Latest in Cinema Highlight
Latest in Cinema
Films shortlisted for foreign-language Oscar
Nine films have made it into the final list vying for an Academy Award nomination in the foreign language category. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the shortlist on Thursday, with films from Lebanon, Chile, Hungary, Senegal, Sweden, South Africa, Russia, Germany, and Israel. The nine films were chosen from a longer …
The Hurt Locker: Hellish Paradise
Having watched it for the second time yesterday, I am still as captivated as I was five years ago when I first watched it. The Hurt Locker, which is slang in the military for an emotional place of unfathomable pain, is the title given to Kathryn Bigelow’s 2010’s Oscar-winning film. The film follows a group …
Standing ovation for Egyptian film Cactus Flower at Dubai Film Festival
Egyptian actress Menna El-Batrawy receives best actress award for her role in the film
Ai Weiwei’s ‘Human Flow’ makes Oscar shortlist
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei first began work on his powerful refugee documentary using his smartphone camera, until he was joined by a German producer. “Human Flow” is now among 15 contenders for Best Documentary at the Oscars. Filmed over a year, armed with drones, his iPhone, and about 200 crew members, Weiwei visited more than …
Saudi Arabia to reopen cinemas after 35-year ban
“This marks a watershed moment in the development of the cultural economy in the kingdom,” Information Minister Awwad Alawwad said.
Lemon Tree: camera as tool to deconstruct borders in Arab-Israeli conflict
Lemon Tree brings the camera to the borders. The film takes place at the separation line, or the “Green Line”, that separates the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank from Israel. Unlike the checkpoints, the borders are not owned by any side. However, the ones who control the regulations on whom and what should …
Roses are red, violets are blue, Rosetta is a girl we aren’t used To
The camera scurries to get a hold of a young woman as she travels ferociously down the hallways of an unknown building. This serves as the opening scene of Rosetta, directed by Luc et Jean-Pierre Dardenne, and becomes the definitive filming style in the 1999 hit. As we soon find out, the young woman, played …
The killing of the Sacred Deer: Searching for the perfect cinematographic blend
In his film Dogtooth (2009), Greek Director Yorgos Lanthimos used one lens for shooting, unknown actors, one location, and dropped using a soundtrack. A few years later, Lanthimos released his film The Lobster (2015), where he selected famous actors such as Colin Farrell and Léa Seydoux, more than one huge location, and a lot of …
Fragments of Broken Glass
In Elia Suleiman’s first feature film, Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996), he depicts Palestinians through the theatre of everyday life. He does so by steering the film via fragmented and observational snippets of mundane life in the occupied territories. The seemingly unrelated vignettes, that lack introductions or conclusions, penetrate the livelihood of Palestinians that live …
The Hurt Locker: how to use film to create pro-war propaganda?
Somewhere in Iraq, a soldier steps forward to disable a bomb, some tension rises and then boom, the bomb explodes. After his death, the main protagonist of the film Sergeant William appears to take the lost one’s place. William is a stubborn, sarcastic, well-trained explosives expert who is always fixing issues even when he does …
‘Western’: a feminine critique of the male ego
Opening the sidebar program of the Cannes Film Festival, “Un Certain Regard”, Valeska Grisebach’s film “Western” investigates ideas of ownership, xenophobia, and masculinity, in a way that reflects some modern tensions between eastern and western Europe. After disappearing for ten years, director Valeska Grisebach returned in the 2017 edition of the Canne Film Festival, after …
US war films and the African question: reproducing “other” in Black Hawk Down
In 1979, Apocalypse Now, an American Vietnam war film directed by Francis Coppola, came out to receive very controversial reviews. One scene in the film includes a number of helicopter fighters moving in formation to assault a village housing Viet Cong members and playing Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries opera to scare off the “enemy”. …