Archive for the ‘Documentary’ Category

The Court Jester’s Power

The Showerhead

Director: Craig Tanner

Running time: 99 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Film Festival: Durban International Film Festival

Please note this film is a Documentary

Thank you to Videovision Entertainment for the invitation to the preview media screening held at their offices in Umhlanga on Wednesday 24th July 2024.

Zapiro, The Cartoonist

The role of the court jester in any royal court is to make the king laugh by poking fun at the king and his antics.

In documentary filmmaker Craig Tanner’s film The Showerhead, Zapiro, that famous and incisive political cartoonist whose cartoons on many South African politicians have graced the pages of the Sunday Times, Mail and Guardian and more recently The Daily Maverick, is the court jester and he holds all the power.

Ferial Haffajee

The Showerhead is one of the best documentaries on the freedom of expression particularly pertinent to the South African political landscape which has now shifted from the disastrous Zuma years through state capture to Ramaphosa’s second term of office in which the President guides the beast that is the Government of National Unity following the ANC’s loss of their majority in the recent 2024 elections.

Mondli Makhanya

Viewing The Showerhead through an amused vantage point of 2024, where the political landscape has transformed considerably, this excellent documentary focuses on the life of Zapiro, known as Jonathan Shapiro whose extraordinary ability to capture in cartoons the South African political zeitgeist of the moment, focussing particularly of his numerous depictions of former President Jacob Zuma from his rise to power to his rape trial and then of course to his numerous corruption charges  which ultimately lead to his downfall.

In a recent online interview with director Craig Tanner and Zapiro, I asked them about their collaboration process, which they replied was intense but rewarding as Tanner expertly weaves the life of Jonathan Shapiro as he emerges as the leading controversial political cartoonist in South Africa as the politics of the country swept from President Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS denialism in the early 2000’s to the rise of President Zuma in 2009.

Ashwin Desai

Zapiro expertly captured all of Zuma’s disgraceful antics from his rape trial to his shady association with the Gupta brothers at the height of State Capture which wrecked the South African economy, to President Zuma suing Zapiro for a particularly blistering cartoon of the rape of Lady Justice.

Ultimately, The Showerhead is about the right to freedom of expression and how powerful politicians should not interfere with that right. It must be expressed by talented cartoonists like Zapiro or brilliant contemporary artists like Brett Murray whose controversial painting of Jacob Zuma known as The Spear which appeared at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg caused a clash between the artists right to exhibit and the government’s power to censor.

The Showerhead is specifically South African, but it will find an audience internationally as freedom of expression is being undermined in many repressive countries globally.

Craig Tanner’s excellent and humorous document will not only take the viewers on a forgotten political journey of previous SA presidents but focuses on the talented Zapiro who captures every politician’s misstep with spot on humour and ingenuity.

The Showerhead closes the 45th Durban International Film Festival tonight Saturday 27th July 2024 and will sure have audiences talking beyond it’s premiere and into its commercial release which is being facilitated by Videovision Entertainment.

In the case between Zapiro and Zuma, the court jester has all the power as he successfully outwits a fallen king.

The Showerhead gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is highly recommended viewing as an extraordinary documentary and a brave account of significance of the freedom of expression, which is enshrined in the South African constitution. Catch The Showerhead on commercial cinema release later this year, its brilliant.  

The Blame Frame

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Director: Laura Poitras

Running Time: 2 hours and 2 minutes

Festival: Durban International Film Festival (DIFF2023)

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS FILM IS A DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

Even before viewers watch film maker Laura Poitras Oscar nominated documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, they should read the New Yorker journalist’s superbly researched book Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe who gives a detailed account of the complex issues surrounding the extensive opioid crisis that gripped America for the first 20 years of the 21st century.

