Rocks (Movie)

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares159 Views

    How ‘Rocks’ Made Stars of Its Schoolgirl Cast

    by

    By casting first-time actors, the film tells a story rarely seen onscreen: what growing up is like for British women of color.LONDON — Bukky Bakray never thought acting was a real possibility for her. So she’s struggling to get her head around winning a BAFTA — the British equivalent of an Oscar — for her first role.“It’s kind of unbelievable,” Bakray, 19, said in a video interview recently, searching for the words to describe her win for playing the titular character in the coming-of-age movie “Rocks.” “I just didn’t expect it at all.”“It still doesn’t really feel real to me,” said Bukky Bakray of winning the Rising Star Award at this year’s BAFTAs.BAFTA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt the BAFTA ceremony on April 10, Bakray took home the Rising Star Award and was also nominated in the leading actress category alongside the likes of Frances McDormand for “Nomadland” and Wunmi Mosaku for “His House.”Bakray said, “Sometimes when I look back at the pictures I’m like, ‘Did this actually happen?’”“I just feel really blessed,” she added.“Rocks” — which was the most-nominated film at this year’s BAFTAs — was released in Britain last fall to critical acclaim, and is now streaming on Netflix in the United States. The movie was shot in the summer of 2018, when Bakray was 15 and a student at a school in East London. Like most of the cast, she was discovered through open auditions and workshops at schools and youth clubs in the city.In the film, Bakray plays Olushola Joy Omotoso, known as Rocks, a 15-year-old British-Nigerian girl whose life is upended when her mother, who struggles with her mental health, disappears, leaving only an apology note and some cash. Rocks is left to care for her 7-year-old brother Emmanuel (D’angelou Osei Kissiedu), doing whatever she can to evade an intervention by the social services.“Rocks” is equal parts joyful and heart-rending: an ode to friendship and the beauty of girlhood, but also a deeply affecting exploration of how external forces can threaten the blossoming of those things.For many women who have been educated in London’s public school system, the scenes in Rocks’ East London school will feel deeply familiar and authentic. The girls dance and make up raps, and treat each other with a mix of impertinence and genuine love and care. In the school’s bathroom, we see Rocks’ best friend Sumaya, played by the British-Somali actress Kosar Ali, talk her through using a tampon for the first time.The director, Sarah Gavron, said in an interview that the idea for the film had started to emerge when she was traveling for her 2015 historical drama “Suffragette.” At screenings, she said, she heard young women connecting women’s suffrage to their own lives and concerns, piquing her interest in what contemporary girlhood was like. So she approached the producer Faye Ward with an idea: What if they made a film about girlhood and built it with the girls themselves?Having such an open-ended idea bred collaboration at all levels, Gavron said. “Everybody sort of fed into it because it was a bit like, ‘We don’t have a road map, how are we going to do this?’”The director Sarah Gavron, center, on the set of “Rocks” with, from left, Tawheda Begum, Afi Okaidja, Kosar Ali and Bukky Bakray.Charlotte Croft/AltitudeThe research process was kicked off by Lucy Pardee, the film’s casting director, who has built a reputation for discovering talent and who also won a BAFTA for her work on “Rocks.” She spent time sitting at the back of classrooms trying to glean the rhythms of teenagers’ lives, she said in an interview. It was during this phase that Gavron and Pardee first met Bakray.