We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it.
~George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, 1860
The anthropology of childhood is a relatively new field for anthropological study that has, in recent years, set about to explore the questions of whether childhood is a cultural universal, the role of children in society, their perspectives on, and participation in, the social world, and the degree to which family and community is structured around them.
In The Story of Children and Film, highly-regarded Irish documentarian Mark Cousins employs his own family as a construct within which to explore the history of children in film — their stroppiness and authentic natures, as well as their reticence, reserve and innate inner strength, his anthropological cine-essay offering an entirely captivating, incredibly well-researched and insight-filled perspective on the history of children in cinema, with Cousins - in his role of interpreter and narrator of the events unfolding on screen - acting throughout as a noble evangelist for the cause of humanist cinema.
Among the 53 films from 25 nations Cousins excerpts, the standouts are Jafar Panahi’s 1995 The White Balloon from Iran, Danish director Astrid Henning-Jensen’s 1949 short Pelle Alone in the World, François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Luis Buñuel’s Los olvidados, Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, Russian Sergei Bodrov’s 1989 Freedom Is Paradise, J. Lee Thompson’s London-set 1953 film The Yellow Balloon, Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid and Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, although there is this one extended scene in a film the title of which eludes me, with a close-up on a young boy’s face, that is absolutely heart-wrenching.
Even at this early point in the Festival, VanRamblings believes that The Story of Children and Film will prove to be among the strongest documentaries to screen at VIFF 2013 — the audience with whom we experienced the film were completely in thrall, the film all but guaranteed a spot in the top five docs to screen in 2013 edition of our Festival by the sea. VanRamblings is awarding the film an A grade, and enthusiastically recommends you take in one of the two final screenings of the film, both times at The Cinematheque, on either Saturday, October 5th at 4:45pm, or on the following Wednesday, October 9th, at 7pm.
Perhaps the only misstep in Cousins’ erudite anthropological analysis arises when he suggests that literature has failed to capture the experience of childhood, when in fact George Eliot, some 150 years ago, did so with keen and often heart-rending insight, as is revealed in this moving passage …

Very trivial, perhaps, this anguish seems to weather-worn mortals who have to think of Christmas bills, dead loves and broken friendships, but it was not less bitter to Maggie - perhaps it was even more bitter - than what we are fond of calling antithetically the real troubles of mature life. ‘Ah, my child, you will have real troubles to fret about by and by’ is the consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in our childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have been grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place; but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment till we weep over it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments has left its trace and lives in us still, but such traces have blended themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture of our youth; and so it comes that we can look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory of what he did and what happened to him, of what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and trousers, but with an intimate penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then – when it was so long from one Midsummer to another? - what he felt when his schoolfellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day in the holidays when he didn’t know how to amuse himself and fell from idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to let him have a tailed coat that ‘half,’ although every other boy of his age had gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless conception of life that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children.
— George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860), Book One, Chapter 7

VanRamblings will conclude today’s VIFF 2013 post by offering recent video of luminous screen performances by children, first from Australian actress Mia Wasikowska, whose role as Sophie in the first season of HBO’s In Treatment represents one of the most incandescent childhood performances captured on screen this past decade.

Next, Canada’s 2011 Foreign Language Oscar nominee, Monsieur Lazhar …

And, finally, arising from her Genie award-winning Best Actress performance, the expressive heart of Monsieur Lazhar, Sophie Nélisse, who this November will star in this - still, as yet - under the radar Fox Studios adaptation of Markus Zusak’s international best-seller, The Book Thief (note: as the narration in the trailer is terrible, you’ll have to look beyond to Sophie Nélisse’s tough, strong-minded performance) …

The Book Thief: something to look forward to this mid-November.

VanRamblings’ pre-and-early coverage of the Festival was expansive. If you haven’t glanced through this past week’s posts, here are some links …

• For those of you who did not catch our Monday introductory VIFF 2013 post, just click here.
• Parts 1, 2 and 3 of our ‘best bets” posts are here, here and here.
• The titles, and more, of the 15 films shared by the New York and Vancouver Film Festivals may be found here.
• The VIFF’s calendar schedule is located here (you’ll need to put in the correct date).
• The search engine for VIFF 2013 films may be found here.

Enjoy your Festival, keep rested, and c’mon back to VanRamblings for more of our 32nd annual Vancouver International Film Festival buzz each day.

