Streaming on Prime Video from 27 February - Rod Bishop recommends "the first great film of 2025" - NICKEL BOYS (RaMell Ross, USA, 2024)

 

This year, one of the films nominated for Best Picture might have you thinking a  filmmaker from the 1960s American avant-garde had resurrected and crashed the Oscars.

Some fifteen years ago, the Oscars increased the number of films nominated for Best Picture from five to nine, and later on to ten.

It allowed occasional low budget independent films with unknown casts to make the cut. Beasts of the Southern Wild (2013) for instance, with a $1.8 million budget; Moonlight (2017), with a budget of $1.5 million; and Sound of Metal in 2021 on a budget of $5.5 million.

This year it’s Nickel Boys, adapted from a novel by Colson Whitehead (author of The Underground Railway) with a $20 million budget and an unknown cast. At the time of writing, the film had been released in only two territories, the USA (grossing a paltry $2.3 million) and the UK (grossing $158,000). Prime Video will start streaming the film from 27 February.

It’s been a resounding critical triumph, however. See below for some of the 24 awards the film has gathered already.

A disjunction between box office and critical reviews is nothing new, but where Nickel Boys differs from other low budget independents nominated for Best Picture is in film language. 

For his first dramatic feature, the director and co-writer, and previous documentary maker, RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning This Evening, 2018) has dispensed with most typical narrative devices.

Ethan Herisse as Elwood

Instead of the traditional third person, Ross chooses a first person point-of-view, narrating his story from inside his characters. We don’t see his central character Elwood (Ethan Herisse) for nearly 40 minutes and then only reflected in a clothes-iron, photo booths and in shop and bus windows. For 40 minutes, we only see events in the film from his gaze or from a point-of-view behind his head.

Then, we abruptly shift to the point-of-view of the second major character Turner (Brandon Wilson). Ross starts alternating between their two points-of-view, even when using two-shot reverses. In the entire 140 minutes, we only see Elwood and Turner together in one shot.

Often we are abruptly taken out of the point-of-view narrative by other devices and by intersecting footage – montages of time jumps, time exposures; brain scans, home movies, archival photographs of the victims of the real Nickel Academy (the Dozier School for Boys); and copious amounts of archival film, including space missions, Martin Luther King, the Civil Rights movement, and even Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones.

Brandon Wilson as Turner

This is definitely not the film language of your common-or-garden Best Picture nominee.

Elwood is living with his grandmother (a superb Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), during the 1960s Civil Rights movement when he is falsely accused of car theft and thrown into a reform school, the Nickel Academy in Florida. With his friend Turner, he witnesses horrific racial degradation and hears of unmarked graves, yet resists and perseveres to retain his dignity and freedom.

For critic Carla Renata: “This may sound like another Black trauma porn motion picture sanctioned by Hollywood to exploit Black history for financial gain. Thankfully…Ross brings his unique cinematic sensibility, allowing audiences to experience this type of story from a sensory perspective.” 

Barry Jenkins (Moonlight): “This is a medium-defining work – aesthetically, spiritually – a rich and overwhelming cinema…RaMell has given us a new way of seeing. It is a thing to make one feel humbled…and filled with gratitude.”

The daring point-of-view direction means we see Elwood’s life between the 1960s and the early 2000s as a series of fractured pieces, to be sorted in the mind of the viewer and reassembled into a coherent narrative. It creates its own power; its own poetry; its own emotional intensity and heightens the immersive experience for the viewer.

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian recently wrote a piece claiming Nickel Boys should be the Best Picture winner.

Punters have the film in excess of 100/1 to win the Oscar. Then again, what were the odds of Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay 1080 Bruxelles becoming Sight and Sound’s Best Film Ever Made?

For me, Nickel Boys is the first great film of 2025.

 

New York Film Critics Circle Awards: Best Director, Best Cinematography

Los Angeles Critics Association Awards: Best Cinematography, Best Editing

Chicago Film Critics Association: Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing and Best Breakthrough Filmmaker

San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle:  Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay 

Toronto Film Critics Association: Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, Best Cinematography

National Society of Film Critics: Best Picture, Best Cinematography

Black Reel Awards: Outstanding Film, Outstanding Director, Outstanding Screenplay, Outstanding Breakthrough Screen Writer, Outstanding Emerging Director, Outstanding Cinematography.

 

THE PAUL COX RESTORATION PROJECT - Tom Ryan remembers the Australian film-maker

Editor's Note: Yesterday this blog published a note drawing attention to a project to restore the films of Paul Cox. In brief it called for tax deductible donations to be made, via the Australian Cultural Fund, in order to bring Paul's films back to the international public. Details of the project  can be found if you click here The post yesterday prompted critic Tom Ryan to send through this note below, written just after Paul's death, in which Tom remembers Paul and his work.

