Harry Cepka
About Harry Cepka
Harry Cepka is a writer and filmmaker. He likes arty movies, comedy, philosophy and rap music. He would like to meet you.
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Last entries by Harry Cepka
  • 15 May 2013
    Memories, Past and Future: Chris Marker gets a mini retrospective at TIFF Bell Lightbox
    April 26 marked the opening of Chris Marker: Memory of a Certain Time, an exhibition of the legendary French filmmaker’s photographs. To accompany the exhibition, TIFF Bell Lightbox is throwing Remembrance of Things to Come, a mini retrospective of Marker’s films, which includes classics such as La Jetée and Sans...
    Archived in Articles Issue 4 Volume 5: May 2013 LGBT Cinema Issue Archive RSS TIFF Programming
  • 03 May 2013
    Review: Kon-Tiki
    In the age of Google Maps and computer nano calculations, it sounds quaint for a scientist to drift across the ocean on a wooden raft to prove a hypothesis. Only 66 years ago, however, a Norwegian explorer named Thor Heyerdahl built such a raft, named it Kon-Tiki, and cruised from...
    Archived in Major Theatrical Reviews RSS
  • 01 May 2013
    Hot Docs Review: Eufrosina’s Revolution
    Eufrosina’s Revolution is set in the impoverished Mexican state of Oaxaca, where many indigenous communities have scarcely been touched by modernity. Supposedly considered autonomous, these communities suffer from isolation as well as a backward legal and political anomaly: women cannot vote. In towns where poverty has been longstanding and feels...
    Archived in Festivals Hot Docs Hot Docs 2013 RSS
  • 26 Apr 2013
    Hot Docs Review: The Defector: Escape from North Korea
    Now that Kim Jong-un has disappointed the world by continuing his late father’s crushing leadership, it becomes tempting to write North Korea off as a lost cause. But its citizens don’t feel that way. Every year, defectors escape North Korea by surreptitiously crossing the border into eastern China. China, however,...
    Archived in Festivals Hot Docs Hot Docs 2013 RSS
  • 25 Apr 2013
    Hot Docs Review: Before the Revolution
    Before its Islamic revolution, Iran made friends with an unlikely neighbour. In the days of the Shah, Israel was not a hated enemy but a trade partner. Israel supplied guns and civic infrastructure to Iran, which traded oil in return. Today, when Israel is utterly convinced Iran wants to send...
    Archived in Festivals Hot Docs Hot Docs 2013 RSS
  • 24 Apr 2013
    Hot Docs Review: Last Woman Standing
    I duck out on the Olympics. Every two years, I fold my arms exaggeratedly and avoid watching what I see as pointless competition and world chauvinism. So naturally I did not know that humble, bronze-loving Canada houses the two greatest female boxers in the world. Last Woman Standing chronicles this...
    Archived in Festivals Hot Docs Hot Docs 2013 RSS
  • 15 Apr 2013
    Proposing a Canadian Queen of Versailles
    Last year’s sensational American documentary A Queen of Versailles felt like a reality TV era wink at Citizen Kane. The premises match nicely: a disgustingly rich American businessman builds himself a palatial estate in Florida. Similar ingredients: a lot of ambition, self-mythologizing, American super-sizing. A handful of decades later, things...
    Archived in Blog Writer Blogs
  • 12 Apr 2013
    Review: Like Someone in Love
    Mr. Watanabe, an elderly widowed sociology professor, orders a prostitute. A while later, a beautiful young lady named Akiko shows up at his apartment. Mr. Watanabe fancies himself a gentleman; he has prepared the regional soup of Akiko’s hometown and eagerly offers her a glass of wine. Although Watanabe’s intentions...
    Archived in Independent & Repertory Reviews RSS
  • 12 Apr 2013
    Review: The Place Beyond the Pines
    Ryan Gosling has sacrificed himself to his own heart-throbby blankness. Reprising a doppelganger version of his role in Drive, Gosling opens The Place Beyond the Pines in leather jacket and bleached blonde hair. Luke is his name, and stunt motorcycling is his game. When Luke finds out that he made...
