With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
Folk Hero & Funny Guy (Jeff Grace)
The bond of male friendship is examined – and tested – in Folk Hero & Funny Guy, a short and sweet dramedy from multi-hyphenate Jeff Grace, who writes and directs. We meet comedian Paul (Alex Karpovsky) at the end of a tired stand-up routine in a beer-stained comedy club. Meanwhile, Paul’s childhood friend Jason (Wyatt Russell) has built a successful career for himself as a folk music star.
Folk Hero & Funny Guy (Jeff Grace)
The bond of male friendship is examined – and tested – in Folk Hero & Funny Guy, a short and sweet dramedy from multi-hyphenate Jeff Grace, who writes and directs. We meet comedian Paul (Alex Karpovsky) at the end of a tired stand-up routine in a beer-stained comedy club. Meanwhile, Paul’s childhood friend Jason (Wyatt Russell) has built a successful career for himself as a folk music star.
- 5/12/2017
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
This is film as revolutionary act. Sembène was not coy about his intentions. This is a story of a black woman. It’s a story of neocolonial slavery. It’s a story of racism. It’s also a story of spirituality. Of modernity versus tradition. It’s an act of courage, and an attempt to speak to a specific, and largely non-commercial, group of people. This is an attempt to change the world. It’s also trying to just be a good film. It’s a heady mix.
The film is based on a true story that its director, Ousmane Sembène, saw in a newspaper while living in France. An unidentified African woman had been found dead of suicide, in the apartment of her employers. Sembène was disturbed by the story for a decade, and eventually he wrote a short story, attempting to tell the tale of this unknown woman.
The film is based on a true story that its director, Ousmane Sembène, saw in a newspaper while living in France. An unidentified African woman had been found dead of suicide, in the apartment of her employers. Sembène was disturbed by the story for a decade, and eventually he wrote a short story, attempting to tell the tale of this unknown woman.
- 1/30/2017
- by Arik Devens
- CriterionCast
In this episode of Off The Shelf, Ryan and Brian take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for the week of October 25th, 2016.
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Episode Links Teen Titans Go! (TV series) – Wikipedia The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection Can you make a non-racist Tarzan movie? – La Times Vudu Movies On Us FilmStruck: Created by the movie lovers at Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and The Criterion Collection The January 2017 Criterion Collection line-up … Sunset Gun: A Different Design: Something Wild The Front Page (Blu-ray) – Kino Lorber Home Video Buy Black Girl / Borom Sarret (Dual Format edition) – Black Girl / Borom Sarret Arrow Video – Timeline Lifeboat | Eureka Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers by Kino Lorber — Kickstarter January/February Slate: Eight for the Hi-Def Road – Twilight Time Movies Hitchcock/Truffaut Blu-ray Peter Potamus Show, The (Mod) | WBshop.com Unboxing Video – The Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast Blu-ray Box Set – Dread...
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Episode Links Teen Titans Go! (TV series) – Wikipedia The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection Can you make a non-racist Tarzan movie? – La Times Vudu Movies On Us FilmStruck: Created by the movie lovers at Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and The Criterion Collection The January 2017 Criterion Collection line-up … Sunset Gun: A Different Design: Something Wild The Front Page (Blu-ray) – Kino Lorber Home Video Buy Black Girl / Borom Sarret (Dual Format edition) – Black Girl / Borom Sarret Arrow Video – Timeline Lifeboat | Eureka Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers by Kino Lorber — Kickstarter January/February Slate: Eight for the Hi-Def Road – Twilight Time Movies Hitchcock/Truffaut Blu-ray Peter Potamus Show, The (Mod) | WBshop.com Unboxing Video – The Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast Blu-ray Box Set – Dread...
- 10/25/2016
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
The Philippine Daily Inquirer is reporting that Lino Brocka’s 1975 film, Manila in the Claws of Light (Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag) will be joining the Criterion Collection in 2017. This will be the first Filipino film in the Collection.
Lino Brocka’s “Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag,” which was restored by the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, will be released by the prestigious Criterion Collection and Janus Films next year.
The good news was relayed to the Inquirer by filmmaker Mike de Leon, who’s the cinematographer and producer of the landmark social-realist drama released in 1975.
Jennifer Ahn, managing director of the Film Foundation, told De Leon that “Maynila” is “on the short list of titles for distribution in 2017.” Ahn explained that the film will be “available on DVD/Blu-ray in North America.”
Manila in the Claws of Light was restored by the Film Foundation and L’Immagine Ritrovata.
Lino Brocka’s “Maynila sa mga Kuko ng Liwanag,” which was restored by the Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, will be released by the prestigious Criterion Collection and Janus Films next year.
The good news was relayed to the Inquirer by filmmaker Mike de Leon, who’s the cinematographer and producer of the landmark social-realist drama released in 1975.
Jennifer Ahn, managing director of the Film Foundation, told De Leon that “Maynila” is “on the short list of titles for distribution in 2017.” Ahn explained that the film will be “available on DVD/Blu-ray in North America.”
Manila in the Claws of Light was restored by the Film Foundation and L’Immagine Ritrovata.
- 10/25/2016
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
The word masterpiece is thrown around a lot these days. Hell, I’m as guilty of maybe having a little bit of hyperbole in my reviews as anyone. However, when one is ostensibly slapped in the face by one of the true titans of cinema history, there are few better words to describe it.
That’s the response one has when they revisit (or see for the first time) a film like Ousmane Sembene’s Black Girl. Now 50 years old, Sembene’s first feature length film garnered much acclaim upon its initial release, but thanks to Janus Films Sembene’s greatest and arguably most poignant work looks, sounds and feels like a film that’s truly timeless.
Black Girl introduces us to Diouana, a Senegalese housemaid who travels to France to work for a bourgeois white family. Sembene is best known as a filmmaker but as seen throughout his politically-charged...
