Hollywood Week: Academy Awards Luncheon, Alexei Navalny, Berlin/EFM, John Mellencamp
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- Category: Entertainment News
- Published on Saturday, 17 February 2024 11:12
- Written by Janet Walker
The Academy Awards class of 2024 held its annual Academy Awards luncheon this week at the Beverly Hills Hilton, where the nominees in every category gathered to be feted as the celebration to Hollywood's biggest night kicks off.
Berlin Film Festival/European Film Market
The Berlin Film Festival and the European Film Market are in full swing. With the media attention focused on the headliners and featured films. I have found a few hidden gems that look interesting and could possibly be overlooked in the sea of possibilities, from features to documentaries to docu-dramas, and some very intense foreign scripted series, showcased in the European Film Market.
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"From Hilde, With Love," the market premiere, has received strong positive reviews, for the World War II historical drama, from director Andreas Dresen. The film's description, "In Berlin 1942, Hilde is a member of an anti-Nazi group. She falls in love with another member, Hans. The two spend a summer together until they get caught by the Gestapo and Hilde is imprisoned, eight months pregnant."
The film stars Liv Lisa Fries, Johannes Hegemann, Lisa Wagner, Alexander Scheer, Emma Bading. The film's success continues to show the topics including World War II have not reached a saturation point in story telling and probably never will. There will always be a story that has never been told awaiting a filmmaker.
The Chinese dramatic thriller, "Brief History of a Family," from director Jianjie Lin, which made its global premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, is also showing at the Berlin Film Festival. The four-hander stars Ke-Yu-Guo, Muran Lin, Xilun Sun, and Feng Zu. The film has garnered global raves and in its two-festival premieres have received three nominations including from Berlin Best First Feature, and Panorama Audience Award, and from Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominee. It is a must see.
The documentary "Facing Darkness," from director Jean-Gabriel Periot, recounts the siege of Sarajevo, from which "lasted from April 1992 to Feb 1996. Young men were called up to protect their city, a few of them chose to take along their cameras to face the violence they witnessed throughout those grueling 1425 days."
Another hidden gem is the triumph over tragedy film, "Unsinkable," a drama inspired by actual events. The film directed by Christian Andersen, stars Sylvester Byder, Johanne Louise Schmidt, Anders Brinck, Sofie Torp. The logline of the Danish film, reads, "In 1981 the "unsinkable" RF2 sinks on its maiden mission, taking nine lives. Captain's son, Henrik, investigates despite resistance from fearful fishermen and authorities, amidst family grief.
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Academy Award Class Photo
The 2024 Academy Award Class Photo.
Alexei Navalny, Subject of Academy Award Documentary, Murdered in Prison
Alexei Navalny, the most vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and subject of the Academy Award winning documentary, Navalny, died Friday, February 16, 2024, in an Artic prison cell, where he had been transferred to serve his bogus criminal sentence.
Unless audiences had not been invited into the life of Navalny, though Oscar winning documentarian, Daniel Roher, the life of the man who posed such an extreme threat to the current Russian regime, would have been insignificant to many, and clearly would not have rallied the people and nations to denounce Putin for the death.
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During the 2023 Academy Award media room interviews, this journalist had the opportunity to speak with Roher regarding Navalny's health even then nearly one year ago, his widow, Maria Pevchikh, described his health "unwell" and described him being denied even the most "basic things" and added, "he hasn't seen his family members for almost a year, which is completely illegal. So, I classify his prison conditions as torture. There isn't another word."
The murder of Alexei Navalny should prove to the world Putin's murderous ways of systemically silencing his opposition.
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John Mellencamp Issues Statement on Gun Violence
Grammy award winning artist John Mellencamp issued a statement on Gun Violence, in the wake of the Kansas City Chief's Celebration parade, that killed one and injured nine, which coincided with the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school massacre in 2018, that left 17 dead, and 17 injured.
Gun violence is not a new issue, and with every shooting that disrupts a classroom, a celebration, a life, more Americans are expecting government to act responsibly.
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John Mellencamp wrote, "Excuse me for stating the obvious truth. O do so out of love for this country and the pain of learning, once again, that children have been killed by gun violence.
If we as a country want to find the collective will within ourselves to change our gun laws, let's stop playing silly political games. Show the carnage on the news. Slow the American people the dead children and others who have been struck down. Show us what guns and bullets can do to the human body.
The news media need to be brave enough to let Americans see what slaughtered children look like. Otherwise, I fear that too many perceive gun violence as an abstract; a story that's repeated nearly every day to numbing effect.
When I was a teenager, there was a war in Vietnam. In the beginning, no one paid much attention to this problem in a foreign land until the media shouldered the responsibility and showed American how our sons were being slaughtered. Once those images were shown on TV, there was an overwhelming demand for that war to be ended immediately.
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I say this as a father and a human begin, with deep empathy for the parents whose children have had their lives ended so suddenly and so senselessly: Show America the carnage.
I am not being callous, and I know it will be painful to see. But, sad, to say, I think it's the only way to shock America out of its stupor."