The Father

Screenwriter Christopher Hampton and screenwriter-director Florian Zeller's screen adaptation of Zeller's award winning play, The Father, is a psychological thriller about dementia as experienced through the vulnerable eyes of 80 years old Anthony (Sir Anthony Hopkins) as well as through his healthy family members' and caretakers' perception. However, what makes this film unique is how the viewing audience is gradually drawn into the same fragmented reality and discernible confusion experienced by Anthony.

The Father is structured around one of the most powerful renditions of Sir Anthony Hopkins, and the strong supporting ensemble of Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell, and Olivia Williams. Further defining the austere composition is the compelling cinematography by Ben Smithard, perfectly aligned with the moving musical score, and editing by Yorgos Lamprinos. (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

On the Rocks

Director-writer Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation) and Bill Murray reteam in this light romantic-comedy about a father-daughter bond, an on the rocks marriage, and the courage for self-expression.

Thirty-something Laura (Rashida Jones) turns to her father Felix (Bill Murray), a charismatic, successful New York art dealer playboy, with doubts about her husband Dean's (Marlon Wayans) fidelity with his beautiful assistant Fiona (Jessica Henwick).

Highlighted by the perfectly casted Bill Murray, On the Rocks is packed with vivid performances. This simple plot, infused with sharp dialogue, keeps us guessing until the very end.

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Sing Me a Lullaby

In this powerful 29 minute documentary short, Canadian filmmaker Tiffany Hsiung embarks on a 14 year journey to search for her biological grandmother in Taiwan, from whom Tiffany's mother Ru-Wen, was separated in the 1960's at the age of 5.

Hsiung undertakes this moving, transformative journey with a hand-held camera, gradually uncovering old wounds, secrets and challenges while crafting an intimate and touching family portrait on the road to healing.

Hsiung won the 2020 Directors Guild of Canada Outstanding Directorial Achievement for Best Short Film and 2020's Toronto Film Festival's Share Her Journey Award.

 

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THE DISCIPLE

Writer-director Chaitanya Tamhane’s second feature, The Disciple, revolves around Sharad Nerulkar (Aditya Modak), a North-Indian classical Khayal vocalist under the tutelage of Guruji, Maestro Vinayak Pradhan (Dr. Arun Dravid). Sharad adheres to the stringent discipline of self control, perseverance and personal sacrifices the artform requires. His calmness is reflected in the pictoresque shots of Mumbai by Director of Photography Michal Sobocinski. However, Sharad's inner turmoil gradually comes to the forefront, challenging his music career.

With The Disciple, recipient of the 2020 Venice Film Festival Best Screenplay Award as well as the Fipresci Prize, Tamhane and executive producer Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men, Roma and Gravity) deliver an unfiltered, intimate and realistic quest for perfection and self-discovery.

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Fiji: Art & Life in the Pacific

The first substantial project on the art of Fiji to be mounted in the U.S., Fiji: Art & Life in the Pacific, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts (LACMA), showcases an eclectic range and quality of the archipelago's artworks from the past two centuries, providing insight into Fiji’s historical and cultural traditions.

Produced from the rich landscape of more than 300 islands, materials represented include a wide variety of timbers for housing, canoes, and weapons; plant materials for textiles, mats, roofing, ropes, and bindings; clay, bamboo, and coconuts for containers; and shells and other marine materials for adornments.

Drawn from major international collections, including the Fiji Museum, British Museum, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Cambridge), the Smithsonian, and distinguished private collections, the over 280 artworks

are presented in eight thematic sections.

Voyaging focuses on the role and implements of travel by sea. The show-stopping centerpiece is a newly commissioned, fully sailable, 26-foot double-hulled sailing canoe (drua) constructed in Fiji using traditional materials and techniques such as fiber lashings, shells, as well as a pandanus-leaf matting sail and is metal free. Without a fixed bow or stern, drua can sail in either direction by adjusting the mast and sail. The newly constructed dura is a small version of the great 100 feet long vessels of the 19th century, the biggest canoes ever built.

Fiber and Textile Arts features Masi, the magnificent cloth with virtuoso weaving techniques made from the paper mulberry tree bark pulp, for investitures, weddings, or state gifts. The artform is one of Fiji’s most significant symbols of cultural pride.

In Warfare, the multiple clubs on view represent the widest range of their design. In addition to their value as weapons, Fijian clubs and spears are used as ritual objects and expressions of supreme carving and military skill.

Embodying the Ancestors features one of the only three known surviving double-figure hooks made from whale ivory, collected in 1876. While it seems that figures were not worshipped as deities, they were kept in temples and shrines as embodiments of deified deceased individuals, usually ancestors.

In Adorning the Body, key forms of personal ornament consist of whale ivory as the basis for high worth. Breastplates, valued for their subtle design variations and alluring reflective and color properties, were suited for chiefly wear and were made from whale ivory, pearl shell, coir and fibre.

