What I’m Seeing This Week: I haven’t seen many films by Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki, so I’m going with Fallen Leaves since you’ve got to start somewhere. It’s at Cinemapolis for one week only starting today.
Also in Theaters: The Boy and the Heron, which continues its run at Cinemapolis this week in both dubbed and subtitled versions and at the Regal Ithaca Mall with subtitles only, is one of my favorite films of Movie Year 2023. Poor Things, which remains at Cinemapolis, is another. If Fallen Leaves wasn’t here for such a limited time, I’d probably be seeing Napoleon this week since I missed it during it’s first Ithaca run last year. It’s back at the Regal for one show a day. Speaking of the Regal, one of the reasons it will be a tragedy if it ever does close for real is because they do a great job of programming new films from India. Two Telugu-language films, Guntur Kaaram and Hanu Man, open there today. Finally, I’m banking on The Color Purple, which is at Cinemapolis, picking up Oscar nominations in a couple of week and sticking around in or returning to local theaters, but you might prefer not to take the risk.
Home Video: Over winter break I watched as many documentaries directed by the talented Belgian-Cameroonian filmmaker Rosine Mbakam as I could get my hands on in preparation for my EMRO review of her stellar first narrative feature Mambar Pierrete. My favorite was Chez Jolie Coiffure, which is about a Brussels hair salon. The most audacious is Delphine’s Prayers, which invites us into a room with one of the director’s fellow Cameroonian transplants and keeps us there until she’s said everything she has to say. Last but by no means least, Mbakam’s feature-length debut The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman and the collaborative (with An van Dienderen and Éléonore Yaméogo) essay film Prism are the ones most essential for understanding what she’s doing in Mambar Pierrette. Current Cornell University faculty, staff, and students have access to all of them through a great platform called Docuseek that the library subscribes to. Even if you aren’t so fortunate, they’re all available on DVD or a variety of commercial streaming video platforms from Icarus Films.
The Prodigal Cinephile 