***************************** 

Paul seemed to have a pathological resistance to giving direct answers. That reluctance came from somewhere deep inside, and its effects were often as winning as they could be unnerving. 

In an official capacity, I’d interviewed him many times over the years. The first was in the late 1970s, when I was hosting a film program called Talking Pictures for radio station 3ZZZ. “Hello, Paul. It’s nice to have you on the show. Let’s talk a bit about Kostas.” He grinned, a warning sign. Undaunted, I continued: “How much of Paul Cox is lurking inside the character (a Greek immigrant, newly arrived in Australia)?” A reasonable question, I’m sure I was thinking at the time, designed to draw Paul into conversation about the autobiographical aspects of his film work. 

Kostas

At which point, Paul got the giggles. The kind that burst through even the bravest attempt to resist, that bring tears to the eyes and make it impossible to speak except in splutters, and that transformed my simple follow-up – “Is there any way we can continue this?” – into the most hilarious thing ever said, and that are wholly contagious to all in the vicinity. Including interviewers. 

To this day, I have no idea what I did to provoke such a response. Perhaps it was the earnestness of my introduction that tickled his fancy? But, whenever I raised this with him, he’d patiently explain that he’d always believed that there was too little laughter in the world and that he was just trying to pitch in. Or something like that. Needless to say, I never got an answer to the original question I’d innocently tried to ask him, or any of the others I’d prepared for him that day. Or any afterwards.

The last time I interviewed Paul was in 2015, this time for a feature I was writing for The Australian about his latest – and final – film, Force of Destiny. I asked him if he had any regrets about his professional career. This is how he shaped his reply: “Well…,” he said, before interrupting that eloquent Coxian flow with an extended silence. Then: “They say that life is fate and that you don’t have much choice. It happened. You know, we’re here [at the office for Illumination Films, which was downstairs from the Albert Park home Paul shared with his partner, Rosie Raka] because I put my hand up at an auction… I was holding an apple.” Bearing witness to this was Paul’s longtime friend and collaborator, Tony Llewellyn-Jones. 

“Tony and I were shooting My First Wife in Williamstown and we had a little office down the road. We were driving back from the shoot one day and there was an auction happening here. I was having the apple for lunch and we were just walking past. We had looked at this place and we knew it was for sale, but I didn’t know the auction was on. I was living in a motel at the time. I had no money. My life was fucked, it had fallen to pieces. I was paying $16 a night.

My First Wife

“The bid was $240,000 and, to surprise Tony, I put my hand up. It was a joke! The area was full of derelicts. And the smell that came from this place was terrible. Anyway, the estate agent went inside. Tony said, ‘Let’s go.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute.’ And then they came back and started again. But nobody bid. And, before I knew it, they were congratulating me. I’d lost the plot. I had absolutely nothing, I promise you. And we had to give them a cheque for $24,000. I remember: all my blood went into my feet and I couldn’t walk. Tony was holding me.” Paul is laughing at this point, the tears running down his cheeks. 

“It was a Friday afternoon,” he continued. “Jim [Khong], my Chinese doctor friend for 50 years or more was working in Phillip Island and he knew the bank manager there. Over the weekend, he managed to get hold of him and by Monday we had $24,000 in my account. And we had three months to get some proper money together and get a loan. We then realised that it wasn’t such a bad deal.” 

Then came his oh-yes-your-question moment. “But we’re talking about what I regret,” he continued, as an aside. “I regret now that I wasn’t tougher with business because a lot of my films are still working; they still go around. It’s the same with these photographs [a new batch had arrived during the interview]. I should have had more belief in what I was doing. That’s what I regret. It sounds silly, but often I just let the films go. People have made millions out of Vincent. Innocence made $90 million, I hear, and I was never even paid. I regret my stupidity because I thought it would all work itself out.”

Paul was always a stream-of-consciousness fellow. He never lost sight of the bigger picture, but he always had his own unique take on it. I asked him if he felt comfortable with the description of Force of Destiny as a film about illness as a learning experience. I’d expected a reply relating to how his protagonist (David Wenham) learns about himself and about his life in the material world and how people see him in it. But Paul took me somewhere else altogether. 

