Pick of the week
On Sundays the editors of Film International recommend articles, freely available online, that we’ve enjoyed or found informative during the week. Initials stand for: JB (Joy Britt), KH (Krista Henderson), DL (Daniel Lindvall), PL (Pelle Linnertz), LP (Liza Palmer).
November 25, 2012
Celluloid Liberation Front, ‘Bond Age: 50 Years of a Very (Submissive) English Hero’, Notebook, November 20. (DL)
September 23, 2012
Patricio Guzmán, ‘What I owe to Chris Marker’, British Film Institute, September 18. (DL)
September 9, 2012
‘Autopocalypse Now’, Vadim Rizov on ‘Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s state-of-Detroit portrait Detropia‘, GreenCine Daily, September 5. (DL)
September 2, 2012
Jeff Sparrow on Clint Eastwood’s performance at the Republican convention, ‘Eastwooding: Dirty Harry and Rightwing Populism’, Overland, September 1. (DL)
‘The Antagonist: On Lillian Hellman’, Victor Navasky reviews Alice Kessler Harris’ Hellman biography, A Difficult Woman, The Nation, August 28. (DL)
August 19, 2012
Film International contributor Wheeler Winston Dixon on his days as ‘part of a group of filmmakers who created films out of almost nothing at all’ in 1960s New York: ‘On The Value of “Worthless” Endeavor’, College Hill Review, No. 8, Summer 2012. (DL)
July 22, 2012
The first ever edition of Nisimazine, official publication of Nisi Masa – Network of Young European Cinema, offers a comprehensive coverage of the East of the West Competition at the 47th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, edited by Giovanni Vimercati of the Celluloid Liberation Front. (LP)
July 15, 2012
Our regular festival reporter Gary M. Kramer lets us know where he’ll be at QFest in Philadelphia Gay News. (LP)
July 8, 2012
The title says it all: ‘Being an unemployed female graduate, as not seen in the movies’, Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in The Guardian, July 3. (DL)
Film International contributors Deirdre O’Neill and Mike Wayne of Inside Film brought Fred Engels to the stage with the Ragged Collective: ‘ENGELS SPARKS AT THE SALFORD ARTS THEATRE’. (DL)
June 17, 2012
Film International reviewer Chelsea Wayant is looking for help to finish post-production of her documentary, Strength and Beauty: Giving Ballerinas a Voice, a portrait of dancers at the North Carolina Dance Theatre in Charlotte. More about the project here. (LP)
Listen to what Slavoj Žižek has to say about The Avengers on CBC radio. (DL)
Nicolas Winding Refn, ‘My obsession with Andy Milligan’s cult horror movies: Why the notorious Drive director paid £16,000 on eBay to buy up Milligan’s films and bring them back to life’, The Guardian Film Blog, June 14. (DL)
Scott Jordan Harris, ‘Let’s drag film criticism out of the snark ages’, The Telegraph Blogs, June 13. (DL)
June 3, 2012
‘Cinema Asian America: Director Evans Chan Discusses “Sorceress of the New Piano”‘ – Director and Film International contributor Chan talks about his portait of avant-garde musician Margaret Leng Tan, XFINITY, May 26. (LP)
‘So That You Can Live: In Memory of Paul Willemen’: Adrian Martin, Lesley Stern, Martin McLoone and Michael Chanan pay tribute to ‘the brilliant and hugely influential film theorist, critic, programmer, historian and, above all, activist.’ Film Studies For Free, May 21. (DL)
475 Free Movies Online and much more at Open Culture. (DL)
May 20, 2012
David Bordwell presents Pandora’s Digital Box: Films, Files, and the Future of Movies. (LP)
Charles Bogle reviews Film International contributor Dan Callahan’s new book, Barbara Stanwyck: The Miracle Woman, at WSWS, May 18. (DL)
Inside Job director Charles Ferguson talks about his new book, Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America to Andrew Leonard, Salon, May 18. (DL)
