Human Flowers of Flesh.For its second edition under director Giona A. Nazzaro and the first fully physical iteration since 2019, the Locarno Film Festival sought to reestablish itself in 2022 as one of the preeminent destinations for cinephiles looking to simultaneously discover fresh talent, take in new work by veteran directors, and dive deep into film history. While Nazzaro’s stated intention to make the festival more audience-friendly—if not outright commercial—was met with skepticism by critics accustomed to Locarno’s tradition of championing art cinema, it’s clear after two years that these comments didn’t portend a drastic realignment of programming values so much as anticipate a reevaluation of the festival’s perceived strengths. Due to the elimination of a couple of sidebars, the curatorial focus is now centered directly on the International Competition and Filmmakers of the Present sections, with even some clever cross-pollination between these strands...
- 8/29/2022
- MUBI
In Tales of the Purple House, French-Iraqi filmmaker Abbas Fahdel and his wife, Lebanese artist Nour Ballouk, offer a collaborative video diary of the last few years of their lockdown life and, through that figurative keyhole, their account of the unraveling world outside. Their film is about domestic things––weather, painting, lots of cats––but it’s also about shockwaves of Covid and the Syrian refugee crisis, and of the explosion that rocked Beirut in August 2020, leveling the city’s port and taking over 200 lives. (It is also about their government’s failure to adequately respond to these things.)
Purple House is a reminder that this period––rocky for us all––has been astonishingly turbulent for the Lebanese, even by their country’s historic standards. There is no shortage of stories there, and Fahdel doesn’t skimp: over a lengthy, indulgent 186 minutes, we observe not only the slow change of...
Purple House is a reminder that this period––rocky for us all––has been astonishingly turbulent for the Lebanese, even by their country’s historic standards. There is no shortage of stories there, and Fahdel doesn’t skimp: over a lengthy, indulgent 186 minutes, we observe not only the slow change of...
- 8/19/2022
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
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