Truth was not stranger than fiction, just a little faster. David Schickele |
Is it a biopic? Docudrama? Docufiction? Mockumentary? That’s what I was thinking while watching this 1971 movie starring Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam and Elaine Featherstone for whom, as for most of actors here, Bushman was their only cinematic appearance. I don’t want to give any spoilers. Please don’t read reviews beforehand; go and see this “lost and found”, newly restored feature and discover for yourself.
Didn’t I write years ago what I think about classical ballet? Yes, I did, and yes, it was years ago, so it’s time to reiterate. To say ballet isn’t pretty is an understatement. It’s a sadomasochistic art form we can live without. I almost wrote “we all can live without” but the tragic truth is that some people can not — or act as if they can not — live without ballet.
Which apparently is the case of the titular Darling (Danica Curcic, Lang historie kort). Not content with destroying her own body, she is bent on inflicting the same suffering on the others, primarily on her substitute Polly (Astrid Grarup Elbo, who is a real ballet dancer) but also, at least potentially, on her future students. And so, the abused becomes the abuser herself. As Darling’s partner Frans (Gustaf Skarsgård) tells her, “your hip is your least problem”.
Incidentally, Frans the choreographer seems to be a reasonable guy who is not buying all this “no pain, no gain”, “a dancer must suffer”, “in my days,” — in my flipping days, says the woman in her early 30s, but wait for it — “I danced the whole act with a broken leg” bullshit.
Another incidentally: I didn’t realise until now what a weird story that of Giselle is.
After breaking up with her lover Olga (married, with two children), Elia escapes to a small village in Galicia. Which immediately reminded me of Un amor, and brought about the same thought: moving from the city to the arse end of nowhere in a hope to remake one’s life is the worst idea ever.
In this graphic novel Fermín Solís tackles difficult topics with sensitivity and — shall I say it? — love. The monochrome drawings are simple and expressive; just wait till the page where another colour appears! There are plenty of humourous episodes too. My favourite is the airplane game that Elia and her friend Luis play in the car: taking Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper off that fateful plane and shoving there instead all the singers and bands they hate.
To the modern-day viewer, Fragment of an Empire should have a reverse Good Bye, Lenin! feel. Indeed, the whole sequence of Filimonov (Fyodor Nikitin) returning to unrecognisable St. Petersburg, rebranded as Leningrad, fully deserves to be named Hello, Lenin! The way Filimonov reacts and adapts to the new realities looks pretty comical now but it also must have been so to the Soviet viewers, albeit for different reasons. You’d think that Ermler was taking the mickey, and perhaps he was, for in 1929 it was still permitted. (Ilf and Petrov just started to work on The Little Golden Calf.) Ermler’s satire is at its sharpest in the portrayal of Natasha’s new husband, a “culture worker” and a petty tyrant (Valeri Solovtsov). More subtly and way more subversively, the film shows, through the eyes of Filimonov, the astounding emptiness and inhumanity of “brave new world”.
Some curiosities. Filimonov sees his ex-wife, Natasha (Lyudmila Semyonova), in the window of the express train «Одеса—Харків» (Odesa—Kharkiv). A tram in “Leningrad” carries a warning in Ukranian: «виходити під час руху заборонено», “it’s forbidden to get off while (the tram is) moving”. A constructivist skyscraper in “Leningrad” in fact is the freshly completed Derzhprom building in Kharkiv.
Another one: the page of Société des Amis d’Honoré de Balzac lists Fragment of an Empire as an adaptation of the novella Colonel Chabert. If so, the film draws an interesting parallel between French Restoration and developments in the Soviet Union at the time. The committed Bolshevik Ermler well could have viewed these latter as counter-revolutionary.
This film (a 2018 restored version) was screened as a part of the new cycle Cámara, acción, olvido. El cine, memoria viva of Filmoteca Canaria.
This not-too-romantic romantic comedy provides a refreshing alternative to En familie and its ilk. Long story short: there’s no story as such. Over several years, a group of friends in relationships of many shapes of pear meet at various festive events (eight parts = eight parties). Starring Mille Lehfeldt, Trine Dyrholm, Danica Curcic, Jens Albinus (The Boss of It All, Rosita), Peter Gantzler (Italiensk for begyndere, The Boss of It All), Ola Rapace and many others, including a very large dog.
Just like four years ago, the closure of Happy Piano Day 2024 in the San Telmo park featured two classic silent movies: A Dog’s Life and Pay Day by the great Charlie Chaplin. Once again, the screening was accompanied by Federico Lechner.
What was different this time is that, at about 21:45, they run out of electricity, or the generator run out of gas and then they run out of electricity. So the lights and projector went off and we missed the last ten or so minutes of Pay Day. The pianist did his best to play the coda, and that was it. I think this added authenticity to the whole show.
This documentary takes us to the biodynamic farm of Niels Stokholm (1933—2022). It’s beautifully shot, the music is angelic, and you’d be forgiven to think this farm is a paradise. Probably it is, in summer.
While I don’t buy the pseudoscience of biodynamics (no, plant growth doesn’t depend on lunar phases, not to mention the position of Mars), it’s nice to see a guy who genuinely cares about the living beings in his charge, including those to be slaughtered next day. Harmless, in Pauli’s sense. Is it?
For all Niels’s talk about sustainability, organic farming (which subsumes biodynamic farming) is anything but sustainable. Stokholm’s farm may supply their produce (“100% natural” and “chemical-free”, whatever that means) to a handful of posh restaurants. Good for them. Good for Niels. But that’s about it. To quote Jay Rayner,
We need to keep reminding ourselves just how difficult it is to keep a mass population fed, and what a brilliant job large-scale agriculture does.
Niels’s opinion, surprise surprise, is that there is a capitalist conspiracy of chemical companies who just want to sell more fertiliser. On the third hand (provided we had one), if you want to be, or to keep being, certified as an organic or even biodynamic farmer, you’ve got to follow certain rules, and Niels seems to be determined to break them. Maybe, as Tamara suggested, he’s just taking the piss.