That’s the response one has when they revisit (or see for the first time) a film like Ousmane Sembene’s Black Girl. Now 50 years old, Sembene’s first feature length film garnered much acclaim upon its initial release, but thanks to Janus Films Sembene’s greatest and arguably most poignant work looks, sounds and feels like a film that’s truly timeless.
Black Girl introduces us to Diouana, a Senegalese housemaid who travels to France to work for a bourgeois white family. Sembene is best known as a filmmaker but as seen throughout his politically-charged...
- 5/20/2016
- by Joshua Brunsting
- CriterionCast
This time on the Newsstand, Ryan is joined by Aaron West and Mark Hurne to discuss a few pieces of Criterion Collection news.
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Topics & Links FilmStruck Cat People Drawing Black Girl, Borom sarret, and other Ousmane Sembene films Documentary on Netflix Criterion UK Announcements July – Dr. Strangelove and Burroughs: The Movie June – Gilda, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Overlord Episode Credits Ryan Gallagher (Twitter / Website) Aaron West (Twitter / Website) Mark Hurne (Twitter / Website)
Music for the show is from Fatboy Roberts’ Geek Remixed project.Donate via PayPal...
Subscribe to The Newsstand in iTunes or via RSS
Contact us with any feedback.
Topics & Links FilmStruck Cat People Drawing Black Girl, Borom sarret, and other Ousmane Sembene films Documentary on Netflix Criterion UK Announcements July – Dr. Strangelove and Burroughs: The Movie June – Gilda, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Overlord Episode Credits Ryan Gallagher (Twitter / Website) Aaron West (Twitter / Website) Mark Hurne (Twitter / Website)
Music for the show is from Fatboy Roberts’ Geek Remixed project.Donate via PayPal...
- 5/5/2016
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
Eva Orner's Chasing Asylum.
The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival has unveiled its full 2016 program, featuring 31 feature films and 25 shorts.
The festival will open with the Australian premiere of Eva Orner's offshore-detention documentary Chasing Asylum, fresh off its Hot Docs international premiere.
Also featured is Michael Graversen's Dreaming of Denmark, which follows a teenager who has spent his adolescent years in Denmark after fleeing his native country of Afghanistan..
The festival will close with the Australian premiere of Sundance award-winner The Bad Kids, an immersive dive into America.s most pressing education problem: poverty..
Another highlight is documentary They Will Have to Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile, which follows various musicians in Mali in the wake of a jihadist takeover and subsequent banning of music in the region. The film features Damon Albarn (Blur), Brian Eno and Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and the band Songhoy Blues.
The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival has unveiled its full 2016 program, featuring 31 feature films and 25 shorts.
The festival will open with the Australian premiere of Eva Orner's offshore-detention documentary Chasing Asylum, fresh off its Hot Docs international premiere.
Also featured is Michael Graversen's Dreaming of Denmark, which follows a teenager who has spent his adolescent years in Denmark after fleeing his native country of Afghanistan..
The festival will close with the Australian premiere of Sundance award-winner The Bad Kids, an immersive dive into America.s most pressing education problem: poverty..
Another highlight is documentary They Will Have to Kill Us First: Malian Music in Exile, which follows various musicians in Mali in the wake of a jihadist takeover and subsequent banning of music in the region. The film features Damon Albarn (Blur), Brian Eno and Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and the band Songhoy Blues.
- 4/10/2016
- by Staff Writer
- IF.com.au
For the uninitiated, Samba Gadjigo and Jason Silverman’s Sembene! offers a valuable entry into the canon of African cinema and its founding father: the late, great Senegalese pioneer Ousmane Sembene. Forgoing the liveliness of Alex Gibney’s Finding Fela!, Sembene! finds its own rhythm: part-retrospective, part-academic study in the spirit of the director’s work.
The film opens with a critical quote from its subject: “If Africans don’t tell their own stories, than Africa will soon disappear.” Focusing on the public intellectual that Sembene was, the film eventually loses a kind of flavor it could have had, relying not upon the urban images of Dakar (as seen in his film Faat Kine and Borom Sarret), but the images he was known for in his portrait of more rural spaces in his films Guelwaar and his final picture Moolaade.
The picture is co-directed by a person from the western...
The film opens with a critical quote from its subject: “If Africans don’t tell their own stories, than Africa will soon disappear.” Focusing on the public intellectual that Sembene was, the film eventually loses a kind of flavor it could have had, relying not upon the urban images of Dakar (as seen in his film Faat Kine and Borom Sarret), but the images he was known for in his portrait of more rural spaces in his films Guelwaar and his final picture Moolaade.
The picture is co-directed by a person from the western...
- 11/10/2015
- by John Fink
- The Film Stage
Written about a number of times here on Shadow and Act as the film traveled the world from Sundance, to Cannes, to the Telluride Film Festival and so many more, the new documentary “Sembene!” on Senegalese film auteur and ‘Father of African Cinema,’ Ousmane Sembene, makes its theatrical premiere this Friday, November 6th in New York City at Lincoln Plaza Cinema for one full week. For those unfamiliar, Ousmane Sembene had a career spanning 40 years in cinema, beginning with his first short film “Borom Sarret” (1963) and continuing with the film most (outside of Africa) still know him best for, “La noire de” (Black Girl), the story of a domestic worker enslaved by her white...
- 11/5/2015
- by Curtis Caesar John
- ShadowAndAct
This post was originally published on February 10, 2015. With Sembene! opening in limited release this weekend, we're re-promoting it. This year’s Sundance Film Festival was filled with movies about the love of movies: The drama smash Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and the documentary The Wolfpack both featured characters whose lives centered around a fascination with classic films, and who strove to re-create those films in their own way. But no film demonstrated the power of cinema more resonantly than Sembene!, directed by Samba Gadjigo and Jason Silverman, which screened as part of the world-documentary competition. The Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene (1923–2007), often called the father of African cinema, had a seismic career. He effectively created an African film industry out of nothing: In 1963, with a used 16mm camera and leftover film stock sent by friends from Europe, he made a short called Borom Sarret (The Wagon Driver), considered...