“Of course, that’s very much part of it,” he began before confiding that his head had taken him somewhere else altogether. “You know, while it was all happening to me, I sincerely lived in Venice for three days and they couldn’t get me out. And I know the year: 1743. It’s very complicated. I looked up what happened in Venice then. Nothing much, no world-shattering events. I remember a doctor coming to tell me, ‘You’re in the Austin Hospital and it’s 2014.’ And I said to him – it sounds very silly, I know… I was reassuring him – ‘It’s OK. If I’m in Venice, you’re in Venice too.’”

What we might call Paul’s eccentricities were crucial to his distinctive vision of the world. Key aspects of his gift as an artist were his refusal to bend to others’ inabilities to see it with the same kind of clarity as he could and his impatience with those for whom filmmaking and the other arts were a business before they were anything else. 

He’s long been an important figure for Australian film culture and I’ve never understood the disjuncture between his international reputation and the way his films were received locally, in the country he’d made his own and that owed him so much. Not just because he contributed so much to Australian film culture, not just because he made so many good films, but also because of the inspiration he’s been to others involved in the noble art of filmmaking.

In some ways, it’s easy to measure that influence: his films’ casts and crews read like a who’s who of Australian cinema, providing a showcase for so many on both sides of the camera at a time when our industry wasn’t always a happy place to work. 

From the outside anyway – and I’ve never come across any insiders who disagree – to work on a Paul Cox film was to feel part of a collaboration, even if your voice wasn’t always heard in quite the way you’d expected. Which is why, over the years, such a loyal team formed itself around him. Paul was creating collaborations from the so-called renaissance of the 1970s through the hard times and right up to the weeks before his death, when he was planning projects such as Sublime (with playwright Daniel Keene and Isabelle Huppert) and Inferno. He was a significant force and it’s hard to believe that (to borrow from a John Wayne line that’s always appealed to me) he’s gone on ahead.

He was important to us in ways you can’t easily measure. Just by being Paul, he showed what was possible even when conservative funding bodies said “no”. On the day after he died, my daughter texted me about the beautiful evening sky she could see from her back window in Castlemaine: “I’ve been thinking about Paul all day,” she wrote. “I think he organised the amazing sunset. He must have gotten funding from St. Peter straight away.” Appreciated by the Big Boys at last!

He was also an inspiration to all those fortunate students who attended his classes over the years: when he was at Prahran working alongside Athol Shmith in the photography department in the good old days, and whenever he spoke to budding young filmmakers. 

On a personal note, I’d love to be able to thank him for his friendship over more than 40 years, ever since we found ourselves sitting together on a short film jury in the balcony at the Palais during the Melbourne Film Festival (those were the pre-MIFF days). Back then, I saw myself as leading man material, but he knew better and saved me much future embarrassment. We made each other laugh a lot: there was always a mischievous twinkle in his eye and he was a great person to be silly with. He used to call me “Thomas”, so I always called him “Paulus”.

He could sound like a grumpy bastard sometimes, but that was all a front. He was an artist passionate about his craft and, as his collaborators and others who knew him can testify, he exuded love. That is there for all to see in his work. It’s there in his affection for every one of his characters: even for Wendy Hughes’ nutty evangelist in Salvation, a character who in other hands might have been reduced to a cliché. Can you think of a character in any of his films that he didn’t make you care about, even when you might disapprove of what they said or did? 

The love was there too in his ongoing fascination with the eccentricities that make us tick as human beings, and the generosity of his humour. When you laugh in one of Paul’s films, the comedy comes attached to an affection for our blundering ways. He was an astute observer of human flaws, and his sense of our failings as a species was apocalyptic: “The world is fucked” was a recurring refrain. But his comedy was always a humane comedy. It was never about someone’s humiliation. He’d gently poke fun at those who try to find neat explanations for the vagaries of human behaviour, like Tony Llewellyn-Jones’s loony, Confucius-quoting psychiatrist in The Human Touch. But he’d never look down on them. 

I reckon it was because he saw himself in them... That’s why I loved him. Farewell, Paulus.

CINEMA REBORN NEWSLETTER - Paul Cox Restoration Project, Parallel Indian Cinema at Riverside Parramatta

 

