By Trevor Mowchun. “Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ them as emblems of our thoughts? The world is emblematic.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature) There is a sense in which it could be said that the natural world is beyond […]
Premiers Plans 2015 Festival Report
March 15, 2015
By Joseph Pomp. Festival Premiers Plans d’Angers (literally, First Shots Festival of Angers—a city in northwestern France that more than makes up for its size in charm) is arguably the most important celebration of young filmmakers in Europe. Now in its twenty-seventh year, Premiers Plans boasts a list of alumni […]
Victoria: A Berlinale Review
March 9, 2015
By Zhuo-Ning Su. Calling German writer/director Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria the runaway sensation at this year’s Berlin Film Festival is overstating it a little bit, considering how critical response to the film was not nearly as unanimously amorous as to, say, Jafar Panahi’s Taxi or Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years. That said, if […]
Il Sorpasso (1962)
March 3, 2015
By Jeremy Carr. Bruno Cortona (Vittorio Gassman) zips along deserted Roman streets in his Lancia Aurelia B24. In search of a telephone, he is a high-speed automotive speck dwarfed by towering housing complexes and businesses. Bruno maintains this frenetic pace whether he’s on foot, in his car, or speaking. He […]
A Future for Indigenous Media Studies: The Fourth Eye: Māori Media in Aotearoa New Zealand, Ed. Brendan Hokowhitu and Vijay Devadas (2013)
February 25, 2015
A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. With a fascinating lineage spanning from the Treaty of Waitangi to the inception of the first ever state-funded Indigenous television station, New Zealand has proven itself a veritable incubator of the growing intersection between Indigeneity and media. It is therefore appropriate that editors Brendan […]
In Defense of Hitchcock and Serious Criticism
By Robert K. Lightning. “It follows that the critic should read without inappropriate bias. We cannot properly object to The Pilgrim’s Progress, for example, because we think that John Bunyan’s theology is false: it is not a valid criticism of a work that it disagrees with the critic. What we […]
Rare Screening of the Films of Jim Krell, Anthology Film Archives, April 17, 2015
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. I’m very pleased to announce that after the preservation of Jim Krell’s originals by Anthology Film Archives about a year ago, Anthology has been kind enough to arrange for a screening of some of Krell’s key works on April 17, 2015. Krell’s films are such utterly […]
Sundays and Cybèle: Serge Bourguignon’s Oscar Winner Now on Criterion
February 13, 2015
By Jude Warne. On April 8th 1963, at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, it was announced that Serge Bourguignon’s film Sundays and Cybèle had won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Fifty-one years later, Criterion has re-released Bourguignon’s Oscar winner in a remarkably satisfying Blu-ray package that showcases […]
Humanities in the Digital Era
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. We live in the age of the visible invisible; everything is supposedly available to us online, but in fact, only a small fraction of the knowledge and culture of even the most recent past is available on the web. The digitization of our culture is now […]
Two Days, One Night: Woman at Work
By Christopher Sharrett. I have been meaning for some time to applaud the work of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Their new film Two Days, One Night seems the appropriate occasion for recognition, but all of their films merit regular revisiting and, in my view, celebration. But Two Days may be […]