- 11/5/2015
- by Bilge Ebiri
- Vulture
Growing up in Culver City, I always saw the MGM studio near us as a place of make-believe where I could collect autographs of famous movie stars. I knew they made the movies there that I watched every weekend. But it was home, and home was a place of safe daydreams without ambitious goals associated with it.
When I became a teenager and saw Un Chien Andalou, I began to see Movie Mecca as New York and Paris, but now I see they have nothing on us.
Los Angeles this past month had so many events that I could see the world without leaving town. Just a sampling here: German Film Currents,Polish Film Festival, So. African Arts Fest, Satyajit Ray Restored, Pure and Impure: The films of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gabriel Figueroa Retrospective and The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema which this weekend showed Roberto Gavaldon’s Macario an Oscar-nominated 1959 surrealist Mexican fable. Also showing this weekend alone were A Century of Chinese Cinema at UCLA, the Cambodian documentaryA River Changes Course, Ida’s free documentary series, sci-fi Beyond Fest at the Egyptian Theater, Henri-George Couzot’s La Verite at Red Cat, not to mention Classics from the Cohen Film Colletion: The Rohauer Collection and finally, the early press screenings for the Foreign Language Submissions for the Academy Awards.
Today I write about Africa, West Africa in particular, but even more so Chad, because that is where Mahamat-Saleh Haroun and his film Grigris (Isa: Les Films du Losange, No. America: Film Movement) originate. Grigris premiered in the Cannes Film Festival this year. Haroun also wrote and directed The Screaming Man (Isa: Pyramide, No. America: Film Movement) which won The Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Grigris is playing as part of the Cameras d’Afrique Series at Lacma which I blogged about earlier Here. This showcase of world-changing films is an initiative of Loyola Marymount University Film School, Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Film Program and Film Independent.
The films offer a unique view of Africa in the comfort of our own town. This series includes the 1963 film Borom Sarret by Ousmane Sembene from Senegal, the first film directed by an African to focus on an African filmmaker’s own people. We all know the name of Ousmane Sembene, but rarely have the chance to see his films, though I will never forget the experience of seeing Black Girl in 1966 at the height of our own Civil Rights struggles. It enlightened me about the rest of the world’s own warped (i.e., colonial) view of the Africans in diaspora, a subject being revived in so many films of today.
My most current education on Africa comes from the annual course I teach about the international film business to festival directors from Africa, Asia and Latin America at the Deutsche Welle Akademie in Berlin. I learn about the problems and issues facing a diverse range of festival directors, many of whom are also filmmakers. For example, in a country with no theaters, the film festival is held in the bush and promoted via cel phones which everyone possesses. I was also made alert to the fact that many Africans themselves find European-funded films showing dusty, poverty-stricken but cute kids in torn t-shirts and running barefoot in dirty streets and men wearing the boubou and women balancing baskets on their heads condescending and imbalanced depictions of Africa today.
Mama Kéïta was present to talk about L’Absence and Gaston Kaboré was there with Buud Yam (followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker). Other program highlights included the L.A. premiere of Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns), Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1973 French New Wave–inspired Touki Bouki, Idrissa Ouédraogo’s 1990 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix winner Tilaï (The Law), and the 2013 Fespaco Golden Stallion winner Tey (Today), followed by a Q&A with director Alain Gomis and star Saul Williams.
Seeing these films gave me a feeling of wholeness, from L’Absence, the tail of a prodigal son, returning too long after he was granted an education in France by his fellow countrymen and family who had expected him to return and contribute to his own country’s wellbeing but instead stayed in France where he basically lost his soul, to Buud Yam, a classic hero’s journey by a young man seeking a healer for his sister. The audience and the filmmakers along with their films had a great opportunity to unveil an Africa about which we know too little
Planning to interview Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, I looked up Chad in Wikipedia and read it is what is called a “failed country”. My spirits dropped. But on seeing Grisgris and meeting Haroun and hearing all he had to say, my spirits soared.
Do you know for a fact that a film can change the world? I believe it can, does and is changing the world. So many of my colleagues in the film world are in film because of the same ideal.
The African directors at the series spoke of their films and their passion and they too make films to change the world. Haroun was not the only one who spoke at the African film series, but my conversation with him proved it to me. We spent a good hour discussing his films and his thoughts and development which I will try to summarize here.
It has been a long road for Haroun. When he first returned to Chad from France and made Bye Bye Africa, he was inexperienced and afraid of nothing. You see his chutzpah making Bye Bye Africa as he shoots film of everyone, offending some who believed he was stealing their spirits. He meets his past star who played a woman dying of AIDS whose life has been ruined because the people believe the film was real.
For Haroun, acting is like cooking. You do it for someone you love. Chad was such a difficult country for filming his first film, so he could make mistakes. If you fall down, you just get up and keep going. He had no doubts. It’s a question of love. You feel it; you act it. His non-professional actors do their best and their passion carries them through.
Making his second film was different. There was pressure, especially for him as an actor, to make it good. After A Screaming Man he got a call from Brad Pitt who wanted him as an actor in World War Z and who wanted the lead, but not speaking English put an end to that.
Chad is landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west. Because the French colonized it in the 1920s, it is now a “Francophone” country and has more in common with its neighbors in the West and so is considered West African.
Chad had free elections in 2008 and elected President Idriss Déby. The country defeated the Sudanese rebels there. The nation sent troops into Mali and killed Moktar Belmoktar, the Algerian terrorist behind the deadly attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria and withdrew its troops in April of this year saying they were not prepared to fight guerilla warfare. That means money that went to the military can be redirected toward peaceful endeavors. Today they are rebuilding the country which is based on an oil economy which gives it a window of rich opportunity.
