Portuguese auteur Joao Canijo (Blood of My Blood) arrives at the 2023 Berlinale with not just one but two films — a diptych shot in the same hotel location with overlapping characters. Bad Living (Mal Viver) focuses largely on the women who own and run the hotel, while its companion, Living Bad (Viver Mal), centers on some of the hotel’s guests. (Both films unfold within the same time frame.) Full disclosure: I have not seen Living Bad, but given that Bad Living was selected for the festival’s main competition presumably it was deemed to be the stronger work. One can only shudder to imagine what an ordeal Living Bad must be to endure. Punishingly slow, grandiloquently depressing and ultimately not even especially convincing psychologically, Bad Living feels like the work of people who sincerely believed they were making great art. Sadly, they were mistaken.
Bad Living assembles a procession of mostly static,...
Bad Living assembles a procession of mostly static,...
- 2/21/2023
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Despite the pandemic disruption of the film industry around the world, which impacted everything in film from production to simple moviegoing, the vibrancy of cinema culture throughout the year has felt as strong as ever, and fiercely resilient. In our small but passionate way we also have made a show of force. In 2021 alone, Notebook has published over 400 articles. Here are some highlights from the year—and we encourage you to use the "Explore" menu or dive into our archives to find even more excellent work published this year.ARTICLESTikTok meets silent cinema in Caroline Golum's witty essay. Cinematic technology used not for social celebrity but rather for criminal forensics was the focus of an article by Emerson Goo.The French New Wave's Luc Moullet, a guiding light for Notebook, was the subject of two pieces, one about the extraordinary TV show How to with John Wilson, the other...
- 12/31/2021
- MUBI
There is a lot that Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke cannot say about his new project “A Useful Ghost.” But then again, when audiences in Thailand see the film, they will know exactly what it means.
Set primarily in a family home, “A Useful Ghost” tells the story of a couple, March and Nat, and their young son Dot. March runs a vacuum cleaner factory, but ironically, one day Nat dies from a respiratory disease caused by air pollution in the area. Saddened by the death of his wife, March becomes worried that the same fate will befall Dot, when the boy starts developing similar symptoms.
In an attempt to save her son’s health, Nat returns to haunt the family as a vacuum cleaner and tries desperately to suck up all the dust in the house. Eventually, she realizes the family home is haunted also by the ghosts of dead...
Set primarily in a family home, “A Useful Ghost” tells the story of a couple, March and Nat, and their young son Dot. March runs a vacuum cleaner factory, but ironically, one day Nat dies from a respiratory disease caused by air pollution in the area. Saddened by the death of his wife, March becomes worried that the same fate will befall Dot, when the boy starts developing similar symptoms.
In an attempt to save her son’s health, Nat returns to haunt the family as a vacuum cleaner and tries desperately to suck up all the dust in the house. Eventually, she realizes the family home is haunted also by the ghosts of dead...
- 8/10/2021
- by Will Thorne
- Variety Film + TV
Study, nymphs, the spreading treesas you gather your flowers in their shade,how they were lovers in former daysand their trunks even now bear their loadof pain.—From Luís de Camões' "As doces cantilenas que cantavam"; To the Fawns, transl. Landeg WhiteFull Bloom is a series, written by Patrick Holzapfel and illustrated by Ivana Miloš, that reconsiders plants in cinema. Directors have given certain flowers, trees or herbs special attention for many different reasons. It’s time to give them the credit they deserve and highlight their contributions to cinema, in full bloom.Above: Ivana Miloš, Vuvu lusitanica (2021), monotype and gouache on paper, 33 x 24 cmWhen João César Monteiro sits on a bench under the protecting branches of the Cupressus lusitanica (Mexican Cypress) in Lisbon’s Jardim do Príncipe Real in his final film Vai~E~Vem, he is posing for an image that will survive him; an image bound to life and death,...
- 4/13/2021
- MUBI
The pandemic, although disastrous for most parts of the economy, had one minor upside: a boost in online viewing. The number of subscribers of Portugal’s VOD platform Filmin, for example, has tripled compared with last year, due in part to the lockdown. “We grew as much in three months as we forecast for two years,” Filmin Portugal manager Anette Dujisin told Variety. Classic films have played a major part in driving that growth.
Despite challenges with local classics, Filmin is seeing growing success with heritage films and catalog titles as well as new releases. Filmin has received constant requests from subscribers – even loud demands from some – for more classic films since the service went online in 2016, Dujisin said.