“We didn’t want to do that thing that lots of adults do, which is project our own memories and sense of what being a teenager was onto modern teenagers,” Pardee said in a video interview. “We wanted to get a sense of what their dramas were, what their lives were.”Open auditions were held to find the cast (Pardee and her associate Jessica Straker saw about 1,300 girls), while workshops were run with teenagers to help build the world and characters around the story that Theresa Ikoko, a British-Nigerian playwright, and Claire Wilson, a television writer, had in mind. Out of those processes, the main cast emerged.While the young actors don’t play themselves in “Rocks,” they were able to feed into the development of the characters. Ikoko brought the scene breakdowns to the actors and asked them to complete exercises, such as writing a diary for their character and deciding what their character’s favorite songs were. That information then informed the script.The actors’ essence was also a big part of the writing process, Ikoko said in an interview. She recalled speaking to Anastasia Dymitrow, who plays a character called Sabina, about her pride in identifying as Polish Gypsy. The comment was ultimately included in the film, when Dymitrow’s character talks about her grandparents and their imprisonment in Auschwitz.Referring to the process, Bakray said, “I’d never felt listened to like that before in my life,” recalling that a stray comment she had made about how she used to ritually buy a cake after school with a friend had ended up in a draft of the script. “It made you feel like you had something of substance to say,” she added.During the script’s development process, the actors’ own lives and backgrounds became part of their characters’ stories.Altitude“Rocks” is unusual even among Black British films, which are more likely to follow the narratives of young Black men.For many British women of color, the opportunity to see their lives and experiences reflected so accurately in film is extremely rare. Tobi Oredein, the founder of Black Ballad, an online platform for Black British women, wrote last year, “For the first time in my life, I saw a girl who looked similar to me and my friends as we ran around secondary school trying to figure friendships, education and life at large.”Ikoko — who hadn’t co-written a film before “Rocks” — credited Gavron and Ward for getting the movie made.“I wouldn’t have been able to make this film if I said ‘I want to make a film about being a young girl from Hackney,’” Ikoko said.“There needed to be a first, and the way the industry is set up, firsts have to happen when people like Sarah and Faye use their power and their privilege and share that and open those doors,” she added.When it came to shooting, the filmmakers were aware of practices or “invisible” training that could make it easier for the first-time actors. During preparation workshops, the girls were filmed so that they would become accustomed to being on camera, and the movie was shot in chronological order to help them to get into the story.There were a lot of scenes that required vulnerability, and the production gave the cast space to try and display those emotions.Bakray said that putting such feelings out in the open was tough. “Pre-shooting, we had a lot of conversations, because they were getting young women that were from backgrounds where we weren’t necessarily emotionally available, that’s not how we grew up,” she said.“We grew up to be strong,” she addedBakray likened her time on the film to an education. “‘Rocks’ was a university,” she said. “They weren’t just preparing us to act for ‘Rocks,’ but they were preparing us to act for the foreseeable.”For many British women of color, “Rocks” offered an extremely rare opportunity to see their lives and experiences reflected accurately in film.AltitudeThree years after “Rocks” was filmed, members of the production team are still taking an active interest in the careers of the young actors they helped put onscreen.Bakray, who spoke from Birmingham, where she is currently filming her next project, said she had work through the end of the year. She said she planned to go to drama school and has auditioned for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.“I feel like kids are sponges,” she said. “And these guys caught me at my prime sponge phase.” More