RESTORING A LEGACY FILM-BY-FILM The Paul Cox Restoration Project seeks support to restore Paul Cox’s films which are no longer available to the general public because of the changes in technology and distribution. Paul Cox (above), who passed away in 2016, is recognised as one of Australia's most prolific film auteurs. He created over 40 film and television projects, enjoyed by millions of people around the world. Most of these titles are now unavailable to the general public due to changes in technology now needed by streaming companies and distributors. The first film to be restored is “Vincent – the Life and Death of Vincent van Gogh” (1987) starring John Hurt. Restoration will be done in association with Hanway Films UK, a leading international sales company who hold the Paul Cox collection. Why Vincent? because there is still market demand for Vincent and once restored the proceeds from sales, after distribution costs, will go into restoring the next Paul Cox film and so on and so on – hopefully becoming self-sufficient. Hence restoring Paul Cox’s legacy film-by-film. We are aiming to release Vincent in the Cannes Classics section of the Cannes Film Festival 2025. Donations, which are made via the Australian Cultural Fund, are tax deductible. https://artists.australianculturalfund.org.au/s/project/a2EMn00000EnxeyMAB/paul-cox-restoration-project Admission Free at Riverside Parramatta Beyond Bollywood, India’s cinema also includes vibrant regional industries and an alternative tradition: Parallel Cinema. Emerging in the 1950s and aspiring to more than entertainment, Parallel Cinema broke away from studio sets and into towns and villages to explore human life in all its contradictory richness. Perhaps its most famous representative is Satyajit Ray – among the most celebrated and influential filmmakers of all time – but its protagonists are wonderfully diverse, each conducting original experiments and probing difficult cultural and philosophical questions. Parallel Cinema drew inspiration from Indian literature, as well as French Poetic Realism, Italian neorealism and India’s own tradition of realism in silent cinema. It overlapped with the French and Japanese New Wave movements, evolved through the 70s and 80s, and its influence continues today. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the National Film Development Corporation, Consulate General of India, the Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre, Cinema Reborn and Riverside Theatres are delighted to partner for ‘Parallel Cinema of India’. Our program features two works by major figures: Mani Kaul’s Duvidha(1973) and Mrinal Sen’s Suddenly, One Day (1989) (both pictured below). Admission to the screenings is FREE however there are only a limited number of seats available and it is essential that you book your seats in advance on the Riverside Parramatta website. Full details of the times and dates of the screenings and booking information can be found if you click on  this link: https://riversideparramatta.com.au/whats-on/parallel-cinema-of-india/  CHARITABLE DONATIONS Cinema Reborn has established a page to enable our supporters to make tax-deductible donations to support our work. Our organisation is run by a group of film industry professionals, working critics, curators and film conservation specialists. All work in an entirely voluntary capacity. Nevertheless there are significant costs, most notably our screening fees, which have to be met each year and we are always grateful for the financial support we receive that defrays these costs and charges. If you would like to make a donation you may do so via via the attached link established by the Australian Cultural Fund which enables small unincorporated organisations like ours to use a service which would otherwise not be easily accessible. To make a donation any time between now and the end of Cinema Reborn 2025 click on this link https://artists.australianculturalfund.org.au/s/project/a2EMn00000FDsl8MAD/cinema-reborn-2025 CINEMA REBORN MAILING LIST Please forward this email to any friends who may be interested in our presentations of restored cinema classics. Invite them to join our mailing list by sending an email to cinemareborn2025@gmail.comNotice of Cinema Reborn’s full program will be sent out around March 15 when all session times will be known  and advance bookings open for both our Sydney and Melbourne screenings.

At the Thornbury Picture House - Peter Tammer presents his latest film TRIP OF A LIFETIME (Australia, 2025)

Peter writes:

I won't summarise the backstory or details of how the film came to me, that is very well covered by my friend Bill in his detailed notes which you can find if you click here 

As you can appreciate this has been a long drawn out process which started about 1988 and really kicked off when my friend Mike Reed helped me with the digitising of some of my films in 2007. It was only at that time I learned that I could make a telecine on a sprocketless machine, so no damage would be done to the fragile filmstock.

I made that telecine to Digital Tape at Complete Post but it took me another ten years to really get going in the restoration when I discovered Topaz and other AI engines for the first time. You could say that the serious work on the restoration started then, so I've been mucking around with it for 8 years now. That period also includes consideration of many different strategies in using the footage. I finally resolved against any narration or fictional narrative overlay.

Tuesday, March 18, time TBA (around 8:30 pm) Thornbury Picture House, house prices. Tickets from March 4.

Hoping to see many of you in March at the Thornbury Picture House.

MANY THANKS TO YOU BILL FOR YOUR WONDERFUL SUPPORT!

Peter.