Claire Black, ‘Interview: Ken Loach, director of The Angels’ Share’, The Scotsman, May 14: Loach, scriptwriter Paul Laverty and debut actor Paul Brannigan about their new film. (DL)
Greg Burris, ‘A Communist in the Woods: A Review of The Cabin in the Woods‘, Dissident Voice, April 28: ‘The Cabin in the Woods is not just subversive in terms of genre conventions. The film also demands to be read politically.’ (DL)
May 13, 2012
Tom Jennings, ‘The Poverty of Imagination’, Variant, issue 43, Spring 2012. (DL)
May 6, 2012
Benjamin B. Olshin on ‘Finding Solace in The Rockford Files’, Cynical Times, May 1. (DL)
April 29, 2012
Giovanni Vimercati of the Celluloid Liberation Front made his debut recently as Huffington Post blogger with a piece on ‘The Dangers of Breivik’s Madness’, April 20. (LP)
Woodcuttingfool: Journey of a Carving Enthusiast is the website of woodcutter and writer Loren. See Brando or Edward G. Robinson like you’ve never seen them before. (LP)
March 18, 2012
Our regular contributor Gary M. Kramer has recently talked to actors Ewan McGregor and Adrien Brody for Men’s Health, March 9 and 16. (LP)
March 11, 2012
‘Carancho – review’, Philip French on an interesting-sounding example of Argentinean noir in The Observer, March 4. (DL)
February 26, 2012
A dissenting and succinct take on The Artist: Choire Sicha, ‘Wait, Did People Really Think “The Artist” Was a Good Movie?’, The Awl, February 20. (DL)
February 19, 2012
‘[T]he sea is capitalism’s global trading floor writ large.’: Kalvin Henely reviews a new documentary by Allan Sekula and Noël Burch, The Forgotten Space, in Slant Magazine, February 12. (DL)
If you haven’t already, check out Film Studies For Free‘s ‘Open Access Film E-books List‘, currently containing 93 books from Kracauer, Leyda and Münsterberg to Musser and Bordwell. (DL)
February 12, 2012
David Walsh looks back at the career of ‘American actor Ben Gazzara (1930-2012)’ and particularly his work with director John Cassavetes, WSWS, February 9. (DL)
January 22, 2012
‘Q&A with The Room‘s TOMMY WISEAU: “Move on. Next question!”‘: our regular contributor Gary Kramer has talked to the cult director, Philadelphia City Paper, 19 January. (LP)
Undergraduates, submit your film-related research papers to Film Matters, next deadline February 1st. (LP)
January 15, 2012
Maryann O’Connor asks herself what the miners from Brassed Off would have thought of the new Thatcher movie: ‘What would Danny say to The Iron Lady?’, New Empress Magazine, January 6. (DL)
‘Criticwatch – The 2011 Whores of the Year’: eFilmCritic‘s annual list of ‘the worst that junketeer, TV-centric, faceless radio voices and members of the Broadcast Film Critics Association have to offer’ America. (DL)
January 8, 2012
‘Streep’s portrayal of grief and the loss of faculties is very powerful. The problem is that the grief and loss is being suffered by Margaret Thatcher.’ – Pat Stack, ‘The Iron Lady: Thatcher film misses the misery she dealt’, Socialist Worker, January 7. (DL)
Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist on an evening at NY’s Anthology Film Archives featuring the one and only Ken Jacobs and dedicated to Occupy Wall Street, ‘Occupy Wall Street in 3D!’. (DL)
January 1, 2012
Anthony Alessandrini reviews recent literature on Turkish cinema: ‘My Lonely and Beautiful Country: Recent Work on the Cinema of Turkey’, Jadaliyya, Part One and Part Two, December 26 and 30. (DL)
Michael Yates on a ‘ridiculously bad’ piece of reality television that nevertheless has something to say about the times we live in: ‘Fool’s Gold’, Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate: An Economist’s Travelogue. (DL)
David Walsh and Joanne Laurier pick the ‘Best films of 2011′ at WSWS, December 30. (DL)
