In Morocco, homosexuality is banned and just one in five citizens find gayness “acceptable,” at least according to a 2019 poll. An Elton John concert twelve years ago broke the law, but was personally approved by Morocco’s king. Still, Grindr thrives, and third-largest city, Tangier, has a decades-long tradition as a haven for LGBT+ culture in North Africa.
Morocco thus makes a fitting setting for British sophomore director Fyzal Boulifa’s challenging melodrama “The Damned Don’t Cry,” a loose remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Mamma Roma,” which was nominated for the Golden Lion sixty Venice Film Festivals ago. But selectors in this year’s Giornate Degli Autori sidebar program did not place Boulifa’s film out of sentimentality alone. “The Damned Don’t Cry” is excellent, asking tough questions about society and morality without easy answers or neat conclusions. Non-actors populate the cast, performing terrifically, in one of many nods...
Morocco thus makes a fitting setting for British sophomore director Fyzal Boulifa’s challenging melodrama “The Damned Don’t Cry,” a loose remake of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Mamma Roma,” which was nominated for the Golden Lion sixty Venice Film Festivals ago. But selectors in this year’s Giornate Degli Autori sidebar program did not place Boulifa’s film out of sentimentality alone. “The Damned Don’t Cry” is excellent, asking tough questions about society and morality without easy answers or neat conclusions. Non-actors populate the cast, performing terrifically, in one of many nods...
- 9/8/2022
- by Adam Solomons
- Indiewire
In terms of international recognition, this week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced feature films eligible for consideration in the International Feature Film category for the 94th Academy Awards. Since the African continent first submitted a film for Oscar consideration in 1958, with Egyptian director Youssef Chahine’s “Cairo Station,” the number of African submissions for Best International Film Oscar consideration seems to be stabilizing at an average of around 10 annually. Eight films were submitted for the 2019 awards; 10 for 2020; and 12 for 2021, which marked a record. Ten submissions are in consideration for the upcoming 2022 ceremony.
The history of cinema on the African continent is expectedly complex and brief — unlike other artforms including music and literature, of which there are decades, if not centuries of rich history.
Due to restrictive colonialist structures and a Francophone/Anglophone divide, Africans weren’t always in a position to tell their own stories on film.
The history of cinema on the African continent is expectedly complex and brief — unlike other artforms including music and literature, of which there are decades, if not centuries of rich history.
Due to restrictive colonialist structures and a Francophone/Anglophone divide, Africans weren’t always in a position to tell their own stories on film.
- 12/9/2021
- by Tambay Obenson
- Indiewire
IndieWire turns 25 this year. To mark the occasion, we’re running a series of essays about the future of everything we cover.
Quick: How many films can you find on Netflix from before 1980? Gems can be uncovered there — shout-out to Youssef Chahine’s 1958 Egyptian classic, “Cairo Station” — but the burden is on those cinephiles already interested enough to seek them out.
Lovers of film history aren’t born, they’re made. Discussions with other film fans, nights out at your university rep cinema, and serendipitous discoveries on Turner Classic Movies, certainly help. Many of us owe our parents for exposing us to classic film at an early age. Still, we’ve reached a point where movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, as well as concurrent world cinema titles, are more accessible than ever, but risk falling further into obscurity.
There was a time when you couldn’t see even towering classics,...
Quick: How many films can you find on Netflix from before 1980? Gems can be uncovered there — shout-out to Youssef Chahine’s 1958 Egyptian classic, “Cairo Station” — but the burden is on those cinephiles already interested enough to seek them out.
Lovers of film history aren’t born, they’re made. Discussions with other film fans, nights out at your university rep cinema, and serendipitous discoveries on Turner Classic Movies, certainly help. Many of us owe our parents for exposing us to classic film at an early age. Still, we’ve reached a point where movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age, as well as concurrent world cinema titles, are more accessible than ever, but risk falling further into obscurity.
There was a time when you couldn’t see even towering classics,...
