by ·Comments Off on Sirens (2022, Rita Baghdadi)

We arrived late and tired on Thursday, skipping our planned first film (Where Are We Headed), instead opting for beer and food at Broadway Brewing, then apples and sausage and coffee at Cafe Berlin the next morning.

Lilas and Shery lead a metal band in Beirut. Formerly a couple, they still rock out together but Lilas (not out to her family) is with a new girl visiting from Syria. Movie looks good, sensitively made. The director says she didn’t set out to make a “rock doc,” but after the band infighting and breakup and makeup and the one gig with sad attendance at a Glastonbury side stage, that’s what she made. Includes footage of the port explosion, which was the focus of another T/F movie (Octopus). Opening band Living Hour played us some mostly-light slowcore.

by ·Comments Off on Notturno (2020, Gianfranco Rosi)

Military training, solitary hunters, traumatized family members. A long procession of prisoners to match a long procession of soldiers (with alarming sound editing). A historical play enacted by psychiatric patients. Browsing ransom demands in voicemail. Loosely interwoven doc episodes filmed in four countries in the Middle East.

Mark Peranson in the great Cinema Scope cover story:

Notturno looks and sounds like what we would associate with a bigger-budget feature film, not something shot and recorded by one man over a three-year period. Often bereft of dialogue, the images are carefully framed.

Rosi:

Always there was this idea, even when I was filming Fire at Sea, “Where are these people coming from? What’s happening there?” … The challenge was to find these stories, because I went there not knowing anything, and I came back knowing less. I was able to grab and embrace stories and moments that left a very strong impact.