CLAUDIA LLOSA, “THE MILK OF SORROW”

By Brandon Harris

For Claudia Llosa, director of the Berlinale-winning and Academy Award-nominated Peruvian film The Milk of Sorrow, magical realism isn’t a literary genre or filmic device, it’s an element of national identity and consciousness. Her film, easily the most critically-lauded film to emerge from Peru, is set in the rough-hewn mountain settlements on the outskirts of Lima. It concerns a young Peruvian woman (the captivating Magaly Solier) who, having contracted a mysterious disease that is passed on via breast milk to the daughters of rape victims taken by soliders serving Peru’s deposed terrorist regime, sets out to bury her newly deceased mother. Her uncle, with whom she lives, is about to marry off his rather bone-headed, carefree daughter and wants no part of paying for a burial. He suggests she simply bury her mother in his backyard. Aware of her mysterious disease, he accepts it matter of factly. In one of the single most unsettling scenes you may see in a cinema this year, he tries to explain to a doctor the folkloric disease which afflicts his daughter. The young woman, who is prone to nose bleeds, muteness and bouts of fainting from the disease, begins to work for a wealthy, blonde classical pianist in Lima who treats her dismissively. However, as she receives a rude introduction to the world of elite Peruvian musicianship, the movie toys with the notion that something may come of her hauntingly beautiful and profanely lyrical singing, the only coping mechanism that the victims of the state-sponsored sexual torture have to rely on.

While she draws upon influences ranging from the high European modernism of Antonioni to the short filmography of Barbara Loden, her film most clearly suggests a clever re-imagining of Todd Haynes’ Safe set amidst an altogether more violent and troubled South American milieu. Never failing to worm its way under your skin, The Milk of Sorrow is a potent and unforgettable film, one which challenges you to engage with it on its own terms and, like the very best cinema, seems to build its visual language from the ground up; you’ve never … Read the rest

ACADEMY DOCS SHORTLISTED

By Admin

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences yesterday released a list of films that will continue on in the voting process in the category of Best Documentary Feature for the 77th Academy Awards. The 12 films from which the five nominees will be selected are listed below in alphabetical order:

Born into Brothels (ThinkFilm), directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kaufmann

The most stigmatized people in Sonagachi, Calcutta’s red light district, are not the prostitutes, but their children. In the face of abject poverty, abuse, and despair, these kids have little possibility of escaping their mother’s fate or for creating another type of life. Zana Briski gives these kids cameras and teaches them how to use them, igniting latent sparks of artistic genius. The photographs taken by the children are not merely examples of remarkable observation and talent; they reflect something much larger, morally encouraging and even politically volatile: art as an immensely liberating and empowering force.

Home of the Brave (Emerging Pictures), directed by Paola di Florio

Home of the Brave is about the only white woman murdered in the civil rights movement in America and why we don’t know who she is. Told through the eyes of her children, the film follows the on-going struggle of an American family to survive the consequences of their mother’s heroism and the mystery behind her killing.

Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train (First Run Features), directed by Deb Ellis and Denis Mueller

The life and times of the historian, activist and author of the best selling classic A People’s History of the United States.

In the Realms of the Unreal (Wellspring), directed by Jessica Yu

Explores the parallel lives of legendary outsider artist Henry Darger. Reclusive janitor by day, visionary artist by night, Darger’s 15,000-page novel The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, as caused by the Child Slave Rebellion details the exploits of seven angelic sisters who lead a rebellion against godless, child-enslaving men.

Riding Giants (Sony Pictures Classics), … Read the rest