The Locarno International film festival has announced its major awards and they all sound incredible. The great Lav Diaz has won the Golden Leopard for his new film FROM WHAT IS BEFORE. Diaz says in his directors statement “In 1972, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos proclaimed Martial Law plunging the entire Philippines into its darkest period. The epoch practically obscured everything that is essentially Filipino then. Marcos’s political methodology was clinical and brutal. The story of the film revolves around the lives of poor villagers in one of the remotest regions of the Philippines before Martial Law was declared. Loosely based on real events and characters, the film examines how an individual and collective psyche responds to extreme and mysterious changes in social and physical environment.” The great Portuguese director Pedro Costa was awarded best director for his work on HORSE MONEY a film that continues his exploration of the now totally gentrified community of Fontainhas. The film, like his remarkable COLOSSAL YOUTH stars retired construction worker Ventura is a narrative that weaves back and forth between the life of poor immigrants in contemporary Lisbon and the hopeful revolutionary past within Guinea-Bissau. I cant wait to see this one! American director Alex Ross Perry won a Special Jury Award for his satirical drama about a novelist (Jason Schwartzman) having a kind of existential crisis as he awaits the publication of his second novel. The film is loosely inspired by the work and life of Phillip Roth and it co-stars Mad Mens Elisabeth Moss in a performance that is being acclaimed as magnificent. The jury awarded a special mention to acclaimed Brazilian documentary filmmaker Gabriel Mascaros fiction debut AUGUST WINDS. This one sounds fascinating a kind of cinema verite look at a small Brazilian fishing village framed by the mysterious discovery of a corpse in the coastal waters. The Mexican documentary-film essay hybrid Nazajazo directed by Ricardo Silva sounds likes a disturbingly entertaining look at people dealing with the impending environmental apocalypse. The jury awarded the film the Special Golden Leopard in the cinema of the present award. Lets hope some of these find US distribitors soon.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 06:56:04 +0000
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