Lukas Agelastos film blog

The Secrets in Their Eyes/ El secreto de sus ojos (2009) film review by Lukas Agelastos.     Juan José Campanella's film is set in 1974. It is about a male legal counsellor (Ricardo Darín) and his female supervisor, a law clerk (Soledad Villamil), as they examine a rape and assassination case, while also following the protagonists 25 years later as they remember the case and uncover the concealed passion between them.      While I usually make a point of discussing politics, there is too much of Argentine political backstory here about the aftermath of the 1976-83 military dictatorship, a time of ferocious political violence known as the Dirty War, which I am not sufficiently acquainted with and which has already been amply discussed elsewhere, such as  David Hanley's 2016 essay in OffScreen . Also, according to  The Guardian's  Ben Bollig's 2010 article , for example, the film is an "attempt to cope with Argentina's past of unsolved crime d...

Layla M. (2016) film review  by Lukas Agelastos, 12 December 2020. Layla M. is about a teenage Muslim girl growing up in Amsterdam who becomes radicalised. Layla is smart but stubborn like many kids her age- and of fiery Moroccan background. She has a hard time with the increasing suspicion towards girls with headscarves and boys with beards that she witnesses every day. While her disappointment grows, her faith increases. Layla connects with a group of Muslims who fight for their religious views. Layla starts posting flyers and films online depicting atrocities committed against Muslims. She also becomes interested in the charismatic Abdel. When her brother, who has more moderate views than her, and she are arrested by the police, Layla resolves to leave home. She decides to marry Abdel and leave for Belgium to raise money and awareness for their cause and to start an adventure. After they narrowly dodge a raid by the police on a group of jihadists, they flee to the Middle East, w...

More on Directing Actors -  a guest post by Jay Jay Last month, I wrote an article about directing actors in a realist film . Interestingly, my fellow Raindancer , Jay Jay, posted this long reply on our closed Facebook group, which I thought was worth making into a guest blog post in its own right.

Directing actors in a realist film  by Lukas Agelastos I am intrigued by watching “slice of life” dramas, as this naturalism makes me identify with the protagonists. Like Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, in my films, I want to give ordinary people depth to unfold their stories. For example, Loach’s marginalised but jovial characters resonate with the people I met in Scotland as a student in my teens and twenties, and Leigh’s three-dimensional personalities make me think about the way we deal with each other. Leigh wants the viewer to come away from a film “reflecting on the way we live from various points of view” (Leigh in MacGregor 2011). But as a film director interested in doing Social Realism films, how do you direct actors? This was a question that I constantly worried about when I was moving from documentary to fiction film. This article deals with the research I did prior to embarking on my own journey into directing actors while studying towards the MA Film at Raindance ....

Structuring a Social Realism screenplay  by Lukas Agelastos In this article, I am looking at a concentration of the ideas and thoughts I drew from experts and professionals on screenplay structure. I am attempting to offset the lack of texts on Social Realism screenplay structure by discussing some concepts that seem to be relevant to the sub-genre. I will discuss how structure applies to "art cinema" and Social Realism. “Structure is the prime element of a film or television script. But while the importance of structure is clear, the interpretation is often less so” (Miller 1984). According to McKee (2014), the purpose of structure is to yield progressively building pressures that compel characters into more and more difficult dilemmas where they must make more and more difficult risk-taking actions and choices, slowly revealing their true natures, even down to the unconscious self. "It is because narrative structures bend time to human will that we delight in th...

Social Realism films - a quick definition  by Lukas Agelastos Both Samantha Lay (2002) and David Forrest (2009 & 2013), the authors of the most important texts on British Social Realism, acknowledge the impact of documentary film on the genre. In order to define it, Lay lists the following features: It aims to show the effects of environmental factors on the development of character by showing the interrelation between location and identity (Hallam and Marshment in Lay 2002). They are texts which explore controversial issues in a society, especially in crisis or conflict (Lowenstein in Lay 2002).

Where do I start?  By Lukas Agelastos Before I start writing a screenplay, I need to come up with an idea first. Inspiration, research, and coming up with a premise are part of that. Collaborative writing with a screenwriter can also help in instances when I want to come up with new angles for a project, a completely fresh idea, or when I simply need the feelings of team play and accountability to bring a project forward. This post is from the perspective of writing a screenplay in the genre of Social Realism. While I mention Mike Leigh in this article, he isn't a great example of a screenwriter since most of his films are developed through months of improvisations with his actors rather than based on a script. But that's the topic of another article on this blog.

Ken Loach and Social Realism films  by Lukas Agelastos      My conviction is that every person should be born into equal opportunities. Social Realism films exhibit a socially conscious perspective while at the same time remaining accessible to mainstream audiences.   I first watched Ken Loach films because of my love for Scotland. I am very fond of what I perceive to be the positive traits of their mentality: the humbleness, the humour, the hospitality, the genuine friendliness and the way people are not brought up to be the centre of the universe.      I was astonished by how realistically life in Glasgow and surrounding areas was depicted in Ae Fond Kiss (2004), My Name is Joe (1998), Sweet Sixteen (2002) and more recently, The Angels’ Share (2012). The images of poverty, the realness of the humour, the language, and the way the films are shot are “real”.

One of my all-time favourites  by Lukas Agelastos "For a long time, I thought I would love to be able to find a string to put on a lot of the childhood experiences that I remember"  (Stephen King talking about his novella that became Stand By Me in Walking the Tracks, 2000). Rob Reiner's classic adaptation of Stephen King's 1982 novella "The Body" is 30 years old this year. I was only ten when I first saw it in the cinema in 1987. It is the story about four boys on an expedition to locate the body of a missing child and to many film fans "the most iconic coming-of-age story ever put to film" (Mentel 2016). Like for many of my peers at the time, the impression it created on me was so lasting that it is still one of my favourite stories. I won't argue that it's one of the best films ever made, but it's certainly one of the most engrossing and enjoyable ones.

Some Key Concepts of Film Language  by Lukas Agelastos Casablanca (1942) Film is difficult to explain because it is easy to understand. The semiotics of film is easy to explain because it is difficult to understand (Monaco 2009). How does film manage to communicate meaning? While we can instinctively recognise meanings that are conveyed through film, the study of semiotics can help us analyse them further. In his book "How To Read A Film" (2009), James Monaco refers to certain key concepts that are important to the study of the language of film. I have tried to condense these concepts and find some illuminating examples for them in order to understand them better myself. Signs The Swiss linguist and semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure defined a sign as being composed of: the signifier - the form which the sign takes; and the signified - the concept it represents. Example: the word 'Open' (when it is meaningful to someone who encounters it ...