Articles by Alison Frank
123 articles
The International Film Festival Summit, Paris
As a freelance film critic looking to get involved with film festivals, I feared that talks at the International Film Festival Summit might be too specialised for me. True, I was one of only two film...
May 8, 2012 / Alison FrankJiří Trnka: Animation Retrospective
From April to May, the UK is being treated to a retrospective Jiří Trnka’s animation, through a collaboration by the Czech Centre London, the Czech National Film Archive and specialist cinemas in...
Apr 30, 2012 / Alison FrankLowlights of Cinélatino
After the last two weeks’ blogs on highlights of Toulouse’s Cinélatino film festival, this week will conclude with a selection of films which, in my opinion, should be avoided at all costs. First of...
Apr 23, 2012 / Alison FrankBrevity Pays Off
Like A Secret World (reviewed last week), Southwest ( Sudoeste , 2012, dir. Eduardo Nunes) was a flawed film. But audiences are more likely to be forgiving of A Secret World ’s flaws because the...
Apr 16, 2012 / Alison Frank‘A Secret World’ at Cinélatino
A Secret World ( Un mundo secreto , 2012) was among 14 films in the fiction feature competition at Cinélatino, Toulouse’s Latin American Film Festival. The film received a special mention from the...
Apr 7, 2012 / Alison Frank‘Future Lasts Forever’ at Sofia
Slow, meditative films that were thin on plot dominated the awards at the16th Sofia International Film Festival. Grand Prix winner Stories Which Only Exist When Remembered (dir. Julia Murat) centred...
Mar 25, 2012 / Alison FrankTwo Treatments of Italy’s Fascist Past
Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist and Vittorio De Sica’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis were both released in 1970, both based on novels (by Alberto Moravia and Giorgio Bassani, respectively)...
Mar 6, 2012 / Alison Frank‘The Leopard’: novel, opera, but above all, film
Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard ( Il Gattopardo ) was made in 1963, but is set just over a century earlier, during the Risorgimento, when Garibaldi fought for Italy to be united into one kingdom, free...
Feb 27, 2012 / Alison FrankWe’ll always have ‘Casablanca’
Judging from a conversation I overheard before the start of the screening, it seems that there will always be people who haven’t seen Casablanca (1942). ‘I can’t believe you guys have never seen it,’...
Feb 20, 2012 / Alison Frank‘Carnage’ slaughters dialogue with theatrics
Two of cinema’s key advantages as a medium are its mastery of space and time, and its impression of reality. These two traits are not necessarily related: after all, in reality we often find...
Feb 14, 2012 / Alison Frank‘The Artist’: More of the same
I’m getting a little tired of seeing Jean Dujardin’s face. That I can say this about an actor I like so much reflects the degree of media saturation surrounding The Artist . For most of January, the...
Feb 7, 2012 / Alison FrankLoco: London’s 1st Comedy Film Festival
Art films don’t have to be serious, but a lot of them are. Madness, suffering, death—at times these become depressingly familiar themes at film festivals. For this reason, the rare comedy film is...
Jan 28, 2012 / Alison Frank‘Orlando’: Does Sex Matter?
Twenty years on, it is well worth revisiting Orlando , Sally Potter’s 1992 adaptation of a Virginia Woolf novel. Subtly convincing the audience that a person’s sex does not define them, the film...
Jan 23, 2012 / Alison FrankThe Power of Limits in ‘The Five Obstructions’
How are you doing with your new year’s resolutions? Did you start this month with enthusiasm and optimism? We seem to enjoy this annual ritual of creating restrictions for ourselves. Some...
Jan 17, 2012 / Alison FrankSurviving ‘Surviving Life’
At the screening I attended of Jan Švankmajer’s Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) (2010), there were two walk-outs. I was tempted to follow, but my love of the great Czech animator’s previous work...
Jan 9, 2012 / Alison FrankRecent Articles
- Review: ‘A War’ explores war’s quiet, forgotten horrors
- TMA FilmCast #33 — Vera Chytilova and the Czech New Wave
- The fantasist: The comic art of Woody Allen
- Tribeca picks up North American rights to ‘Misery Loves Comedy’ at Sundance
- TMA FilmCast #32 — Alison Frank interviews Ana Geislerova
- ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’ tops Online Film Critics Awards
- TMA FilmCast #31 — Alison Frank reports from 67th Locarno Film Fest
- 5 ½ hour film dominates awards at Locarno
- Shorts at #Locarno67: meditation vs testing the audience’s patience
- ‘The Fool’: A modern propaganda film
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