Another film, which was chosen to close the Venice Film Fest is about my favourite fashion icon - Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel.
Paris, 1913: Coco Chanel attends the first, scandalous performance of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The rhythmic dissonance of the score and the shocking choreography of the piece cause a riot. But Coco is impressed when Igor storms out of the theatre.
Seven years later, Coco and Igor meet again. Although her business has flourished, Coco is mourning her lover, Arthur "Boy" Capel. Igor has been forced to flee to France following the Russian Revolution. An immediate sympathy and attraction is established between the ‘couturiere’ and the composer.
Coco invites Igor to live in her villa outside Paris, along with his wife and children. The summer months that follow see Coco and Igor begin a secret affair. Their work benefits from their growing intimacy; Igor begins to compose in a new, more liberated style while Coco creates Chanel No. 5 with her perfumer, Ernest Beaux.
However, the almost unbearable tension in the villa cannot be contained forever.
6.28.2009
TIFF'09 Wishlist - Film # 2
TIFF'09 Wishlist - Film # 1
Over the next while, leading up to the Toronto International FilmFest 2009, I will be highlighting films that have previewed at other fests. The first one achieved the Golden Bear Award at Berlin's Film Fest in February.
La teta asustada (English: The Milk of Sorrow)
A realistic portrayal of the impoverished suburbia of Lima, Peru is the frame-set for this fantastic story. Fausta, daughter of a woman raped by terrorists some 25 years ago, assists her mother's death and decides to take her remains back to her hometown, in the high Andes. But, apart from having to work hard to collect the money she needs for it, Fausta has a reason, deep inside, that prevents her from enjoying life or accepting her outstanding physical beauty as a normal girl.
Mastery at low-budget cinematic skill should be credited to Bollywood (the Mumbai-based Hindi language film industry) films, which may not be the most groundbreaking in technical or screen writing terms, but contain music in the form of song-and-dance numbers woven into the script in order to appeal to all segments of the audience and maximise box office receipts. Since Hollywood's multi-million budgets would never have helped shoot realistic and colourful, but rough Brazilian imagery, 'Central Station' (1998) and 'Cidade de Deus' (2002) garnered indisputable acclaim at renowned film festivals after being funded on their own. The example set by off-Hollywood movie makers' efforts have become heroic in countries where movie industry budgets are, to say the least, scarce.
This is the case for LTA. It could have been more on par to Danny Boyle's 'Slumdog Millionaire' if it wasn't for the Peruvian-Spanish meagre budget available to Peruvian young director Claudia Llosa. If you expect to see acting beaus or beautés, famous screenwriters and crew, expensive car explosions or CGI, go elsewhere. LTA is neat magic-realism, a territory where people may be poor but not disgusting, where their houses are mere recreation centres for fantasy and everyday life to play happily together. Only time will tell if the trend keeps up, spreads globally, and ends up being called Globbywood.
This is a well-told tale of hope where only two professional actors are involved. And this was as clear to Berlinale judges as it is for the general public -those with a thirst for veritable, honest, witty craftsmanship at film-making.
Source: imdb.com - Author: (alejandrotelleria at hotmail.com) from Barcelona, Spain
6.17.2009
Strippers Are Skilled Workers! (accord'g to the gov)
Source: canada.com
"Canada is a source and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Many trafficking victims are from Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, South Korea, the Philippines, Russia, and Ukraine. Asian victims tend to be trafficked more frequently to Vancouver and Western Canada, the report states. It also says Canadian women and girls, many of whom are aboriginal, are trafficked internally for commercial sexual exploitation. Canadian politicians promised long ago to eliminate exotic dancing from its list of skilled worker categories for immigration because of fears that traffickers were using it as a loophole to legally import women into forced prostitution, yet 14 permits were issued last year. Fifteen were handed out in 2007 and 22 in 2006. Only five traffickers have ever been convicted."
Very disturbing that Aboriginal women are trafficked internally...enough is enough.
