Film review: Cartoonists - Foot Soldiers of Democracy

This film follows 12 political caricaturists in 12 different countries. In broad brush strokes the documentary illustrates the convergence of power, greed and corruption through the sharp mocking eyes of the cartoonists.

Despite very different political contexts, the cartoonists have the ability to upset those in power, whether in France, Venezuela, Tunisia or Denmark.

There are some elegant sweeping panoramas of the different global locales and of course a lot of smart talk from the cartoonists themselves.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to fully take in the cartoons that are intermittently displayed full-screen. You simply don't have time to appreciate the jokes when having to read translations and take in the subtleties of the artwork on offer at the same time.

The cartoonists featured are brought together by the Frenchman, Plantu, who set up a group at the UN called 'cartoonists for peace.' They advocate for press freedom and defend the right to tackle sensitive subjects, even if they seriously offend people.

The film gains great relevance in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. It is well worth watching and may help you to more clearly see where your boundaries are when it comes to freedom of expression versus any form of censorship.

War in Syria - Who's Watching?

'Return to Homs' was screened in Brussels on Tuesday night as part of the One World film festival. It was a gripping and heartbreaking portrayal of the war in Syria from the rebels-eye-view.

About 200 people attended the screening at the Czech Representation to the EU. Only about half of those stayed for the panel debate afterwards.

Šimon Pánek, director of People in Need, the NGO behind the event, looked grim-faced and weary as he listened to Syrian opposition figures express their frustration with the international community for not helping them.

After 20 years in the humanitarian relief business, one sensed that he'd seen it all before. He referred to the siege of Sarajevo. Eventually something was done there.

Who knows how long it will take for 'something' to be done in Syria.

Overall, the event was an admirable and well-organized effort to raise public awareness of the war in Syria. One just wishes that it could have reached more people. There was no evidence of media coverage.

With so many conflicts in the world, where do you start?

At least another 200 people have a greater insight onto the war and will hopefully pass on their experience to family and friends.

Europeans have the luxury of choosing which conflicts to follow. How long before that choice disappears?

One World Brussels 2014 film festival runs until 02 April, tickets are free and the programme can be found here

People in Need

Review of the film

Awesome Writer Dies

J G Ballard has died aged 78.

If there is one book you should read before you die, it is his autobiographical novel 'Empire of the Sun'.

It is a fictionalized account of his internment, at the age of 12, inside a Japanese prison camp in China during WWII. Surrounded by violence, starvation and death, Jim's spirits never fall and neither does his iron determination to cling onto life.

Self-pity is not in Jim's repertoire. Flies clog his sick gums and pus oozes from the sores that cover his body, but his black humour and ability to barter favours sees him live off a single mouldy sweet potato a day.

The Collins English dicitionary may define 'Ballardian' as 'dystopian modernity', but Ballard's writing in 'Empire' thrives on the man-made catastrophe of war.

Prostate cancer may have taken him, but I look foward to exploring his 15 novels and many short stories further.

• 'Empire of the Sun' was made into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1987
• 'Crash' was made into a film by David Cronenberg in 1996 and tells of a group of people who take sexual pleasure from car accidents
  

The Reader

1950s Germany: a teenage lad ends up knocking around with a sultry blond tram conductress. For some reason she gets him to read classics to her before she teaches him a new position. Although the reading is a bit odd at first, he enjoys it.

The affair lasts the summer and then she disappears. By the mid 60s the young man is a law student attending a special seminar on a war crimes trial. Who should be sitting in the dock, but his first love. She was a guard at Auschwitz.

The Holocaust and German guilt are major themes, but it is essentially the tragic love story which drives the film. We follow Michael’s relationship with Hanna throughout.

German actor David Kross is utterly convincing as the nervous besotted youth. But Michael holds his own and is soon rutting Hanna in bed with growing confidence. This is not child porn as some critics have argued. This is a fully consensual adult relationship. As with any relationship the power balance is in flux.

Kate Winslet is outstanding as Hanna Schmitz and fully deserving of her Best Actress Oscar. She’s hot, but at the same time mysterious and rather coarse. Her voice is dry with a hard edge – no cheap German accent here. The way she always calls Michael ‘kid’ is brusque yet affectionate.

Hanna is accused of letting 300 Jews die during a death march in 1944. She has a piece of evidence that may help her defence, but she is so ashamed of it that she keeps it a secret to the bitter end.

Are we supposed to feel sorry for Hanna? Most of the film is shot from Michael’s perspective so his point of view offers a guide. He cannot forgive her for what she has done. But is it more the betrayal of his trust or the fact that she was complicit in the Holocaust? It is certainly a mixture of both and her betrayal becomes even more enormous given that she hid her terrible wartime past from him. Think about it, what if your first ever lover was a death camp guard? Wouldn’t that make you complicit?

Ralph Fiennes plays the grown-up Michael and is a perfect match for Kross. The make-up artists do a very thorough job of making Winslet look old as her character ages, maybe too thorough, since she looks like a decrepit zombie. But the overall artfulness of the cinematography lets them get away with it.

