Kaleem Aftab
@kaleem.bsky.social
Film Producer, Programmer, Critic amd Presenter. Cinema in One Take Podcast host and Substack. Anything and Everything Movies
Why has Elom Musk really gone to war with Christopher Nolan?
Christopher Nolan Made The Odyssey. Elon Musk Made the Controversy.
Nolan built sets, found locations, cast actors and took risks. Musk attached his AI product to the same news cycle with a single post. Here is what that tells us about the business he is running
open.substack.com
A film festival removed Nadav Lapid because of a boycott of Israeli Film Funding. Despite him making films against his own government. France just promised to protect filmmakers facing that kind of pressure. Will it protect all of them? open.substack.com/pub/cinemain...
Who Will the CNC Protect?
France’s CNC says it will support filmmakers facing pressure on freedom of expression. The test is whether it protects only the artists France is comfortable defending or the difficult cases to
open.substack.com
Steven Spielberg's God Problem Every Spielberg film is about the same thing: whether God survived the modern world. E.T. is a resurrection story. In Jaws, the man who faces the universe alone dies. The man who clings to love and family survives.
Nietzsche declared God dead in 1882. Spielberg has spent fifty years politely disagreeing. Disclosure Day is where his argument finally shows its limits. open.substack.com/pub/cinemain...
Steven Spielberg and the God That Science Cannot Kill
Spielberg's alien epic Disclosure Day promises to reckon with God and science. But the big arguments are undermined by his now familiar retreat into childhood wonder.
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The cultural boycott of Israel exists for real reasons. But in Marseille, it silenced one of the loudest Israeil voices against his own government. That is not a victory. That's a gift to people we are supposed to be fighting open.substack.com/pub/cinemain...
Nobody Passes the Test
At FIDMarseille, the boycott of Nadav Lapid exposed the impossible tests now applied to artists — passport, politics, funding — and the collateral damage they leave behind.
open.substack.com
Heading back home from The Busan Film Festival where I met many great filmmakers attended the Asian star awards and am continually amazed by the desire to celebrate movies, even when the mood is deflated by low box office numbers and changes in the management team. But the movie machine rolls on