December 25, 2011
The latest issue of Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination is a cinema special with articles on French militant filmmaking, Nollywood, Cannes and ‘The Missing Labor Class in Malayalam Cinema’ among other subjects. (DL)
FilmInt contributor Murray Pomerance on ‘Significant Cinema: The Scene of the Crime’ at Senses of Cinema, issue 61. (DL)
Raymond Deane, ‘Culture and the Right Hand of the State Lessons from Filmbase’s “Israeli Film Days”’ at Dissident Voice, December 20. (DL)
‘Many of [Hitchcock's] movies are built around class-struggle issues: without them, there would be no movie.’: Mervyn Nicholson, ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents Class Struggle’, from the December issue of Monthly Review. (DL)
November 20, 2011
Dave Riley on the one film Abraham Polonsky directed before being blacklisted, ‘(film noir) Force of Evil: “money has no moral opinions”‘, at LeftClick, September 26. (DL)
‘Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar‘ is ‘seemingly uncertain of (or perhaps shamefaced about) its central themes and, in the end, oddly apolitical’ writes Joanne Laurier in her review at WSWS, November 17. (DL)
November 13, 2011
Our regular contributor Gary Kramer has interviewed Charlotte Rampling for Slant Magazine, November 4. (LP)
‘Apocalypse, Now: What Are Filmmakers Trying To Tell Us?’, Oliver Skinner on the end-of-the-world movie trend in 2011 at indieWire, November 13. (DL)
November 6, 2011
Maria San Filippo on ‘A Cinema of Recession: Micro-budgeting, Micro-dramaI, and the “Mumblecore” Movement’, from CineAction 85. (DL)
FilmInt contributor Mike Wayne looks at the relationship between ‘The State, the media and politicians’, Counterfire, November 1. (DL)
October 30, 2011
Our regular festival reporter Gary Kramer has interviewed director Drake Doremus about his new film, Like Crazy, for Slant Magazine, October 26. (LP)
October 23, 2011
‘American International Pictures (AIP) cornered the market on teen exploitation films during the Sixties youth counterculture, so one asks how they got it all so wrong?’ – Christopher Sharrett on the ‘amazingly silly’ Riot on Sunset Strip at the website of Cineaste. (DL)
October 16, 2011
Zeitgeist Films, Intellect Ltd., and Film Matters are pleased to announce the Vision Frame Analysis Contest 2011, celebrating the release of Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen (2010). This contest is open to any undergraduate student, currently enrolled at an institution of higher learning (or set to graduate in spring 2011) worldwide and working towards a bachelor’s degree in any field. (LP)
October 2, 2011
‘All Motion Picture Power to the People’, Ed Rampell on The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 in the Hollywood Progressive, September 22. (LP)
‘Battling Bollywood: Bangladesh’s Seduction by Celluloid’, Binoy Kampmark looks at a majopr policy shift in Bangladeshi film politics, CounterPunch, September 28. (DL)
September 25, 2011
Discover the fantastic and growing collections of the Media History Digital Library. (LP)
Joe Allen on ‘The End of “Entourage”: The Hollywood Myth of Male Bonding’, CounterPunch, Weekend Edition, September 24-25. (DL)
Susan Abulhawa on Tears of Gaza, ‘a documentary film that should be watched by every American, to see how Israel spends our taxes’, Dissident Voice, September 19. (DL)
‘It’s a misanthropic, misogynistic, gratuitously offensive piece of crap. It’s a seminal transgressive masterpiece. It is what it is’: Mark Stafford looks at Cannibal Holocaust, now available in a new edition on DVD and Blu-ray, Electric Sheep, September 23. (DL)
