; Bertrand Tavernier
2000 Carol Reed; The TV Generation; Bernardo Bertolucci
2001 Frank Borzage; It Happened Yesterday; Getting to Know Otar Iosseliani
2002 Michael Powell; 50 from the 50s; Volker Schlöndorff
2003 Preston Sturges; Michael Winterbottom
2004 Anthony Mann; Woody Allen
2005 Robert Wise; Rebellious and Untamed; Abel Ferrara
2006 Ernst Lubitsch; Emigrants; Barbet Schroeder
2007 Henry King; Cold Fever; Philippe Garrel
2008 Mario Monicelli; Terence Davies; Japan in Black: Japanese Film Noir
2009 Backwash: The Cutting-Edge of French Cinema; Richard Brooks
2010 New Paths of Non-Fiction; Don Siegel
2011 America Way of Death: American Film Noir 1920–2010; Digital Shadows: Last Generation Chinese Film; Jacques Demy
2012 Very Funny Things: New American Comedy; In Progress: Ten Years with Latin American Cinema; Georges Franju
2013 ANIMATOPIA: New Paths of Animation Cinema; Nagisa Oshima
2014 Eastern Promises: Portrait of Eastern Europe in 50 Films; Dorothy Arzner
2015 New Japanese Independent Cinema 2000–2015; Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack
2016 The Act of Killing: Cinema and Global Violence; Jacques Becker
2017 Joseph Losey
2018 Muriel Box
2019 Roberto Gavaldón
2021 Flowers in Hell: The Golden Age of Korean Cinema
2022 Claude Sautet
2023 Hiroshi Teshigahara
2024 Violent Italy: Italian Crime Films
2025 Lillian Hellman
Retrospettiva
Locarno film festival retrospectives: A list
2025 — Great Expectations: British Postwar Cinema, 1945-1960
2024 — The Lady with the Torch: Columbia Pictures, 1929-1959
2023 — Mexican Popular Cinema
2022 — Douglas Sirk
2021 — Alberto Lattuada
2020 — Kinuyo Tanaka
2019 — Black Light
2018 — Leo MaCarey
2017 —Jacques Tourneur
2016 — Beloved and Rejected: Cinema in the Young Federal Republic of Germany, 1949–1963
2015 — Sam Peckinpah
2014 — Titanus
2013 — George Cukor
2012 — Otto Preminger
2011 — Vincente Minnelli
2010 — Ernst Lubitsch
2009 — Manga Impact
2008 — Nanni Moretti
2007 — Retour à Locarno
2006 — Aki Kaurismäki
2005 — Orson Welles
2004 — Newsfront
2003 — All That Jazz
2002 — Allan Dwan
2001 — Out of the Shadows: Asians in American Cinema
2000 — Une autre histoire du cinéma soviétique 1926–1968
1999 — Joe Dante e l’altro cinema indipendente.
1998 — Marco Bellocchio
1997 — 50 +1 ans de cinéma américain
1996 — Youssef Chahine
1995 — Abbas Kiarostami
1994 — Frank Tashlin
1993 — Sacha Guitry
1992 — Mario Camerini
1991 — Jacques Becker
1990 — Lev Kuleshov
1989 — Preston Sturges
1988 — Alberto Cavalcanti
1987 — 40 ans de Festival à Locarno
1986 — Keisuke Kinoshita
1985 — Boris Barnet
1984 — Lux Film (1934–1954)
1983 — Mikio Naruse
1982 — Powell & Pressburger
1981 — American Cinema of the 1950s [?]
1979 — Yasujiro Ozu
1978 — Douglas Sirk
1977 — Citel Films Geneva
1976 — Pietro Germi [?]
1975 — Totò, Portrait of An Actor
1974 — Swiss cinema [?]
1973 — Swiss Cinema Retrospective 1920-1944
1972 — 25th Anniversary Retrospective
1971 — Cinéma et Résistance
1970 — Claude Autant-Lara
1969 — Luchino Visconti
1968 — Satyajit Ray
1967 — Tribute To Soviet Cinema
1966 — G. W. Pabst
1965 — Jiri Trnka + Manoel de Oliveira
1964 — Andrzej Munk + Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau + Louis Lumière
1963 — John Ford
1962 — Jean Vigo + King Vidor
1961 — Georges Méliès + Fritz Lang
1960 — Luis Buñuel
1959 — Ingmar Bergman
1958 — Humphrey Bogart + Norman Mclaren
1957 — Akira Kurosawa + G.W. Pabst + Francesca Bertini
1956 — Ethnographic Film Review [?]
1955 — Aspects of Italian Neorealist Cinema
1954 — Comic Cinema in the Silent Era
1947 — Reconstruction
1946 — Revue du film documentaire