Jesi Khadivi
Jesi Khadivi writes on art, dance and film. She lives in Berlin.
BERLINALE 2O1O
By Jesi KhadiviThe thick ice lining Potsdamer Platz has long melted, but festival-goers’ experiences on the notoriously treacherous Berlin streets reflected the general consensus about the films screened at the 60th Berlinale: some did beautifully, some faltered, and others fell flat on their ass.
Crying Over Broken Eggs
By Jesi KhadiviKnown for his glacially paced, emotionally violent films, Michael Haneke has become one of contemporary cinema’s most loathed and feted directors. The Austrian takes on issues that many viewers would prefer to ignore—violence, class difference, power, guilt and sado-masochism.
Let the Punishment Begin
By Jesi KhadiviIf 2006 was the year of Werner Herzog, then 2007 belongs to Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
Which One Betrays?
By Jesi KhadiviLe Doulos begins with a statement central to the unyielding world of noir ethics, “One must choose. Die…or lie.” Director Jean-Pierre Melville immerses us in the action from the get-go and, as is his style, explains nothing.
DVD Culture
In One Word: Emotion
By Jesi KhadiviPierrot Le Fou opens with a lengthy voice-over explanation of Velasquez narrated over shots of a tennis game and a man leafing through paperbacks in an outdoor Parisian bookshop. Cut to the same man sitting in a bathtub with a cigarette dangling from his lips reading an art history text aloud to a pig-tailed child. Describing Velasquez’s paintings, he tells his daughter, “a spirit of nostalgia prevails, yet we see none of the ugliness or sadness, none of the gloom or cruelty of this crushed childhood.”
DVD Culture
Les Enfants Terribles (1950)
By Jesi KhadiviRealism and fantasy collide in Les Enfants Terribles, the 1950 collaboration between celebrated directors Jean Cocteau and Jean Pierre Melville.
DVD Culture
Everybody Gets Screwed
By Jesi KhadiviThis good old-fashioned melodrama explores political corruption, sexual coercion, poverty, religious fundamentalism and the deep-rooted melancholia at the core of contemporary Egyptian life.