    More stories

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      Five International Movies to Stream Right Now

      by

      Take a cinematic trip around the world with these fine options.In the age of streaming, the earth is flat — screen-sized, with travel to faraway destinations only a monthly subscription and a click away. But sifting the wheat from the chaff can be hard with so many options, and harder still if you don’t know what to look for in the bounties of different national cinemas and film industries.So let me be your travel agent each month: I’ll journey through the world of streaming and choose the best new international movies for you to watch. This month’s picks take you to Britain, India, Algeria (by way of France), Japan and Spain (by way of Germany). If you feel intimidated by the foreign languages, remember the wise words of Bong Joon Ho, the Oscar-winning director of “Parasite”: “Once you overcome the one-inch tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”‘Rocks’Stream it on Netflix.We hear the boisterous teenage girls of “Rocks” before we see them. Their affectionate banter plays over the opening credits, which cut to a rooftop in London from which the girls gaze at the city’s skyline. A rousing, wonderfully specific film about a 15-year-old whose mother suddenly leaves, forcing her to fend for herself and her brother, “Rocks” uses voices, noises and languages to conjure up an absorbing portrait of Britain’s working-class immigrant community.Rocks (Bukky Bakray) is of Jamaican and Nigerian descent, and her friend group comprises diverse nationalities and ethnicities: Somali, Romany, Bangladeshi, white. The girls’ conversations grapple with their cultural differences while never losing the natural rhythms of adolescent chatter. When Rocks encounters speakers of other languages, their dialogue is unsubtitled, faithfully capturing the aural fabric of a cosmopolitan city where the familiar mixes with the unfamiliar.Most of the film’s young actors, including Bakray, are first-timers, but their ebullient performances convey multitudes: They switch effortlessly between rebellion, seriousness, and playfulness. Even as the director Sarah Gavron paints a wrenching portrait of abandonment and poverty, she makes no sweeping judgments about the film’s characters. Life, “Rocks” recognizes, can be messy and difficult, but the bonds of community can sustain us when all else fails.‘Eeb Allay Ooo!’Stream it on Netflix.In this clever satire from India, a rural youth newly arrived in Delhi lands a strange job: shooing away monkeys from the city’s grand government buildings by making shrill sounds. It might seem like a gag out of a Tim Burton film, but “Eeb Allay Ooo!” draws from real life — some supporting roles are even played by actual “monkey repellers,” experts at the guttural calls that give the film its onomatopoeic title.As one of these veterans warns our hero, Anjani (Shardul Bhardwaj), the job may seem like a lark but the stakes are high. The workers are caught between the demands of ruthless contractors, snooty bureaucrats, animal rights activists and Hindus who hold monkeys sacred. And as the director Prateek Vats emphasizes through bustling shots of Delhi’s thoroughfares, trains and cramped slums, Anjani is just one of many precarious migrants trying to eke out a living in an unsparing city.But what sets “Eeb Allay Ooo!” apart from run-of-the-mill poverty-porn dramas is the mix of comedy and rage it taps into. Though no good at monkey chasing, Anjani starts to find release in the performative aspects of the job, and the film’s serene tableaux of working-class life soon give way to pricklier evocations of working-class discontent. Bhardwaj nails his character’s outward spiral, giving it all in a frenzied denouement set within a religious procession.