As has been the case lo these many years, the heavily-juried, very well attended and extremely popular, not to mention oh-so-prestigious New York Film Festival, now in its 51st year, not only occurs simultaneously with VIFF but share a raft of screenings — Kathy Evans and Selina Crammond, the fine, hard-working folks in VIFF Print Traffic, on the phone and posting frantic e-mails to the programming folks at NYFF51 to ensure that the one existing “print” of the film that New York has in its possession makes its salutary way to our shores for your edification and screening pleasure.
Day Two of VIFF 32, then, is Day One of NYFF 51.
If you’re confused, as is the case with many VIFF 2013 supporters, as to which films to attend, and are seeking some early direction in that regard (VanRamblings, of course, offered early insight in the days leading up to Fest commencement), and would love to have attended NYFF51 but time or circumstance prevent such (or you’re just over-the-moon supporters of VIFF, and good for you for that), please find below the list of 15 films — a few of which we will highlight — that our very own and very special VIFF 2013 (or VIFF32, if you will), and NYFF51, will share this autumn (note: the titles of the NYFF films listed below link to the VIFF website, so as to provide you with scheduling info, and the opportunity to purchase tickets).

All is Lost. Robert Redford, as you’ve never seen him before, stars in this riveting survival story in which a lone sailor finds his yacht sinking after a collision with a discarded shipping container in the middle of the Indian Ocean. As the days pass and his options steadily dwindle, the luckless and nameless protagonist - identified in the credits as “Our Man” - takes every step possible in a struggle for self-preservation that puts his intelligence and practicality to the ultimate test. Focusing on a sole individual contending with the forces of nature who speaks only a handful of words throughout, this remarkable second effort by director J.C. Chandor is a genuine technical feat, all the more impressive for being the diametrical opposite of his debut Margin Call, with its ensemble cast, interior locations, and intricate dialogue-driven action. The film belongs to Redford’s fearless performance, alone onscreen from start to finish, facing the prospect of death with quiet determination.
A Touch of Sin. Jia Zhangke’s bloody, bitter film finds the great Chinese filmmaker entering new genre territory, but retaining his commitment to the marginalized and oppressed — this time by way of four overlapping parallel stories, each inspired by real-life acts of violence. A miner (Jiang Wu) struggles with corrupt village leaders. A migrant worker (Wang Baoqiang), returning home, gets his hands on a firearm. A sauna hostess (Jia’s wife and muse, Zhao Tao) endures a series of humiliations over the course of an affair with a married man. A young man (Luo Lanshan) moves to a new town only to find himself trading one thankless, demoralizing job for another. The cumulative portrait, filled with despair and rage, is of a modern-day China undergoing rapid, convulsive changes and creeping cultural amnesia.
Blue is the Warmest Colour. Abdellatif Kechiche’s newest film, based on Julie Maroh’s graphic novel, was the sensation of this year’s Cannes Film Festival even before it was awarded the Palme d’Or. Adèle Exarchopoulos is Adèle, a young woman whose longings and ecstasies and losses are charted across a span of several years. Léa Seydoux (Midnight in Paris) is the older woman who excites her desire and becomes the love of her life. Kechiche’s movie is, like the films of John Cassavetes, an epic of emotional transformation. Blue pulses with gestures, embraces, furtive exchanges, and arias of joy and devastation, some verbal and some physical (including the film’s now celebrated sexual encounters between the two actresses).

Continue reading The New York and Vancouver Film Festivals Share Screenings →

Well, the most august day in VanRamblings’ calendar year has finally arrived — the official commencement of Vancouver’s annual international film festival, offering each and every one of us a window on this vast, changing world of ours, and an affecting and often deeply moving insight into the lives of people who, just like us, across every country on Earth, have in common the struggle that defines us all, where collectively (whatever our circumstance) we seek social justice and peace, and a change in the economic conditions necessary to make this a fairer and more just world.
If you’re arriving to VanRamblings for the first time, you’ll want to apprise yourself of our extensive coverage of VIFF 2013 that was begun this Monday past. All of VanRamblings’ film festival postings may be found under the VIFF 2013 category to right (you’ll have to scroll down a bit). Thanks to some able assistance and much-appreciated direction from our friend Michael Klassen, we have for the first time this year a facility that will allow readers the opportunity to keep apprised of VanRamblings’ timely, and we hope informative, Twitter feed, replete with links of interest, and up-to-minute reflections on films we’ve just seen, as well as bumpf of one sort or another that readers may find of passing, or more, interest.
Before we settle down to providing you with Part 3 of our postings on VIFF 2013 “best bets”, those films which have garnered the most buzz at festivals from distant shores, we’ll provide you with VanRamblings’ VIFF 2013 programme schedule (pdf)

