IN THE CINÉMA CLUB OF…
ULRICH KÖHLER
Ulrich Köhler is one of the key figures of the “Berlin School”, the new wave of German filmmakers that also includes Christian Petzold and Köhler’s producer and wife, Maren Ade. His first three features premiered at the Berlinale, where Sleeping Sickness (2011) won the Silver Bear. In My Room, an impressive pastoral riff on the post-apocalyptic genre, premiered at Cannes’ Un Certain Regard in 2018 and opens this week in New York.
SUMMER OF GIACOMO, Alessandro Comodin, 2011
Intimacy!
CLOSE-UP, Abbas Kiarostami, 1990
The mother of all movies: everything is here, from Hitchcock to cinema verité, and a protagonist whose infatuation with cinema hasn’t been matched (and maybe shouldn’t).
APOLOGIES, Anne Charlotte Robertson, 1986/1990
Haven’t had a chance to see her work since discovering it in the early ’90s, but her refusal to separate life and art has stayed with me all these years.
FRANCE/TOUR/DÉTOUR/DEUX/ENFANTS, Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville, 1978
Marxism reinvented by two children, with a little help from JLG.
TOUKI BOUKI, Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1973
Avant-garde, in the best sense of the word.