‘South Terminal’Stream it on Mubi.Time and space ripple like the ocean in “South Terminal,” directed by the Algerian-French filmmaker Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche. The plot suggests that we’re in Algeria sometime in the 1990s, in the midst of a bloody civil war. But the film’s cobblestoned streets and sun-dappled coastlines are from southern France, and glimpses of cellphones and new car models scramble the period setting. Ameur-Zaïmeche never resolves these anachronisms, instead crafting an intentionally abstract film that powerfully evokes the repetitions of history and the troubling universality of violence.Even the characters are nameless. The protagonist is simply “the doctor” (played with gruff vulnerability by the French comedian Ramzy Bedia), a surgeon who stays put even as those around him flee the country’s growing sectarian conflict and surveillance. His mulish commitment to his lifesaving work lands him in trouble when he is kidnapped and forced to treat a rebel leader, which makes him a target of the army.The film is violent and fast-paced, and yet curiously spare, with stripped-down sound and languorous moments of mundanity. Ameur-Zaïmeche captures the resilience of ordinary lives caught in the cross-fires of war, while scenes of military checkpoints and oceanic escapes point to resonances with the contemporary crises of migration.‘Any Crybabies Around?’Stream it on Netflix.The title of Takuma Sato’s film is the chant of the Namahage: folkloric ogres that visit houses on Japan’s Oga Peninsula every New Year’s Eve to playfully scare children and teach them good values. Tasuku (Taiga Nakano) is one of the young men who don monstrous masks and straw capes to enact this annual ritual — until, on one of his runs, he drunkenly embarrasses himself on live TV. (I won’t spoil how; it’s a masterful exercise in straight-faced cringe comedy.)“Any Crybabies Around?” picks up a couple of years later when Tasuku is living in Tokyo, estranged from his wife and child. But when he hears that they’re struggling to make ends meet, he returns to his hometown to reconnect with his family and win his way back into his daughter’s life.Crisscrossing folklore with the classic movie trope of a man-child, Sato crafts a thoughtful meditation on alienation and masculinity, and the delusions of male saviors. Nakano pulls off a difficult balancing act with the piteous, whimpering Tasuku, who nevertheless invites our empathy with his sincere hope for change. It’s the Namahage that finally offer him some salvation, and the scenes featuring them are some of the movie’s best: gorgeous choreographies of color and slow motion, set to haunting beats of woodblock and drums.‘For the Time Being’Stream it on Mubi.Larissa, a German woman, arrives with her 9-year-old twins at her husband’s family home in the Spanish Sierra Morena mountains, where her mother-in-law and sister-in-law live a quiet, secluded life. Her husband is supposed to join them soon, but when his flight is delayed, the three women and two kids bide their time, waiting for his arrival.This is the entirety of what might be described as “plot” in Salka Tiziana’s “For the Time Being,” an atmospheric, slow-burning feature that turns uneventfulness into something thrilling. Larissa (Melanie Straub) and her in-laws communicate awkwardly across a language barrier, while the boys (Jon and Ole Bader) explore the lush outdoors with curiosity. The film’s growing sense of intrigue derives from sensory stimuli rather than narrative. Nearby wildfires make the air shimmer, and strange explosions from a military test punctuate the passing time. As days go by with no news of the father, Tiziana fills the characters’ uneasy limbo with thick, intoxicating natural sounds (whooshing winds, chirping cicadas) while alternating between drone shots and crackling, 16-millimeter images of the sun-faded landscape. It’s a lovely film to watch while at home during the pandemic, both for its transporting shots of the mountains and its charged depiction of stillness and anticipation. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Television

