An early Téo Hernandez film exploring the space of a garden. Shot in July 1970 in the Carlsberg Glyptotek garden in Copenhagen, Pause is a 8 mm black‑and‑white silent short in which Téo Hernández roams the museum garden, alternating tight close‑ups of bodies (hands, feet, faces) and textures with sculptures and vegetation; the camera’s halting, scanning movement turns the stroll into a study of matter, framing and rhythm. Featuring Michel Nedjar, Léon Pizano and Sheena Mark, the film dispenses with narration and treats the garden’s statuary and foliage as anchors for a tactile observation of bodies in space.
In Saudi Arabia, a little girl (Wadjda) is told she can't have a bike because she's a girl. Wadjda struggles to obtain a bicycle to race her friend, Abdullah, due to the gender inequality and cultural norms of Saudi Arabia.
The repeated actions, the blood on the petals, the rustling under the floor…An ambient short horror film takes us into another realm.
These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.
Given Hollywood's history of racism and financial motivations, how much progress can we expect? Plus: a list of excellent films by Black directors.
Mai yells what every parent dreads hearing from their child: “tao ghét mày” (“I hate you”) and runs from the scene, where Hai discovers that Mai was telling the truth about the wallet.
