Bombay Beach On DVD
Lyrical, striking, quirky, charming and eccentric; video artist and photographer Alma Har’el’s debut feature BOMBAY BEACH is a tender, often funny and sometimes heartbreaking portrait of the idiosyncratic residents of California’s Salton Sea.
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The rusting relic of a failed 1950s development boom, the Salton Sea is a barren Californian landscape often seen as a symbol of the failure of the American Dream. A sea in the middle of the Colorado desert. First-time director Alma Har’el visits this poetically fruitful terrain in her distinctive documentary Bombay Beach, and finds there a motley cast including a bipolar seven-year-old, a lovelorn high school football star, and an octogenarian poet-prophet. Together they make up a triptych of American manhood in its decisive moments, populating the Salton Sea’s land of thwarted opportunity.
True to her roots as a photographer, video artist, and music video director, Har’el crafts here an adamantly atypical and artistically innovative film—a dreamlike poem that sets the personal stories of these distinctive yet familiar characters to a stylized amalgam of observational documentary and choreographed dance, with music by Beirut and Bob Dylan, all cast against the atmospheric scenery of the titular ghost town. The result is a moving and surreal documentary experience—an evocative, symbolic portrait of rural America and its inhabitants. Winner of the Tribeca film festival doc competition.
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Film of the Week - The Most extraordinary documentary
" —BBC Film 2012
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A truly delightful film infused with a strange charm and moments of visual poetry.
" —The Sunday Mirror
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An eerily compelling documentary about lost souls in a lost place
" —The Guardian
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Some inspired moments of magical realism, with one scene involving a child, a fire engine and a Bob Dylan tune that’ll make your spine tingle
" —The Mirror
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This elegiac dance of a documentary is worth seeking out
" —The Times
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Quirky, moving and unique, it’s a haunting bedside view of the place the American Dream went to die.
" —Total Film
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Emits a rare and powerful hold, making it quite unforgettable
" —Empire Magazine
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The crisp, artful photography, often drenched in rich magic-hour sunlight, is simply breathtaking.
" —Time Out London
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Finds an uplifting beauty through dreamlike choreographed danced scenes
" —Little White Lies
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Har’el’s brings her experience to bear on a documentary style that adds a new dimension to the form
" —The Arts Desk
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A beautiful film, with crepuscular lighting Terrence Malick could envy.
" —List Magazine
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Alma Har’el's magical and poetical film Bombay Beach is an enchanting documentary hybrid
" —Screen
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Har'el finds a way for people who are not dancers to express themselves physically
" —LA Times
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A mosaic that evokes the three ages of man in a postapocalyptic America
" —NY Times
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Wonderful, remarkable and irresistible way of presenting strange truth through hyperreal execution
" —IndieWIRE
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Alongside beautiful cinematography is an exceptional soundtrack
" —I-D Magazine
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Bombay Beach and the allure of the ghost town
— The Guardian
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Gilbey on Film: Truth and lies
— New Statesman
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Film Weekly podcast: Bombay Beach director Alma Har'el, and the week's best movies reviewed
— The Guardian
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Interview - Alma Har'el
— Phil on Film
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Bombay Beach Film Interview
— View London
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Bombay Beach: Feature film debut
— Ideas Tap
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Interview with Bombay Beach Director Alma Har’El
— The DFG
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Awards
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Best Feature Documentary
Tribeca Dilm Festival 2011
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Best Editing
Woodstock Film Festival 2011
— The GWF Team