A video essay or an experimental film? John Akomfrah’s masterly analysis of immigration is a video essay that fluently mixes archive footage with mythological musings. Although it might be useful for critics to label this as an experimental work, the emotional impact of the narrative journey which is based on Homer’s Odyssey, resonated with me […]
Category: British Cinema
TRISHNA (Dir. Michael Winterbottom, 2012, UK) – The Troubled Maiden
The beautiful Freida Pinto as Trishna. Micheal Winterbottom works so quickly that it’s hard to keep up with him. His latest feature sees him returning to Thomas Hardy, this time adapting Tess of the d’Urbervilles for a contemporary postmodern treatment. The setting is modern day Rajasthan and the cast is made up of Riz Ahmed […]
LAND AND FREEDOM (Dir. Ken Loach, 1995, UK/Spain/Germany/Italy) – Transformative Political Cinema
The POUM militia – The Workers Party of Marxist Unification. ‘Come, join in the only battle wherein no man can fail, Where whoso fadeth and dieth, yet his deed shall still prevail.’ The cinema of Loach is transformative. What this means is that his way of looking at reality, which is through a leftist internationalist […]
PARTITION (Dir. Ken McMullen, 1987, UK) – ‘What have you done to my world?!’
Commissioned by Channel 4 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the partitioning of India, Partition is more political theatre than cinema. Reassuringly, some of the finest British leftist promulgators were involved in the task of adapting writer Saadat Hasan Manto’s famous short story ‘Toba Tekh Singh’. Produced by Tariq Ali and Darcus Howe, directed by […]