Ironically, the book by German author Bernhard Schlink is too cluttered by words. Director Stephen Daldry reads aloud with a clear voice and the emotionally heart of the story shines through.

Latest German History Movie A Violent Collage

Two and a half hours of endless violence, garbled ideology and much posturing. And I'm not talking about 'Quantum of Solace'. No, this is the latest film about modern German history. But it is not about the World Wars or the East German dictatorship. It is about West Germany's terrorist group of the 1960s and '70s: the Red Army Faction (RAF).

[Watch the trailer on the official film website]

'The Baader Meinhof Komplex' tries to sum up around 30 years of complex social tensions in West Germany: the post-war generation that had to deal with the role of parents and grandparents in Nazi Germany; the student movement and the reaction of older people to its liberalism; and the radicalisation of left-wing ideology that resulted in terrorist tactics.

What results is a collage of scenes that supposedly show 'what actually happened' at the time. We see a student demonstration brutally put down by police and of course the catalystic shooting of the student Benno Ohnesorg by a police officer.

The left-wing intellectual Ulrike Meinhof joins the extremist Andreas Baader and away we go. Political assassination follows bombing follows shooting.

The graphic depiction of violence in this film is shocking in itself, but does it really make one think about the social issues of the time. I left the theatre feeling numb. I can imagine others leaving the theatre feeling elated. For example, this movie would go down very well with any member of Antifa - a German group that sees a need to fight fascists hands on.

It made me more convinced than ever that the use of terror is wrong. What did these people achieve apart from expressing their anger in the most apalling way? The film provided no new clues or perspectives. Given the amount of time it spent looking at the terrorists after they were caught and tried, it's portrayal of them is rather too sympathetic.

German director Uli Edel might have been better off sticking to the realms of myth as in his last movie - 'Ring of the Nibelungs'. He's tried to create an epic, where a single story could have told a lot more. To prove my point, look at 'Downfall' by German director Oliver Hirschbiegel. He took Hitler as his material, but he did not make a film about the entire Second World War. His powerful drama plays out in a bunker in Berlin in 1945 and reveals a lot more about German history than Edel's violent collage.

That said, see 'The Baader Meinhof Complex' yourself and let me know what YOU think.

Dark Night at the Cinema

I recently watched 'The Dark Knight' at the English cinema called Turm Palast in Frankfurt am Main.

Maybe you didn't know, but in Germany subtitles are not common. On TV and in cinemas all English films are simply dubbed into German. So you get Bruce Willis, Nicole Kidman etc. speaking German. Of course, it doesn't make much difference for Arnold Schwarzenegger...

The new Batman film was released in August in Germany, so of course I saw it on one of the cinema's smaller screens. It was not a good cinematic experience.

The volume was lower than on my TV set. The seats were falling apart and the faded red upholstery was rotting off before my eyes. I doubt that this cinema has been refurbished since the end of the Second World War.

Just after the bit where the Joker gets put behind bars, there was the sharp 'clack' of a fuse blowing and the screen went black. Apart from disgruntled murmers from the small audience that was that. Film over. The cash machine was closed, but I got my money back the next day.

Obviously, this does not make me the best judge of the film. But what the hell was it actually about?!

The plot was, indeed, bat-like: erratic in flight and virtually blind. Would Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker really have attracted so much attention if he hadn't died shortly after filming?

The Joker was enjoyably psychopathic. But if you really want to be thrilled by a bunch of maniacs, try going to a Slipknot concert.

Christian Bale's performance as Batman was as stiff as his hard rubber suit. In fact, even the action scenes were boring.

I probably would have demanded my money back even if the projector hadn't blown up!

Why did so many people think this film was the best thing since sliced bread?

Danish film review: ‘Prague’ (2006)

A gripping dark drama, artistically shot and lined with black humour.

Christoffer (Mads Mikkelsen) travels to Prague with his wife Maja (Stine Stengade) to organise the shipment of his dead father back to Denmark. He is unemotional about the whole thing and only expects to fulfil the practicalities. It is 25 years since his father ran away from Denmark leaving him and his mother behind.

At the hospital, Christoffer is unable to wave a fly off of his dead father’s face. He just stands and stares – that is the extent of his stunted feeling. The doctor drolly tells him ‘Life is hard. And you cannot have it all.’ A mantra repeated by the completely bald elderly lawyer played by Czech actor Bořivoj Navrátil.

Whilst the coffin with his father is mistakenly sent to Singapore, events in Prague rapidly develop. Christoffer and Maja’s marriage begins to fall apart. Maja has been seeing a man altogether more lively and tender than the detatched Christoffer. Meanwhile, a surprising fact of his father’s history emerges.

Mikkelsen plays Christoffer very well – lonely, sad, even nihilistic, his placid pale face rarely changes expression. But Stengade really wins your heart as the long-suffering wife who can’t stand her moody self-absorbed husband any longer.

Danish cinema does dark abstract movies well and black humour is its forte. In any Danish film I always find myself looking out for features of the influential Dogme 95 school of cinema. ‘Prague’ does not disappoint. It has all this and more. Stark realism is its most powerful attribute.