Your Daughters Come Back to You: The 28th Pan African Film and Arts Festival Bérénice Reynaud July 2020 Festival Reports The label of “auteur cinema”, whether poetic or political, is often the cloak under which African cinema is “discovered” and appreciated. We know the canon: Ousmane Sembene, Souleymane Cissé, Med Hondo, Djibril...
AFI/AFM 2010 – Places to Fly Away From Bérénice Reynaud April 2020 Festival Reports I believe in ghosts, vampires and public employees That a certain morning fly away from their houses. Because I am a man in love. — Luis Caicedo Places of Anger and Desire Female directors provided rewardi...
Sundance 2020 Bérénice Reynaud April 2020 Festival Reports What are you looking at when you’re looking at me? As Sundance may be one of the last film festivals I will cover for a while, maybe it is a good time to probe what a festivalgoer’s pleasure is made of. 1. Do...
The Grain of the Real, The Grain of the Surreal, and the Grain of Light: Vancouver International Film Festival 2019 Bérénice Reynaud January 2020 Festival Reports The Grain of the Real Always the champion of the most cutting-edge documentaries from Asia, the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) presented two remarkable films by young Chinese women, which, albeit...
Recovering Hidden Histories: The 27th PanAfrican Art and Film Festival Bérénice Reynaud July 2019 Festival Reports The Voice in the Church For the opening night of its 27th edition at the Directors Guild of America, the PanAfrican Art and Film Festival (PAFF), landed quite a coup by organising, a week before its internatio...
Questions of Agency: Sundance 2019 Bérénice Reynaud March 2019 Festival Reports The Warden and the Young Man In 2012, Ava DuVernay made history by becoming the first black woman filmmaker to get a major award at Sundance. Since then, she has continued to change the way African American wo...
Rendez-vous in Autumn: China-US Summit/American Film Market/AFI FEST Bérénice Reynaud March 2019 Festival Reports On Oct 30, the day before the American Film Market opened in Santa Monica, the Asian Society of Southern California had organised the US-China Entertainment Summit at the Skirball Center, allowing the speakers ...
Vancouver 2018 – Not-so-strange Bedfellows Bérénice Reynaud December 2018 Festival Reports Beyond the Great (Digital) Divide Posited at both ends of the aesthetic spectrum (French auteur cinema versus Sundance alum), Doubles Vies (Non-Fiction) and Can You Ever Forgive Me? engage in a conversation ab...
AFM/AFI FEST 2017: Magic Women, Haptic Men Bérénice Reynaud March 2018 Festival Reports – Are you going to sleep with the Chinese? – Yes, I think so. – When? – Maybe later on today. Barbara Two events made the trip worthy to the American Film Market (AFM). First was the screening of Mathieu A...
Pan African Film Festival 2017 Bérénice Reynaud June 2017 Festival Reports Pan African Dreams: the Dreams that Dance Attending PAFF is to open oneself to a world of images, colours, sounds – even the suggestion of smells – from all corners of the African diaspora, and, for its 25th a...
Vancouver 2016: The Daughters Generation Bérénice Reynaud March 2017 Festival Reports Penelope, gone Pedro Almodóvar’ense Julieta was felicitously at home at the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) – as the character is based on a Canadian woman named Juliet, the protagonist of Nobel P...
Sundance 2017 Bérénice Reynaud March 2017 Festival Reports Not at Home Having, in the past, expressed my contentment at attending Sundance, I feel entitled, this year, to introduce a slight drawback in my comments. There were some very good films this year, but I didn...