Cinema in Chad changed greatly and became a new focal point for the newly elected government when Haroun won the Jury Prize in Cannes for A Screaming Man in 2010 When his debut film Bye Bye Africa (1999), showed the wreck of the country revisited by long-time French exile, he saw theaters which the long civil war and instability had destroyed. He spoke to a woman who swore she would renovate her theater, the Normandie. Bye Bye Africa was a drama but it took place in a documentary setting which looks at the poor state of cinema in the country. After Haroun won the Grand Jury Prize of Cannes, the government allocated $1 million to restore the theater which stands today as a testament to the power of film. It shows 35mm, is digitized and can use satellite transmission. It can buy Hollywood films using digital coding although film distribution rights are still difficult to negotiate. However, the distributor of Django in France arranged for Django to show day and date in Paris and Chad’s capitol city N’Djamena for a minimum guarantee. This was a major event for a country that has gone 30 years without cinema.
The government of Chad began to receive compliments for winning the Jury Prize in Cannes, which is perceived to be as important as the Olympics themselves (It is, in fact, the 2nd largest press event in the world after the Olympics). The world’s perception of Chad and its own perception of itself shifted from being one of the poorest, war-torn and corrupt nations of Africa to one of high stature culturally. And its current Prime Minister Djimrangar Dadnadji, and his government has now allocated $10 million into building a film school which should be finished by 2015. It will be one of the rare film schools in all of Africa and will be the finest in the north, east or west of the entire continent.
The film school is a part of rebuilding the country today. It is also trying to become part of the U.N. Security Council. It is the leading country in Central and West Africa. It is part of the Central African Economic Council (Ceeac).
What these changes mean for Haroun is that he can continue to use film for himself as a platform, the means to objectify and philosophize about conscience and consciousness. As Aimee Caesar was quoted in Bye Bye Africa, Africa needs to articulate its storytelling tradition in new ways and to be visible beyond its own borders. Film shows diversity. Differing points of view and discussions mean the nation can start to play a role on a grander world stage. With the building of a film school, the parliament also voted into law at tax of $.01 per telephone call to go toward artistic activities. This will make a huge difference to the next generation.
When Haroun began making movies he wanted to stop talking about the state of cinema, so he put it into his film, memorialized it and then closed the door on the subject.
You can see Haroun’s own evolution in regards to his treatment of women in Bye Bye Africa to his depiction of them in Grigris. It was not a very flattering portrayal; even in Grigris, the hero does not stand up for the woman he loves when his boss degrades her. However, the film gives a special place to the women in the village as if they were a in a classical Greek Choir. The women change the Story and the two artists’ destiny is changed because of the women.
Grigris is the portrait of a young African artist, but even with talent, the milieu is so difficult and as the eldest, he has to take care of others. This is The Responsibility that kills dreams. Grigris is a cruel portrayal of the young artist. It is a modern story, extending the tradition of oral storytelling.
Although he is not acting in it, it is still an impressionistic self-portrait, as was Bye Bye Africa which was shot in two weeks and won Best First Feature in Venice in 1999. His growth intellectually and emotionally can be measured by watching the two films.
After being selected and awarded at the 66th Festival de Cannes for the remarkable quality of its photography, the film Grigris, by Mahamat Saleh Haroun, supported by the Acp Cultures + Programme, won the Bayard d'Or for best photography at the 28th Festival International Film Francophone de Namur (Fiff) in Belgium. (Read the full list of 28th Fiff Awards : click here.)
Haroun explains that he has many women around him – his mother, his sisters, cousins. In Africa, a man’s role does not include cooking. Cooking is love. But in France he enjoys cooking. Cooking shows trust in those who partake in the making and eating of the meal. No one burns the steak when cooking for one’s mother. Food is essential to Haroun. “If you cook, you can share, you open your doors.”
He told me how he got into movies.
I was 9 years old when I saw my first movie. It was a Bollywood movie and a beautiful lady in it was smiling at the camera. I thought she was smiling at me. The love and happiness I felt watching this made me love cinema.
My dream of cinema was a big ambition. It was not to make small films. I dreamt of expressing an important philosophy of life and of my country in cinema. I did not want to stick just to tradition which is disappearing. But to the eternal which remains. Tradition is not the essential; culture is. For example, in Western society, the meaning of seat number 13 on a plane is not culture, but it is a tradition.
Haroun is leading his generation. In 1965 the civil war was raging in the North. It came to the capital in 1979 and he went to Paris to study cinema in 1981/82. His country was ruled by a dictator who is now in prison to be judged in court for the 40,000 lives taken during the 8 years of war. Reid Brady of the Human Rights Watch and Haroun are now making a documentary about this. Today Haroun travels between France and Chad 5 to 6 times a year. Interestingly, there is not yet a film festival in Chad.
When I asked what was next :
Next is about Indian fashion. Also a young artist. It is based on a true story of a young man in N’Djemena who used to watch Bollywood dvds and has seen more than 1,500 Bollywood films and speaks Hindu as a result. He gets a job at an Indian factory and translates to French and to his African language. He spends eight years there but dreams of becoming an actor in Bollywood. The story brings him to Bombay. That is a good base for a film; a film built on truth and documentary.
I am also making a film in France called A Life in France. I have lived there for 30 years. The film is from the point of view of an immigrant as I am.
Hamoud and I so enjoyed our talk that we are now looking forward to meeting again when he returns here in December! Wouldn’t it be great if his film is one of those shortlisted for the Nomination, or if it actually received the Nomination? Or if it won? How might that then change the world? We will have to wait and see.
About Lmu Sftv
Movie industry moguls helped establish Loyola Marymount University’s (Lmu) current campus on the bluffs above west Los Angeles in the 1920s. By 1964, Lmu was formally teaching film and television curriculum, and in 2001, the School of Film and Television (Sftv) was established as its own entity. Today, Sftv offers students a comprehensive education where mastering technical skills and story is equally important to educating the whole person, including the formation of character and values, meaning and purpose. Sftv offers undergraduate degrees in animation, production, screenwriting, film and television studies and recording arts; and graduate degrees in production, screenwriting and writing and producing for television. The school is one of the few film programs providing students with a completely tapeless model of production and post-production, and Sftv’s animation program is one of the few worldwide that teaches virtual cinematography. Selected alumni include John Bailey, Bob Beemer, Francie Calfo, Brian Helgeland, Francis Lawrence, Lauren Montgomery, Jack Orman, Van Partible and James Wong, among others. Get more information at sftv.lmu.edu or facebook.com/lmusftv.
