Review: "Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat" is Essential Viewing

by Cláudio Alves

One of the year's best and most essential documentaries is finally in theaters! Johan Grimonprez's Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat is 50% history lesson, 50% jazz concerto, and 100% political essay if you can believe it, a mad dash rollercoaster of a documentary that brings together a litany of ideas under the same cinematic roof, illuminating their connective tissue like few films before it. The entire thing might run for two and a half hours, but you'll hardly notice the time passing since there's no opportunity for passive, apathetic spectatorship. Instead, the filmmakers demand full attention and a modicum of curiosity, trusting the viewer to keep up with Rik Chaubet's miraculous cutting as Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat approaches midcentury decolonization movements through a musical prism…

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NYFF '24: "Rumours" serves political satire à la Maddin

by Cláudio Alves

Rumours is probably Guy Maddin's most accessible film, flirting with the mainstream in ways most of his work never did. That's relative, however, and one shouldn't presume the Winnipeg-based auteur has defanged himself in some desperate attempt to score the public's approval. This G7 pitch-black comedy is still weirder than your favorite Hollywood directors' wildest swing, keeping true to Maddin's cinema of transgression. It involves, among other things, bog body zombies that jack off until they explode, a giant brain with a horny aura, the pedophile-tracker-like ChatGPT taking over the world, and Cate Blanchett playing the Hetalia version of Germany by way of a SNL Angela Merkel…

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NYFF '24: Portuguese pastoral poetry in "Fire of Wind"

by Cláudio Alves

The first thing one notices about Marta Mateus' feature debut, Fire of Wind, is its striking look. A vineyard extends as far as the eye can see and the camera gobbles up every detail, crisp and razor-sharp in that way digital filmmaking so often is. The visual style is almost aggressive in how much texture it seeks to pack into every shot, a spin on haptic cinema that ensures the spectator considers each line in the grapevine and the rustle of plump windswept leaf. You can almost count the blades of dry grass below, far into the distance, as there's no artful shallow focus here, no anamorphic distortion or other trendy affectations of the cinematic image. It looks like little else out there – not even the films of Fire of Wind producer Pedro Costa...

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And So It Begins: Oscars, Politics, and the Philippines

By Juan Carlos Ojano

Photo: Cine Diaz

Much has been said about how political the submission process for Best International Feature Film at the Oscars is. That assumption is fair. To quickly summarize the submission process, countries must form a nominating body - approved by their respective governments - that the Academy will then consider. These bodies will be in charge of selecting which films will represent the countries in contention for the award. This season, you have a contender like The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Iran didn’t submit it, director Mohammad Rasoulof is in conflict with the government and escaped the country, so Germany submitted it instead) and All We Imagine as Light (India didn’t submit it, director Payal Kapadia is outspokenly critical of the government) as proof of how contentious and political this process is. Make no mistake: everything about the Oscars is political. 

But if there is a film with a fascinating narrative entering this category, it’s the Philippines’ official submission: Ramona S. Díaz’s And So It Begins...

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NYFF '24: Mati Diop tells a ghost story in “Dahomey”

by Cláudio Alves

In a territory located within present-day Benin, there once was the Kingdom of Dahomey, which prospered from the early 17th to near the dawn of the 20th century. Around the mid-1800s, the kingdom became the focus of European imperial forces after a couple centuries as a supplier of enslaved people to the Atlantic slave trade. First came the British and then the French. The Franco-Dahomean wars led to its fracturing, a colonial schism that resulted in the kingdom's annexation into French West Africa. In 1892, when European forces invaded, thousands of treasures and historical artifacts were taken from the royal palace. For decades, they have resided in French museums despite many Beninese calls for their return. By 2021, the two nations reached an agreement.

Out of the estimated 7,000 objects, 26 pieces were shipped from the Musée du quai Branly to Cotonou, in Benin. Mati Diop's Dahomey details this journey, its cultural significance and context within the decolonization process. This year's Gold Berlin Bear winner considers all of it in a swift 68 minutes, embracing documentary techniques while combining them with a touch of poetry, perchance a phantasm…

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