Films This Week 11/12/21
by Gary Palmucci | 12th November 2021 | Gary's Corner
We have two new additions to our Virtual Cinema lineup. Director Radu Jude has been ‘coming up’ on the international film scene in this past decade. His ‘Romanian western’ Aferim! played at Lincoln Plaza (‘picked’ by the NY Times’ A.O. Scott), the black comedy I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians was featured in our NYIT programs and his new provocation, Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn was in this year’s NY Film Festival and will soon open commercially. Today we’re offering another recent film of his, described lovingly by Richard Brody in this week’s New Yorker online: “Documentary-fiction hybrids are having a major moment, and there’s another remarkable one now coming out in theatres : Uppercase Print, a Romanian film. Directed by Radu Jude, who’s best known for his fiction films, “Uppercase Print” expands the practice of nonfiction filmmaking into ingeniously imaginative dimensions. The movie is centered on Jude’s filming of a play, which is performed in the conspicuously theatrical setting of a stage-like studio. Yet the play itself, by Gianina Cărbunariu, is a work of nonfiction, and an extraordinary, haunting one. She derives the text from the archives of Romania’s Communist-era secret police, the feared Securitate, to reconstruct a local event of grand symbolic moment that took place forty years ago in the Romanian town of Botoșani….” Brody delves deeper into layers of tragicomic detail–which he excels at– in his review, but this may well be a film to watch first, with these plot ‘basics,’ then read further for the historical references. We also have a new offering from an unlikely source: the tiny island nation of Malta, whose acclaimed drama Luzzu is their submission for the Best International Film category at the 2022 Academy Awards. A highlight of this year’s Sundance and New Directors/ New Films festivals, Luzzu chronicles the life of a proud, zealous Mediterranean fisherman (the title refers to his sturdy boat) caught between the ancient traditions of his trade and a dilemma very much of the modern world. The NY Times’ reviewer wrote, “Malta’s views are arresting, but the images Maltese-American writer- director Alex Camilleri chooses would never be found in a travel brochure. In his subtle, verite approach he captures something special – not just one man’s crisis, but a community’s culture.”
Gary Palmucci, Film Curator
New Plaza Cinema