Movie Magazine International Blog

By Moira Sullivan Gian Franco Rosi told me that the US does not show his films. Now they have. "Fire at Sea" was screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival in October and the Short Story Doc festival here in San Francisco. It won the Golden Bear at the 2016 Berlinale Film Festival, and is Italy's Official Submission for the Foreign Language Oscar at the 89th Academy Awards, already one of 15 contenders. Rosi took home the Golden Lion at Venice in 2013 for his film about the periphery highway around Rome called "Sacro Gra" where migrant communities live. The same provocative film style with Rosi behind the camera is used for "Fire at Sea", a documentary about a small island near Sicily, Lampedusa, that receives refugees that have voyaged primarily from Sub Saharan Africa risking life and limb. The way they are received by the villagers is important. The Eritrean born Italian who went to film school in New York at NYU shows some of the villagers s

Chen Gang as Lao Shi in 'Old Stone' By Moira Sullivan "Old Stone" by debut director Johnny Ma from the People’s Republic of China received funding from the Sundance Institute,which explains why it has been pushed to the top of distribution channels. The film has an excellent soundtrack*, which is one of its many virtues. The story concerns Lao Shi (Chen Gang), a taxi driver who accidentally hits a motorcyclist in a road accident – an incident that occurs when a drunk passenger shoves Lao Shi’s arm on the steering column. The victim is taken to a hospital and is in a coma. The situation evokes what health insurance companies will look like under the president elect if he succeeds in being installed in this country. Lao Shi is confronted with a bill for the hospital for the victim. The insurance agents and police tell him that he should never have taken the injured man to the hospital because it is against procedure – even though he probably would have died.