Clearly it was a man’s world last night in Venice, as the winners of the Film Festival were announced. Including a very masculine take on being a woman, which snatched the coveted Golden Lion.
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A still featuring Noel Sto. Domingo from Lav Diaz' 'Season of the Devil'
Photo © Giovanni D. Onofrio
The Berlinale Diaries: Hulu's 'The Looming Tower' and a Lav Diaz virgin no more!
The 21st century version of the all-American question "where were you when JFK was assassinated?" is "what were you doing when the planes hit the World Trade Center?"
Some of us watched the towers disintegrate before our very eyes, our landscape changed forever, and it's a vision, a feeling we will carry inside our hearts for as long as we live. The smell throughout downtown Manhattan, the lines of demarcation -- complete with checkpoints -- between the northern and southern parts of the city but also the newfound sense of camaraderie we bestowed upon each other to merely get from day to day, is also what I remember from those days.
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PHOTO BY FRANÇOIS DUHAMEL, COURTESY OF VICE
Jim Carrey in a still from ‘Man on the Moon’
The Venice Film Festival Diaries: ‘mother!’, ‘Loving Pablo’ Escobar and Jim Carrey Made Me Cry
Every meeting at this year’s Venice Film Festival has been a once-in-a-lifetime chance encounter for me. From chatting with the fabulous James Toback, to meeting his visionary producer Michael Mailer, from the relaxed junket on San Clemente island with Kirsten Dunst and the Rodarte sisters to sitting leisurely with artist Shirin Neshat at Villa degli Autori, from the wisdom of Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel to the Zen discipline and class of Maestro Ryuichi Sakamoto — it’s all been divine. There is no other word to describe it.
And yet, on the seventh day of the festival, another surprise awaited me. A cozy, wonderful junket with Jim Carrey and director Chris Smith, who together made a film that has quickly risen to my top five — alright top three actually — in Venice.
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COURTESY OF THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL AND NETFLIX
Peter Sarsgaard in a still from Errol Morris’ ‘Wormwood’
The Venice Film Festival Diaries: Warwick Thornton’s ‘Sweet Country’ and Better than Fiction with ‘Cuba’ and ‘Wormwood’
On one of the English language news channels this morning, they were talking about this new film ‘Toilet: Ek Prem Katha’ which is making a big splash — or shall I say “flush” — in India at the moment. It’s a love story shot around the absolute, undeniably dire need for better plumbing facilities in the Desh. “This is one instance where perhaps a movie has been able to change policies,” said one anchor. Duh, I thought. Cinema has been changing the way we think, act and feel since its inception. It’s just that we don’t often think about it, because the kind of films which usually change us, for better or for worse, are those that entertain us without apparently teaching us anything. But the power of their subliminal messages is there, always, on the big screen, your TV and even your mobile screen.
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COURTESY OF THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL
A still from Lucrecia Martel’s ‘Zama’
The Venice Film Festival Diaries: ‘The Shape of Water’, the Wonder of Netflix and Lucrecia Martel’s ‘Zama’
While my first 36 hours at the Venice Film Festival were filled with impossible sunshine and balmy heat, with the morning’s thunderstorms came both barometric relief but also some much needed introspection. I found myself in a deep, thoughtful place thanks to a beautiful meeting with Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel and a morning screening of Netflix’s ‘Our Souls at Night’.
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