The feedback affirms “that a VOD platform dedicated to independent cinema is not complete without a certain body of classical films,” Dujisin said. “So since the beginning we have been making...
Despite challenges with local classics, Filmin is seeing growing success with heritage films and catalog titles as well as new releases. Filmin has received constant requests from subscribers – even loud demands from some – for more classic films since the service went online in 2016, Dujisin said.
The feedback affirms “that a VOD platform dedicated to independent cinema is not complete without a certain body of classical films,” Dujisin said. “So since the beginning we have been making...
- 10/12/2020
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Joaquim Pinto and Nuno Leonel's Fish Tail (2015) is showing April 16 - May 16, 2018 in the United States as part of the series The Unusual Subjects.When I was a child, my dreams had me follow the mysterious shadows of one Long John Silver. I used to sit in my bed in the south of Germany late at night, hundreds of miles away from any sea or real adventures. However, I was under the spell of Robert Louis Stevenson, his written feelings, and those mysterious figures that came from many dangerous journeys undertaken and many more ahead. Emotions lingered on obscure horizons, emotions that I now find only in a kiss or in filmmakers such as Fritz Lang or Jacques Rivette. Nothing related to these feelings can be called "real," but still there are only a few childhood memories more...
- 4/16/2018
- MUBI
Bertrand Bonello's Sarah Winchester, Phantom Opera (2016) is showing on Mubi from April 7 - May 7 and Antoine Barraud's Rouge (2015) is showing on Mubi from April 21 - May - 21, 2017 as part of our Special Discovery series. Self-portrait in front of a mirror (1908), Léon Spilliaert. MuZee, Ostend. Photo: © Sabam Belgium 2016I would not paint — a picture —I'd rather be the OneIt's bright impossibility—Emily DickinsonWhen asked about his first short film, a beautiful portrait of the amazing Portuguese poet Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, filmmaker João César Monteiro declared, rather dissatisfied, "Well, this film is proof to all those who say that you can not film a poem." The same statement has often been made about any other art that dared be approached by cinema. A strange suspicion arises once a film tackles art. It seems to be deeply grounded in an idea of cinema as the art of the little man,...
- 4/18/2017
- MUBI
The latest installment in the filmmaker's series of journal-films combining iPhone footage and sounds and images from movies. A diary penned with cinema.Journal (6.6.16 - 1.10.17)feat. additional footage from Masha Tupitsyn and Isiah MedinaMy journal-film series (of which this is the third installment) came to be as a means of resolving the points of convergence and departure amongst the environments I occupy and those which I encounter in cinema. I like to view these films as a method of managing the images that take up my thoughts and memories into a new continuity, one in which the distinction between images seen on-screen and those personally experienced is no longer absolute. In dissolving this partition, these films provide a vector for the animation conceptual concerns through cinema - montage fulfilling that which language can only formally describe and vice versa. The following essay outlines some of the concerns this film attempts...
- 3/20/2017
- MUBI
Cíntia Gil is concerned about the future of Portuguese independent film. In a letter of protest shared with IndieWire, the co-director of Doclisboa calls on her country’s government to address a 2013 decree-law that led to the establishment of a new executive board on the Portuguese Film Institute (Ica) described by Gil as “seemingly allergic to its responsibility and ignorant of the Ica’s regulatory role.”
Read More: Locarno: How Modern Portuguese Cinema Is Uniting the Past and the Present
A vital part of that role is to select juries that analyze submissions to the Ica. “The outcome of this situation has been immediately evident,” notes Gil: “The requirement expressed in the regulation that jury members be ‘personalities of recognized cultural merit’ has not been met.” Read her full letter below:
Read More: Documentary Filmmaking is Having a Moment — in Portugal
Letter Of Protest
addressed to His Excellency Mr. President and Honorable Mr.
Read More: Locarno: How Modern Portuguese Cinema Is Uniting the Past and the Present
A vital part of that role is to select juries that analyze submissions to the Ica. “The outcome of this situation has been immediately evident,” notes Gil: “The requirement expressed in the regulation that jury members be ‘personalities of recognized cultural merit’ has not been met.” Read her full letter below:
Read More: Documentary Filmmaking is Having a Moment — in Portugal
Letter Of Protest
addressed to His Excellency Mr. President and Honorable Mr.