Film Matters, our sister magazine celebrating the work of undergraduate film scholars, present their first online film review: Christian Caminiti of Grinnell College on Fish Tank. (LP)
September 18, 2011
Gary Kramer interviews Tom Tykwer in Slant Magazine, September 16. (LP)
September 11, 2011
E. Nina Rothe, ‘Olsson’s The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975: The Revolution Will Be Documented’: ‘one of those once-in-a-lifetime films which seamlessly reaches the full cinematic goal of changing its viewers’ world for good’, Huffington Post, September 8. (DL)
September 4, 2011
Our regular festival reporter Gary Kramer reviews a piece of ‘faith-based filmmaking’: ‘”Seven Days in Utopia”: Bland Christian film squanders Oscar-winning cast’ in Salon, August 31. (LP)
August 28, 2011
FINT contributor Scott Jordan-Harris on life and work with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: ‘A day in the life of: Scott Jordan-Harris’ on BBC’s The Ouch! Blog, August 23. (DL)
August 21, 2011
William Grimes, ‘Robert Breer, Pioneer of Avant-Garde Animation, Dies at 84′, The New York Times, August 17. (LP)
August 14, 2011
Matt Zoller Seitz on The Help, a film that ‘isn’t the story of beleaguered domestics standing up for themselves during a time of American apartheid’: ‘Why Hollywood keeps whitewashing the past’, Salon, August 12. (DL)
Joe Allen, ‘Lucy the Red: The Leftist Roots of Lucille Ball’, CounterPunch, Weekend Edition, August 12-14. (DL)
August 7, 2011
Keith Harmon Snow, four time Project Censored award winner, on ‘War, Hollywood, and the Saviors and Slaughterers of Freedom’, Dissident Voice, August 4. (DL)
Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist on Protektor — ‘…a kind of renaissance of Czech film after a long period of stagnation…’, August 6. (DL)
July 31, 2011
Steve Dollar, ‘Interview: Udo Kier’ (‘the single degree of separation between extreme European art cinema and Hollywood popcorn overdrive’), GreenCine Daily, July 30. (DL)
‘Bravery in Hiding [on LUMIÈRE D’ÉTÉ and LE CIEL EST À VOUS]‘, Jonathan Rosenbaum looks at two films directed by Jean Grémillon during the Nazi occupation. (And don’t miss our interview with Rosenbaum in our current issue!) (DL)
July 24, 2011
Jane Fonda, ‘The Truth About My Trip To Hanoi’, Jane Fonda Official Site, July 22. (DL)
July 17, 2011
Women and Film History International is a network of affiliated scholars, researchers, archivists, and film programmers, all dedicated to the study of women’s film history. (LP)
Saul Landau and Danny Glover, ‘Danny and Saul Visit Gerardo Again’, CounterPunch, Weekend Edition, July 15-17. (DL)
John Pilger, ‘The Strange Silencing of Liberal America’, Global Research, July 7. (DL)
July 10, 2011
Discover the ‘Production Art Database’ of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (LP)
Robert Fowler, ‘A comment on Peter Falk’s finest moments: Husbands and A Woman Under the Influence‘, WSWS, July 8. (DL)
Matt Singer, ‘Robert Sklar (1936-2011)’, a former student remembers Sklar, IFC News, July 4. (LP)
July 3, 2011
Our reviewer Mike Miley takes a literal look at ‘The Face of Cult’, Moving Image Source, June 27, 2011. (LP)
Our regular contributor Omar Kholeif writes about ‘Egypt’s revolutions on film’ in a column available on Sight & Sound‘s website. (DL)
An accountant’s list of ‘The 20 Best Movies About Money’, The Political Film Blog, published June 13, 2011. (DL)
‘Zombies, Like Punks, Have Been Sedated & Sold, Prepackaged As Pitiful Empty Signifiers’ thinks David Ensminger in Pop Matters, June 17, 2011. (DL)
June 26, 2011
Charlie Chaplin on colonialism and capitalism in previously unknown manuscript: ‘Charlie Chaplin’s first attempt at “talkie” is discovered’, The Guardian, June 22. (DL)
