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Posted: 2018-06-09 14:15:00

ESSENTIAL KAURISMAKI

(acmi.net.au). Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Thursday 14 June to Sunday 1 July.

The career of Aki Kaurismaki has gone through multiple phases, with the Finnish filmmaker in recent years proving to be Europe's most astute chronicler of community's reckoning with asylum seekers at an intimate level. His many eras – yes, Leningrad Cowboys Go America gets a guernsey –- are covered in this 10-film retrospective, curated by David Stratton, which includes 1990's The Match Factory Girl (★★★☆, 15+, 68 minutes). One of Kaurismaki's sparsest, most unaffected works, it's the story of Iris (Kati Outinen) a young woman whose acceptance of her cruelly dismal life begins to throb as a breaking point builds. Kaurismaki is unyielding in his depiction of emotional neglect and economic exploitation, but he does not apply the easy salve of sympathy. This is one of the works that drew Kaurismaki comparisons to Robert Bresson, but it was more for the austere style than the possibility of spiritual transcendence. With its cold, inexplicable certainties, the movie now looks ahead of its time.

FOOD FIGHTER ★★★
M, 86 minutes. Village Cinemas Rivoli, Geelong, and Bendigo, Saturday June 16, Sunday 17, and Wednesday 20

A self-described "accidental activist", Ronni Kahn works to make sure that surplus food gets to hungry people instead of adding to landfill. According to this brisk, bullish documentary about the South-African-born and Sydney-based charity boss and advocate, one third of all food produced in the world goes to waste, a figure that should be morally and economically untenable. Dan Goldberg's film is tied to Kahn's cheerfully indomitable personality – it has her engaging spark and dedication. But at points it gets so swept up in Kahn's mission, which takes her from boardrooms to an international quest for support, that it doesn't fully examine its subject. "I don't take no for an answer," she cheerfully says, but there's not enough seen of that side of her. A return to South Africa, a country she left in 1988 because she objected to apartheid but didn't fight it, offers some illumination, but the Australian Story-like aesthetic always swings back to quick summations – with plugs for supportive politicians – and a restating of her mission.

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