Little White Lies January - February 2017

Directed by MAREN ADE Starring PETER SIMONISCHEK, SANDRA HÜLLER, MICHAEL WITTENBORN Released 3 FEBRUARY Though it might be hard to imagine, there exists such a thing as film critic grunt work. It’s the equivalent of clearing out the mess hall or hosing down the latrines. One of these menial but necessary tasks involves reiterating why the late Japanese director, Yasujiro Ozu, is one of the all-time grand masters of cinema. His 1951 film, Tokyo Story, often scrapes the heady peaks of the increasingly-regular ‘best movie ever’ polls. But there remains a contingent who don’t quite see the appeal of the director’s delicate, deliberate and minor-key domestic comedies. Grabbing for the pithy but reductive response, Ozu is one of a very small handful of filmmakers who truly comprehends the fraught emotional bonds…

Following the 2016 Cannes world premiere of her third feature, Toni Erdmann, German writer/director Maren Ade became an instant celebrity. The film concerns a father who goes to absurd lengths to regain closeness with his daughter. Its maker spends years gestating ideas, playing the long game of producing only a few, highly-refined movies a decade, as opposed to cranking them out annually. Her features, to date, reveal an interest in character dramas powered by observations on the bungling ways that humans – sometimes comically, often painfully – try to connect with those closest to them. Her debut The Forest for the Trees from 2003 is a deadpan study of adult loneliness and alienation channelled through wide-eyed, well-meaning schoolteacher, Melanie Pröschle (Eva Löbau). The more desperately Melanie tries to find a…

YOU MAY NOT KNOW THE NAME BUT YOU WILL HAVE SEEN THE WORK. GARY ARCHER IS AN LA-BASED BRITISH EXPAT WHO WORKS AS ONE OF HOLLYWOOD’S GO-TO GUYS FOR PROSTHETIC TEETH. HIS COMMITMENT TO QUALITY HAS ALLOWED HIM TO RETAIN HIS STATURE WITHIN THE INDUSTRY FOR DECADES, AND ANY JOB THAT INVOLVES TEETH IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM USUALLY FINDS ITS WAY TO HIS DOOR. HE MAKES HIS OWN IMPRESSIONS WITH THE SUBJECTS AND HAS REFUSED TO SUCCUMB TO THE SHODDY METHODOLOGY. HERE, ARCHER TAKES UP THE STORY ON SOME OF HIS MOST MARVELLOUS CREATIONS… LOOKING FOR REPLACEMENT DENTURES? MRS DOUBTFIRE (1993) “I was born in London. I came over to the US in 1976 with my father. We ended up in this dental lab. I went to work…

In September 2014 an online zine named ‘OtherZine’ published a short text penned by Toronto-based filmmaker/programmer Clint Enns called, ‘A Series of Questions for Experimental Film and Video Programmers’. Little more than an unnumbered list of 26 tersely-phrased propositions disguised as queries, Enns’ piece ruffled a few feathers and was well-circulated, as it implicitly accused contemporary experimental media curators (and, in turn, the media’s makers and their audiences) of upholding an avant-garde community that is noxiously exclusive, opposed to genuine risk-taking and devoid of humour and pleasure. “Is fun only reserved for after the screening has finished?” asks the 22nd line. On one hand, it’s a claim that glosses over the reality that, for a certain type of viewer, the discovery of a rigid, formallyrigourous masterpiece can itself be fun,…

(EL) ELENA LAZIC (ML) MANUELA LAZIC (MT) MATT THRIFT (AW) ADAM WOODWARD (DJ) DAVID JENKINS (SMK) SOPHIE MONKS KAUFMAN DAVID LOWERY Bursting on to the scene in 2013 with Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, starring Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck, David Lowery’s follow up is the lyrical live-action remake of Disney’s Pete’s Dragon, which is available on DVD and VOD in the UK now. “I can’t remember when I told my parents I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I can remember when I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker. I was seven and my mother had checked out some books from the library about how to make movies. I had expressed an interest in how Star Wars was made, so she found this book about it and took it…

“I grew up in an environment where theatrical attendance was forbidden. A church environment. I didn’t see movies and I didn’t know anybody who did. So I didn’t know I was missing anything. One of the things that first attracted me to films was the fact that they were forbidden. I went to some and they weren’t very interesting, but then the European cinema of the ‘60s came along when I was in college. My parents never came around to it. When my father died, I was surprised to find that he had purchased all my films on VHS. They were all in their original wrapping, unopened. He wanted people to know he was proud of his son, but he wouldn’t watch them. He had no real interest in my…