(well, at least the most recent edition, anyway), a partial list of the films that, at least at this point in time, we have every intention of taking in over the course of the next 16 days of the 32nd annual Vancouver International Film Festival. And, for your further enjoyment and edification, here’s the full VIFF MiniGuide Schedule (pdf).
Part 3, Films to Consider, VanRamblings’ “Best Bets” at VIFF 2013

The Playlist’s Oliver Lyttelton has this to say about Stray Dogs …

Every shot feels perfectly composed, the filmmaking almost impossibly well-realized, right down to the evocative sound design, adding up to an unforgettable experience, a film that demands a second viewing, there’s so much to unpack. In the end, you’re left with a masterclass in directing, and a film that anyone who’s serious about cinema needs to make the time to see.

In his five-star review, The Telegraph’s Robbie Collin is even more effusive in his praise for the film, writing …

In a small concrete room, with black mould climbing up its crumbling walls, a woman is watching two children sleep. She runs a brush through her hair, and the gentle scruff-scruff-scruff noise of the bristles mixes with the sound of falling rain. One of the children starts breathing heavily, in little half-sighs, half-snores, and as time passes, you realise that your own breath, and the breath of the audience, has synchronised with his. The mongrels of the title are a middle-aged father, and his young son and daughter, who during the day work as a ‘human billboards’, the children and he bedding down each night in a ruined tower block. By turns sad, bleakly funny and absolutely terrifying, every shot of Stray Dogs has been built with utter formal mastery, every sequence exerts an almost telepathic grip; the film, it seems at times, to have been beamed from another planet.

Viewers should be warned that this is Taiwanese master Tsai Ming-liang’s sumptuous brand of slow cinema, which perhaps means it is not for everyone. Tsai has long had the ability to create moments of great power from the seemingly most insignificant of events; in Stray Dogs, he reportedly outdoes himself, which, for VanRamblings, is all to the good.

Hotell: A couple of years ago, VanRamblings was absolutely blown away (we saw it four times at VIFF 2011) by Lisa Langseth’s début film, the thriller Pure, which also introduced the transportingly affecting Alicia Vikander (by far, the best thing about Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina this past Christmas), who holds the screen and the viewer’s attention like no other actress working today (although, one has to admit that Elle Fanning and Mia Wasikowska have their moments). And now Langseth and Vikander reunite, with Vikander starring in yet another, reportedly, astonishing performance, as a young mother suffering from severe postpartum depression.
Perhaps Hotell isn’t as strong a film as Pure (which is on our list of top 10 films of the millennium), but VanRamblings will attend a screening of Hotell for the sheer joy of experiencing the magic of Alicia Vikander on screen.

Tracks: One of the most acclaimed films at the Telluride, Venice and Toronto film festivals earlier this month, and starring the luminous and incandescent Mia Wasikowska, David Rooney, in The Hollywood Reporter, says of Tracks, “A journey of arduous physical challenges and incalculable spiritual rewards, Tracks is evocatively rendered in this superb adaptation of real-life adventurer Robyn Davidson’s epic journey across the Australian desert.” Says Robbie Collin in The Telegraph, who comments on Wasikowska’s “revelatory performance” …

In the wilderness, tracks are the things we follow, but also the things we leave behind: a trail of beaten earth that leads to the horizon in front of us; a line of footprints that tails off towards the one behind. John Curran’s achingly beautiful new film, which screened in competition at the Venice Film Festival, is about a woman who feels most alive in that place between starting point and destination. As such, she undertakes a journey that entails more betweenness than seems physically possible: a 1,700-mile solo trek across the Australian desert, on foot. A simple and beautiful journey undertaken purely for its own sake, and approached in that spirit, Tracks will lead you to a place of quiet wonder.

Kate Erbland, at Film School Rejects, weighs in with this: “Tracks is never anything less than intensely human and, quite often, deeply moving, the film a true unexpected pleasure.” Nuff said. We’ll be attending a screening.

