Film-maker Paul Schrader accused of sexually assaulting personal assistant

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Writer and director behind Taxi Driver and American Gigolo accused by former employee in lawsuit Paul Schrader , the writer of Taxi Driver and director of American Gigolo, has been accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting his former personal assistant, firing her when she wouldn’t acquiesce to advances and reneging on a settlement that was meant to keep the allegations confidential. The former assistant, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, sued the filmmaker and his production company on Thursday. She is seeking a judge’s order to enforce the agreement after Schrader said he couldn’t go through with it. The terms, including a monetary payment, were not disclosed. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/0oE8qGa via IFTTT
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Dreaming an Island review – an eerie tour of planet Earth’s depopulated future

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This documentary about a small Japanese island, a once thriving mining outpost that now has only 100 residents, lightens its existential concerns with a focus on human connection

In his second full-length documentary, Swiss director Andrea Pellerani gives us a guided tour of what a post-industrial, post-growth, or even an eerily post-human future might look like. We are on the south-western Japanese island of Ikeshima. Once a thriving mining outpost that was home to 8,000 people, since the facility’s closure in 2001 it has been reduced to just 100 mostly elderly holdouts. As the residents fish the grey sea off abandoned wharves, inspect pregnant cats and loiter around derelict lots, there is a sense they inhabit the set of a long-shuttered stage play, and are awaiting new lines.

Though it begins with long tracking shots of greenery choking empty apartment blocks, Dreaming an Island isn’t exactly ruin porn. Pellerani is more interested in the vestiges of human activity, and milks a distinct absurdity from the stalwart locals. One collects “fun” beach flotsam, there are guides waiting rather optimistically for an upswing in coal-mining tourism, while Ikeshima’s sole restaurateur hopes for a customer. “Is there anything interesting to see?” asks one who finally turns up. “In what sense interesting?” she replies.

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