About Film Independent at Lacma
Film Independent at Lacma is a film series produced by Film Independent—the nonprofit arts organization that also produces the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival—and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) with presenting sponsor The New York Times and premier sponsor Ovation. The Film Independent at Lacma Film Series is curated by Elvis Mitchell and assistant curator Bernardo Rondeau. The program features classic and contemporary narrative and documentary films; emerging auteurs; international showcases; special guest-curated programs, such as Jason Reitman's acclaimed Live Read series; and conversations with artists, filmmakers, and other special guests. For more information, go to filmindependent.org/lacma or lacma.org.
When I became a teenager and saw Un Chien Andalou, I began to see Movie Mecca as New York and Paris, but now I see they have nothing on us.
Los Angeles this past month had so many events that I could see the world without leaving town. Just a sampling here: German Film Currents,Polish Film Festival, So. African Arts Fest, Satyajit Ray Restored, Pure and Impure: The films of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gabriel Figueroa Retrospective and The Golden Age of Mexican Cinema which this weekend showed Roberto Gavaldon’s Macario an Oscar-nominated 1959 surrealist Mexican fable. Also showing this weekend alone were A Century of Chinese Cinema at UCLA, the Cambodian documentaryA River Changes Course, Ida’s free documentary series, sci-fi Beyond Fest at the Egyptian Theater, Henri-George Couzot’s La Verite at Red Cat, not to mention Classics from the Cohen Film Colletion: The Rohauer Collection and finally, the early press screenings for the Foreign Language Submissions for the Academy Awards.
Today I write about Africa, West Africa in particular, but even more so Chad, because that is where Mahamat-Saleh Haroun and his film Grigris (Isa: Les Films du Losange, No. America: Film Movement) originate. Grigris premiered in the Cannes Film Festival this year. Haroun also wrote and directed The Screaming Man (Isa: Pyramide, No. America: Film Movement) which won The Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Grigris is playing as part of the Cameras d’Afrique Series at Lacma which I blogged about earlier Here. This showcase of world-changing films is an initiative of Loyola Marymount University Film School, Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Film Program and Film Independent.
The films offer a unique view of Africa in the comfort of our own town. This series includes the 1963 film Borom Sarret by Ousmane Sembene from Senegal, the first film directed by an African to focus on an African filmmaker’s own people. We all know the name of Ousmane Sembene, but rarely have the chance to see his films, though I will never forget the experience of seeing Black Girl in 1966 at the height of our own Civil Rights struggles. It enlightened me about the rest of the world’s own warped (i.e., colonial) view of the Africans in diaspora, a subject being revived in so many films of today.
My most current education on Africa comes from the annual course I teach about the international film business to festival directors from Africa, Asia and Latin America at the Deutsche Welle Akademie in Berlin. I learn about the problems and issues facing a diverse range of festival directors, many of whom are also filmmakers. For example, in a country with no theaters, the film festival is held in the bush and promoted via cel phones which everyone possesses. I was also made alert to the fact that many Africans themselves find European-funded films showing dusty, poverty-stricken but cute kids in torn t-shirts and running barefoot in dirty streets and men wearing the boubou and women balancing baskets on their heads condescending and imbalanced depictions of Africa today.
Mama Kéïta was present to talk about L’Absence and Gaston Kaboré was there with Buud Yam (followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker). Other program highlights included the L.A. premiere of Mille Soleils (A Thousand Suns), Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1973 French New Wave–inspired Touki Bouki, Idrissa Ouédraogo’s 1990 Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix winner Tilaï (The Law), and the 2013 Fespaco Golden Stallion winner Tey (Today), followed by a Q&A with director Alain Gomis and star Saul Williams.
Seeing these films gave me a feeling of wholeness, from L’Absence, the tail of a prodigal son, returning too long after he was granted an education in France by his fellow countrymen and family who had expected him to return and contribute to his own country’s wellbeing but instead stayed in France where he basically lost his soul, to Buud Yam, a classic hero’s journey by a young man seeking a healer for his sister. The audience and the filmmakers along with their films had a great opportunity to unveil an Africa about which we know too little
Planning to interview Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, I looked up Chad in Wikipedia and read it is what is called a “failed country”. My spirits dropped. But on seeing Grisgris and meeting Haroun and hearing all he had to say, my spirits soared.
Do you know for a fact that a film can change the world? I believe it can, does and is changing the world. So many of my colleagues in the film world are in film because of the same ideal.
The African directors at the series spoke of their films and their passion and they too make films to change the world. Haroun was not the only one who spoke at the African film series, but my conversation with him proved it to me. We spent a good hour discussing his films and his thoughts and development which I will try to summarize here.
It has been a long road for Haroun. When he first returned to Chad from France and made Bye Bye Africa, he was inexperienced and afraid of nothing. You see his chutzpah making Bye Bye Africa as he shoots film of everyone, offending some who believed he was stealing their spirits. He meets his past star who played a woman dying of AIDS whose life has been ruined because the people believe the film was real.
For Haroun, acting is like cooking. You do it for someone you love. Chad was such a difficult country for filming his first film, so he could make mistakes. If you fall down, you just get up and keep going. He had no doubts. It’s a question of love. You feel it; you act it. His non-professional actors do their best and their passion carries them through.
Making his second film was different. There was pressure, especially for him as an actor, to make it good. After A Screaming Man he got a call from Brad Pitt who wanted him as an actor in World War Z and who wanted the lead, but not speaking English put an end to that.
Chad is landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west. Because the French colonized it in the 1920s, it is now a “Francophone” country and has more in common with its neighbors in the West and so is considered West African.