      What’s on TV This Week: ‘Hemingway’ and ‘The People v. the Klan’

      by

      Lynn Novick and Ken Burns revisit the life of Ernest Hemingway on PBS. And a documentary about a civil suit against the Ku Klux Klan airs on CNN.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, April 5-11. Details and times are subject to change.MondayHEMINGWAY 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Lynn Novick and Ken Burns look back at the life of Ernest Hemingway in this new three-part documentary, which airs over three consecutive nights beginning on Monday. The program aims to give an evenhanded assessment of Hemingway’s life and legacy, recognizing the uglier elements (racism and anti-Semitism) while paying tribute to his work. The result is a documentary that is “cleareyed about its subject and emotional about his legacy,” James Poniewozik wrote in his review for The New York Times. “It celebrates his gifts, catalogs his flaws (which included using racist language in his correspondence) and chronicles his decline with the tragic relentlessness its subject would give to the death of a bull in the ring.”TuesdayFOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (1994) 10 p.m. on TCM. The director Mike Newell and the screenwriter Richard Curtis worked together on this classic British romantic comedy, about two people (played by Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell) whose love develops in fits and starts. It is, Janet Maslin wrote in her review for The Times, “elegant, festive and very, very funny.”WednesdayEXTERMINATE ALL THE BRUTES 9 p.m. on HBO. Raoul Peck (“I Am Not Your Negro”) blends archival footage, clips from Hollywood movies, scripted scenes and animation into a rumination on the history of European colonialism and American slavery in this new four-part series. The first two parts air on Wednesday at 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.; the second two air on Thursday night at the same times.ThursdayDiane Keaton and Al Pacino in “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.”Paramount PicturesMARIO PUZO’S THE GODFATHER, CODA: THE DEATH OF MICHAEL CORLEONE (1990) 6:45 p.m. on Showtime. Should “The Godfather, Coda,” be considered a 1990 release, or a 2020 one? It’s both, really. This re-edited version of the “The Godfather Part III,” released last year, is more than a standard extended director’s cut: Revisiting the film three decades after its original release, the director Francis Ford Coppola tweaked the opening. And the ending. And a lot of material in between, too. The changes are meant to sharpen a trilogy-capping movie that never managed the kind of acclaim that the original “Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II” did. Coppola had originally envisioned the film as “a summing-up and an interpretation of the first two movies, rather than a third movie,” he said in an interview with The Times last year. He had never wanted to use the “Part III” label in the first place. The title, he explained, “was the thread hanging out of the sock that annoyed me, so that led me to pull on the thread.”FridayDOING THE MOST WITH PHOEBE ROBINSON 11 p.m. on Comedy Central. The comedian Phoebe Robinson, known to many as one of the erstwhile co-hosts of the podcast “Two Dope Queens,” is on her own in hosting this new comedy series. Well, sort of: Each episode finds Robinson spending time with a different famous face. She goes horseback riding with the comic Whitney Cummings. She meets Kevin Bacon at a ropes course. The first season also includes appearances from the fashion designer Tan France, the model Ashley Graham, the comedian Hasan Minhaj, the actress Gabrielle Union and several other guests.AMERICAN MASTERS — OLIVER SACKS: HIS OWN LIFE (2021) 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Ken Burns and Lynn Novick are on PBS earlier this week with their new documentary, “Hemingway,” but on Friday night Burns’s younger brother, Ric Burns, gets a turn in the director’s chair. He’s the filmmaker behind this feature-length documentary, which profiles the neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, whose many explorations of the mind turned him into a best-selling author. Burns explores the life of Sacks, who died in 2015 at 82, through a “deftly edited mix of archival footage, still imagery, talking-head interviews and in-the-moment narrative,” Glenn Kenny wrote in his review for The Times. Kenny added that, “while the movie steers around the details of how post-fame Sacks became something of a brand, it beautifully presents a portrait of his compassion and bravery.”SaturdaySidney Flanigan in “Never Rarely Sometimes Always.”Focus FeaturesNEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS (2020) 5:45 p.m. on HBO Signature. A young woman takes a long journey to get an abortion in this latest movie from the filmmaker Eliza Hittman. The story follows Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), a 17-year-old who gets on a bus to New York City after being told that she needs parental permission to obtain an abortion in her home state, Pennsylvania. She’s accompanied by a cousin, Skylar (Talia Ryder), who helps her jump over the many hurdles along the way. The result is a film that “tells a seldom-told story about abortion,” Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times. It does so, Dargis added, “without cant, speeches, inflamed emotions and — most powerfully — without apology.” She included it on her list of the 10 best movies of 2020.SundayBeulah Mae Donald, as seen in “The People v. the Klan.”CNNTHE PEOPLE V. THE KLAN 9 p.m. on CNN. After her son Michael Donald was killed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1981, Beulah Mae Donald successfully sued the hate group for $7 million, in what became a groundbreaking case. Her push for justice is at the heart of this four-part documentary series, which looks back at work by civil rights activists to dismantle the Klan’s power in the 20th century. The program ties those activists’ work to modern movements for justice.2021 BAFTA AWARDS 8 p.m. on BBC America. Chloé Zhao’s Oscars front-runner, “Nomadland,” and the British coming-of-age film “Rocks,” from the filmmaker Sarah Gavron, are the two most-nominated films at this year’s EE British Academy Film Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars. They lead a notably diverse slate of nominees, which comes after BAFTA’s voting rules were overhauled to address criticism of last year’s ceremony, when no people of color were nominated in the main acting categories and no women were nominated for best director. More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      BAFTA Nominations: ‘Nomadland’ and ‘Rocks’ Lead Diverse List

