SIght & Sound 2011 In Review:
Impressions In Poll
101 critics and curators remember their film highlights of the year
NICOLE BRENEZ
Critic, France
Abel Ferrara in Lucca
Gérard Courant, France/Italy
A simple, modest and faithful record of some moments at the Lucca Film Festival in October 2010, with songs and speeches by Abel Ferrara: trace of the co-presence of two of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, dissident and true sons of Cesare Zavattini’s revolutionary spirit.
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu (Autobiografia lui Nicolae Ceausescu)
Andrei Ujica, Romania
How propaganda reverses itself into a devastating critique of any political power.
Far from Afghanistan
John Gianvito, Jon Jost, Minda Martin, Travis Wilkerson, Soon-mi Yoo, Rob Todd, Pacho Velez, USA, in progress
To commemorate the tenth year of the invasion in Afghanistan, a collaborative work analysing the logics and consequences of American imperialism.
Impressions
Jacques Perconte, France
Digital fresco about Normandy landscapes that renews the forms of editing.
Video Letter
Masao Adachi, Japan
Adachi, still a political prisoner in Japan in the sense that he can not travel abroad, sends a video-letter to his audience to explain his ideals, fights and questions.
Highlights:
Book: Radical Light: Alternative Film & Video in the San Francisco Bay Aera, 1945-2000 (Steve Anker, Kathy Geritz, Steve Seid, eds), a scientifically and visually magnificent survey.
Film/Exhibition: ‘Correspondence(s)/The Completed Letters’, curated by Jordi Ballo for the CCCB (Barcelona, Spain): five video-letters exchanges between filmmakers from different parts of the world, including José Luis Guerín and Jonas Mekas, Albert Serra and Lisandro Alonso, Isaki Lacuesta and Noami Kawase, Jaime Rosales and Wang Bing, Fernando Eimbcke and So Yong Kim.
Retrospective: ‘Minding the Gap: The Films of Dick Fontaine’, curated by Michael Chaiken at the Anthology Film Archives, New York. A great British stylist and fighter with a knack for working exactly where the wind of history begins to blow.
Screening: On September 28th, the quality of the screening of John Gianvito’s My Heart Swims in Blood through Vimeo, during the World Cinema Now! Conference in Melbourne, was so excellent we could count the feathers on the Hegelian owl.
Website: livestream.com/globalrevolution. Livestream of the occupation movements all over the world, covered by independent journalists and filmmakers.