CINEMA REBORN - FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER - Parallel India Cinema at Riverside Parramatta, 2025 Launch date, Charitable Donations

 

PARALLEL CINEMA OF INDIA AT THE RIVERSIDE PARRAMATTA Beyond Bollywood, India’s cinema also includes vibrant regional industries and an alternative tradition: Parallel Cinema. Emerging in the 1950s and aspiring to more than entertainment, Parallel Cinema broke away from studio sets and into towns and villages to explore human life in all its contradictory richness. Perhaps its most famous representative is Satyajit Ray – among the most celebrated and influential filmmakers of all time – but its protagonists are wonderfully diverse, each conducting original experiments and probing difficult cultural and philosophical questions. Parallel Cinema drew inspiration from Indian literature, as well as French Poetic Realism, Italian neorealism and India’s own tradition of realism in silent cinema. It overlapped with the French and Japanese New Wave movements, evolved through the 70s and 80s, and its influence continues today. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the National Film Development Corporation, Consulate General of India, the Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre, Cinema Reborn and Riverside Theatres are delighted to partner for ‘Parallel Cinema of India’. Our program features two works by major figures: Mani Kaul’s Duvidha (1973) and Mrinal Sen’s Suddenly, One Day (1989). Admission to the screenings is FREE however there are only a limited number of seats available and it is essential that you book your seats in advance on the Riverside Parramatta website. Full details of the times and dates of the screenings and booking information can be found if you click on  this link: https://riversideparramatta.com.au/whats-on/parallel-cinema-of-india/  CINEMA REBORN 2025 DATE OF FULL PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT Cinema Reborn 2025 will announce its full programme for both the Randwick Ritz and the Hawthorn Lido on March 15th. All told there will be 21 programs of restored classics screened over seven days in Sydney (30 April -6 May) and 6 days in Melbourne (8-13 May). All those on our mailing list will be the first to be given full details of titles, booking information, links to the Cinema Reborn website. A 24 page booklet with all program information will be available at the Ritz and Lido cinemas on that date. CHARITABLE DONATIONS Cinema Reborn has established a page to enable our supporters to make tax-deductible donations to support our work. Our organisation is run by a group of film industry professionals, working critics, curators and film conservation specialists. All work in an entirely voluntary capacity. Nevertheless there are significant costs, most notably our screening fees, which have to be met each year and we are always grateful for the financial support we receive that defrays these costs and charges. If you would like to make a donation you may do so via via the attached link established by the Australian Cultural Fund which enables small unincorporated organisations like ours to use a service which would otherwise not be easily accessible. To make a donation any time between now and the end of Cinema Reborn 2025 click on this link https://artists.australianculturalfund.org.au/s/project/a2EMn00000FDsl8MAD/cinema-reborn-2025 CINEMA REBORN MAILING LIST Please forward this email to any friends who may be interested in our presentations of restored cinema classics. Invite them to join our mailing list by sending an email to cinemareborn2025@gmail.com

The Current Cinema - Rod Bishop's memories of Bob Dylan triggered - A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (James Mangold, USA, 2024)

I never expected to see this Beginner’s Guide to Dylan, let alone write about such a film or ever listen to these songs through a state-of-the-art cinema sound system. 

Dylan’s four years in A Complete Unknown, 1961 to 1965, were this writer’s formative teenage years: 13 to 17-years-old. The first Dylan songs I ever heard were in a suburban Melbourne pop-up folk club, sung by a visiting American folk singer who - like Pete Seeger - spoke of Dylan in breathless, near-religious terms. My friend and I sat in embarrassed awe, in a circle around the singer. Angst-ridden, hormone-driven by puberty, we stared into our cups of black coffee, hoping no-one would suspect our ages.

These tumultuous four years covered Kennedy’s assassination, the Cuban missile crisis, the Vietnam War, civil rights in the USA, right-wing politics in Australia - particularly the DLP - and my suburban parents whose lives were governed by a pathological cultural conservatism and by child rearing practices consisting solely of treating their children as “units to be controlled”. 

The political events ticked off in A Complete Unknown, were the staple material of the “finger-pointing” folk singers we heard at the time. By contrast Bob Dylan’s songs - “finger-pointing” or otherwise - were delivered with such an intense, poetic ferocity, the effect was revelatory, particularly on young teenagers. He was seriously charismatic and prolific beyond anybody’s reasonable expectation. The songs were not only significantly divergent from each other, but also showed a rapidly developing maturation. They spoke to us on a whole other level. His songs and his trajectory through these four years, like the political events swirling around in our daily soup, became life-defining for us.

