The Engine

LUCAS CRANACH THE ELDER at the ROYAL ACADEMY Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553), an exceptional Late Medieval artist, typifies his era rather than foreshadowing the next as Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) did. Cranach's depiction of Melancholia , clearly strongly influenced or derived from Durer's famous work is essentially medieval in its association of melancholy with sin, witches, Satan, whereas Durer's work, a humanist masterpiece, associates melancholy with the progressive forces of intellectualism and creativity. Most of the works, besides the portraits, are consumed by religious references which clearly reflect the worldview of Cranach’s wealthy patrons. Late Medieval Franconia (Northern Bavaria) wasn't essentially as enlightened as Italy and the Medici in Florence had been, for instance. This is at odds with Harry Lime’s view of Renaissance Italy, for in The Third Man Lime contrasts the creatively productive turbulence of Italy with 500 years of peace in Switze...

FDA Magazine Screening Invite COUSCOUS (LA GRAINE ET LE MULET) (CERT TBC) A film by Abdellatif Kechiche Special Jury Prize Best Actress (Hafsia Herzi) - Venice Film Festival 2007 WINNER – Best Film, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay & Best Female Newcomer for Hafsia Herzi – CESARS AWARDS 2008 WINNER Abdellatif Kechiche - Prix Louis Delluc 2007 London Film Festival 2007 Starring Hafsia Herzi, Habib Boufares, Faridah Benkhetache, Abdelhamid Aktouche The FDA Magazine Press Show of LA GRAINE ET LA MULET will be held: On Tuesday 25 March 2008 at 6.00pm for 6.30pm at The Hospital, 24 Endell Street , London WC2H 9HQ Germany, France / 2007 / 115 Mins / In French with English Subtitles / Colour / 1:1.85 / DOLBY SR UK RELEASE DATE: 20 June 2008 Opening at selected West End Venues and selected cinemas nationwide An Artificial Eye Release Images are available on image.net For further information please contact: press@artificial-...

The Last Mistress (Une vieille Maitresse), 2007, dir Catherine Breillat, with Asia Argento, Fu’ad Ait Attou, Roxanne Mesquida. Adapted from the novel by Jules Barbey Taken from the Les Liasons Dangereuse era rather than the subsequent Madame Bovary  one, Une vieille Maitresse takes as its subject a male predicament: marry the woman you hate, retain the woman you love as a mistress. (it seems, in fact that the novel is a 19th century retrospective of the 18th century, the mores certainly seem to belong to a pre-feminist era.) That’s a bit stereotypical and this film will certainly please men, even if it is by a feminist. The subject of the film is not so much infidelity or adultery but pornography itself. The director is poised to ask the audience: is this pornography I am making, am I, a committed feminist, a pornographer, what indeed is the difference between pornography and the genuinely erotic? For the reviewer this seems a stunning non-question which should be self-evid...

You, the Living , (2007) dir Roy Andersson You, the Living is a beautiful series of filmed vignettes, arrayed in a variety of pastel hues which are exquisitely matched to the decor. This film is poignant, sometimes tragic, but also funny and askew. Many of the images, such as the scene where a voyeur is watching a man attempting to bang the ceiling to alert a brass player about his noise level, are onion-shaped. Each layer peels back to another horizon. An old man wheeling his zimmerframe pulls a whelping puppy behind him while some cooks look on. In another vignette a table cloth is pulled off to reveal a pair of swastikas in black polished mahogany, but the old and expensive crockery crashes onto the floor. Behind the facade dwells a darker, sinister history, but nothing is made to pull this into any overall coherence. There's a distinct Nordic quality, (of course, the film was made in Sweden) lemon yellow light, sombre shadows, amongst all those pastel blues, yellows an...