- 10/28/2021
- by Christian Blauvelt and Kristen Lopez
- Indiewire
The series Youssef Chahine: Son of the Nile is showing on Mubi starting September 16, 2021 in most countries.Image from https://festival.ilcinemaritrovato.itBologna, June 2019. I spotted an Arab name on the badge of the hotel's night porter. When I asked, he turned out to be one—an Egyptian. I mentioned to him that Youssef Chahine's films would be playing in Bologna for the next few days. His face lit up. A floodgate of emotions, about Egypt, his past, and cinema opened, temporarily drowned him in nostalgia, passion and regret. He shared stories of Chahine, of his beloved Alexandria. He even cursed the extra who had forgotten to remove his wristwatch during the battle scene of Salah Eddin (a film about the Crusade, from the Arabs' point of view). According to him, by doing so he had prevented the film from entering the Oscar competition.Very few directors can make that impact on their people,...
- 9/21/2021
- MUBI
The visual assurance of “You Will Die at Twenty” is the most immediately notable element of Sudanese director Amjad Abu Alala’s accomplished feature debut. Beautifully composed and boasting the kind of sensitivity to light sources and color tonalities usually ascribed to top photographers, the film lovingly depicts the remote east-central region of Sudan as a quasi-magical place of sand, sky and the colors of the Nile. The story, about a young man raised to believe an unfortunate event at his birth has condemned him to die at 20, generally has an equally clear-cut quality, simple in the telling yet matched to the pictorial tenor. Some may find a clash between its fable-like guilelessness and other moments when the outside world’s cynicism breaks in, yet the film remains a touching, nonjudgmental depiction of people circumscribed by superstition. Festival play is assured.
This pocket of Sudan is both life-giving, situated between...
This pocket of Sudan is both life-giving, situated between...
- 9/4/2019
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
This is an introduction to the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival's retrospective, A Tribute to Youseff Chahine. An abridged version of this text will be published in the festival catalog.Youssef ChahineIn a filmography overflowing with countless grandstanding moments, a quiet moment stands out in Youssef Chahine’s formative career period: a sultry soda vendor is dragged to a motionless train by a group of young hipsters playing rock ‘n’ roll. She starts dancing in abandon, letting go and losing the little inhibitions she may have had. A crippling newspaper seller, played by Chahine himself, slowly approaches the train cabin window, gazing at the dancing vendor. His gaze interrupts her dancing when they lock eyes. A brief look of shame, of awkwardness, crosses her face. His eyes are dismayingly blank. She offers him a bottle of soda. He takes it. She smiles. He smiles back. She resumes her frantic dancing...
- 6/25/2019
- MUBI
For 11 years running, our end-of-the-year tradition on the Notebook has been to poll our roster of contributors to create fantasy double features of new and old films. But what about the curators behind Mubi itself? This year we begin what we hope to be a new tradition: publishing the favorite films of the year as chosen by our programming team: Daniel Kasman in the U.S., Anaïs Lebrun and Chiara Marañón in the U.K. We each have two lists: our top new films that premiered in 2018, and then a selection of revivals screened in cinemas.PREMIERESDaniel Kasman1. Blue (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)2. The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland)3. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski, USA)4. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, USA)5. The Waldheim Waltz (Ruth Beckermann, Austria)6. Unsane (Steven Soderbergh, USA)7. The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, USA)8. The Red Shadow [director's cut]9. What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire?...
- 12/24/2018
- MUBI
Within the first ten minutes of Nicholas Ray’s unimpeachable classic Rebel Without a Cause Jim Stark (James Dean) wails, “You’re tearing me apart!!!!!” This is not an instance where the film crescendos with an emotional breakdown, but begins. Jim Stark is a staggering portrait of apocalyptic masculine adolescence ripping apart a young body through expectations put on him by society and his own self-imposed fears that he could turn into his passive father. Jim Stark is one of the defining characters of cinematic melodrama with his unbridled emotional honesty laid bare for the world to see. He physically cannot keep himself from gnashing, wailing, and screaming in the face of emotions that bubble to the surface. Melodrama opens the lid on these reactions and rides that feeling to cinematic honesty and authenticity. Melodrama is realer than real; a hyper-stylized evocation of feelings that we’re all familiar with as human beings.