- 2/7/2017
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Moonlight fan poster by Tony StellaMoonlight, Deadpool, Mel Gibson, Trolls: a portrait of mainstream cinema in 2016 in the form of the eclectic list of nominees for the 2017 Golden Globes.Speaking of awards, the European Film Awards were announced over the weekend, with Germany's Toni Erdmann deservedly winning in the film, direction, actor, actress, and screenwriter categories. A moment of pride: our film, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, took home the Discovery award.An even more handsome list of films can be found at Film Comment's best released and unreleased films of the year. The poll is discussed in the magazine's latest podcast.The First Look series, a January festival at New York's Museum of the Moving Image, has always been on the cutting edge of film programming, and the 2017 First Look lineup looks very strong indeed, including a video game (!), Hirokazu Kore-eda's After the Storm,...
- 12/14/2016
- MUBI
Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.
Watch Fandor’s tribute to Lgbtq cinema:
Our friends at Screen Slate, the top resource for NYC repertory screenings, have debuted a slick-looking new website.
Av Club‘s Jesse Hassenger on how Noah Baumbach helped Greta Gerwig become a brilliant soloist:
Baumbach, working with the late cinematographer Harris Savides, shoots Gerwig with a kind of watchful affection, getting in close as she drives around doing work errands, a hazy Los Angeles sun hitting the windows and Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Airliner” playing. “Are you going to let me in?” she asks another driver in talking-to-herself tones. This is one of the first shots of the movie, which follows Florence for a full eight minutes before introducing Stiller’s title character. In retrospect, it seems like Baumbach is tipping his hand about his interest in Gerwig. His instincts are dead-on; putting Gerwig at the front of the movie allows a hesitant character to make a vivid impression before smashing her into Stiller’s prickly garden of hang-ups and neuroses. Their romantic scrabbling, including a profoundly unsexy sort of sex scene, maintains the uncertainty of mumblecore but with a more articulate form of mumbling.
Listen to a one-hour talk with Jonny Greenwood on his Paul Thomas Anderson collaborations and more:
New York Times‘ Nina Siegal on how Robby Müller created the look of indie film classics, plus watch a masterclass from the director:
For Mr. McQueen, Mr. Müller developed a visual language to capture what appear to be men falling to their deaths in slow motion — a reference to the 1651 suicides of Carib Indians who leapt off a cliff rather than submit to their French colonizers on the island of Grenada, where Mr. McQueen’s parents were born. “Caribs’ Leap’’ is included in the exhibition.
The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody lists his 50 favorite foreign language films of the 21st century:
Ultimately, the movies on the list point forward to the future of the art, even if some of that future has already slipped into the past. The Chinese cinema has experienced, in this century, an outpouring of creative energy, thanks to the films of Jia Zhangke and other independent filmmakers there. I hope that the independent Chinese cinema will survive the government’s current wave of censorship and repression. In the Portuguese cinema, the baton has passed from Manoel de Oliveira and João César Monteiro to Pedro Costa and Miguel Gomes; the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, a one-man wave, has been followed by Jafar Panahi and Samira Makhmalbaf. It remains to be seen whether Romania’s one great filmmaker, Corneliu Porumboiu, will be able to coax that country’s rising industry away from its run of script-bound, Euro-generic social realism; whether Hong Sang-soo, currently the subject of a complete retrospective at Museum of the Moving Image, will inspire other filmmakers in South Korea; whether the Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako (who has worked often in Mali as well) and the Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun will inspire a younger generation of filmmakers in those countries; and whether Germany, which saw its modern tradition broken by the death of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the emigration of Werner Herzog, and the self-diminution-through-cultural-ambassadorship of Wim Wenders, will again become a spawning ground for daring young filmmakers.
Watch a video featuring BBC’s 100 greatest American films:
See more Dailies.
Watch Fandor’s tribute to Lgbtq cinema:
Our friends at Screen Slate, the top resource for NYC repertory screenings, have debuted a slick-looking new website.
Av Club‘s Jesse Hassenger on how Noah Baumbach helped Greta Gerwig become a brilliant soloist:
Baumbach, working with the late cinematographer Harris Savides, shoots Gerwig with a kind of watchful affection, getting in close as she drives around doing work errands, a hazy Los Angeles sun hitting the windows and Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Airliner” playing. “Are you going to let me in?” she asks another driver in talking-to-herself tones. This is one of the first shots of the movie, which follows Florence for a full eight minutes before introducing Stiller’s title character. In retrospect, it seems like Baumbach is tipping his hand about his interest in Gerwig. His instincts are dead-on; putting Gerwig at the front of the movie allows a hesitant character to make a vivid impression before smashing her into Stiller’s prickly garden of hang-ups and neuroses. Their romantic scrabbling, including a profoundly unsexy sort of sex scene, maintains the uncertainty of mumblecore but with a more articulate form of mumbling.