Chad had free elections in 2008 and elected President Idriss Déby. The country defeated the Sudanese rebels there. The nation sent troops into Mali and killed Moktar Belmoktar, the Algerian terrorist behind the deadly attack on a natural gas plant in Algeria and withdrew its troops in April of this year saying they were not prepared to fight guerilla warfare. That means money that went to the military can be redirected toward peaceful endeavors. Today they are rebuilding the country which is based on an oil economy which gives it a window of rich opportunity.
Cinema in Chad changed greatly and became a new focal point for the newly elected government when Haroun won the Jury Prize in Cannes for A Screaming Man in 2010 When his debut film Bye Bye Africa (1999), showed the wreck of the country revisited by long-time French exile, he saw theaters which the long civil war and instability had destroyed. He spoke to a woman who swore she would renovate her theater, the Normandie. Bye Bye Africa was a drama but it took place in a documentary setting which looks at the poor state of cinema in the country. After Haroun won the Grand Jury Prize of Cannes, the government allocated $1 million to restore the theater which stands today as a testament to the power of film. It shows 35mm, is digitized and can use satellite transmission. It can buy Hollywood films using digital coding although film distribution rights are still difficult to negotiate. However, the distributor of Django in France arranged for Django to show day and date in Paris and Chad’s capitol city N’Djamena for a minimum guarantee. This was a major event for a country that has gone 30 years without cinema.
The government of Chad began to receive compliments for winning the Jury Prize in Cannes, which is perceived to be as important as the Olympics themselves (It is, in fact, the 2nd largest press event in the world after the Olympics). The world’s perception of Chad and its own perception of itself shifted from being one of the poorest, war-torn and corrupt nations of Africa to one of high stature culturally. And its current Prime Minister Djimrangar Dadnadji, and his government has now allocated $10 million into building a film school which should be finished by 2015. It will be one of the rare film schools in all of Africa and will be the finest in the north, east or west of the entire continent.
The film school is a part of rebuilding the country today. It is also trying to become part of the U.N. Security Council. It is the leading country in Central and West Africa. It is part of the Central African Economic Council (Ceeac).
What these changes mean for Haroun is that he can continue to use film for himself as a platform, the means to objectify and philosophize about conscience and consciousness. As Aimee Caesar was quoted in Bye Bye Africa, Africa needs to articulate its storytelling tradition in new ways and to be visible beyond its own borders. Film shows diversity. Differing points of view and discussions mean the nation can start to play a role on a grander world stage. With the building of a film school, the parliament also voted into law at tax of $.01 per telephone call to go toward artistic activities. This will make a huge difference to the next generation.
When Haroun began making movies he wanted to stop talking about the state of cinema, so he put it into his film, memorialized it and then closed the door on the subject.
You can see Haroun’s own evolution in regards to his treatment of women in Bye Bye Africa to his depiction of them in Grigris. It was not a very flattering portrayal; even in Grigris, the hero does not stand up for the woman he loves when his boss degrades her. However, the film gives a special place to the women in the village as if they were a in a classical Greek Choir. The women change the Story and the two artists’ destiny is changed because of the women.
Grigris is the portrait of a young African artist, but even with talent, the milieu is so difficult and as the eldest, he has to take care of others. This is The Responsibility that kills dreams. Grigris is a cruel portrayal of the young artist. It is a modern story, extending the tradition of oral storytelling.
Although he is not acting in it, it is still an impressionistic self-portrait, as was Bye Bye Africa which was shot in two weeks and won Best First Feature in Venice in 1999. His growth intellectually and emotionally can be measured by watching the two films.
After being selected and awarded at the 66th Festival de Cannes for the remarkable quality of its photography, the film Grigris, by Mahamat Saleh Haroun, supported by the Acp Cultures + Programme, won the Bayard d'Or for best photography at the 28th Festival International Film Francophone de Namur (Fiff) in Belgium. (Read the full list of 28th Fiff Awards : click here.)
Haroun explains that he has many women around him – his mother, his sisters, cousins. In Africa, a man’s role does not include cooking. Cooking is love. But in France he enjoys cooking. Cooking shows trust in those who partake in the making and eating of the meal. No one burns the steak when cooking for one’s mother. Food is essential to Haroun. “If you cook, you can share, you open your doors.”
He told me how he got into movies.
I was 9 years old when I saw my first movie. It was a Bollywood movie and a beautiful lady in it was smiling at the camera. I thought she was smiling at me. The love and happiness I felt watching this made me love cinema.
My dream of cinema was a big ambition. It was not to make small films. I dreamt of expressing an important philosophy of life and of my country in cinema. I did not want to stick just to tradition which is disappearing. But to the eternal which remains. Tradition is not the essential; culture is. For example, in Western society, the meaning of seat number 13 on a plane is not culture, but it is a tradition.
Haroun is leading his generation. In 1965 the civil war was raging in the North. It came to the capital in 1979 and he went to Paris to study cinema in 1981/82. His country was ruled by a dictator who is now in prison to be judged in court for the 40,000 lives taken during the 8 years of war. Reid Brady of the Human Rights Watch and Haroun are now making a documentary about this. Today Haroun travels between France and Chad 5 to 6 times a year. Interestingly, there is not yet a film festival in Chad.
When I asked what was next :
Next is about Indian fashion. Also a young artist. It is based on a true story of a young man in N’Djemena who used to watch Bollywood dvds and has seen more than 1,500 Bollywood films and speaks Hindu as a result. He gets a job at an Indian factory and translates to French and to his African language. He spends eight years there but dreams of becoming an actor in Bollywood. The story brings him to Bombay. That is a good base for a film; a film built on truth and documentary.
I am also making a film in France called A Life in France. I have lived there for 30 years. The film is from the point of view of an immigrant as I am.
Hamoud and I so enjoyed our talk that we are now looking forward to meeting again when he returns here in December! Wouldn’t it be great if his film is one of those shortlisted for the Nomination, or if it actually received the Nomination? Or if it won? How might that then change the world? We will have to wait and see.