Watching A Complete Unknown was an alternating experience of revisiting my teenage years while trying to fact-check what appeared on screen. Timothée Chalamet covers most of it – voice, dress, looks, body language. He can’t quite nail Dylans’s intensity and facial expressions. For this, check out Dylan’s Newport performances in Murray Lerner’s The Other Side of the Mirror. But when Chalamet soars, like he does with Dylan’s premiere performance of The Times They Are a-Changin’ at Newport or Masters of War in a Greenwich Village club, it feels almost like the real thing. Only disappointment was the closing Newport song It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Dylan’s heartfelt goodbye to the folk scene forever. See The Other Side of the Mirror for this. Watching all his performances recorded by Murray Lerner from Newport 1963-1965 you wonder if you’ve ever heard Dylan sing any better live. 

Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Timothée Chalamet  as Bob Dylan

Ed Norton gives a decent account of Pete Seeger and is also in good voice. If his performance feels one-note, then maybe that was just the way Seeger wanted to present himself publicly. Monica Barbaro also comes very close to reproducing Baez’s voice as does Boyd Holbrook with Johnny Cash’s pipes.

If you took all the songs out of A Complete Unknown, I’m not sure what you’d be left with. The romantic triangle of Dylan, Baez and Russo would be even more sketchy and limited than it is, and the machinations between Grossman, Lomax and the Newport Folk committee would appear even more slapstick.

Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo

Mangold with co-writer Jay Cocks worked with Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric!and along the way there’s considerable time fudging; some completely invented characters such as bluesman Jesse Moffette and a black Brit ‘companion’ of Dylan’s called Becka; Phil Ochs is missing entirely – a serious omission; Bob Neuwirth is given far more screentime than his appearances in Wald’s book; only one of Peter, Paul and Mary appears and then in an organizational role, despite this highly successful group’s work with many Dylan songs. The New Yorker once called them “two beards and a doll”. There’s no mention of The Byrds at all, a group who had a huge hit with an electric version of Mr Tambourine Man and electric versions of other Dylan songs. And, apart from the alcohol, there no drugs. Ridiculous.

I remember three things from the Melbourne concert in April 1966. A third of the audience walked out during the electric set. The acoustic set contained a memorable 11-minute version of Visions of Johanna, sung so slowly I thought Dylan might fall asleep from some sort of opioid consumption. And somewhere in that audience that fateful night was my future life partner. We hadn’t met and didn’t meet for another five years. We’ve been together now for 55 years. 

 

At the Jewish International Film Festival and streaming on DocPlay - Tom Ryan reviews the film Netanyahu doesn't want you to see THE BIBI FILES (Alexis Bloom, USA, 2024)

 

If The Bibi Files has it right, Israel’s democracy – like America’s – is at risk because of the proclivities of its political leader. The latest documentary from producer Alex Gibney’s esteemed and prolific Jigsaw Productions proposes that Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, the 75-year-old former special forces captain who has spent 17 years as its Prime Minister, is at least partially responsible for the troubled circumstances in which the country currently finds itself. 

 

The film offers a strong case concerning the reasons for Netanyahu’s ongoing resistance to any lasting peace deals with Palestine. Yet, despite the significance of its subject matter, it hasn’t been easy to see anywhere in the world.

 

Dependent on which news sources you rely on, the actual information that it contains is already available. However, there’s a compelling difference between reading words on page outlining why he’s currently on trial for bribery, fraud and corruption and watching actual footage of him attempting to fend off his official accusers.

 

Explosive in its implications, the film is directed by Emmy-nominated South African Alexis Bloom (Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes), who grew up Jewish. Its chief coup is its access to the thousands of hours of police interrogation videos that landed in Gibney’s inbox a couple of years ago and that place Netanyahu and his supporters in the cross hairs. 

 

The footage speaks for itself as Netanyahu responds to the charges. His angry reactions speak eloquently of his sense of entitlement: “You’re asking me delusional questions… This is preposterous and insane… You’re trying to incriminate the Prime Minister on nonsense…” And the cutting between various other testimonies to the police about the extraordinary precision of Netanyahu’s memory and his repeated refrain to his interrogators of “I don’t remember” guides viewers towards an obvious conclusion. 

 

He frequently appears shifty, refusing to give direct answers, as his belief in his invincibility gradually crumbles in the face of seemingly irrefutable evidence of his abuse of power. Seated at his office desk, surrounded by the paraphernalia of his working life – rather than at a police station like the other witnesses – he's clearly conscious of the camera throughout the interviews. He’s both giving a performance for it, akin to the ones he’s shown delivering so forcefully elsewhere in his public life, and uneasy about the possibility that a surprise question or revelation could bring him undone. Which is what happens, repeatedly.

