Category Archives: documentary

the greatest anti-Impressionist (Film: Degas: Passion for Perfection – David Bickerstaff)

I had the chance to visit last month the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, a respectable institution, designed as a place of spiritual recollection and of discovery of a selection of treasures of art and civilization, modeled (keeping the proportions) after … Continue reading

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the greatest dialog about movies ever (Film: Hitchcock/Truffaut – Kent Jones, 2015)

‘Hitchcock / Truffaut‘ is a movie about a book about movies. And much more. It’s a movie about the book that many of the movie fans (I among them) think of as the best book ever written about movies. A … Continue reading

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portraits and letters (Film: Cézanne, Portraits of a Life – Phil Grabsky, 2018)

Paul Cezanne’s life can be divided into two very different periods. Born in 1839 in a prosperous family, with a banker father, he chose a life and artistic career very different from the expectations of the bourgeois environment. All his … Continue reading

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traveling the world, traveling the mind (documentary: Sans Soleil – Chris Marker, 1983)

‘Sans Soleil‘ is a movie that is hard to fit in any category, same as its director Chris Marker (1921 – 2012) was a cinematic persona hard to characterize or place into a single shelve of the French film history. … Continue reading

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the final cuts (documentary: Matisse Live – Phil Grabsky, 2014)

The ‘Exhibition on Screen‘ series gave us yesterday the opportunity to watch at the local cinematheque the great exhibition of Matisse’s works in the final decade of his life, organized five years ago by Tate Modern in London and MoMA … Continue reading

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the shadows of the victory (documentary: Censored Voices – Amos Oz, 2015)

The Israeli writer Amos Oz, deceased at the end of 2018, was praised as one of his country’s and the world’s most important contemporary writers. His relationship with cinema is illustrated by quite a significant number of references on IMDB, … Continue reading

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at the German roots of the moving images (documentary: Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky – Wim Wenders, 1995)

‘Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky‘ started as a research and production project by Wim Wenders and his students about the beginnings of cinema in Germany. The result was interesting enough to become a (almost) long duration documentary. In Wim Wenders’ cinema, sprinkled … Continue reading

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beautiful documentary about one of the greatest artists ever (Michelangelo: Love and Death – David Bickerstaff, 2017)

Can anything new be said, in writing or on the screen, about Michelangelo Buonarroti? Unlike many other unlucky genius or valued artists, the sculptor, painter, architect, Renaissance man born in Tuscany in 1475 was recognized during his life as a … Continue reading

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a special kind of documentary (Film: LoveTrue – Alma Har’el, 2017)

‘LoveTrue‘, the second (only) documentary by Alma Har’el (after ‘Bombay Beach‘ in 2011) confirms that we are dealing with a film-maker with an original style and voice, who has something to say about the realities and the people around us, … Continue reading

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a nostalgic documentary (Film: My Generation – Michael Caine, 2017)

Revolutions are rare in England’s history, but when they happen, they shake off the system and have repercussions not only on the Island but also around the world. More than three hundred years after Cromwell’s revolution and 150 years after … Continue reading

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