Wadjda: Saudi Arabia’s first-ever Best Foreign Language Oscar entry, with over-the-moon reviews from a raft of estimable film critics, we’ll start of with Robbie Collins’ take in The Telegraph …

Like one of the great Italian neorealist films, Wadjda centres on a child and a bicycle. All Wadjda wants is a bike so she can race against the little boy who lives next door, but her mother (Reem Abdullah) refuses to buy her one: in Saudi Arabia, little girls do not ride bicycles. Modest as it may look, this is boundary-pushing cinema in all the best ways, and what a thrill it is to hear those boundaries creak.

The Guardian’s Xan Brooks says of this bittersweet film about a 10-year-old girl finding her feet in Riyadh society, “You’d need a heart of stone not to be won over by Wadjda, a rebel yell with a spoonful of sugar and a pungent sense of a Riyadh society split between the home, the madrasa and the shopping mall.” Most enthusiastic, though, is The Playlist’s Oliver Lyttelton who, while awarding the film an “A“, writes …

In a world where an independent-minded 14-year-old girl can be shot by the Taliban, Wadjda’s enormous warmth and comedy, and fine observational eye introduces a world alien to Western audiences, the film never sugarcoating the situation in Saudi Arabia, but by the end making it clear that in the likes of Wadjda, there are real hopes for progress and change in years to come. That it manages to do so in such a technically adept way (much of the production team are German), with such clarity of storytelling, and is able to do with humour, emotion and smarts, is something close to a miracle.

Well, that wraps up VanRamblings’ Day One post on the 32nd annual Vancouver International Film Festival — and our fourth consecutive VIFF 2013 post of the week. C’mon back tomorrow, and each of the 16 Festival days, for reviews, buzz, and more. For now, we’ll leave you with this …

• For those of you who did not catch our Monday introductory VIFF 2013 post, just click here.
• Parts 1 and 2 of our ‘best bets” posts may be found here and here.
• The search engine for VIFF 2013 films may be found here.

Enjoy your Festival, keep yourself hydrated, try to get some rest, c’mon back to VanRamblings for more Fest buzz each day, and over the course of the next 16 days, we’ll very much look forward to sharing a transcendently lovely VIFF screening with you in a warm, inviting and darkened cinema.

Before getting underway with the subject matter of today’s column on the 32nd annual Vancouver International Film Festival, we’ll start off by recommending three of the strongest films VanRamblings has seen in preview over the past three weeks, about which we will write at some greater length during the course of the Festival, which kicks off tomorrow, to run for 16 fun-filled (if challenging) days, through Friday, October 11th.

• Oil Sands Karaoke: We were knocked out by Charles Wilkinson’s stunningly well-realized and incredibly moving documentary, non-fiction film fare that digs deep into the experience of the film’s protagonists, while offering abiding insight into the devastatingly broken lives of five Fort McMurray oilpatch workers. The result: one of the most humane, truth-telling docs you’re likely to see at VIFF 2013, as harrowing a time inside a darkened theatre as you’re likely to have this year, yet a document that is filled with hope and the possibility of redemption.
• Felix: The feel-good film of this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, an absolute must-see, a humble, deeply affecting, cross-cultural coming-of-age story set in South Africa that left the audience verklempt but heartened, with nary a dry eye in the house. Everything in Felix works: the cinematography, the production values, performances, screenwriting, and directorial ambition. Quite simply, a moving and accomplished film that is not to be missed at VIFF 2013.
• Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia: Despairing, melancholy, screamingly funny at times, and filled with more wit and perspicacity than any film you’ll see this year, here’s another doc that is not-to-be-missed. Quite simply, doc director Nicholas Wrathall, while offering a document on the nature of the 21st century state, has outdone himself. Which is all to the good, in a film that VanRamblings is awarding an A+. Just yesterday, we were suggesting to Festival Director Alan Franey that he’s got a hit on his hands, that once word gets out on the Gore Vidal doc, The Cinematheque is likely to prove inadequate as a venue to meet the demand of an audience that is going to rush out in large numbers to see what could very well prove to be the strongest non-fiction film to be screened at VIFF 2013.

The titles of the films above are linked to the VIFF web page for the film, where you can purchase your ticket online. Once word gets out on these films, tickets are going to be hard to come by, so you’re going to want to act immediately to schedule each of these films, and purchase your tickets.

Now we get down to the initial task at hand in offering you more “best bets” for VIFF films to screen over the next 16 days.

Continue reading VIFF 2013: Early Odds-on-Favourites for Best Pics to See, Part 2 →