 

In a telling scene, he’s confronted by documentation proving that he had – via Qatar, because the Israeli banks refused to cooperate – channelled monthly payments of $35 million to Hamas in order to undermine the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. By way of justification, he turns to a fictional gangster, Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974), for a rationale: “You need to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” 

 

And while Bloom’s interviewees are hardly impartial regarding what they see as Netanyahu’s betrayals, none seem unreasonable in their criticisms of his policies and leadership style. Among those who appear are respected Israeli investigative journalist and longtime Netanyahu critic, Raviv Drucker (who also produced the film with Gibney and Bloom), former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert (2006 – 2009), Nimrod Novik, who was a chief advisor to PM Shimon Peres, journalist Nir Efetz, once a spin doctor for Netanyahu, and former housekeepers at the Prime Ministerial residence. 

 

It’s not without justification that Novik describes Netanyahu as “the one who fed the beast” and “the architect of chaos”. And, in the context of what’s gone before, Bloom’s key thesis – that Netanyahu’s direction of the unrelenting bombardment of Gaza was primarily designed to shore up his political position and to serve as grounds for the postponement of his trial – is both deeply disturbing and very persuasive. As the 19-year-old, softly spoken Gili Schwartz, a survivor of the horrific 2023 massacre by Hamas militants at the Kibbutz Be’eri, puts it, “A forever war is beneficial to Netanyahu. It makes people feel they always need him.” 

 

It emerges in the film that one of Netanyahu’s most outspoken supporters is his third and current wife, Sara, which elsewhere might appear to be a perfectly understandable case of spousal loyalty. Here, however, she’s cast as a modern-day Lady Macbeth, whispering in his ear, encouraging his excesses and generally keeping him under her thumb. Her astonishing outbursts when pressed politely but purposefully by police interrogators does nothing to discourage such a view. And their elder son, Yair, emerges as a very splintery chip off both their blocks.

 

The film also establishes that Netanyahu’s pursuit of power has propelled him into unholy alliances with far-right figures in Israeli politics. The backgrounds of two in particular are documented via news footage in the film (both of whom have repeatedly declared their opposition to the peace process in Gaza). One is Bezalel Smotrich, who’s openly committed to ethnic cleansing, is described by Ami Ayalon, ex-director of the Israeli Security Agency, as “a Jewish terrorist”, and is (at least at the time of writing) Finance Minister in Netanyahu’s cabinet. The other is the outspoken extremist, Itama Ben-Gvir, who’d threatened PM Yitzhak Rabin on camera shortly before his assassination and, until his recent resignation in protest against the peace talks, had served as Minister of National Security and was in charge of the Israeli police force (responsible for overseeing the West Bank). 

 

As Gibney told Christiane Amanpour on CNN a few weeks ago (when he could get a word in), production of the film began with the allegations of petty corruption against Netanyahu but ended up dealing with “the huge crime of using the unbelievable carnage in Gaza to solidify his personal position”. However, despite the convincing case it builds about the threat the PM has been posing to Israel’s security and rule of law – or perhaps because of it – there are forces at work that have sought to bury The Bibi Files. 

 

In September last year, when it was to be screened as a work-in-progress at the Toronto International Film Festival, Netanyahu’s lawyers petitioned – unsuccessfully – for an injunction preventing the screening. They’ve since sought a court order to prevent any further showings of the leaked police videos. Given what they and the film reveal, such actions were only to be expected.

 

More troubling, however, is the fact that, while the film has been programmed at a few festivals (including the Jewish International Festival in Australia) and has been bought for theatrical distribution in several European countries, it’s been banned (apparently for privacy reasons) in Israel and has struggled to find theatrical exhibition outlets elsewhere.

 

“No mainstream outlet will show the film in the US,” Gibney told Amanpour. And while Madman has bought the Australian distribution rights, the only way to see it here at the moment is via the company’s adventurous streaming arm DocPlay   (Click on the link to take yourself through to the film's page.) However, given the controversy swirling around it – and the attempts to silence it – the film seems destined to remain in the public eye. Where it deserves – and needs – to be. 

 

 

At the Randwick Ritz, Hawthorn Lido and Elsternwick Classic - Sculpting in Time: The Films of ANDREI TARKOVSKY

 

The Ritz, Lido and Classic Cinemas, supported by Cinema Reborn, are presenting a complete retrospective of the feature films of master filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (pictured above). These will be the first ever screenings in Australia to be devoted to a full career review of this master filmmaker. Tarkovsky’s work was previously at Cinema Reborn in 2022 when his masterpiece Mirror was presented in a superb 4K restoration.

