On the Path

Luna and Amar are an engaged, secular Muslim couple in Sarajevo. Their relationship is under strain thanks to Amar’s drinking and their problems conceiving a child. Amar takes a job miles from home, in a community of conservative Wahhabis. 

Jasmila Zbanic, the director of On the Path, joins Amanda Palmer and the FPS audience for a Q&A

When Luna visits Amar at this idyllic lakeside setting, where men and veiled women live in strict segregation, she discovers that he has stopped drinking – and, to Luna’s dismay, embraced the Wahhabi lifestyle.

Luna and Amar are at a crossroads, and have to face some big questions: What happens to a couple when only one of them suddenly adopts a strict religious discipline that brings their previous life to a close?

And can they continue along the path they were heading?

Jasmila Zbanic, the director of On the Path, joins Amanda Palmer, Al Jazeera’s head of entertainment, and the FPS audience for an often contentious Q&A about her hot-button new film.

James Franco x 2

James Franco in 127 Hours

With a method-acting intensity and hungry intelligence that recalls the likes of James Dean, James Franco has become one of today’s most watchable leading men – and he will be the co-host of the 2011 Academy Awards.

FPS takes a look at two excellent new films with Franco at the centre.

Howl, by multi-award-winning documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, is a hybrid that defies classification, combining animation, dramatic re-enactment and verbatim readings to tell the story of a landmark obscenity trial that enshrined Howl, by Alan Ginsberg, as the signature poem of America’s 1950s Beat Generation. 

Franco portrays Ginsberg, as the film tells the story of Ginsberg and Howl, and summons a time and place when a post-war generation was finding its own voice while pushing against the establishment. 

Franco, Epstein and Friedman talk to FPS about this unique approach to a man and his art.

Franco is also very much front-and-centre in the latest film by Danny Boyle, the filmmaker behind such hi-NRG gems as Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting, and 28 Days Later. Boyle has established himself as the UK’s most exciting filmmaker – one who can craft a thrilling film about pretty much any subject. 

So it should not be too surprising that he has delivered one of the year’s most breathtaking films about a young man who spends the majority of its running time with his arm trapped under a rock.

James Franco plays Aron Ralston, the real-life inspiration for 127 Hours. Approaching fatal dehydration, Ralston had to face the harrowing necessity of hacking off his arm with a dull pen-knife. 

Danny Boyle talks to FPS about working with Franco, and the advantages of structuring a feature film around an ultra-faithful recreation of a true-life story.

Frederick Wiseman

Frederick Wiseman speaks to FPS  about his career

During the 1960s, an important new movement swept the world of the feature documentary: cinéma vérité, or “truthful cinema”.

Leading the charge were D.A. Pennebaker, Albert & David Maysles, and Frederick Wiseman.

All have continued to provide inspiration for modern-day documentarians. 

In this FPS, we speak to Wiseman – widely admired for his intimate looks at US institutions, large and small – and look back at his career, from the ground-breaking, banned-for-25-years, fly-on-the-wall inside a hospital for the criminally insane, Titicut Follies (1967), to his latest, Boxing Gym.     

This episode of The Fabulous Picture Show can be seen from Thursday, December 9, 2010, at the following times GMT: Thursday: 0630, 1430; Friday: 0300; Saturday: 0830, 1630; Sunday: 0130, 1230, 2330; Tuesday: 1930; Wednesday: 0030, 0730.