Face to Face

This entry is part 20 of 30 in the series Raindance 2011

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned on a fellow blog that I hadn’t really seen much Australian cinema. There’s Muriel’s Wedding and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert but apart from that I can’t recall much else…

Bonsai

This entry is part 19 of 30 in the series Raindance 2011

And so after 12 days, 94 feature films, 137 shorts and more than a couple of milkshakes at MADD, the 19th Raindance Film Festival has come to an end. Over the next few days I’ll be posting more reviews and listing my ten favourite films …

Leaving Baghdad

This entry is part 18 of 30 in the series Raindance 2011

Leaving Baghdad is the debut feature of London-based Iraqi, Koutaiba Al-Janabi and is a deeply personal and emotive examination of one individual’s complicity in the worst excesses of the Hussein period…

Interview – Leaving Baghdad Director, Koutaiba Al-Janabi

This entry is part 17 of 30 in the series Raindance 2011

Koutaiba Al-Janabi is an Iraqi-born cinematographer and director whose first feature film Leaving Baghdad is a deeply personal examination of collaboration and guilt in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq…

Victims

This entry is part 16 of 30 in the series Raindance 2011

Imagine that all the people who believe everything they read in the Daily Mail got together and decided to sort out the injustices they see all around them. The country would descend into chaos and people would face punishment dished out by the mob rather than the courts …

The Box

This entry is part 15 of 30 in the series Raindance 2011

The war in the early 1990s and the break-up of the former Yugoslavia casts a long shadow over the culture of the Balkans. It’s no surprise that film-makers in the region are creating work which reflect the time…

By Day and By Night (De Dia y De Noche)

This entry is part 14 of 30 in the series Raindance 2011

The world’s population is getting bigger and bigger every day. Our resources are threatened and in some towns and cities there are simply too many people for the local infrastructure to manage …

Mesocafe

This entry is part 13 of 30 in the series Raindance 2011

The war in Iraq and the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) have been a source of inspiration for a number of films including In The Valley of Elah, The Hurt Locker and the hugely disappointing Green Zone. All of these come from a Western (American) perspective…

How To Start A Revolution

This entry is part 12 of 30 in the series Raindance 2011

It always feels strange going to the cinema to see a documentary feature. When I think of factual films I tend to look towards Channel 4 or BBC 2 rather than a night out at the movies…

Amnesty (Amnistia)

This entry is part 11 of 30 in the series Raindance 2011

As I expected, my time at the Raindance Film Festival is exposing me to films I would never normally choose to go and see. Not because they aren’t worth seeing but simply because they would never normally have come onto my radar, not being amongst the blockbusters showing at the local multiplex…