'The Image Book' at IFFR: Watching cinema as God(ard) intended it

E. Nina Rothe January 31, 2019

I’d read the reviews, both out of Cannes where the film premiered, and lately for its US release. A.O. Scott’s was my favorite for the NY Times, as it usually is. Then, I’d listened to friends — some admitted to breaking down after viewing the film, some pointed to the filmmaker’s problematic mishmosh of the Arab world with Iranian images.

But having missed ‘Le livre d’image’ (‘The Image Book’) at the Festival de Cannes, I had to view it for myself. And, it turns out, I did well to wait.

Emilia Derou Bernal and Julien Debard in a still from Anaïs Volpe’s ‘Indemnes’

Anaïs Volpé's 'Indemnes' reinvents the palette of tragedy at the International Film Festival Rotterdam

E. Nina Rothe January 24, 2019

How do you personally survive tragedy, when it hits close to home?

It’s a question that has played in my mind over and over in the last few months. Each of us has a distinct and very human way of dealing with personal tragedy, and none of it is wrong or right, I’ve figured out. It just is.

Filmmaker Anaïs Volpé says that her way of coping with terrorist attacks, which have hit very close to home, literally for the Parisian, is to turn blood into glitter and imagine that the victims have gone to a better place. We hear that time and time again, “they have gone to a better place now,” but in Volpé’s exquisite ‘Indemnes’ (which translates to “Unharmed”) that better place is filled with color, beauty, peace and harmony. It’s a beautiful view into the afterlife, complete with stylish golden jackets, from an artist who has had her own creative style from the get-go.

The Trieste Film Festival turns 30 this year and in this edition teaches us the trouble with walls

E. Nina Rothe January 17, 2019

The Italian city of Trieste has always had its own particular history. From its Austro-Hungarian and Slovenian influences, to its proximity to the Croatian border, its people have enjoyed a special status. At the end of the 19th Century, Trieste had more Slovenian inhabitants than Slovenia's capital of Ljubljana and at the start of the 20th, great luminaries and intellectuals like James Joyce, Italo Svevo, Sigmund Freud, Zofka Kveder, Dragotin Kette, Ivan Cankar, Scipio Slataper, and Umberto Saba frequented the bustling cosmopolitan city.

To me, it has always been a city with a foot deeply planted in its Italian roots yet the other striding towards its Eastern European culture. A bridge city overlooking a port, filled with people of different ethnicities and speaking several languages and dialects. A utopia for the perfect world, a place where everyone truly, and mostly could get along. And have gotten along.

We have so much to learn from the city of Trieste these days.

Favorite movies only need apply. Life is too short to write about what I didn't enjoy.

'The Image Book' at IFFR: Watching cinema as God(ard) intended it

The Trieste Film Festival turns 30 this year and in this edition teaches us the trouble with walls

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