Change Your Image
janbanke
Reviews
Sari's Mother (2006)
lovely, deep film
just saw this short documentary film at IDFA in amsterdam. very impressed. like in Iraq in Fragments, director Longley is doing something very rare and wonderful for documentary. he is creating a work of real cinema. film not only as document and information, but as art, as human expression - actually like expressionism in style.
this film is about a woman taking care of her ill son in Iraq, but is also about a lot more. it is a political film without being political on the surface. but all the layers are there -- there is a lot going on just below the surface in this film. another great work of the New Documentary Cinema!
Iraq in Fragments (2006)
documentary film as art
most docu films I see are less than exceptional in terms of cinema style. this is an exception. in Iraq in Fragments you get both the revelation of Iraq's reality from within society and also the eye of a true filmmaker. exceptional, beautiful work of cinema art and a very important documentary film. i think this film will be a landmark work in future years.
this film is returning to something like the time when images were more important than text/language. in other words, this is a film that uses CINEMA language to speak with. it is truly unusual this way, not like any documentary in i saw in a long long time. maybe this is a new direction for documentary film. i hope so.