    Archived in Major Theatrical Reviews RSS
  • 08 Apr 2013
    Cinefranco Review: L’affaire Dumont
    On an evening when Michel Dumont swears he was playing cards, Danielle Lechasseur claims she was violently sexually assaulted. Out of nowhere, Dumont, a quiet, mullet-rocking delivery man, is accused of rape. Dumont’s already precarious life – crazy ex-wife, crappy job, two kids – gets torn apart. From the get-go,...
    Archived in Festivals Other Festivals RSS2
  • 03 Apr 2013
    Barbara Hammer: Queer politics and abstract experiments come together for The Free Screen
    Barbara Hammer’s coming to town. Though not a household name, Hammer has carved herself a potentially immortal niche in cinema as a pioneer lesbian experimental filmmaker. Such a mouthful of a title, however, doesn’t do justice to Hammer’s totally diverse oeuvre: topic and styles range from abstract film exercises to...
    Archived in Articles RSS TIFF Programming
  • 02 Apr 2013
    Meet the TFS Writers: Harry Cepka
    When my dad showed me Jan Svankmajer’s Faust at the tender age of nine, I think he messed me up. Svankmajer, a legendary Czech director, makes surreal, creepy, stop-motion animated art films. Faust is the story of a man who sells his soul to Mephistopheles in order to, what, learn...
    Archived in Articles Meet the TFS Writers RSS
  • 05 Mar 2013
    Human Rights Watch Review: The Patience Stone
    To many Westerners, the burqa – a garment some Muslim women wear – holds an unsettling power. Covering the face and the body, the burqa can suggest oppression, misogyny, extremism. But I think that another word umbrellas all of these words: mystery. The Patience Stone, by Afghani expat and novelist-filmmaker...
    Archived in Festivals Other Festivals
  • 04 Mar 2013
    TIFF Bell Lightbox does the eighties, Japanese-style
    We should all see more Japanese films – and TIFF Bell Lightbox’s massive Spotlight on Japan series of programmes makes this easy.  A few years ago, my brother broadly introduced me to Asian cinema. We watched violent Korean action movies like Old Boy, Chinese tragedies such as Farewell My Concubine....
    Archived in Articles TIFF Programming
  • 27 Feb 2013
    Human Rights Watch Review: Camp 14 – Total Control Zone
    Just about the worst life you can imagine has been lived by Shin Dong-Huyk. Born into Camp 14, a North Korean labour camp for political prisoners, Shin began slave labour at age six. He starved constantly, suffered daily beatings and feared death at any moment. Those who live in Camp...
    Archived in Festivals Other Festivals
  • 26 Feb 2013
    Human Rights Watch Review: Putin’s Kiss
    Don’t expect to see any soft caresses from Russia’s strong-armed leader in this political documentary. Screening as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Putin’s Kiss portrays a Russia where political naysayers get beat up and intimidated. We follow Masha, a young woman and devoted member of a political...
    Archived in Festivals Other Festivals
  • 11 Jan 2013
    Review: Zero Dark Thirty
    Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film, recreates Osama Bin Laden’s ten-year manhunt. We watch CIA agent Maya (Jessica Chastain) defy her superiors and give up sleep in her obsessive quest to pin down Bin Laden’s whereabouts. This mission involves espionage in Pakistan, satellite surveillance, phone tapping””and torture. Although we...
    Archived in Major Theatrical Reviews
  • 04 Jan 2013
    Review: Promised Land
    Promised Land is a Little Guys vs The Corporation story. Steve Butler (Matt Damon), a natural gas salesman, tries to make good with the locals of a small town so that Global, his corporate employer, can drill the gas reserves out from underneath their feet. A seasoned pro, Butler expects...
    Archived in Major Theatrical Reviews
  • 13 Dec 2012
    TIFF gets Victorian with Dickens on Screen
    What the Dickens! It’s Christmas time, which means that cheesy and beloved Christmas film classics will be commandeering basic cable for the next few weeks. If you still have a TV, you might find yourself plopped in front of the boob tube with a glass of hot Nesquik cocoa, mindlessly...
    Archived in Articles TIFF Programming
  • 07 Dec 2012
    Review: Last Chance
    Last Chance, a documentary by Paul-Émile d’Entremont, follows five people from different parts of the world who identify as LGBT and are as seeking asylum in Canada. In their escape from oppressive and intolerant communities, these five people have chosen Canada as a safe haven. Through extensive interviews, Last Chance...
    Archived in Independent & Repertory Reviews
Last Comments by Harry Cepka

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