Blog Posts for Christopher Bernard

A Sample Story From My New Collection

Christopher Bernard — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 18:05:10 -0700

The Man Who Talked to the Sea He stands by the hour on the edge of the beach, staring at the sea. He stands near the water’s edge, in the roar of the breaking waves, his eyes scanning the horizon or focused on a single point, or gazing at a cloud. He sometimes paces up and down the little patch of beach, his eyes still ...

Tulpan

Christopher Bernard — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 13:13:35 -0700

Tulpan, directed by Sergey Dvortsevoy, is a peculiar and delightful thing: a romantic comedy set in the steppes of Central Asia. Bound by a semi-arid plain of scrub nubbed with yurts like sleeping beetles on a vast desolate counterpane, the story follows the hopeless courting of a young Kazakh just discharged from the Russian navy. Asa is in need of a wife before he will be given a flock of ...

Traumraum, a new play in San Francisco

Christopher Bernard — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:59:40 -0700

Traumraum Written and directed by Ahmed El-Gasseir Performed at the Mission Cultural Center, May 15-17, in San Francisco Traumraum (German for “dream room”) is a philosophical entertainment – and I only hope there’ll be many more from Theatre Anomaly, the spirited company that produced it and states that its goal is to make “new dance theatre works inspired by great essays on ...

Chaturanga at the San Francisco International Film Festival

Christopher Bernard — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:56:32 -0700

Chaturanga (Four Chapters), based on a novella by the early 20th century Bengali writer Rabindrinath Tagore, often translated under the title “Quartet,” tells the story of a series of spiritual crises of a young Bengali Hindu, beginning with his rejection of the religious traditions of his family in favor of an Enlightenment rationalism promoted by his Westernized uncle. A deeply inspiring, ...

My Suicide at the San Francisco International Film Festival

Christopher Bernard — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:52:50 -0700

My Suicide is a dark, no-holds-barred comedy (or “dramedy,” to use the fashionable, and apposite, term) that explores contemporary teen angst with considerable insight into the labyrinthine hell of modern youth indentured to a high-tech world, both freed and imprisoned by it. The film screened recently at the SFIFF as part of its Cinema by the Bay. Brilliantly directed and ...

35 Shots of Rum at the San Francisco International Film Festival

Christopher Bernard — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:17:13 -0700

The new film by French director Claire Denis (best known in this country for such films as Chocolat, I Can’t Sleep and Beau Travail) is a work of that casual skill attained by only the most accomplished, in the service of a candid and probing and clear-eyed love, of the director for her characters and (sometimes less clear-eyed) of her characters for each other. It screened recently at the ...

Hansel and Gretel at the San Francisco International Film Festival

Christopher Bernard — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:14:30 -0700

Never has the phrase “the little monsters” to describe the sweet little kids playing in the next room been taken more literally. The South Korean director Yim Phil-Sung’s updating of the Grimm brothers’ fairytale, this time reversing the roles of children and witch, was screened at the current SFIFF as part of its “Late Show” series of playful horror films, shown near midnight ...

Adoration at the San Francisco International Film Festival

Christopher Bernard — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:11:50 -0700

Adoration, the challenging, teasing, smart new film by Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan, received its American premiere on April 25 at the San Francisco International Film Festival. The film is a cunningly made construct of Egoyan’s trademark non-chronological style, shattered pieces of time reflected, refracted, recollected and reorganized into ever-shifting shapes and deepening ambiguities of ...

Venus

Christopher Bernard — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:26:55 -0800

in the evening, a nail of silver

or ice

Kindling

Christopher Bernard — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 12:24:12 -0800

It will pass, and so it should.
The flame requires so much wood
to burn and warm and brighten here –
where you eat and laugh and sleep,
the fire glistens in your eyes,
illumines your lips, and then it dies.
If only I could flame for longer
than it takes to burn this wood:
a life, a body, time, heart, mind.
But only if I pass along
the flame to your eyes, your mind,
and kindle in your ...