- 12/16/2017
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Asuka Langley Sohryu - Neon Genesis Evangelion Cosplayer: Nadya Sonika * Photographer: Laphotonet ........................................................................ Jinx - League of Legends Cosplayer: Nadya Sonika * Photographers: Laphotonet & Dee Dee ........................................................................ Cortana - Halo 4 Cosplayer: Nadya Sonika * Photographer: Ihphotostudio Body Paint: Lyma Makeup Art Cortana, Unsc Artificial intelligence (Service Number - Ctn 0452-9), was a Smart artificial intelligence construct. She was one of the most important figures in the Human-Covenant war, and was also John-117's partner in various combat missions as well as serving as the A.I. for the Halcyon-class light cruiser - Unsc Pillar of Autumn, Orbital Defense Platform - Cairo Station and Charon-class light frigate - Unsc Forward Unto Dawn. In addition, she held vital data pertaining to the Halos, including the Activation Index from Installation 04. - halo.wikia...
- 12/28/2014
- ComicBookMovie.com
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in partnership with the Dubai International Film Festival (Diff), will present “Arab Cinema Classics,” a two-day screening series of the best in Arab film on Friday, June 13, and Saturday, June 21, at the Bing Theater in Los Angeles. With input from nearly 500 prominent film critics, writers, novelists, academics and other arts professionals, Diff in 2013 compiled a tally of the 100 greatest Arab films of all time. The Academy will screen three selections from Diff’s Top 10: “The Night of Counting the Years” (“Al-Mummia,” 1970) Friday, June 13, at 7:30 p.m. Director Shadi Abdel Salam’s film is based on the true story of the Horabat tribe’s 1881 plundering of pharaohs’ tombs in the ancient city of Thebes. Long unavailable for exhibition, the film was restored in 2009 by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation. “Cairo Station” (“Bab el Hadid,” 1958) Friday, June 13, at 9:20 p.m.
- 5/30/2014
- by HollywoodNews.com
- Hollywoodnews.com
To celebrate Africa Express rolling out across the UK, here's a guide to 10 classic films to have come from the continent
Africa played no part in the invention of cinema. For decades, in Tarzan movies, it was the subject of fake Hollywood fantasies. And yet, when Africans made films about themselves, the results were astonishing. There are scores of great African movies. Here are 10 of the best:
Cairo Station (Egypt, 1958)
If Alfred Hitchcock had been Egyptian and bisexual, and had himself played Norman Bates, Psycho might have been something like this. Sweaty, musical, melodramatic and political, Cairo Station stars ballsy writer-director Youssef Chahine as a homicidal newspaper seller in Cairo's vast railway station. In the 1950s, movies such as Rebel without a Cause and All That Heaven Allows were about repression as a ticking time bomb, but Chahine's film about sexual desire with no outlet was one of the biggest cinematic bombs of the decade.
Africa played no part in the invention of cinema. For decades, in Tarzan movies, it was the subject of fake Hollywood fantasies. And yet, when Africans made films about themselves, the results were astonishing. There are scores of great African movies. Here are 10 of the best:
Cairo Station (Egypt, 1958)
If Alfred Hitchcock had been Egyptian and bisexual, and had himself played Norman Bates, Psycho might have been something like this. Sweaty, musical, melodramatic and political, Cairo Station stars ballsy writer-director Youssef Chahine as a homicidal newspaper seller in Cairo's vast railway station. In the 1950s, movies such as Rebel without a Cause and All That Heaven Allows were about repression as a ticking time bomb, but Chahine's film about sexual desire with no outlet was one of the biggest cinematic bombs of the decade.
- 9/3/2012
- by Mark Cousins
- The Guardian - Film News
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