Something in the Air // Tuesday 19th // 18:10 // Light House //
Olivier Assayas is a directorial graduate of Cahiers du Cinéma of a somewhat later vintage than the journal’s most renowned alumni Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol but remains one of France’s most significant directors, and an inheritor of the conscious style of the nouvelle vague. While his most famous feature, L’Eau froid (Cold Water), he referred to as a ‘second first film’, retreading an autobiographical line from his high-school-era youth, and set in 1972, Something in the Air, with its French title Après Mai (After May), might be considered his third, engaging as it does with the post-’68 malaise of an idealistic group of students who must flee legal retribution for a protest in which a guard is injured. Returning to a point in the director’s life coloured by his involvement with the intellectually dubious countercultural project of Situationism, it promises a distinctly narrow, human focus on a larger story, of the 1970s, which would, it turns out, end sadly.
Blood Rising // Sunday 24th // 19:30 // Savoy //
Feminiciados refers to the murder of women, a distinction which, in Juárez, Mexico, represented 438 innocent deaths in 2010. Artist Brian Maguire and director Mark McLoughlin bring the stories of the bereaved, and those lost, to the international community in a documentary which is, at its heart, a plea for justice. Often, families must carry out their own investigations into these murders, or face death threats for calling for action from the authorities. Blood Rising promises to be a compassionate, rare glimpse into the lived reality of the inhabitants of one of the world’s most dangerous cities. At a time when the value of a woman’s life is currently a source of public debate in our country, this documentary from the other side of the world can be considered timely.