Poitras chooses to follow the bohemian life of photographer and activist Nan Goldin who herself got addicted to OxyContin and then once recovered launched a successful smear campaign again the Sackler Family who owned the Pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma who made and distributed the highly addictive strong pain killer OxyContin, which is a derivative of heroin.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed focuses on Goldin’s smear campaign, who as an artist who had her work hung in some of the world’s most prestigious galleries from The Met to the Guggenheim and the Louvre, attacked the immensely wealthy Sackler’s families philanthropic efforts of donating huge amounts of money to galleries in New York, London and Paris with the proviso that the cultural institution name a wing of the gallery after the Sackler’s.

With a brilliant title, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, documentarian Laura Poitras makes her position clear that she is on the side of Nan Goldin and does not maintain an objective gaze but instead scandalizes the actual smear campaign which was both riveting and explosive as Nan Goldin and her gang of activists stages protests in the Guggenheim throwing thousands of prescription OxyContin bottles down the spiral ramp of the Guggenheim, the most glamourous art gallery in New York. Goldin does a similar protest at the Louvre where the European wing of the Sackler’s who were based in London had donated large amounts of money.

Laura Poitras does do a full comprehensive historical biography of Nan Goldin from her counterculture days as an emerging photographer in New York surrounded by fringe film makers and queer artists to her own addiction struggles and to the scourge of the AIDS crisis in the late 1980’s which nearly wiped out that entire counter-culture community.

Ultimately what Poitras does do is paint the immensely clever and secretive Sackler clan as aloof billionaires who had invented a drug which was abused by millions of Americans and many died, while not accepting any responsibility for how they had contributed to the Opioid epidemic from 2000 to 2020, while vastly benefiting from the immense profits made by their Pharmaceutical company.

The faces of Kathe and Richard Sackler, some of the heirs of the vast wealth of the Sackler clan, as appearing cold and unsympathetic at the end of the documentary when the family is deposed virtually in 2020 to appear before the families of the victims who died during this crisis, paints the family that privately owned Purdue Pharma as completely unsympathetic, which they were.  The Sackler’s did not acknowledge guilt or accountability but through the efforts of Nan Goldin and her gang of protesters, years of philanthropy have been stripped at some of the finest cultural institutions in the world as the Sackler name was erased from the esteemed Art World.

As a documentary film maker, Laura Poitras does a superb job of bringing the opioid crisis to light and how the once influential Sackler family lost their reputation but not their wealth. All The Beauty and the Bloodshed is a fascinating if slightly one sided documentary which is tangential in parts but illuminating in other.

While the complex ethics of pharmaceutical distribution is largely untouched in this documentary, the focus squarely remains on the Sackler’s enormous contribution to the World of Art and their untimely undoing by a spiralling opioid crisis and Federal litigation. See this documentary in conjunction with reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s brilliant non-fiction book, to gain the full complex history of the Sackler family and the opioid crisis in America. 

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is a fascinating tale of counterculture flamboyance and protest versus corporate greed and murky philanthropy to some of the most influential art galleries in the World: The Louvre, the Guggenheim, The Tate and the Met. Highly recommended viewing.

The Lithuanian Radioman that Caused All the Trouble

The Jump

Director: Giedre Zickyte

This film is a feature length documentary

Lithuanian with English subtitles

Running time 1 hour 24 minutes

Film Rating: 9 out of 10

This documentary film will be screened virtually as part of the 8th European Film Festival – https://www.eurofilmfest.co.za/films/

Ever heard of Simas Kudrika? Don’t worry if you hadn’t.

Neither had I until I saw this absolutely brilliant documentary called The Jump by Lithuanian ethnographic film maker Giedre Zickyte whose previous credits included the short documentary film I am Not from Here which won Best Short documentary at the 2016 Budapest International Documentary Festival.

On Thanksgiving Day in November 1970, Lithuanian radioman and aspirant defector jumped off a Russian vessel onto a nearby American vessel off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts in American waters.

While the Americans aboard the Vigilant tried to harbour Simas Kudrika and keep him from being captured by the Russian seaman who had boarded the American vessel to hunt for Simas, they ultimately failed, leading to one of the biggest diplomatic muddles of the Cold War, sending ripples through the frosty relationships of the two biggest superpowers in 1970, America and the USSR.

