Subversion is a new group show of Arabic art taking place at Cornerhouse in Manchester from 14 April – 5 June 2012. It’ll feature work by eleven emerging and established artists including Marwa Arsanios, Sherif El-Azma, Wafaa Bilal, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Khaled Hafez, Larissa Sansour, Tarzan and Arab, […]
New Cinephilia: toward a retro-maniacal future?
By Celluloid Liberation Front. ‘One can look forward to future contests, their outcome by no means predetermined, since problems that seem insurmountable today will yield to the more complex intelligence of children still playing ball in the parks of the world.’ (Amos Vogel, 1974.) The following (confused) thoughts and many […]
The Cabin in the Woods (2011): A SXSW Review
By Jacob Mertens. Stop me if you have heard this story before: a group of teenagers head to a remote cabin in the woods, trading pithy comedic dialogue as a menacing score drifts in and out. The men and women on screen are young, carefree, and about die increasingly gruesome […]
The Adventures of Tintin (essay collection): Call For Papers
Abstracts are now being accepted for possible inclusion in an anthology on “The Adventures of Tintin.” Proposed essay topics should creatively engage with the critical, philosophical, and social issues explored in the Tintin universe and intended to appeal to the intelligent lay reader. Possible topics include, but are not limited […]
Chronicle (2012)
By Steven Harrison Gibbs. “With great power there must also come — great responsibility.” This maxim, first delivered via narration in Marvel Comics’ Amazing Fantasy #15 (the August, 1962 issue in which Spider-Man made his debut), is perhaps the most widely recognized quote in comic book history. For half a […]
The Grey (2012)
By Jacob Mertens. In the beginning of the poem “Dante’s Inferno,” Dante finds himself in a dark wood, disorientated, grasping for an understanding of his surroundings. Within this grim setting, the poet conjures a primordial chaos, in which Dante’s last impressions of life follow him into the death. In much […]
‘We Need to Talk about Kevin’ or The Devil is a Woman
By Christopher Sharrett. I find Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk about Kevin to be among the more vexing films I have recently seen. It is a notable contribution to the domestic melodrama, at a time when the genre is besieged by “dramedies” about families with problems that aren’t problems […]
What Separates Us from ‘A Separation’
By Celluloid Liberation Front. ‘Their universe of discourse is populated by self-validating hypotheses which, incessantly and monopolistically repeated, become hypnotic definitions or dictations.’ (Herbert Marcuse) The cinema of the Middle East is often stereotypically seen under the restrictive frame of ‘realism’. Euro-American audiences tend to associate formal experimentation with Western […]
Film International 55: The Romanian New Wave – special issue out soon
The New Romanian Cinema between the tragic and the ironic The Death of Mr Lăzărescu (the second film by Cristi Puiu), is without a doubt the paradigmatic, even programmatic work of the Romanian New Wave. With its austere classical aesthetics, it separates radically the past of Romanian auteur cinema – […]
Call for Entries
The French Cinema Project ‘Portraits d’artistes’ is currently seeking scholars willing to offer bibliographical entries both literary and personal on French actors/actresses (1000 words maximum) for a future publication. If you are interested in contributing please email: michael.abecassis AT mod-langs.ox.ac.uk. If you have suggestions for other actors/actresses we would be […]