Every day during this year’s festival, we’ll be offering you some supplemental reading (and the odd visual aid) in order to better inform your future viewing or appreciation of work you’ve already seen.
As you readers prepare for your final push of festival viewing, we thought we’d highlight a few longer pieces of coverage on this year’s programming. We’d hate to think that there’s even one film in our lineup that’s not on your radar.
We’ve already linked to a couple of these in the past few days, but we’re pleased to share all four of the VIFF dispatches from David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s Observations on film art:
- First sightings: David discusses Undine, Last and First Men and The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel.
- Three gems from Iran and India: Kristin shares her thoughts on There Is No Evil, Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness and The Shepherdess and the Seven Songs.
- Stories spiced and stacked: David investigates ambitious fare like Tales from the Lockdown, Memories to Choke on, Drinks to Wash Them Down, Sarita and My Mexican Bretzel.
- “It’s the arts”: Kristin rounds things out their coverage with a look at Paris Calligrammes, Marcel Duchamp: The Art of the Possible and Frida Kahlo.
(For those of you who have a Criterion Channel subscription, you’ll want to be sure to check out David and Kristin’s regular segments on that platform.)
In her preview to this year’s festival, The Tyee‘s Dorothy Woodend wrote, “If I had to a pick a defining quality about many of this year’s films, it would be looking back. No one has the faintest clue what the heck is going to happen next week, much less next year, so it’s only natural that many films feel like missives from another time and place.” With this in mind:
- In Woodend’s Top Film Festival Picks, she cites Out of the Blue, Paris Calligrammes and The Forum as particular highlights.
- In a subsequent piece that focuses on The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel, she adds John Ware Reclaimed and Maguy Marin: Time to Act to her list of “rear-view VIFF picks”.
Taste of Cinema is always a fine source for recommendations if you like your essential international cinema spiced up with some elevated genre and other outré offerings. Sure enough, Shane Scott-Travis’ list of 15 Films Not to Miss at VIFF contains the usual prestigious suspects (Another Round, Undine) as well as Siberia, Jumbo, Dancing Mary and Sanzaru.
Over at the Georgia Straight, Charlie Smith joins the legion of scribes wading into The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel by interviewing codirector Joel Bakan. The same outlet also features an extensive conversation between Radheyan Simonpillai and No Ordinary Man‘s directors Chase Joynt and Aisling Chin-Yee, as well as co-writer Amos Mac.
And: Just in case it escaped your notice, a couple of former Straight writers have started a new publication entitled Stir. On their recently launched website, Adrian Mack fearlessly takes a deep dive into Violation, talking with its codirectors Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli while surmising, “The film is an authentic shocker… It’s also an aesthetic triumph…”
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