The Ballad of Suzanne Cesaire (Hunt-Erlich, 2024): ICA Cinema, 6.45pm
68th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL (9th - 20th October 2024) DAY 9
With its date at the end of the year, London is a "festival of festivals", as Telegraph film critic Robbie Collin put it in one of his previews,
so the films shown have mostly been seen and commented on by critics
who have watched the features at such high-profile festivals as Cannes,
Venice, Toronto, Sundance and Berlin.
So I'm making it simple with one recommendation a day. I will be concentrating on the repertory choices but I've also read the
reviews of the contemporary releases and talked to and listened to the trusted critics all year and I
am as confident as I can be that this is the pick of the movies within
the parameters I have set. Firstly, there's no point highlighting the
major gala films - they will be sold out quickly. Secondly, there is
little to be gained in paying the higher Festival ticket prices to see
films that are out in Britain soon. I will be returning to the London
Festival films worthy of seeing and set to be released in the coming
months on this blog as and when they get a general release in London.
Here then (from October 9th to October 20th) are the films you are likely
to be able to get tickets for and the movies you are unlikely to see in
London very soon unless you go the Festival. Here is the LFF's main website for the general information you need. Don't
worry if some of the recommended films are sold out as there are always
some tickets on offer which go on sale 30 minutes before each
screening. Here is the information you need to get those standby tickets.
This London Film Festival Experimenta Special Presentation also screens at BFI Southbank on October 19th. Details here.
BFI introduction:
Restoring Suzanne Césaire’s legacy as a pioneer of Afro-Caribbean
surrealism and co-founder of Tropiques feels like vital work. However,
multidisciplinary artist Hunt-Ehrlich is in search of something beyond
Césaire’s impressive yet underappreciated intellectual achievements,
overshadowed as she has been her husband Aime Césaire; fittingly, the
film offers up fragments of Suzanne’s life as a full-time school
teacher, organiser and mother of six children. Guided by Suzanne’s
writing and testimony from her family, the film seeks to honour lost
memories and the unknowable. As the lead, Zita Hanrot - a new mother
herself - says in the beginning, “we’re making a film about an artist
who didn’t want to be remembered”. Resplendent in tropical light and the
lush greenness of Martinique, this delicately layered metafictional
essay evokes the unspoken, the almost disappeared whilst keeping our
heroine’s radical voice startlingly present.
Hyun Jin Cho
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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