The section on Chiefly Objects highlights the tabua, a polished sperm whale tooth, the most significant Fijian valuable presented as a gift or negotiation tool on important occasions. For Fijians, whale teeth were symbolically associated with the cosmological power of the sea and of chiefs. This section also examines the cultural importance of yaqona, an important drink known generally in the Pacific as kava, still consumed by Fijians socially.

Respecting the Ancestors, provides insight on the early 19th century religious observance of dedicating temples mainly to divine ancestors rather than creator gods. The section features model temples which duplicate the architecture of full-scale temples and were possibly taken as portable shrines on canoe voyages.

Fiji Life highlights implements for the making of masi, an adze for cracking of ivi nuts, a bamboo tube for the transportation of water, and an end-blown trumpet for multiple forms of communication. 

A key domestic object was the wooden bar headrest which offered air circulation and protection for hairdos on tropical nights for sleepers reclining on woven mats. Other works in this section include elaborate multi-chambered pottery vessels that often took the shape of natural forms including turtles or citrus fruits. They were rubbed with hot resin from dakua trees to achieve a glossy varnish.

Illustrating 19th-century Fiji are 22 remarkable historical photographs from LACMA’s recently acquired Blackburn Collection, European watercolors and paintings as well as studio portraits, landscapes, architecture, and other features of daily life.

Organized by Dr. Steven Hooper, director and professor of visual arts and one of the leading Fijian art authorities, as well as his team at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich, England, the exhibition has been reformatted for the presentation at LACMA, and co-curated by Hooper and Nancy Thomas, senior deputy director, art administration and collections at LACMA, and includes major loans from U.S. Collections. 

Philanthropists Lynda Resnick and Stewart Resnick, brought these works from across the archipelago to the U.S. for this important exhibition.

Following the presentation at LACMA, the exhibition will be on view at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts from September 12, 2020 through January 3, 2021.

The Traitor

Known for his films about the darker chapters of Italian history, director and co-writer Marco Bellochio's latest biopic, relates the story of Cosa Nostra's Tommaso (Masino) Buscetta (Pierfrancesco Favino), the first mafia boss who broke the code of silence, the omertà, by becoming an informant, a pentito, to anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone (Fausto Russo Alesi). His statements led to the arrest of hundreds of mobsters and the largest anti-mafia trial in history, the Maxi Trial, lasting from 1986 to 1992, in which Buscetta agreed to testify.

Set against a 20 years backdrop of Sicilian mafia history, from 1980 to 2000, Italy's entry for the 2020 Academy Awards Best International Feature Film centers on the struggle between humanity and power. Rather than perceiving himself as a pentito, Buscetta believes that the real traitor is Totò Riina's (Nicola Calì) Corleon mob, who broke the code of honor by abandoning the sacredness of family and respect, in favor of greed and absolute power.

In a career-best performance, Favino's poise as a mobster figure is compelling and convincing. Besides the good performance of Luigi Lo Cascio as Totuccio Contorno, Fabrizio Ferracane shines as the villain Pippo Calò. Providing levity is Vincenzo Pirrotta as Luciano Leggio, one of the highest-ranking bosses brought to trial.

At 152 minutes, the immersive narrative blends mob violence, drama, and a stimulating mega trial lightned by dark comedy. Accentuated by Nicola Piovani’s operaric score, are Vladan Radovic’s tone setting lensing and the vibrant period set designs representing Sicily, Rome, Brazil and the United States.

Depero Halley Replay

In Depero Halley Replay at the Futurism & Co Art Gallery in Rome, Italy, the artistic continuity between two central figures of abstract art, Fortunato Depero’s (1892- 1960) Futuristic Abstractionism of the 1920’s to 1940’s and Peter Halley’s (1953-) Neo-Geometric Conceptualism of the 1980’s are explored.

Curators Giancarlo Carpi and Graziano Menolascina selected 30 key works from private collectors, that delineate the uniqueness as well as artistic similarities of Depero and Halley, in the use of colors, texture and intellection.

Both artists, use space with bright chromatic effects set in a textured urban, tropical or mechanical abstract setting.

In the automated-robotic nature of Depero’s animated characters, a dynamic, futuristic modern life, is expressed with intense colors and geometric language.

Halley’s flat, two dimensional pictorial works, which he defines as flat sculptures, represent the degradation of the human experience and the sense of alienation created by the surrounding physical as well as psychological ‘prisons’ and ‘cells’, symbolized by squares and rectangles. Connecting places and people are disembodied linear conduits. A master of Day-Glo, Halley’s social criticism is illuminated by a fugue of fluorescent acrylic hues while traction in the conduits is created through the use of Roll-A-Tex, a stucco-like texture.

Futurism & Co Art Gallery Via Mario de’ Fiori 68, Rome, Italy. For more information call 06 6797382 or visit www.futurismandco.com