Tag: film
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Fiction Unbound: On Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost
For someone who has written so eloquently about the creation of Frankenstein you would have to expect Solnit to know, all too well, that you cannot piece together a series of abstract ideas, assemble them, and call it a character.
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Review: The Surrender
It is nearly too perfect that the French word genre denotes both literary genre and gender. For if Scott Esposito’s quietly powerful essays found in The Surrender do not defy genre, they certainly do reveal the plasticity of memoir and then stretch the form to its limits. Somewhat the same could be said for the author’s own exploration of gender. In this book, the acclaimed critic…
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RIDM Screening 122: Atalaku
Directed by Dieudo Hammadi, Atalaku is set during the latest elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo. http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi1422763033/ Here’s a quick timeline: 1960: Patrice Lumumba becomes the first Prime Minister of the newly independent Republic of Congo (the one that becomes the DRC, not the other one). He is deposed by the president, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, and…
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RIDM Screening 84: A jamais, pour toujours
Confession: I am basically posting this for good form, because it is a documentary that I saw, and thus feel obligated to include it in the series. (Plus, duh, I like bragging about all these awesome films I’m seeing. Aren’t you tempted to move to Montreal now so you can watch great documentaries and go…
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RIDM Screening 69: Ayiti Toma
Focusing on foreign aid (before and after the earthquake), the slave trade and colonialism, and vodou in Haiti, this documentary provides a far-reaching scope of a complex society. If there is one flaw the film suffered from it was the ambitious attempt to cover everything. How can you not try to cover everything when you’re…
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RIDM Screening 30: The Square
This was my first screening so far of the Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal and I can safely say that it was fantastic way to start. First, a word on the festival: Since 1998, the RIDM has been bringing filmmakers from Quebec, and from around the world, to the city of Montreal for about a…