About Lmu Sftv
Movie industry moguls helped establish Loyola Marymount University’s (Lmu) current campus on the bluffs above west Los Angeles in the 1920s. By 1964, Lmu was formally teaching film and television curriculum, and in 2001, the School of Film and Television (Sftv) was established as its own entity. Today, Sftv offers students a comprehensive education where mastering technical skills and story is equally important to educating the whole person, including the formation of character and values, meaning and purpose. Sftv offers undergraduate degrees in animation, production, screenwriting, film and television studies and recording arts; and graduate degrees in production, screenwriting and writing and producing for television. The school is one of the few film programs providing students with a completely tapeless model of production and post-production, and Sftv’s animation program is one of the few worldwide that teaches virtual cinematography. Selected alumni include John Bailey, Bob Beemer, Francie Calfo, Brian Helgeland, Francis Lawrence, Lauren Montgomery, Jack Orman, Van Partible and James Wong, among others. Get more information at sftv.lmu.edu or facebook.com/lmusftv.
About Film Independent at Lacma
Film Independent at Lacma is a film series produced by Film Independent—the nonprofit arts organization that also produces the Film Independent Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival—and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Lacma) with presenting sponsor The New York Times and premier sponsor Ovation. The Film Independent at Lacma Film Series is curated by Elvis Mitchell and assistant curator Bernardo Rondeau. The program features classic and contemporary narrative and documentary films; emerging auteurs; international showcases; special guest-curated programs, such as Jason Reitman's acclaimed Live Read series; and conversations with artists, filmmakers, and other special guests. For more information, go to filmindependent.org/lacma or lacma.org.
- 10/25/2013
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
The first time I saw Ousmane Sembène's Borom Sarret, I was in film school. Struck by the wagoner’s candid voiceover, and the way it contrasted with his routine labor of picking up passengers in his wagon, I wondered why I hadn’t seen this film earlier. I wondered why many of the people I knew hadn’t seen it. There was movement in this film, but this character seemed not to be getting anywhere, mirroring the Neo-colonial context in which it was set. This film was only the beginning.Noted film critic Elvis Mitchell will curate a month-long film series entitled Caméras d'Afrique: The Films of West Africa, running from October 3 – October 28, 2013 in Los...
- 10/1/2013
- by Nijla Mumin
- ShadowAndAct
The first time I saw Ousmane Sembène's Borom Sarret, I was in film school. Struck by the wagoner’s candid voiceover, and the way it contrasted with his routine labor of picking up passengers in his wagon, I wondered why I hadn’t seen this film earlier. I wondered why many of the people I knew hadn’t seen it. There was movement in this film, but this character seemed not to be getting anywhere, mirroring the Neo-colonial context in which it was set. This film was only the beginning.Noted film critic Elvis Mitchell will curate a month-long film series entitled Caméras d'Afrique: The Films of West Africa, running from October 3 – October 28, 2013 in Los...
- 10/1/2013
- by Nijla Mumin
- ShadowAndAct
While international film festivals, especially those of the calibre and history of Venice (this year celebrating its 70th edition), are most commonly seen as a golden opportunity to catch new cinema from contemporary filmmakers, many offer meaty and mightily tempting repertory programmes loaded with restorations. This year’s Cannes festival, for example, featured restored prints of Vertigo, Hiroshima Mon Amour and Borom Sarret (the first film by a black African: Ousmane Sembene), among sundry others. Venice, as ever, has its own Classics strand, with 29 restorations (and documentaries on cinema), including works by Chantal Akerman, Nagisa Oshima and Satyajit Ray. However, the […]...
- 9/1/2013
- by Ashley Clark
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
While international film festivals, especially those of the calibre and history of Venice (this year celebrating its 70th edition), are most commonly seen as a golden opportunity to catch new cinema from contemporary filmmakers, many offer meaty and mightily tempting repertory programmes loaded with restorations. This year’s Cannes festival, for example, featured restored prints of Vertigo, Hiroshima Mon Amour and Borom Sarret (the first film by a black African: Ousmane Sembene), among sundry others. Venice, as ever, has its own Classics strand, with 29 restorations (and documentaries on cinema), including works by Chantal Akerman, Nagisa Oshima and Satyajit Ray. However, the […]...
- 9/1/2013
- by Ashley Clark
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
The Cannes Film Festival section, Cannes Classics, celebrates the heritage of film, and aims to highlight classic/masterpiece works of the past, which are presented with brand new or restored prints. This year's Cannes Classics include, of note, Ousmane Sembène's 1963 20-minute short film, Borom Sarret, will be one of the restored prints screened. His first film, Borom Sarret (a Wolof expression that means cart driver), has been heralded as the beginning of Black African Cinema - a stark masterpiece that chronicles a frustrating day in the life of a sympathetic, embittered Dakar cart driver, in post-Colonial Senegal, which leaves him cheated out of his...
- 5/13/2013
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
A still from “Charulata”
Satyajit Ray’s Charulata (The Lonely Wife) is one among the twenty feature films to be presented at Cannes Classics, as part of the Official Selection.
Based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore about a lonely housewife, the film features Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee and Shailen Mukherjee. It won Satyajit Ray a Silver Bear for Best Director at Berlin international film festival in 1965.
Cannes Classics was created in 2004 to present old films and masterpieces from cinematographic history that have been carefully restored. It is also a way to pay tribute to the essential work being down by copyrightholders, film libraries, production companies and national archives throughout the world.
This year’s programme of Cannes Classics is made up of twenty feature-length films and three documentaries.
Restored Prints
Borom Sarret (1963, 20’) by Ousmane Sembène
Charulata (Charluta: The Lonely Wife) (1964, 1:57) by Satyajit Ray
Cleopatra (1963, 4:03) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz...
Satyajit Ray’s Charulata (The Lonely Wife) is one among the twenty feature films to be presented at Cannes Classics, as part of the Official Selection.
Based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore about a lonely housewife, the film features Soumitra Chatterjee, Madhabi Mukherjee and Shailen Mukherjee. It won Satyajit Ray a Silver Bear for Best Director at Berlin international film festival in 1965.
