Most recent articles
23 March 2021
Our Picks + The Obituary Of Tunde Johnson
by Abla Kandalaft, Coco Green, Ryan Ormonde
This week, we are joined by poet and writer Ryan Ormonde to discuss Ali LeRoi’s feature film The Obituary Of Tunde Johnso and yet another Jack Black flick, Bernie.
As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama
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In Chloé Zhao’s 2020 docu-fiction, Frances McDormand plays a woman in her sixties whose financial circumstances force her out of her home and into a life on the road, roaming the country in a camper van in search of temporary work.
Nomadland (2020) is a romanticisation of misery. And for that reason, it is going to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. In an era where hopelessness is the norm and anxiety about our bleak future is prevalent among most of us, cultural productions such as (...) Continue Reading »
16 March 2021
Our Picks + Typical
by Abla Kandalaft, Anastasia Osei-Kuffour, Coco Green
We’re stretching things a bit this week to include filmed theatre: our guest is director Anastasia Osei-Kuffour whose latest production is Typical at the Soho Theatre (available to stream online). The play stars Richard Blackwood as Christopher Alder, a Black man who died in police custody in 1998.
The play, a monologue that’s halfway between poetry and rap recounting Christopher’s last day and the acts of racism he experiences leading up to his death, highlights issues around racial (...) Continue Reading »
1 March 2021
Interview with Zachary Woods, director of David
by Abla Kandalaft
Is David based on anyone you know?
Nope. My co-writer Brandon Gardner and I talked about lots of people we care about when we were writing. But there wasn’t one person in particular.
What gave you the idea of setting the story at a therapist’s?
My dad is a therapist and would sometimes get calls from patients in crisis when we were on family vacations. He’d have to walk far away, into the woods or down the beach or whatever, to talk to them. I always thought that must’ve been intense for (...) Continue Reading »
1 March 2021
Our Picks + Judas And The Black Messiah
by Abla Kandalaft, Coco Green
Highlights this week include the Glasgow Film Festival, entirely online, with its usual strong selection and carefully curated programmes, running from 24 February to 7 March and MLK/FBI is a 2020 American documentary directed by Sam Pollard who co-directed the 1987 doc Eyes on the Prize, which traces the FBI’s investigation of Martin Luther King. Obviously Eyes on the Prize comes up as we discuss our main film of the evening: Judas And The Black Messiah
Subscribe for offers at: (...) Continue Reading »
24 February 2021
Interview with Ibrahim Handal, director of Bethlehem 2001
by Abla Kandalaft
Why did you choose to revisit this – I presume traumatic – event as a short film?
Actually, I am still trying to understand what I have done and why. However, I have held in these memories and feelings throughout these years with the purpose of sharing them in a short film. Other filmmakers might have already told this story differently, but I tried to use my own memories to show events that have happened. These events might not even feel as traumatic anymore, because I shared them with the (...) Continue Reading »
24 February 2021
Interview with Sami Tlili, director of Hors-jeu flagrant [Obvious Offside]
by brasserieducourt.com, Elise Loiseau
Do you have a particular interest in football? In your opinion, what place does football have in Tunisia?
I am both a big fan of football as well as a critic of its excesses (the business of football, the political exploitation of football, the fanaticism of both the fans and the major actors in this sport, to cite a few examples). I often go to the stadium to watch my favorite team play but I don’t like to talk about football, and it annoys me when debates over football are put front and (...) Continue Reading »
19 February 2021
Pick of IFFR: Sexual Drive, directed by Yoshida Kota
by Tommy Hodgson
International Film Festival Rotterdam had some dazzling pieces in its programme this year, but Sexual Drive seriously stands out in its ambition and creative execution. Japanese director Yoshida Kota’s odd but undeniably endearing film is triumphant in illustrating the intimate link between food and sex, at the sweaty intersection of lust and repressed desires. Sexual Drive is a striking piece in that the plot is three separate vignettes, all involving a seemingly sudden and dramatic (...) Continue Reading »
17 February 2021
Interview with Wissam Charaf, Director of Pas de Panique [Don’t Panic]
by Elise Loiseau
How did your film come about?
In the beginning, there was the desire to talk about what had happened to Lebanon since October 2019, precisely, a catastrophic economic crisis and the protest movement that ensued. What happened in Lebanon in the space of a year is of such tremendous violence and vulgarity, namely the loss of all the people’s savings due to the regime’s vile kleptocracy, that I wanted to make a film that would do justice to this brutal and vulgar violence. Last year in (...) Continue Reading »
12 February 2021
Our Picks + Be Kind Rewind
by Coco Green, judy
This week, guest and Mydylarama co-founder Judy Harris joins us to discuss the beauty of amateur cinema, community cohesion, gentrification, colourblind casting and the joys of play in Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind.
We also touch on the issues around race and casting choices in Netflix hit show Bridgerton.
When she’s not doing revisions on a PhD on the utopian film theory of the poet Vachel Lindsay, which the viva panel described as "conceptually ambitious but let down by its (...) Continue Reading »
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