Film Matters announces a new partnership with staff and students in the film studies department at Queen Mary, University of London: Mapping Contemporary Cinema. (LP)
June 19, 2011
Call for papers from undergraduate film scholars, on the subject of film genre, for a special issue of Film Matters. Deadline 5 July. (LP)
June 12, 2011
John Sayles interviewed by The A.V. Club about his new epic novel, A Moment In The Sun, and his forthcoming film, Amigo, June 6. (DL)
Matthew Hays, ‘Winter Kept Us Warm‘, a Cineaste web exclusive about a unique low-budget gay love story made in 1965 by a 22-year-old Canadian college kid inspired by the French New Wave and now available on DVD. (DL)
June 5, 2011
Jeff Shannon takes a very personal look at HBO documentary How to Die in Oregon, Chicago Sun-Times, May 26. (DL)
Also in Chicago Sun-Times, June 1: Omer M. Mozaffar, ‘The rose that grew from concrete’, review of Tupac: Resurrection. (DL)
The joys of early Soviet cinema: Owen Hatherley, ‘Marx at the movies’, The Guardian, May 28. (DL)
Crooks as heroes: Charles Bogle, ‘HBO’s Too Big to Fail: Propaganda aimed at the US population’, WSWS, June 1. (DL)
May 29, 2011
Gary Kramer has interviewed one of the leading directors of the Romanian ‘New Wave’, Radu Muntean, for Slant Magazine, May 23. (DL)
Find out what a ‘scrapper’ is in this interview with filmmaker Stephan Wassmann by Noel Lawrence, published by Film Threat. (DL)
May 22, 2011
Zeitgeist Films, Intellect Ltd., and Film Matters are pleased to announce the Vision Frame Analysis Contest 2011, celebrating the release of Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen. This contest is open to any undergraduate student. (LP)
‘Robin Wood: A Tribute’. Seven articles by Wood, originally published between 1960 and 1983, made available online by Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism. (DL)
Playwright Wajahat Ali on the ambitions and frustrations of Terence Malick: ‘”Tree of Life:” Beautiful, Strange and Shallow – The Maddening Return of Terrence Malick’ in CounterPunch, May 17. (DL)
May 15, 2011
Tim Palmer talks to Peter Monaghan about his love of French cinema and his new book on the subject, Brutal Intimacy: Analyzing Contemporary French Cinema
FINT contributor Mike Wayne interviewed by Farooq Sulehria on the continued usefulness of Marxism for understanding the contemporary media landscape, Viewpoint Online, no. 50, May 13. (DL)
Classic 1977 interview with Robert Altman, originally published in Movietone News, now made available online by Parallax View, May 11. (DL)
May 8, 2011
Alfredo Guevara, director of the Cuban Film Institute 1959-1980, during the golden years of Cuban cinema, and then again during the difficult years 1991-2000, talks to journalism students at Havana University and answers their questions. (DL)
May 1, 2011
A fascinating look at ‘Dziga Vertov’s Storyboard for “Man with a Movie Camera”‘, posted by MUBI, 23 April, 2011. (LP)
The Classic TV History Blog takes an insightful look at the television work of Sidney Lumet. (DL)
‘The Heretic’ in Tablet: A New Read on Jewish Life. An interview with David Simon, creator of The Wire, published April 22, 2011. (DL)
Bertrand Tavernier, Death Watch, Glasgow: article and interview about the director’s forgotten sci fi cult classic recently published by Glasgow Film. (DL)
April 24, 2011
Stuart Klawans ‘consider[s] whether it might be a good thing that film has stopped being central to American life’: ‘Readjustments: On “Win Win”, “The Adjustment Bureau” and “My Perestroika”’ in The Nation, April 18, 2011. (DL)
World Socialist Website‘s obiturary of Sidney Lumet: ‘Sidney Lumet, director of 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon, dead at 86′, April 20, 2011. (DL)