Cannes Classics was created in 2004 to present old films and masterpieces from cinematographic history that have been carefully restored. It is also a way to pay tribute to the essential work being down by copyrightholders, film libraries, production companies and national archives throughout the world.
This year’s programme of Cannes Classics is made up of twenty feature-length films and three documentaries.
Restored Prints
Borom Sarret (1963, 20’) by Ousmane Sembène
Charulata (Charluta: The Lonely Wife) (1964, 1:57) by Satyajit Ray
Cleopatra (1963, 4:03) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz...
- 4/30/2013
- by NewsDesk
- DearCinema.com
There are too many great movies playing at Cannes to catch everything. Now they’ve just announced their Classics series. Restored Prints Borom Sarret (1963, 20’) by Ousmane Sembène Charulata (Charluta: The...
- 4/29/2013
- by Sasha Stone
- AwardsDaily.com
The 2013 Cannes Film Festival lineup continues to grow, today with the announcement of the films playing in the Cannes Classics selection as well as the titles playing on the beach at night as part of the Cinema de la Plage selection. It was already announced Kim Novak would be in attendance to present the restored version of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, but the restorations that will be screening don't end there. In addition to Vertigo a restored print of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Cleopatra will screen along with restorations of Billy Wilder's Fedora, Yasujir? Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon, Hal Ashby's The Last Detail starring Jack Nicholson and a 3-D conversion of Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor. Additional notable names include films from Alain Resnais, Marco Ferreri, Chris Marker and Rene Clement. In addition to those titles a special presentation of Jean Cocteau's La Belle et La Bete...
- 4/29/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
The Cannes Film Festival today announced the 23 film screening in the tenth edition of its Cannes Classics sidebar, which screens restored films that the festival deems essential to the history of the medium. Highlights include Satyajit Ray's "Charulata: The Lonely Wife," Bernardo Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor 3D," and Billy Wilder's "Fedora." The festival previously announced that Kim Novak will present a new restoration of Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo." The full Cannes Classics lineup can be found below. Restored Prints Borom Sarret (1963, 20’) by Ousmane Sembène Charulata (Charluta: The Lonely Wife) (1964, 1:57) by Satyajit Ray Cleopatra (1963, 4:03) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz Fedora (1978, 1:50) by Billy Wilder Goha (1957, 1:18) by Jacques Baratier Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959, 1:32) by Alain Resnais Il Deserto Dei Tartari (The Desert Of Tartars) (1976, 2:20) by Valerio Zurlini La Grande Abbuffata (La Grande Bouffe) (1973, 2h05) de Marco Ferreri La Reine Margot (1994, 2:39)...
- 4/29/2013
- by Indiewire Staff
- Indiewire
If you’re not already familiar with Al Jazeera English’s film programme, The Fabulous Picture Show, which you can catch online after episodes have aired, then I’d recommend it for its diverse coverage of independent film from around the world where both new and hot and established talent are exposed and explored.
Although the excerpt below was taken from an episode featuring Cary Fukunaga, director of the socio-political thriller Sin Nombre, the first part of the show has an interview with actor/producer Danny Glover, highlighting his political activism, from the documentary Soundtrack For A Revolution, which I’ve written about here before, and including his support for Hugo Chavez – who later went on to pledge funding for Glover to make a film about 18th century Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Overture – and the role of music and film in shaping fights for freedom. He also speaks about his...
Although the excerpt below was taken from an episode featuring Cary Fukunaga, director of the socio-political thriller Sin Nombre, the first part of the show has an interview with actor/producer Danny Glover, highlighting his political activism, from the documentary Soundtrack For A Revolution, which I’ve written about here before, and including his support for Hugo Chavez – who later went on to pledge funding for Glover to make a film about 18th century Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Overture – and the role of music and film in shaping fights for freedom. He also speaks about his...
- 12/11/2009
- by MsWOO
- ShadowAndAct
By Michael Atkinson
The seminal will behind everything that matters about sub-Saharan African cinema, and at the same time the world's most guileless filmmaker, Ousmane Sembene was virtually a one-man continental film culture for 40 years, establishing the cinematic syntax and priorities for an entire section of mankind, and its relationship with movies. From the first mini-feature, "Borom Sarret" (1964) to the last, vibrant, polemical film "Moolaadé" (2004), Sembene's work aches with sociopolitical austerity . as an artist, he's virtually style-free, almost unprofessional, but possessed of a voice as clear and uncomplicated as sunlight. Primal, unsophisticated experiences, the films are simple but never simplistic, lowbrow but unsensational, fastidiously realistic and yet unconcerned with sustaining illusion. His filmography is more or less divided between cool, undramatic autopsies on post-colonial norms and folly (1966's "Black Girl," 1968's "Mandabi," 1974's "Xala") and demi-epics of colonial horror (1971's Emitai, 1977's "Ceddo," 1987's "Camp de Thiaroye"). The slow burn,...
The seminal will behind everything that matters about sub-Saharan African cinema, and at the same time the world's most guileless filmmaker, Ousmane Sembene was virtually a one-man continental film culture for 40 years, establishing the cinematic syntax and priorities for an entire section of mankind, and its relationship with movies. From the first mini-feature, "Borom Sarret" (1964) to the last, vibrant, polemical film "Moolaadé" (2004), Sembene's work aches with sociopolitical austerity . as an artist, he's virtually style-free, almost unprofessional, but possessed of a voice as clear and uncomplicated as sunlight. Primal, unsophisticated experiences, the films are simple but never simplistic, lowbrow but unsensational, fastidiously realistic and yet unconcerned with sustaining illusion. His filmography is more or less divided between cool, undramatic autopsies on post-colonial norms and folly (1966's "Black Girl," 1968's "Mandabi," 1974's "Xala") and demi-epics of colonial horror (1971's Emitai, 1977's "Ceddo," 1987's "Camp de Thiaroye"). The slow burn,...
- 3/25/2008
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
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