Ken Loach’s film, THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY, won top prize at Cannes. The film, which is set during the Irish Civil War in 1922, is about “the complexities of Ireland’s struggle for independance at a grass-roots level”. Featuring Cillian Murphy and Liam Cunningham. - Jordan

And of course, gets a Criterion Collection release. No other imprint is deserving of this landmark film, which is sadly little known. Admittedly, I have a faint recollection of the film itself, with a greater memory of how profoundly it affected me. I saw it 9 years ago, during a summer stay in London, at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts). I had just spent six months living in Rome, and felt more deeply attached to the country — and to my heritage as an Italian-American — as I ever had before. I also saw it with my ex-boyfriend, with whom I had a very turbulent post-relationship friendship, so this good cinema experience is colored by that fact as well. The film is set in the mid-sixties in rural Italy, where it explores a family’s claustrophia, dysfunction, and subsequent implosion. It centers around the intense and damaged son Alessandro, who is epileptic. I don’t want to give anything else away, other than that he has a hot mod-ish looking sister who loves him with an affection that seems to transcend certain societal boundaries. I have been looking forward to seeing this film again for years, and am happy I will finally get the chance. It is, of course, available on Indiepix.net http://www.indiepix.net/film/film.pl?film=2096

- Danielle

MARIE-ANTOINETTE, the new picture starring the lovely KIRSTEN DUNST, directed by Sofia Coppola, premiered at CANNES at a peculiar 8:30 AM screening. As is expected by now of the Gallic crowd, the film was met with applause, followed by a loud series of boos. I’ve read many articles in the past about how the French love to be loud at Cannes - after all, it’s they’re festival - and love to tear down a film quite publicly. In a way, this reminds me of the theater going audiences of ages past - tomato-throwing in the Globe theater, for example. While I’ve never been a fan of Sofia Coppola’s films, I do admit that I’m excited to see her latest, if only because it stars Dunst and the trailer features a lovely New Order song on its soundtrack. -Jordan

A list of the films currently in competition at Cannes 2006. It seems like Pedro Almodovar’s newest picture, “Volver”, is a likely contender for the Palm D’or.

ALEJANDRO GONZALEZ INARRITU - Babel

NANNI MORETTI - The Cayman

NURI BILGE CEYLAN - Climates

RACHID BOUCHAREB - Days of Glory

RICHARD LINKLATER - Fast Food Nation

BRUNO DUMONT - Flanders

PAOLO SORRENTINO - Friend of the Family

AKI KAURISMAKI - Lights in the Dusk

SOFIA COPPOLA - Marie Antoinette

GUILLERMO DEL TORO - Pan’s Labrynth

ANDREA ARNOLD - Red Road

LOU YE - Summer Palace

NICOLE GARCIA - Selon Charlie

PEDRO ALMODOVAR - Volver

XAVIER GIANNOLI - When I Was a Singer

LUCAS BELVOUX - The Right of the Weakest

KEN LOACH - The Wind That Shakes the Barley

PEDRO COSTA - Youth on the March

-Jordan

After watching video footage of his parents kill a small pig on their summer farmhouse, a privileged youth kills a girl, just because he wants to see what it feels like.

A fifty-year old piano teacher at a prestigious Vienna conservatory, who still sleeps in the same bed as her domineering mother, sits on the edge of a bathtub and uses a razor blade to cut her labia, just before sitting down for that routine dinner with said mother.

After a seemingly endless routine of working, buying, eating, and shopping, a family decides to destroy all their possessions and commit group suicide.

Like Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Michael Haneke presents the social failures of middle class Europe and slices them open with a fine blade for audiences to inspect and discuss. Each film deals with how the modern Family is presently unequipped to survive the alienation caused by the growth of technology, consumption, and capitalism.

Haneke consistently uses an abrupt, off-screen violence that derives its strength from sound FX instead of traditionally confrontational visual carnage, creating a distancing, analytical aura of dissection; while watching Haneke’s films, we often feel as if we are watching someone go under the knife in a hospital room. By forcing us to endure visceral depictions without typical Hollywood methods, Haneke asks us to question Western values at large, which he believes deadens the bond between human beings.

To the accusations of his films being pornographic, Haneke posits that what is truly pornographic is not the depiction of sex or violence itself, but the commercialization of sex or violence –it is the film that makes sex and violence digestible and easy to consume that is truly offensive. Haneke instead offers cold, antiseptic truths, where sex and violence always happens off-screen, or in the dark. With Haneke, truth is to be heard, loud and clear, and we are left to our own neurosis to investigate what the film means to each of us.

When a father prefers to watch the stock market rather than talk to his son, destruction follows. When a family can no longer communicate because they are too busy wondering how to keep the summerhouse in tip-top shape, as their daughter suffers from loneliness in the room next door, destruction follows.

One plus one is two. What Haneke states is just as simple. The stylistic skill with which he stages harrowing truths to the film-going audience puts him in a rank with the most important filmmakers of our time.

Kino International has released four titles from the Austrian auteur’s oeuvre: “The Seventh Continent”, “Benny’s Video”, “71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance” and “Funny Games”, for an upcoming box set. Each DVD comes with an informative 10-15 minute interview with Haneke himself.

In addition to “The Piano Teacher”, “Code Unknown”, and “Time of the Wolf”, these seven titles encompass the current spectrum of his material. Please keep an eye out for “Cache”, his latest film, to be made available on DVD soon.

In the meantime, Indiepix.net invites you to enjoy our selection of Haneke’s stunning body of work.
- Jordan