Listen to a one-hour talk with Jonny Greenwood on his Paul Thomas Anderson collaborations and more:
New York Times‘ Nina Siegal on how Robby Müller created the look of indie film classics, plus watch a masterclass from the director:
For Mr. McQueen, Mr. Müller developed a visual language to capture what appear to be men falling to their deaths in slow motion — a reference to the 1651 suicides of Carib Indians who leapt off a cliff rather than submit to their French colonizers on the island of Grenada, where Mr. McQueen’s parents were born. “Caribs’ Leap’’ is included in the exhibition.
The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody lists his 50 favorite foreign language films of the 21st century:
Ultimately, the movies on the list point forward to the future of the art, even if some of that future has already slipped into the past. The Chinese cinema has experienced, in this century, an outpouring of creative energy, thanks to the films of Jia Zhangke and other independent filmmakers there. I hope that the independent Chinese cinema will survive the government’s current wave of censorship and repression. In the Portuguese cinema, the baton has passed from Manoel de Oliveira and João César Monteiro to Pedro Costa and Miguel Gomes; the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, a one-man wave, has been followed by Jafar Panahi and Samira Makhmalbaf. It remains to be seen whether Romania’s one great filmmaker, Corneliu Porumboiu, will be able to coax that country’s rising industry away from its run of script-bound, Euro-generic social realism; whether Hong Sang-soo, currently the subject of a complete retrospective at Museum of the Moving Image, will inspire other filmmakers in South Korea; whether the Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako (who has worked often in Mali as well) and the Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun will inspire a younger generation of filmmakers in those countries; and whether Germany, which saw its modern tradition broken by the death of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the emigration of Werner Herzog, and the self-diminution-through-cultural-ambassadorship of Wim Wenders, will again become a spawning ground for daring young filmmakers.
Watch a video featuring BBC’s 100 greatest American films:
See more Dailies.
- 6/13/2016
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Now in limited release is one of the summer’s must-see films, Luca Guadagnino‘s I Am Love follow-up A Bigger Splash, which we called “a sweaty, kinetic, dangerously unpredictable ride of a film” back at Venice last year. To celebrate its arrival, today we’re highlighting the Italian director’s 10 favorite films, which he submitted for the last Sight & Sound poll.
An eclectic batch of titles from all over the world, they include an underrated Brian De Palma thriller, Nagisa Oshima‘s controversial erotic drama, an 8-part project from Jean-Luc Godard, an Italian staple from Roberto Rossellini, and more. Expanding upon one of his picks, he told The Guardian, “I am a Hitchcockian – I still believe that Psycho sets the standard for mother/ son relations.”
Speaking about another one of his choices, Fanny and Alexander, he recently discussed the behind-the-scenes documentary available on Criterion’s excellent box set. “You see the master at work.
An eclectic batch of titles from all over the world, they include an underrated Brian De Palma thriller, Nagisa Oshima‘s controversial erotic drama, an 8-part project from Jean-Luc Godard, an Italian staple from Roberto Rossellini, and more. Expanding upon one of his picks, he told The Guardian, “I am a Hitchcockian – I still believe that Psycho sets the standard for mother/ son relations.”
Speaking about another one of his choices, Fanny and Alexander, he recently discussed the behind-the-scenes documentary available on Criterion’s excellent box set. “You see the master at work.
- 5/4/2016
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
One cannot but share the praises for the "imaginary friends"—filmmakers Gabriel Abrantes, Alexander Carver, Benjamin Crotty, and Daniel Schmidt—by film critics and sensitive audiences, and all the adjectives are right, from the sumptuousness of imagery to the unpredictability and boldness of their scripts. Discovering and/or returning to the films remains a constant pleasure and an uncommonly thought-provoking experience.Going back to some of the films, and thanks to a certain distance in time and circumstances, I feel something could be said about precisely these particular relationships and the elegant tone created by the friendship's humorous and burlesque qualities.In, for example, Palaces of Pity (2011), Ennui ennui (2013), The Unity of All Things (2013), as in La isla está encantada con ustedes (2015), families, siblings, couples and groups (more than individual "characters") go through adventures where they are all faced with the immensity of the universe, time and space, history and traces,...
