Chris Fujiwara
Film Critic
USA
Chris Fujiwara is the author of Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall (Johns Hopkins University Press) and the editor of Undercurrent.
He has written for Film Comment, Cineaste, InterCommunication, Osian’s Cinemaya, Cinemaction, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Village Voice, The Chicago Reader, Film International, Senses of Cinema, and other publications. He has contributed to numerous anthologies, including books on Yasujiro Ozu and Sergei Parajanov and recently edited a catalog on Peter Watkins for the Jeonju International Film Festival. Fujiwara has taught and lectured on film studies at Yale University, Emerson College, and Rhode Island School of Design.
Fujiwara’s edited anthology on key moments in cinema was published by Cassell Illustrated in November, 2007. His critical biography of Otto Preminger was published by Faber & Faber in February, 2008. He is currently finishing a book on the films of Jerry Lewis, to be published by the University of Illinois Press.
★5th Festival Recommended Movies★
Chain Gestures (Gestos em Cadeia) (11min.)
Director:Carla Mota
A brilliant film in conception and realization.
Director:Petr Hatle
Handles a difficult subject with delicacy and discretion, leaving much for the viewer to ponder.
On Earth as It Is in Heaven (21min.)
Director:Hervé Demers
The photography is beautiful, the text is exquisite, the lead actor is sublime; there is something academic about the filmmaking.
Director:jojo
The handling of the narrative is diffusive and ponderous, but the cinematography makes the film work.
Director:Daniel Wirtberg
Sustains narrative interest and atmosphere; subtle and involving.
Director:Lukas Kokes
The film begins with a very potent contrast - nuclear power plant vs. beekeeping. It is weakened by the voice-over narration whose concerns and points of view are too limiting.
HERO, WINGS ARE NOT NECESSARY TO FLY (25min.)
Director:Ángel Loza
The subject is remarkable, though the filmmaking is not always equal to it. Why is the older footage presented in the wrong aspect ratio? This seems to express an incredible contempt on the part of the filmmakers.
EVE`S FRUIT OR QUITE FAST EVOLUTION (2min.)
Director:Kaoru Ishida
Well designed and executed exercise.
HOLDING THE HAND OF THE RED QUEEN (20min.)
Director:OMAR RABUNAL VARELA
Competently directed and acted, with some interesting touches, but crude and simplistic conceptually and in sexual politics.
Director:Shohreh Jandaghian
Lacks a firm point of view; mechanical and sentimental.
Director:Nadejda Zaretskaya
Overelaborate direction doesn't help obvious story.
Director:Margarita Cobilich Rizo Patron
Conventional in every way, including its fractured narrative structure (which unfortunately seems to be the whole point of the film).
I don't feel like dancing (7min.)
Director:Evi Goldbrunner&Joachim Dollhopf
Heavy-handed, crudely manipulative, and undeveloped.
★4th Festival Recommended Movies★
Growing Up in Amman's Suburbia (8min.)
Director:Hazim Bitar
An enigmatic and strong film in which the question of point of view comes to the fore. Children are the subjects, but we are not close to them; the film does not propose to let us share their perceptions or feelings; instead, the children are treated as photographic subjects in a film on landscape and environment - a treatment that is troubling and ambiguous. The orders issued off-camera by the filmmaker create a tension that is both conceptual and political. The gutsy last shot is the most indelible image of the whole competition.
A Shift in Perception (16min.)
Director:Dan Monceaux
A visually surprising and richly textured film. The interplay of image and voice-over is dense and rigorous. The long wordless shots are striking; the stop-motion of things moving by themselves is marvelous
Director:Jung, Youngho
A surprising and imaginative film. The filmmaker does sustained work with shifting points of view. Within the short form, the filmmaker elaborates an unusual and elaborate experience of time.
The Telegraph Pole Mother (10min.)
Director:Yusuke Sakamoto
A well-constructed film of witty vignettes, it tells its story in a simple and clever manner. It benefits from being mainly limited to a single location. The soundtrack, in its sparseness, is effective. The imagery, making use of shallow focus, is very interesting.
Director:Jean-Gabriel Periot
An impressive work in which the careful layering of still images raises questions about the relationship between photography and memory and about the nature of memorializing.
Director:Petra Schroder
An engaging film that establishes a style, sustains it, and varies it with proficiency. It seems to strive for a rhythm and a sense of expanding narrative time that would be typical of a feature film, whereas the filmmaker might have been better advised to make a friend of brevity
Director:Tonny Trimarsanto
A familiar approach to a familiar theme in recent documentary. The mournful music comments too heavily on the images, which themselves sometimes seem random.
Director:Sevada
Au hasard Balthazar with a shoe in the role of the donkey? An attractively shot allegorical film.
Director:Guillermo Rios
The use of short shots is well judged, and the life-remembered-calvary narrative structure is competently handled.
Director:Huang Ying
A lovely, delicate, spare work visually. The music does not enhance the film
