Trás-os-Montes filled the Portuguese cinema houses3 with the caterwaul of a young shepherd boy. Panning across the mountain region of northeast Portugal, the first of the film’s three shepherds herds us brashly, with furrowed brow, into the corral of the film’s life. We first see a young boy turn back to witness many scenes, our comprehension can prove unclear, but once we are reminded there is a boy who has turned to stop and look back, an overwhelming understanding of…

Toute leçon de géographie devrait être soit préparée, soit complétée par une étude sur le terrain, par une leçon-promenade.
-Jean Brunhes

If film projection will continue to be limited at the going rate, we will lose work like La Vallée close and the principles it builds the film upon. While this is still a tremendous film not only digitally but in the visually compromised file available via piracy, there are aesthetic brilliancies at play here that are lost. This is…

Always something new and unexpected. A window becomes a mirror, which, without the oppression of knowing the camera is there shows a subject in different rhythm. Cut back to Rousseau and he is locked between shadows and tight close-ups. His movements are at times robotic and precise between perspectives, and at other times just romantic and silly. A change of shirt becomes a huge leap in time in this short span, which is made more whimsical than supernatural because of…

Lots that this liberal Zionist film does that is insulting to the subject, but I'll keep it brief because when one sees the film they are so thoroughly beaten with cliche and lack of learning that it grows tiresome.

Exhibit A: If the Zionist (he comes out and stands by two-stateism in the movie!) editor of the film does not trust you to feel emotional about the maimed and killed people of this film, so much so that he feels…