The Russians recaptured Simas and extradited him back to Siberia in Russia and tried him for treason, for betraying the motherland, the almighty USSR.

Simas Kudrika

Meanwhile in America, particularly in political circles under the choppy presidency of Richard Nixon, the Simas Kudrika affair was starting to make waves both in the immigrant Lithuanian communities in New York, Washington DC and Chicago but also for the mere fact that how could those friendly American sailors allow Simas Kudrika to be recaptured by those nasty Russian naval officers when all Simas really wanted to do was defect to the land of the free and the brave, the gloriously opulent United States of America?

From 1970 to 1974, Simas Kudrika remained in freezing Siberian prisons completely unaware that an ocean away, the activists of the Lithuanian immigrant communities in America were successfully lobbying to get him freed and returned to America.

Even former top diplomat and Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger (1973-1977) got involved as did President Richard Nixon’s successor President Gerald Ford.

Eventually through a strange twist of fate, the immigrant community in America discover that Simas’s mother was actually born in America so this Lithuanian radioman had some claim to his American birth right.

Documentary film maker Giedre Zickyte expertly blends archival TV and film footage with real interviews with Simas Kudrika in this brilliantly told true story of one man’s journey to defection from the then Soviet controlled Lithuania during the Cold War.

The Jump is a superb documentary, a real slice of cold war historical drama tinged with nostalgia and emotional realism to make the viewer side with who the real Simas Kudrika was, a Lithuanian radioman that didn’t mean to cause so much trouble but just wanted to live in a free country.

The Jump is highly recommended viewing and gets a film rating of 9 out of 10. An absolute treat of a documentary especially designed for history buffs.

Living with Memories

Ella Blumenthal: I am Here

Director: Jordy Sank

This is a Feature Length Documentary and is available online at the Encounters: South African International Documentary Film Festival from Thursday 10th June until Sunday 20th June 2021 – https://www.encounters.co.za/ #Virtuallyeverywhere – https://www.encounters.co.za/film/i-am-here/ and at select physical venues in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

After his South African Film and Television Award (SAFTA) nomination for best short documentary The Locket in 2017, SA documentary film director Jordy Sank tackles a fascinating subject, the horrific memories of a still living holocaust survivor Ella Blumenthal in his directorial debut feature length documentary Ella Blumenthal: I am Here, which was part of the official selection at the 2021 Miami Jewish Film Festival https://miamijewishfilmfestival.org/ and winning the Audience Award at the 2021 Atlanta Jewish Film Festival https://www.ajff.org/film/i-am-here and now is available to watch online at the Encounters South African Documentary Film Festival.

In a plush apartment in Seapoint in Cape Town, South Africa, Holocaust survivor Ella Blumenthal celebrates her 98th birthday surrounded by her children and grandchildren. During this auspicious occasion, Ella Blumenthal reveals the secret of her horrific past as a Holocaust survivor.

Born in Warsaw, Poland in 1921, Ella Blumenthal was 18 when the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939 igniting World War II. Her and her family were immediately transferred to the Warsaw ghetto until it burnt down. Ella and her niece Roma were then transferred to various concentration camps , while her survival skills were paramount she went onto survive both Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz concentration camp where eventually n 1945, World War II ended and the Holocaust survivors were freed by the Allied troops.

Director Jordy Sank films his subject matter with a compassionate gaze from Ella walking briskly on the Seapoint promenade to her emotional retelling of her horrific experiences of being a prisoner of some of the most notorious concentration camps of World War II at her 98th birthday celebration in 2019, surrounded by friends, children and grandchildren, educating them about the past.

Perceptively and rather cleverly, the flashbacks to the concentration camp horrors are told in a strategic combination of documentary news reel and beautiful animation provided by Greg Bakker, giving the documentary a palatable and heart-warming tone.

Impressively it is the shot of the 98 year old great grandmother swimming in a heated pool with the magnificent skyline of Cape Town in the background as her voice over describes the relief at being rescued by the allied troops and being brought to a camp with well-made up beds and running water, basic necessities which we nowadays take for granted.

