Dina Iordanova

This is a nice biopic of Svetlana Boym — a Russian-American intellectual who we lost prematurely to cancer — aiming to outline the intellectual areas of her concern. It is mainly built around excerpts from her talks and published works, testimonies from colleagues, friends and family, and a wealth of photographs. A good model for those who want to make a documentary dedicated to the seemingly uninteresting lives of academics.

The documentary GENTLEMAN RISSIENT (2015), about the Cannes mover-and-shaker Pierre Rissient who passed in 2018. It is directed by Benoît Jacquot, Guy Séligmann, and Pascal Merigeau. This 80 min long film consists of a contra-jour shot of Rissient seated in an armchair at the window of his Parisian apartment, looking at excerpts from various films being screened on the wall next to his plants, and discussing what he remembers about the films' auteurs and of the fate of these films at festivals (as well as the activist involvement he had in the film's fate). And, even if annoyingly staged, it makes for an interesting viewing, as Rissient is a veritable encyclopedia when it comes to the godd and great in the history of cinema -- he discusses situations involving people like Raoul Walsh, Fritz Lang, Clint Eastwood, or Lino Brocka. Only two women are mentioned in this monologue -- his early admiration for Ida Lupino from the time he was manager of Le MacMahon cinema in Paris and later on an account of his endorsement of Jane Campion, who, still the only woman to win at the Cannes Film Festival, allegedly, also owes him her success. Rissient has been the subject of at least one other documentary, L'HOMME DU CINEMA (2007, Todd McCarthy). He is also being referred to as 'warrior' of cinema, 'globe'trotter' of cinema, 'talent broker', 'Jack of all trades' and so on. Indeed, whoever has spent any time on the festival circuit in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s, and even in the 2000s would have crossed paths with him, one way or another. The ultimate 'sole trader', the kind of man that keeps the festival merry-go-round turning.

This is a book that compares in humanism to Remarque’s NOTHING NEW ON THE WESTERN FRONT. It focuses on the little-known but extremely complex post-colonial conflict that evolved on the Asia Minor part of the territory of today’s Turkey at the end of WWI when, with the heavy involvement of imperial powers, the Greeks and Turks who had inhabited these lands jointly for centuries, were set on one another into a bloody and merciless war of extinction. A powerful condemnation of the consequences of imperialism and militarism.