Now that we have to maintain physical distance, our experience of cinema has become a solitary delight. But in this time of confinement, we can find our cinephile community in the non-endemic space of the online environment. In the next weeks, Sabzian will select three films a week, available on online platforms. You can find more information about our online selection here.
Firstly, we would like to draw your attention to a collaboration between the Dutch film magazine De Filmkrant and the video-on-demand platform Eyelet. On the website of De Filmkrant, a selection of the films discussed in the magazine is now available for viewing. From the online offer, we have chosen A fábrica de nada [The Nothing Factory] by Pedro Pinho, a hybrid film that plays in various cinematic registers ranging from documentary to musical. “Re-staging fiction based on documentary elements,” writes Daniel Kasman on the MUBI-website, “– and with a set of actors who likewise successfully blur the line between reality and drama, The Nothing Factory plunges full hilt into the details and discourse of the particulars of the fading away of a single, lone factory and the congested efforts by its workers to keep their labor going and their livelihood intact.”
In 2003, the Iraqi-French director Abbas Fahdel visited his family in Baghdad just before the war broke out. Over the period of one and a half year, he filmed their daily lives. Doing so, he made a portrait of life in Iraq, not prioritizing the war situation but giving the time to let the dark clouds of presentiment finally merge with the day to day life in a city under siege. The title of Fahdel’s film resonates with the neorealist film Germania, anno zero [Germany, Year Zero] (1948) by Roberto Rossellini, evoking a place in ruins, which is empty and still open to all future possibilities. Homeland: Iraq Year Zero (2003) is available on Vimeo.
This week, we are remembering the cinema of Agnès Varda and the film that established her importance in the Nouvelle Vague. The film Cléo de 5 à 7 follows the young woman Cléo during the two hours she has to wait for her test results to learn if she has cancer or not. Meanwhile, she roams through Paris, revealing delicate realities of her hometown. You can watch Cléo de 5 à 7 on the Criterion Channel (only available in the US and Canada).
A fábrica de nada (Pedro Pinho, 2017) | Watch here
Homeland: Iraq Year Zero (Abbas Fahdel, 2003) | Watch here
Cléo de 5 à 7 (Agnès Varda, 1962) | Watch here
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