Ella Blumenthal: I am Here is a captivating and brilliantly shot documentary about an extraordinary woman, a 98 year old Jewish woman who came to South Africa to make a new life and it offers a message of hope and forgiveness as she recalls how her and her grandson visited Auschwitz in 2004 to make peace with the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. Ella’s message is simple, love everyone and be grateful to be alive.

This is an amazing documentary, skilfully educating a new generation about the survivors of the Holocaust and a formidable woman who has learnt to live life through memories as most of her family from Poland were killed during World War II. With the exception of her niece who now lives in New York, Ella Blumenthal is one of the few survivors of a generation that got brutally obliterated by pure hatred and rampant Anti-Semitism.  

Highly recommended viewing and an important documentary to watch, Ella Blumenthal: I am Here gets a documentary film rating of 8 out of 10. Catch this insightful documentary online at the Encounters Film Festival –

86th Academy Awards

The 86th Academy Awards / The Oscars

 

Sunday 2nd March 2014

 

OSCAR WINNERS AT THE 86TH ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS

 twelve_years_a_slave

Best Picture/Film: 12 Years a Slave

gravity_ver3

Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron – Gravity

dallas_buyers_club_ver4

Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey – Dallas Buyers Club

blue_jasmine_ver2

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett – Blue Jasmine

Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto – Dallas Buyers Club

12_years_a_slave_2

Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong’o – 12 Years a Slave

Best Adapted Screenplay: John Ridley – 12 Years a Slave

her

Best Original Screenplay: Spike Jonze – Her

Great Beauty - la_grande_bellezza_ver3

Best Foreign Language Film: The Great Beauty (Italy) directed by Paolo Sorrentino

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Beauty

20 Feet_From_Stardom_poster doc

Best Documentary Film: 20 Feet from Stardom – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20_Feet_from_Stardom

frozen

Best Animated Feature: Frozen

Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki – Gravity

Best Editing: Alfonso Cuaron and Mark Sanger – Gravity

Best Hair and Make-up: Robin Matthews – Dallas Buyers Club

Best Original Score: Steven Price – Gravity

gatsby-poster

Best Production Design: Catherine Martin – The Great Gatsby

Best Costume Design: Catherine Martin – The Great Gatsby

Best Visual Effects: Gravity

Source: http://www.oscars.org/

 

 

 

 

2013 Toronto Film Festival

2013 Toronto International Film Festival Winners

2013_Toronto_International_Film_Festival_poster

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) takes place every year in September in Toronto, Canada.

Films which premiere at Toronto are often nominated for Academy Awards the following year.

TIFF does not hand out individual prizes for Best Actor or Actress but focuses on among others the following awards:
People’s Choice Award & Best Canadian Feature Film

the fifth_estate

Opening Night Film: The Fifth Estate directed by Bill Condon starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Bruhl, Dan Stevens, David Thewlis, Alicia Vikander, Laura Linney, Stanley Tucci and Carice van Houten

twelve_years_a_slave

People’s Choice Award: 12 Years a Slave directed by Steve McQueen starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Paul Giamatti, Alfre Woodard, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano and Sarah Poulson

Best Canadian Feature Film: When Jews were Funny directed by Alan Zweig (documentary) starring Howie Mandel, Shelley Berman, Norm Crosby, Shecky Greene, Jack Carter, David Steinberg

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Toronto_Film_Festival

2013 Venice Film Festival

2013 Venice International Film Festival Winners

Venice International Film Festival, known as La Biennale di Venezia takes place annually
in late August, early September and is regarded as the oldest Film Festival in the World.

Sacro_GRA

Golden Lion (Best Film): Sacro Gra directed by Gianfranco Rosi (documentary)

Miss_Violence

Silver Lion (Best Director): Alexandros Avranas for the film Miss Violence (Greece)

Best Actor: Themis Panou – Miss Violence

Via_Castellana_Bandiera

Best Actress: Elena Cotta – Via Castellana Bandiera 

philomena

Best Screenplay: Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope – Philomena starring Steve Coogan and Judi Dench

Source: http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/news/07-09.html

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