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Nomadland’ and ‘Rocks’ Lead Diverse BAFTA NominationsBut the nominees include many independent films, after BAFTA overhauled its voting processes to rectify all-white, all-male shortlists.Frances McDormand in “Nomadland,” which won the award for best motion picture, drama, at the Golden Globes in February.Credit…Courtesy Of Searchlight Pictures/Searchlight Pictures, via Associated PressMarch 9, 2021Updated 12:56 p.m. ETLONDON — “Nomadland,” Chloé Zhao’s drama about a middle-aged woman who travels across the United States in a van seeking itinerant work, scored the biggest number of high-profile nominations for this year’s EE British Academy Film Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars.On Tuesday, the film, which stars Frances McDormand and won the Golden Globe for best drama in February, picked up seven nominations for the awards, commonly known as the BAFTAs.It will compete for best film against “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” “Promising Young Woman,” “The Father” and “The Mauritanian.”The best-film nominees are almost the same as the titles that competed for best drama at this year’s Golden Globes. (Only “Mank,” David Fincher’s revisiting of “Citizen Kane,” is missing, replaced by “The Mauritanian.”) But in the talent categories for this year’s BAFTAs, the nominees are more diverse than the Golden Globe lists. Many come from low-budget, independent films, such as “Rocks,” a British coming-of-age tale about a Black teenager in London, that also received seven nominations. This appears to be the result of a recent overhaul of BAFTA’s voting rules to increase the diversity of the nominees after recent criticism. Last year, no people of color were nominated in the BAFTAs’ main acting categories, and no women were nominated for best director. Those omissions prompted a social media furor and criticism from the stage at the award ceremony. “I think that we sent a very clear message to people of color that you’re not welcome here,” Joaquin Phoenix said when accepting the best-actor award for his performance in “Joker.”BAFTA required all of its 7,000 voting members to undergo unconscious bias training before voting on this year’s nominees, as well as requiring them to watch a selection of 15 films to stretch the range of titles viewed. Among dozens of other changes to the voting procedures to increase the diversity of the nominees, they were selected for the first time from “longlists” prepared by BAFTA, with the input of specialist juries.In contrast to the male-skewed nominee lists of previous years, four of the best-director nominees announced on Tuesday are women; four of the six nominees in both leading actor categories are people of color. In the best-director category, for example, Chloé Zhao has been nominated for “Nomadland” and will compete against Lee Isaac Chung for “Minari”; Sarah Gavron for “Rocks”; Shannon Murphy for “Babyteeth”; Jasmila Zbanic for “Quo Vadis, Aida?” a retelling of a massacre in the Bosnian War of the 1990s; and Thomas Vinterberg for “Another Round,” a dark comedy about Danish attitudes to alcohol.In the best-actress category, Frances McDormand, the star of “Nomadland,” will compete against Radha Blank for her role in “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” Wunmi Mosaku for the horror film “His House,” and Bukky Bakray, the teenage star of “Rocks.” That list includes fewer recognizable star names than previous years: Rosamund Pike and Andra Day, who won the main actress awards at this year’s Golden Globes, are missing.Pippa Harris, BAFTA’s deputy chair, said in a video interview that the most important change that shaped this year’s nominations was the requirement that voters watch more films than usual, rather than letting them simply see those with the most buzz from other awards or marketing campaigns. “Time and again, people have emailed in, written in, phoned in to say that made a massive difference, and they watched films they would never have come to normally, and found work they absolutely loved,” she said. Movie awards are generally dominated by five or six highly touted films, said Marc Samuelson, the chair of BAFTA’s film committee, in the same interview. “If we’re disrupting that a bit, it’s a good thing,” he added.Some 258 films were submitted for consideration for this year’s awards, and they were watched over 150,000 times on a viewing portal created specifically for voters, he said.This year’s winners will be announced on April 11 at a ceremony in London. Samuelson would not explain how the event will be held, but he said it would conform with Britain’s coronavirus rules. Indoor events are not allowed in England until May 17 at the earliest. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is scheduled next Monday to announce nominations for this year’s Oscars.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More