We wanted LFM readers to know that Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film opens this Wednesday (2/29) at New York’s Film Forum, and will soon thereafter be playing at select theaters across the country through May. For bookings in your area, please visit the film’s official website.
This is Not a Film depicts in heartbreaking detail the house arrest of acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was accused in 2010 of making a film critical of the Iranian government. Panahi vehemently denies the charges, yet he currently faces six years in jail and a twenty-year ban on filmmaking. Nonetheless, in This is Not a Film Panahi not only documents his own house arrest, revealing how the banal details of daily confinement can crush the human spirit; he also reveals how the creative impulse can survive even the most repressive circumstances, and inspire hope.
LFM’s Joe Bendel reviewed This is Not a Film at the New York Film Festival, calling it “an inspiring example of the creative impulse as it flows like water through the cracks of an oppressive state.” LFM’s Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo also ranked This is Not a Film as the #1 Pro-Freedom Film of 2011 in their “The Cinema of Liberty: The Top 10 Pro-Freedom Films of 2011” blog post for The Huffington Post.
We hope you take the opportunity to see this important film when it comes to your area.
By Joe Bendel. Keigo Higashino’s Byakuyako is the hottest literary property you’ve never heard of. Within a five year span, a Japanese television miniseries and a feature film have dramatized Higashino’s tragic, decade-spanning mystery. In between the two productions, a Korean adaptation shifted the story to the ROK. Faithful to the source material, but radically different in tone from the subsequent Japanese version, Park Shin-woo’s White Night makes its North American debut tomorrow as the latest free screening sponsored by the Korean Cultural Service in New York.
Kim Yo-han’s father and Lee Jia’s mother were thought to be carrying on rather openly. When the senior Lee turns up murdered, she becomes the logical suspect. There are a lot of incriminating circumstances, but little hard evidence. When Lee’s mother apparently commits suicide, the case is conveniently closed. However, Detective Han Doong-soo cannot let it lay.
Son Ye-jin in "White Night."
Over the next two decades, the three go in seemingly disparate directions. Han’s career flatlines after the accidental death of his son. Conversely, Lee Jia overcomes the stigma of her infamous mother, with the help of a name change. Now known as Yoo Mi-ho, she is poised to marry a very wealthy man. Kim more or less disappears into anonymity, but he secretly acts as Lee/Yoo’s guardian angel. Anyone threatening her advancement will answer to him.
In both films, Higashino’s two lead characters really have a way of getting into your head. Yoshihiro Fukagawa’s Into the White Nightinvests more time up front on their traumatic childhood, which pays greater dividends later in the film. It also more fully explains the complex circumstances of the original crime. On the other hand, Park’s version plays up the sex and scandal, making it considerably more accessible to general audiences.
White Night features a strong ensemble, but Go Soo might just take the honors over his Japanese counterpart as the adult Kim Yo-han. It is an intense performance, viscerally projecting his pain and ferocity in equal measure. While her character is icier and less vulnerable here (by design), Son Ye-jin is undeniably a striking and rather nuanced femme fatale (much as she was in the stylistically similar Open City). Indeed, her limited screen time with (or near) Go Soo is powerfully potent stuff.
While Fukagawa’s Night is a tour de force among psychological thrillers, Park’s Night is still a devilishly twisted crime drama. It also happens to be playing in town for free, which cannot be said for either Japanese version this week. Highly recommended in its own right, Park’s White Night screens tomorrow (2/28) at the Tribeca Cinemas, courtesy of the Korean Cultural Service.
