This week, we liked, among other things, the strange Memory Housea first film by the Brazilian Miranda Maria, alternate history where the Nazis came to power in Brazil, the serial return of the mastodon Lord of the Rings, as classic as it is promising, and again the resurrection of Topor at the Dijon Consortium. If you are in the area, consider stopping at the “Saison d’art” festival in Chaumont-sur-Loire. And good comeback.
Movie theater
In Brazil, “Memory House” seizes bad subjects
A curious tale of fake cowboys and real martyrs, the strange debut feature by João Paulo Miranda Maria advances relentlessly in the hallucination it gives us to contemplate, shot after shot, surprise after splendor, a slow tremor succeeds the cold fury. The fury of Cristovam, an employee of a dairy company filmed like a nuclear power plant: the Afro-Brazileiro “mulatto”, the proletarian, the poor and the foreigner, faced with the Nazis. Because here, in this village lost for the western, Brazil is in the hands of National Socialism. We could not be clearer and the filmmaker on this subject is frontal, since this Austrian village exists, with zip lines and young people with guns, in the center of the country. The Nazis reign over the old man foreign to the territory – the State of Goiás -, sowing their icy terror, racial, economic, cultural. It’s not Bolsonaro’s Brazil, it almost is. Our article.
Memory House by João Paulo Miranda Maria avec Antonio Pitanga, Ana Flávia Cavalcanti… 1h33.
Animation: “Flee”, exile once upon a time
Flee arrives in theaters preceded by a semi-trailer of awards – three Oscar nominations, one at the Golden Globes, Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, feature film crystal at Annecy –, a sparkling burden that dissonates with the simple and brutal beauty of this testimony. Because this is first and foremost an oral testimony, collected and recorded between friends. Jonas Poher Rasmussen met Amin when he was 15, when he was living in a foster home near his home and they took the same bus to go to high school. Their friendship has lasted twenty-five years and it is only thanks to this extreme trust that Amin was able to agree to tell his flight from Afghanistan. Our article.
Flee Jonas Poher Rasmussen. 1h23.
Series
“The Rings of Power”, a series to rule them all
A show of strength, the first two episodes of the “Lord of the Rings” prequel series, which lands September 2 on Prime Video, hint at a spectacular and successful season. It is a pleasure of which one recognizes with a certain contentment the little music, a choral narrative, distributed between races and communities, of a deaf threat, of something rotten in a world between the two wars, blackened milk in the udders of a cow, a fiery angel fallen from heaven, a troll bellowing in the shadows. At the stage of the story where we have remained, there is hardly more to say except that it is infinitely classic and quite promising. Our article.
The Rings of Power, on Prime Video, starting September 2.
Expositions
At the Dijon Consortium, do you see the Topor?
It costs nothing to affirm that surrealism had its influence on Topor as much as the metaphysical period of a Giorgio de Chirico. What the exhibition at the Dijon art center reminds us is how much this jack-of-all-trades, known for his press illustrations (he returned to Hara-Kiri from 1961), his stagings (ofUbu RoiMore for example) and his collaborations for TV (with his parody of JT, Download), continues (after his death in 1997) to be exhibited in museums. At the Consortium, several of his drawings represent, in a joyous shambles, the moment of creation and that of the exhibition. Our article.
Roland Topor, “Oh la la” at the Consortium (21000), until January 22, 2023.
“Looks” offshore on Greater Paris
At the Magasins Généraux, in Pantin, an exhibition that is a little convoluted, but with a fine selection of photos, surveys and explores this sector which encompasses 131 municipalities, on the illustrious model of the photographic mission of the Datar which, in the past, let go of the reins at twelve artists invited to represent the French landscape of the 80s – or more distantly and on a more explicitly social front, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks mandated in the 30s by the state branch of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to document the rural daily life of an America then in capilotade. Our article.
“Regards du Grand Paris” at the Magasins Généraux in Pantin (93) and in around forty sites in Ile-de-France, until October 23.
Art season 2022: in Chaumont-sur-Loire, in the flower of art
The imposing building which, like its neighbors Amboise and Blois, offers an unobstructed view of the Loire, has chosen to live with its time, becoming the first “Center of art and nature” reconciling “artistic creation and landscape intervention, heritage and the contemporary”. A mission that the estate, owned since 2007 by the Centre-Val de Loire Region, now declines in three sizes, through an international garden festival, a hair-raising stroll that attracts transgenerational and cosmopolitan crowds, a coinciding “Art Season” , focused on contemporary art, and a winter event dedicated to still images, “Photo-sur-Loire”. Our article.
“Art Season”, domain of Chaumont-sur-Loire (41), until October 30.
Musique
Roc Marciano & The Alchemist, worship beat
It’s both the most zen album of the summer, and the most distressing. A string of buzzing jazzy instrumentals, carried by rhythms between two waters, on which poses one of the most brilliant rappers of our time. A collection of boom-bap bombs obsessed with the blue note, ideal nightmare music that precipitates the deepest catharsis. Our article.
Roc Marciano & The Alchemist, The Elephant Man’s Bones (ALC)
Video game: “Immortality” gets everyone hooked
Far from a simple mimetic gesture, the new creation of genius game designer Briton Sam Barlow stages the film as a subject and as a material. Its principle consists in placing the player in an editing room, where he is in charge of getting through the scattered reels of three films which have in common never to have been released in theaters, and to star the same actress, Marissa marcel. Our article.
Immortality, from the Half Mermaid studio, available on PC, Xbox, Mac, and on iOS and Android via Netflix subscription.
Livres
Polar: “The coming storm”, lycanthrope and feminist
Synonymous with curse, animality and bloodthirsty violence, the figure of the lycanthrope alias Werewolf, a human who turns into a wolf on full moon nights, abounds in crime fiction and science fiction alike. Seizing it is therefore both obvious and puzzling, already seen and read so much. With Mila, a 15-year-old teenager whose savagery is difficult to tame and who will unleash it to protect her family, the Frenchwoman Louise Mey plays the obstacle impeccably. Our article.
The coming storm, by Louise Mey, editions the City burns, 208 pp., 15 euros. To be released September 9.
Find every day in our paper edition, the culture pages with a complete overview of cinema releases on Wednesdays, and Images notebooks (photographs, comics, series, video games, etc.), Music and Books on weekends. More cultural news on the site of Release.