Latest news with #filmmaker
News.com.au
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Clint Eastwood bemoans ‘era of remakes and franchises'
The four-time Oscar winner and veteran filmmaker has urged fellow filmmakers to come up with original ideas. The Juror #2 director said in an interview with Austrian newspaper Kurie: "I long for the good old days when screenwriters wrote movies like Casablanca in small bungalows on the studio lot. When everyone had a new idea. We live in an era of remakes and franchises. I've shot sequels three times, but I haven't been interested in that for a long while. My philosophy is: do something new or stay at home.'
Free Malaysia Today
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Free Malaysia Today
Oldest Cannes Palme d'Or winner Hamina dies at 95
Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina's 1967 film 'The Winds of the Aures' won the Best First Work award. (Photo by AFP) ALGIERS : Mohammed Lakhdar Hamina, the first Arab and African director to win the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, has died aged 95, his family said yesterday. The filmmaker was awarded the prize in 1975 for 'Chronicle of the Years of Fire', a historical drama about the Algerian war of independence. His children said he passed away at his home in Algiers. Hamina – who was the oldest living recipient of the Palme d'Or – competed four times in the festival on the French Riviera. His 1967 film 'The Winds of the Aures' won the Best First Work award. The struggle for Algeria's independence was at the heart of his most famous work, which in six chapters from 1939 to 1954 tells the story of a nation through its people, culminating in the uprising against French colonisation. Born on Feb 26, 1934 in M'sila in the mountainous Aures region of northeast Algeria, Hamina was the son of modest peasants from the high plains. He attended agricultural school, then studied in the southern French town of Antibes, just along the Mediterranean coast from Cannes, where he met his future wife. The couple had four sons together. During the Algerian war, his father was kidnapped, tortured and killed by the French army. He was called up in 1958 and joined the Algerian resistance in Tunis. He learned filmmaking on the job, through an internship with Tunisian newsreels before venturing into short films.
ABC News
3 days ago
- General
- ABC News
The Karl Popper Memorial Lecture
28m ago 28 minutes ago Sat 31 May 2025 at 9:45pm Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Play Duration: 18 minutes 13 seconds 18 m
The National
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The National
Late Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina overcame bomb threats to become first Arab to win Cannes Palme d'Or
In May 1975, Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina became the first Arab and African to win the Palme d'Or, the top honour at the Cannes Film Festival, for Chronicles of the Years of Fire. It was not just a moment of cinematic triumph for the Algerian filmmaker – who has died aged 95, his family said on Friday – but a testament to his resilience. After all, the screening of Chronicles of the Years of Fire was rife with tension. Lakhdar-Hamina was facing an assassination attempt as the festival received a series of bomb threats for giving the film and the filmmaker a platform. But what was it about Chronicles that caused such an uproar and made it one of the most politically charged titles to screen at Cannes? The historical epic is set between the 1930s and 1954, drawing a trajectory of the events that led to the Algerian War of Independence. The film is segmented into six chapters, showing Algeria's road to revolution through the perspective of Ahmed, a peasant who gradually becomes involved in the nationalist struggle against colonial rule. Each chapter represents a phase in Algeria's political awakening, beginning with drought, poverty and colonial exploitation before culminating in armed resistance and the first flares of the War of Algerian Independence. Ahmed's personal transformation, along with the experiences of his village, brilliantly depict this blooming political consciousness. As such, Chronicles of the Years of Fire is a portrait of the brutality of colonialism, showing how revolt was a natural result from years of repression and suffering. Yet, Lakhdar-Hamina made not only a political film, but also a poetic one – with tastefully paced scenes and tableauxesque shots that capture the communal and cultural significance of the moment. Lakhdar-Hamina drew from his personal background to make Chronicles. The filmmaker was born in 1934 to a peasant family in M'Sila. He studied agriculture and law in French universities. His father was kidnapped, tortured and killed by the French Army during the Algerian War. In 1958, Lakhdar-Hamina himself deserted the French Army and joined the Algerian resistance in Tunisia. Revolution and the anticolonial struggle was a lived experience, deftly communicated through Chronicles of the Years of Fire. The political implications of the film were towering for its time. The Algerian War had ended a mere 13 years before Chronicles was screened at Cannes. The conflict marked the end of 130 years of French colonial rule in Algeria, but it was signified by a reshaping of France's global position and identity. This was a change some segments of French society were not particularly happy with. The film exposed these ruptures, particularly when veterans of Organisation armee secrete – a far-right French paramilitary and terrorist group that opposed Algeria's independence – threatened to bomb the festival and kill Lakhdar-Hamina. Thankfully, the assassination attempt was not carried out, and Lakhdar-Hamina received his award with the pomp and ceremony he deserved. Chronicles of the Years of Fire still stands as both a cinematic feat and a political one. 'What prevails is the motivation for the Algerian War,' Lakhdar-Hamina has been quoted as saying in an article that marks the 50th anniversary of the film on the Cannes Film Festival website. 'For young people who have not known this era, this would help them understand, while older people will recognise the truth in what is being told.' Chronicles of the Years of Fire has endured, as Lakhdar-Hamina intended, as 'a film against injustice, against humiliation', while also being a sharp historical resource. It shows how the Algerian War was not merely a fight for political freedom and land, but also a struggle to reclaim cultural identity and dignity. Its legacy looms alongside that of the war, which continues to inform relations between France and Algeria, as well as conversations around postcolonial identity and memory.
South China Morning Post
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
How HBO Max film Pee-wee as Himself about Paul Reubens came together after comic's death
Paul Reubens did not tell his director that he was dying. Advertisement On July 31, 2023, the news of Reubens' death came as a shock to documentary filmmaker Matt Wolf, who had spent a year trying to convince the actor and comedian to make the ambitious two-part documentary Pee-wee as Himself, now streaming on HBO Max, and over 40 hours interviewing him on camera. But in 2023, the project was in danger of falling apart. The two had been at an impasse for a while over the issue of creative control, and they had finally found a way forward. He had one last interview scheduled, set for the first week of August. Then the texts started coming in. Wolf sat there shaking. They had spoken about everything – Reubens' childhood, his relationship with fame, his ambitions, his commitment to his alter ego Pee-wee Herman, his sexuality, his arrest – except the fact that he had been battling cancer for the past six years. But after the initial shock, a renewed purpose set in. 'I went to work the day after Paul died. I started to read the 1,500-page transcript of our interview through the night and was struck by the significance and meaning that came by understanding that he was privately contemplating mortality,' Wolf said.
