-
Distant Constellation
When the producer Shelly Grizim mentioned in a Q&A following Shevaun Mizrahi’s DISTANT CONSTELLATION that only two shots in it used a moving camera, I started. It was something I hadn’t noticed, so alive and full of motion the film had been. There is nothing static about this most unusual of documentaries: its very stillness…
-
Kedi
A Turkish friend has told me that her greatest culture shock upon coming to New York from Istanbul was the absence of street cats as a part of daily life – cats, she said, that people take it on themselves to care for, but who come and go independently, with no real sense of “masters”…
-
Our Last Tango
The Wim Wenders produced OUR LAST TANGO, by German Kral, reconciles art with life and narrative cinema with documentary. The lives are those of María Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes, probably the longest enduring couple in Argentine tango as a performing art. I am careful how I put that, because there are social dance…
-
Crazy Horse
Frederick Wiseman‘s documentary about a Parisian erotic dance club, which I went to upon hearing of its profound sociological content from the New York Times, is every bit as engrossing as promised. I did not need to be sold on its central premise, that nude, or partially nude, dancing can be seriously artistic. That has…