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Jacques Tati: The Mime of Modern France
The spirit of silent comedy is kept alive in Jacque Tati’s eccentric satires, sending up the inefficient distractions of modern civilisation through bizarrely constructed architectural monuments and gags, many of which stand among cinema’s most brilliantly odd set pieces.
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Mr. Turner (2014)
On every level of its stylistic construction, Mr. Turner inhabits the watercolours of its titular historical painter with ethereal elegance, and though this exquisite aesthetic initially seems at odds with the coarse, prickly figure at its centre, Mike Leigh’s exceptional orchestration of such beautiful contradictions affectingly reveals the complex creative processes shared by both artists.
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Krzysztof Kieslowski: The Souls of Strangers
As a leading figure in cinematic, philosophical storytelling, Krzysztof Kieslowski probes metaphysical questions of fate, morality, and spirituality, using sensual colour palettes and symbolic cutaways to better understand the lives that lie just beyond our immediate perspectives.
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Fitzcarraldo (1982)
In Fitzcarraldo’s absurd dream of building an opera house in the Amazon jungle and his even stranger endeavour of hauling a giant steamship up a mountain, Werner Herzog centres him as a tragic figure in an epic fable of extraordinary ambition, fully consuming his mind with a megalomania that threatens the foundations of his own…
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Jia Zhangke: Landscapes of Lost China
With a commitment to raw realism and segmented narrative structures, Jia Zhangke crafts scathing indictments of iron-fisted authority, modernity, and globalisation, setting himself up as a significant leading figure among the Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers.