Louis Proyect, ‘Looking Back At The Battle of Algiers‘ at Swans Commentary, to read alongside our review of Rachid Bouchareb’s Outside of the Law. (DL)
April 17, 2011
‘HBO: MILDRED PIERCE (2011)—The Evening Class Interview With Todd Haynes’, Michael Guillen has talked to director Haynes about the new miniseries version of a classic. (DL)
‘[T]he fact that certain British critics won’t engage with [Ken Loach's] films on an aesthetic level is testament to his self-control (and the stupidity of certain critics)’ says Julien Allen in his review of ROUTE IRISH in Reverse Shot, issue 28. (DL)
And also in Reverse Shot, issue 28, Matt Connolly criticises celebrated Oscar winner IN A BETTER WORLD, from a slightly different angle than the one we applied a couple of weeks back. (DL)
April 10, 2011
FINT writer Larry Portis on the murdered Palestinian film and theatre actor and director Juliano Mer-Khamis: ‘“My Name is Juliano”: The Sudden Death of Juliano Mer-Khamis’ on CounterPunch. (DL)
Programmer Brian Robinson looks at the history of the BFI London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, now threatened by budget cuts: ‘The pride and the passion: 25 years of the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival’ at the website of Sight & Sound. (DL)
Mike Leigh on theatre, cuts in arts funding and outsidership: ‘Mike Leigh: “Creativity is a life-blood for people”’ from The Observer, 10 April 2011. (DL)
April 3, 2011
Film anthropology: A look at what American conservatives like to watch and why, ‘The Best Conservative Movies’ (top 25 films) in National Review Online. (DL)
On Devil’s Island, Iceland and the cold war: Sean Schonherr, ‘Understanding the Socio-Political Background Behind Devil’s Island’, in Senses of Cinema, issue 58. (DL)
An urgent message from Canyon Cinema (San Francisco), a major distributor of experimental film. (LP)
March 27, 2011
FINT contributor Scott Jordan Harris has reviewed two books on Indian cinema in Scope: an online journal of film & tv studies. (LP)
Rebecca Keegan, ‘Catherine Deneuve: Ice maiden comes down to earth’ in Los Angeles Times, March 20, 2011. (LP)
‘Peter Ho-Sun Chan is one of the most successful directors in the Chinese film industry, but, unlike his counterparts in Hollywood or Mumbai, he is still looking for a home.’: Michael Curtin, ‘Chan Is Missing: Hong Kong Creatives in China’s Orbit’ in issue 2 of Media Fields Journal, devoted to the theme of ‘Media, Labor, Mobility’. (LP)
Simon Hester talks to Ken Loach about his Iraq war thriller, Route Irish, in Socialist Worker, March 26, 2011. (DL)
March 20, 2011
‘The Importance of a Singular, Guiding Vision: An Interview with Arthur Penn’ by Gary Crowdus and Richard Porton. First published in Cineaste back in 1993, this interview covers most of the director’s career. (DL)
Chicago-based writer Hugh Iglarsh on how Warren Beatty could conquer the system but not alter it: ‘Warren Beatty and “Reds”’: Revolution as Ego Trip’ on CounterPunch. (DL)
March 13, 2011
FINT contributor Omar Kholeif on the canon of Egyptian cinema: ‘Screening Egypt: Reconciling Egyptian Film’s Place in “World Cinema”’ in Scope: an online journal of film & tv studies. (DL)
Lee Parsons on a documentary about the Israeli appropriation of the Jaffa orange: ‘Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork: Palestine, Israel – and the Orange’ at World Socialist Website. (DL)
Sousan Hammad on Larissa Sansour’s and Oreet Ashery’s Falafel Road, a series of short videos on the food politics of Zionism: ‘Israel’s falafel food fight’ at Al Jazeera English. (DL)
Wes Felton on French speaking African filmmakers’ influence on the French New Wave: ‘Caught in the Undertow: African Francophone Cinema in the French New Wave’ in Senses of Cinema, issue 57. (DL)