- 2/22/2016
- by Marie-Pierre Duhamel
- MUBI
After garnering the Fipresci prize at Locarno and playing at the New York Film Festival earlier in the fall, "What Now? Remind Me" has officially been picked up for North American distribution by the Cinema Guild. The intimate yet expansive documentary follows filmmaker Joaquim Pinto, who has been living with HIV for the past twenty years and undergoing various medical treatments, as he reflects on his life and coping with his disease. “Having worked as a producer and sound engineer for the likes of Raul Ruiz, Manoel de Oliveira, João César Monteiro and André Techiné, Joaquim Pinto demonstrates his own mastery as a filmmaker with ‘What Now? Remind Me,’ a brilliant, expansive first-person documentary on art, love, and above all, survival,” commented Ryan Krivoshey of the Cinema Guild. “This is a truly unique and special film and we are excited to be working with Joaquim and Joana on its release.
- 12/18/2013
- by Clint Holloway
- Indiewire
“My name is Joaquim, and my life has nothing special.”
This is how the film begins, and the film is what makes (among other things) Joaquim Pinto special.
A notebook, a diary. A tale of pains and joys, of suffering and struggling. Of books and films. Of many places and moves. Of memories and images that come again and again. A tale of bodies, cells, and the making of mankind.
Almost 20 years ago, Joaquim Pinto has been diagnosed with AIDS. After having gone through all available treatments, he has entered an experimental program with a Spanish specialist.
From November 2011 on, Joaquim has been making a film: the notebook of one year of tests and treatment, of limited activity. But also a year of going through one’s memories, a year to study and think, a year to live with Nuno, his life partner and husband, to live with the neighbors and the friends,...
This is how the film begins, and the film is what makes (among other things) Joaquim Pinto special.
A notebook, a diary. A tale of pains and joys, of suffering and struggling. Of books and films. Of many places and moves. Of memories and images that come again and again. A tale of bodies, cells, and the making of mankind.
Almost 20 years ago, Joaquim Pinto has been diagnosed with AIDS. After having gone through all available treatments, he has entered an experimental program with a Spanish specialist.
From November 2011 on, Joaquim has been making a film: the notebook of one year of tests and treatment, of limited activity. But also a year of going through one’s memories, a year to study and think, a year to live with Nuno, his life partner and husband, to live with the neighbors and the friends,...
- 8/10/2013
- by Marie-Pierre Duhamel
- MUBI
Recollections in a Yellow House
Director: João César Monteiro
Portugal, 1989
Introduced in an opening quotation, The Yellow House in the title of Recollections in a Yellow House refers to a prison. This film, a self-proclaimed comedy by João César Monteiro, follows a cinematic version of Monteiro living in a boarding house and worrying about life, sex and death. He has many adventures, many of them seemingly inconsequential, set up only to reveal his rather twisted sense of self-preservation and greed. He is a character with low morals and evokes a fool of a bygone era, someone who stands outside of the fray but without the wisdom or insight that we have come to associate with these characters. The film’s prison, referring not only to the actual place, but the social, cultural and self-made trappings which continually keep the various characters from moving forward and elevating themselves above their poverty and unhappiness.
Director: João César Monteiro
Portugal, 1989
Introduced in an opening quotation, The Yellow House in the title of Recollections in a Yellow House refers to a prison. This film, a self-proclaimed comedy by João César Monteiro, follows a cinematic version of Monteiro living in a boarding house and worrying about life, sex and death. He has many adventures, many of them seemingly inconsequential, set up only to reveal his rather twisted sense of self-preservation and greed. He is a character with low morals and evokes a fool of a bygone era, someone who stands outside of the fray but without the wisdom or insight that we have come to associate with these characters. The film’s prison, referring not only to the actual place, but the social, cultural and self-made trappings which continually keep the various characters from moving forward and elevating themselves above their poverty and unhappiness.
- 1/14/2013
- by Justine
- SoundOnSight
Branca de neve (Snow White)
Director: João César Monteiro
Portugal, 2000
João César Monteiro ’s interpretation of Snow White is clearly meant to incense and challenge our understanding of storytelling and the cinematic medium. Running little over an hour, the majority of the film’s running time is series of dialogues against a black screen, occasionally interrupted by breaks in the scene, signalled by various images of clouds, ruins and Monteiro himself. The film’s release at the dawn of a new millennium seems to be an act of providence, and as cinema enters its second century of life, Snow White challenges our very understanding of the medium by prioritizing sound over sight, in an experimental and meta-textual journey through myth.
