Issue 58: 2011 in Film


Take Shelter

2011 in Film: The year’s highlights and low points

We look back at our favourite cinema releases, DVDs/Blu-rays, festival films and filmic events as well as the great expectations that proved to be big disappointments. This month’s featured artist picks The Ides of March as his best film of 2011 in a Comic Strip Review and we have a Reel Sounds column on The Artist. We also have an interview with Takeshi Kitano, whose latest film, Outrage, features in our best festival films.

At the cinema in December you can see Jan &#352vankmajer’s psychoanalytical fantasy Surviving Life, Argentine poetic road movie Las Acacias, affecting docu-drama and festival hit Dreams of a Life while in the DVDs we have Pasolini’s take on classic Greek myth Medea. We review The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, screened at Brighton’s Cine-City, and Pipilotti Rist’s Eyeball Massage exhibition, and we have features on suitably wintry director Larry Fessenden and innovative German trilogy Dreileben.

In Short Cuts we look at the London Korean Film Festival‘s offerings while our brand new Cine Lit column peruses books on Tarkovsky and exploitation cinema. In Alter Ego, the author of The Night before Christmas Scarlett Bailey dreams of being Scarlett O’Hara while all-female contemporary choir Gaggle pick their favourite films in the Jukebox. And we report back on Zipangu, Toronto (take 2) and the 8th China Independent Film Festival.

PODCAST:
From Pulp to Cleaning Up: Low-Budget Filmmaking: Alex Fitch talks to director Tom Guerrier about his short film Cleaning Up, featuring Doctor Who stars Mark Gatiss and Louise Jameson as a hitman and his landlady; and to Adam Hamdy, co-director, and actors Jay Sutherland, Gavin Molloy, Simon Burbage and Lee Ravitz, about Pulp, a caper movie set in the small press comic community. Both films are starting to tour festivals (Cleaning Up will be screening next on 10 January 2012 at the London Short Film Festival) and Alex talks to their creators about the making of each project and their ambitions to get the films to larger audiences.