Posts

Showing posts from September, 2019

239. US independent filmmaker Debra Granik’s third feature film “Leave No Trace” (2018): An unusual tale of a father and his teenage daughter duo, living in the woods in self-imposed exile, far removed from socially acceptable elements of modern living

Image
D irector Debra Granik is an independent filmmaker in USA who works outside the Hollywood studio system.   Leave No Trace is her third feature film as a director without support from the influential studio producers and mainstream distributors.   Ms Granik often works with US scriptwriter Anne Rosellini. Their collaboration has resulted in two notable independent feature films: Ms   Granik’s second feature film Winter’s Bone (2010) and Leave No Trace.   The duo picked   up two novels on individuals living on the fringes of society (one on the family of a drug addict, another of a traumatized war veteran), and transformed those into   the scripts of unusually magnetic feature films with very striking performances from carefully chosen actresses, propelling them from near obscurity to world attention. This happened with all three feature films directed by Ms Granik: Vera Farmiga in Down to the Bone (2004), Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone (based on a n...

238. Italian maestro Roberto Rossellini’s film “Stromboli, terra di Dio” (Stromboli) (1950) (Italy) (Italian, English): A slightly different perspective of the classic nearly 70 years after the film was made--atheism vs. theism

Image
M any cineastes are aware of Roberto Rossellini’s famous work called Stromboli . But how many are aware of its complete title Stromboli, terra di Dio, which translates as Stromboli, land of God? The full title is essential to grasp what Rossellini as its director and its original story writer wanted to state through the film he conceived and made for us to enjoy and appreciate. The bulk of the critical analyses of the film considers the story outside of the film’s narrative—the extramarital affair between Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and Rossellini, which led to the birth of three offspring and a brief self-enforced exile of Ms Bergman from Hollywood. Ms Bergman, while working in Hollywood, had expressed her desire to work with Rossellini after viewing his two films prior to Stromboli — Paisan and Rome Open City —by writing this brief and famous letter to him without having met him. Dear Mr Rossellini, I saw your films Open City and Paisan , and enjoyed them very much. If you nee...