By 
By Roger Costa
BOBBI JENE
As she turns 30, Bobbi, a prolific Israeli dancer member of Batsheva Dance Company, decides to leave behind everything she had accomplish in her home country, career, friends, connections, mentors, family and partner, in order to pursue her own choreographic skills in the USA. There’s an immediate relationship developed with the audience and the main subject, as director Elvira Lind in-depth study of the artist’s personality and eagerness, allows us to participate in most intimate and private moments of her journey. The film starts with the announcement, capturing the reactions around her, and as preparations for her departure ensues, she must resolve important things, such as finishing the season with Batsheva, finding the right reasons to say goodbye, and most crucial, figuring out a way to maintain a long distance relationship with her beloved, creative and patriotic dancer-boyfriend. Then, it follows her abroad witnessing her perseverance and ambition as she struggles to get her work out, a scandalous solo piece where she performs a real orgasm on top of a sandbag. With remarkable sensibility, honesty and accuracy, Lind extracts from Bobbi, truthful aspects of youth desires, anxieties, and the revolutionary influence of art in one’s behavior and lifetime decisions. Winner of 3 Top Awards at this year’s Tribeca including Best Documentary, it’s an accomplished feminine portrait of an equally fierce artist and her emotionally-charged trajectory for authenticity. (An Oscilloscope Laboratories Release. Opens Friday, September 22nd at Quad Cinema NYC.)
THIRST STREET
Love is a strong force that moves us in unexpected ways and actions. After the suicide of her lover, flight-attendant Gina escapes to Paris where some friends arrange for her to find distractions such as a bon-vivant bartender. He promises to give her a “fantastic night” and turns out Gina falls head over heels for the womanizer, attentive and gentle Frenchman. They experience an intense sexual connection as well as a fun-packed, crowded nightlife and Gina drastically decides to fix residence in Paris and changes her job for serving whiskeys at the nightclub. Lindsay Burdge is phenomenal as the naive, fragile and enchanting Gina, a woman who insists on being blind by love, and sees herself in a gradually transformation as consequences of her ingenious, uncontrollable heart speed. Its depiction of bohemian life, shot in blazing neon lights comes with an unprecedented jaw-dropping twist, analyzing sexual pleasures, friendship and co-dependence. Filled with sharp, ironically modern humor and hidden observations on the controlling power of love, director Nathan Silver’s fable-burlesque-style, kitsch and strangely poetic comedy, makes a fabulous statement on the freedom of loving. (A Samuel Goldwyn Films Release. Now Playing at Quad Cinema, NYC.)
ELIZABETH BLUE
Award-winner Queens-born Director Vincent Sabella’s intensely dramatic first feature film goes deep inside the head of our protagonist to portrait her traumatic experience dealing with strange effects of a mental illness recovery. Structured as a mysterious psychological thriller, Elizabeth (magnificently performed by Anna Schafer) comes back home to a devoted fiancée, and as they plan their wedding and future, a series of disturbing visions and voices emerge as obstacles interfering in her attempts to overcome the mental dysfunction. Sabella charts both romantic overviews and personal conflicts with preciseness and coherence, as he curiously examines such a polemic material. He also creates a passionate love story capturing the convincingly beautiful chemistry between Elizabeth and lovebird Grant (Ryan Vincent). Anna’s long perplexed eyes and absorbing control of trauma is intensified with the arrival of veteran actress Kathleen Quinlan, stealing the scene as her mother. They savagely expose secrets, troubles and insults, throwing revelations at each other’s, in one of the film’s most striking moments. (A Global Digital Releasing Release. Opens Friday, September 22nd at Cinema Village, NYC.)
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