 

The retrospective will begin at the Ritz Cinemas in Sydney on March 20 and Lido and Classic Cinemas in Melbourne on March 27, where Tarkovsky’s debut feature Ivan’s Childhood will be screened at 7pm on those dates. In Sydney there will be an introduction to the season at the Ivan’s Childhood screening by Sydney University film studies scholar Matilda Mroz and the main screening of The Sacrifice during the Cinema Reborn 2025 season will be preceded by an introduction by critic Janice Tong. In Melbourne, critics Grace Boschetti (Ivan’s Childhood) and David Heslin (The Sacrifice) will introduce those sessions at the Hawthorn Lido. The Sacrifice will be a part of the 2025 Cinema Reborn season at the Ritz on Thursday 1 May and at Lido on Thursday 8 May, and will  also screen at Classic Cinemas, Elsternwick on Thursday 8 May.

 

Full details of the Tarkovsky retrospective, with links to bookings at each of the cinemas, may be found at these  links.

 

The Hawthorn Lido

The Randwick Ritz

The Elsternwick Classic 

 

The autobiographical note published below was written by Cinema Reborn Foundation Committee member Rod Bishop and was first published in the 2022 Cinema Reborn catalogue when the festival screened Tarkovsky’s 1975 film Mirror. (Click on the link to read Rod's excellent and most comprehensive notes on the film and its restoration)

 

“My discovery of Tarkovsky’s first film was like a miracle. Suddenly I found myself standing at the door of a room the keys of which had until then, never been given to me…Tarkovsky is for me the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream”.

 

-      Ingmar Bergman

 

Born in 1932 in Zavrazhye, 300 kms from Moscow, Andrei Tarkovsky’s father was the poet and translator Arseny Tarkovsky and his mother Maria Vishnyakova, a graduate of the Maxim GorkyLiterature Institute. He was only five-years-old when his father left the family, volunteering for the army during World War II and being awarded the Red Star. During the war, Andrei Tarkovsky moved to Moscow with his mother and sister where Maria worked as an editor and proofreader.

 

After high school, he studied Arabic at the Oriental Institute in Moscow, but dropped out to work as a prospector for the Academy of Science Institute for Non-Ferrous Metals and Gold, spending a year living in the Siberian taiga in the Krasnoyarsk Province.

 

He was accepted into the directing program at Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), making several short films and at least one television docudrama. Collaborating on a script with fellow classmate Andrei Konchalovsky, The Steamroller and the Violin(1960) became his graduation film and won First Prize at the New York Student Film Festival in 1961.

 

His first feature, Ivan’s Childhood (1962), centred around an orphan who becomes a scout for theSoviet army during World War II, brought Tarkovsky to international attention, winning the Golden Lion at the 1962 Venice Film Festival. Problems with Soviet authorities and several different versions of his second featureAndrei Rublev (1966), a historical epic based around the Russian icon painter, meant the film did not appear at Cannes until 1969 where it won the FIPRESCI prize.Soviet authorities had insisted it be screened Out of Competition.

 

The near three-hour science fiction drama Solaris (1972), adapted from the novel by Stanislaw Lem and described as ‘a sci-fi masterpiece’ by Salman Rushdie won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury atthe 1972 Cannes Film Festival.

 

Mirror(1975) was not well liked by Soviet authorities and suffered severely limited distribution in the USSR in third-class cinemas and workers clubs. It was, however, heralded in the West and its reputation has continued to grow significantly over the past 45 years.

 

His last film in the Soviet Union was Stalker (1979), a philosophical and theological science fiction drama following three men journeying to a mysterious “Zone”. It won the Ecumenical Jury prize at Cannes.

 

Some sources report The First Day (1979),a script by Tarkovsky and Andrei Konchalovsky set during the reign of Peter the Great in 18^th Century Russia, was stopped half way through production when it was learnt the film differed from the script submitted to Soviet censors. Tarkovsky was reported to have destroyed most of what was filmed.

 

In Italy, he made the documentary Voyage in Time (1983) with Tonino Guerra and again, with Guerra, started production on Nostalghia (1983), a film set in Italy about a Russian writer who is stricken with homesickness while researching an ex-pat Russian composer.At Cannes, it won the Ecumenical and FIPRESCI prizes and shared a specially created prize ‘Grand Prix du cinema de creation’ with Robert Bresson (for L’argent).

 

In 1985, he was processed as a Soviet Defector in an Italian refugee camp although declaring: “I am not a Soviet dissident. I have no conflict with the Soviet Government…I would be unemployed [in the USSR].”

 

His last film was the spiritually apocalyptic The Sacrifice (1986) made in Sweden and winner of the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury and the Ecumenical and FIPRESCI prizes at Cannes. He could not attend the festival to accept the awards and died of cancer on 29 December 1986.