Quite obviously controversial upon its initial release, Joao Cesar Monteiro further fuelled the fire when he insulted Portuguese critics and audiences for being in this exchange:
Q: What do you...
Director: João César Monteiro
Portugal, 2000
João César Monteiro ’s interpretation of Snow White is clearly meant to incense and challenge our understanding of storytelling and the cinematic medium. Running little over an hour, the majority of the film’s running time is series of dialogues against a black screen, occasionally interrupted by breaks in the scene, signalled by various images of clouds, ruins and Monteiro himself. The film’s release at the dawn of a new millennium seems to be an act of providence, and as cinema enters its second century of life, Snow White challenges our very understanding of the medium by prioritizing sound over sight, in an experimental and meta-textual journey through myth.
Quite obviously controversial upon its initial release, Joao Cesar Monteiro further fuelled the fire when he insulted Portuguese critics and audiences for being in this exchange:
Q: What do you...
- 1/12/2013
- by Justine
- SoundOnSight
In 2009, the best film in Competition at the Berlinale was Maren Ade's Everyone Else (Fwiw, it came away with 1.5 Silver Bears, the 1 for Best Actress Birgit Minichmayr, the .5 for tying with Adrián Biniez's Gigante for the Jury Grand Prix; the Golden Bear that year went to Claudia Llosa's The Milk of Sorrow). Three years on (!), the trio that made Everyone Else worth talking up to this day (see, for example, Kevin B Lee's new video essay on a key scene at Fandor; see, too, Mike D'Angelo on the same scene a year ago at the Av Club) is back in Competition, albeit in three different films. Lars Eidinger has drawn the shortest straw, taking on the lead in Hans-Christian Schmid's rather dismal Home for the Weekend. Minichmayr's fared better opposite Jürgen Vogel in Matthias Glasner's new film, though I seriously doubt many of us will...
- 2/18/2012
- MUBI
The 64th Locarno Film Festival’s International Competition (Concorso internazionale) jury will be headed by the Portuguese producer Paulo Branco the winner of the very first Raimondo Rezzonico Prize in 2002. The films produced by him include Francisca by Manoel de Oliveira, 1981; In The White City by Alain Tanner, 1983; Come And Go by João César Monteiro, 2003, and Mysteries Of Lisbon by Raoul Ruiz, 2010. Read More...
- 6/21/2011
- Bollywood Trade
Updated through 5/3.
Michael Joshua Rowin for Artforum: "Though far less of a household name, João César Monteiro was for Portuguese cinema what Luis Buñuel was for Spanish, a gleefully caustic satirist and libertine whose targets may have been the usual suspects of sexual, religious, and political propriety, but whose means of attack against them were highly unusual. Whereas, for example, his compatriots of the Novo Cinema swore by realism and the techniques of direct cinema, Monteiro's vision was alternately baroque and crude, rigorous and anarchic, the work of a man fascinated by the purity of depravity."...
Michael Joshua Rowin for Artforum: "Though far less of a household name, João César Monteiro was for Portuguese cinema what Luis Buñuel was for Spanish, a gleefully caustic satirist and libertine whose targets may have been the usual suspects of sexual, religious, and political propriety, but whose means of attack against them were highly unusual. Whereas, for example, his compatriots of the Novo Cinema swore by realism and the techniques of direct cinema, Monteiro's vision was alternately baroque and crude, rigorous and anarchic, the work of a man fascinated by the purity of depravity."...
- 5/3/2010
- MUBI
Movies are made up of images, even the bad ones. But the bad movies rarely leave any images lingering in your brain. The great films are the ones making great images. A great image is many things, by nature diffuse, and we might agree that any great image moves even when stopped still, opening its own cinematic world. Thus, The Notebook's decision to celebrate our recent decade not with a list but with this stream. Each contributor was asked to pick 1 film he or she wants to remember from the 2000s, select 1 image from that film to remember it by, and write one sentence to supplement their selection. We've done our best to craft not simply a grab bag but a cogent flow of the indelible, one image speaking to the next on a variety of registers: from film to film, between color and compositional rhymes, and, as you'll read,...
- 1/16/2010
- MUBI
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