The Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look festival will take place from January 9-18, 2015 and this year features works by the likes of Denis Côté (Joy of Man’s Desiring), Jessica Hausner (Amour Fou) and Jorge León (Before We Go). The festival’s purpose is to showcase not only new works, but works that push the boundaries of form and style, whether they be from emerging voices or established auteurs. We got a sneak peek and these are our five favorites from this year’s selection:
Amour Fou
Jessica Hausner’s droll account of the suicide pact between German Romantic writer Heinrich Von Kleist (Christian Friedel) and Henriette Vogel (Birte Schnoeink) feels like a Jane Austen adaptation directed by Aki Kaurismäki. It’s a meticulously shot, work of art that defies the concepts of love and desire that the movies have made us believe are true to life. Friedel conveys longing splendidly, but it’s Schnoeink’s quietly touching performance that steals the show, as Henriette seems to be caught between two polar views of what love is supposed to be about, she encompasses issues of gender inequality that might look very 1800s, but are more relevant than ever.
I Touched All Your Stuff
An American tourist arrives in Colombia wanting to see the famous hippopotamuses living in druglord Pablo Escobar’s now deserted home, instead he meets a seductive Japanese-Colombian woman whom he believes is the love of his life, years later he’s serving a sentence for drug trafficking in a Brazilian prison. This tale of obsession and deception has been put together by filmmakers Maíra Bühler and Matias Mariani using the subjects’ emails, photographs and chat history, which creates an eerie companion piece to fiction films like The Social Network, which seek out to find where has the soul gone during the digital era.
I for Iran
Belgian filmmaker Sanaz Azari is of Iranian descent but does not speak Persian, trying to understand more about her culture she enrolls in private lessons with a teacher who survived the Iranian Revolution. Soon Sanaz realizes that there is more to Persian than meets the eye, as every letter and word, not to mention the images of the textbook she uses, tell a devastating story about the struggles of the country. The camera placed on the audience’s perspective, looking at the instructor and the book, means that we are given a rare opportunity to absorb the vast richness of Iranian culture in a way no other film has allowed us to do before.
August Winds
Gabriel Mascaro’s sensuous fiction debut focuses on two lovers, Jeison and Shirley, (Geová Manoel Dos Santos and Dandara de Morais) whose peaceful life in a coastal town is suddenly disrupted by the appearance of a corpse that becomes Jeison’s obsession. A beautifully observed film about the passing of time in rural regions, Mascaro’s camera evokes a sad tranquility made both heartbreaking and hopeful by the realization that death is our eternal travel companion.
The Guests
Leave it to Ken Jacobs to take a one minute film by the Lumiere brothers and expand it into an hour long 3D meditation on cinematic form. Allow your eyes to examine each and every inch of the screen, trying to figure out if something will change or if anything will “happen”. When you realize nothing will indeed happen in the traditional sense, the film turns into a sensorial experience the likes of which will haunt you for weeks. The film is preceded by the equally fascinating Wire Fence which turns an inconspicuous construction site into a playground for the eyes.
For more on this year's selection, as well as tickets visit the Museum of the Moving Image's website.
