There’s nothing like beginning the year at the end of the world. As Iowa City’s FilmScene prepares for its yearly showing with two screenings, how does John Carpenter’s cult classic, a film infamously received as off-putting during the Reagan era, land on our laps as we face our own rising tide of conservatism and real-world violence? […]
Worth a Rewatch
Posted inEastern Iowa
Worth a Rewatch: ‘The Idiot’ (1951) is a Kurosawa deep-cut from a Dostoevsky superfan — and an idiotic film studio
Akira Kurosawa seems keenly aware of the improbability of translating literature into film, especially in the case of Dostoevsky, who Kurosawa calls more psychological than visual. But Kurosawa wanted to make The Idiot.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
FilmScene is highlighting a 30-year-old French film inspired by the murder of an immigrant by police
In April of 1993, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, Makomé M’Bowole, along with two of his friends, was chased down at 4:30 a.m. carrying 120 cartons of Dunhill Cigarettes. His friends were released later in the morning, but M’Bowole was not. Twelve hours after his arrest, inside the 18th Arr. Police Precinct in Paris, he was dead. Director Mathieu Kassovitz was 25 years old when Inspector Compain was on trial for the murder of M’Bowole. Kassovitz would have heard the narrative.
