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My Stolen Planet 2024
Seen as part of the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art's 29th Annual Festival of Films From Iran
Farahnaz Sharifi's "My Stolen Planet" is simply one of the most visceral, moving, and thoughtful documentaries I've ever seen. A hybrid of found footage, diary, and historical documentary, Sharifi's film deftly moves between perspectives without ever sacrificing narrative or pacing. From a technical perspective, I was reminded of Kristen Johnson's diaristic film Cameraperson as well as the hauntological work of Adam Curtis. Sharifi's mission is nothing less than rescuing women's history in Iran from the ongoing erasure.
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Janet Planet 2023
It's impossible for me to objectively review this film, namely because in some important ways this film is about my own childhood. Not the fraught parent/child dynamics, not the pseudo-cultish theater troupe, but rather the immersive sound of cicadas, the green so lush it nearly overwhelms, the pastoral pace of a hot summer afternoon in Western Massachusetts in the early 1990s.
I can be objective in a few ways, however. For all the accolades the film's actors justly receive, it…
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Past Lives 2023
Do you remember the first time you fell in love, how it opened up the world for you in ways your young imagination could not yet fathom? This film exists in such a space. Curious, empathetic, humbled. Two children gazing into each other's eyes looking for something. A shared identity. A radical vulnerability. That ineffable braid of consequence, the 8000 layers of "inyeon". Loving is perhaps the most cherished mission we are charged with. Loss permeates everything, and yet we go on.
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Anselm 2023
"Anselm" is a hypnotic, immersive experience that, much like its subject, is an invitation, provocation, and confrontation. Unmoored from the traditional beats of the modern documentary, it moves foreword and backward through time, through various media, and brings Keifer into focus for moments of breathtaking clarity before he recedes into the background again, leaving the viewer to contemplate his immense oeuvre in stunningly filmed images. This is not biography nor hagiography. It is rather a portrait of an artist, a…
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