By James Knight. “My sugar was carried away on ships, but my tears were left behind.” This year marks the fiftieth birthday of Mikhail Kalatozov’s classic film I am Cuba. Not in the half decade since has a film been so effective in its portrayal of history. It is a […]
Making Personas: Transnational Film Stardom in Modern Japan (2013)
August 6, 2014
A Book Review by Carmen Siu. Earlier this year, Avril Lavigne garnered considerable negative attention for her ‘Hello Kitty’ music video. Filmed in Tokyo, the video features an enthusiastic Lavigne jumping around in stereotypical Japanese locales, like a clothing boutique, a candy store and a sushi bar, backed by four expressionless […]
Wherever in the Landscape: ArtFilm 2014
August 5, 2014
By Robert Buckeye. Cannes may be a place, but it is not place as we understand it, except as it exists as cinephilia on a screen. Berlin is a place, its past always brought to bear whenever the city or its people are mentioned. At ArtFilmFest in Trenčianske Teplice and […]
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
August 1, 2014
By James Teitelbaum. The coolest thing about Joss Whedon’s film The Avengers (2012) is that it exists. The notion that four major Marvel Comics heroes (The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, and Captain America) could each appear in their own individual movies, and then be brought together in a team-up […]
The Films of Joanna Hogg
July 31, 2014
By Gary M. Kramer. With the release of Joanna Hogg’s three features, Unrelated (2007), Archipelago (2010), and Exhibition (2013), it is imperative for cinephiles to discover her brilliance as a filmmaker. Hogg’s films are remarkable for their perspicacity. The filmmaker captures the intimacies between family members and their environments in […]
AFI Docs Film Festival 2014
July 29, 2014
By Michael Miller. AFI Docs, now in its second year, unspooled June 18-22 at multiple venues in the District of Columbia and all three screens at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland. Eager fans of non-fiction film queued up for mostly sold out screenings of some of the […]
What’s at Stake in the Work of Art: John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
July 28, 2014
By Brandon Konecny. Apart from Faces (1968) and A Woman Under the Influence (1974), none of Cassavetes’ films were successful, both commercially and critically. They were seen as chaotic, technically inept, haphazardly improvised—they were, in short, a chore to watch. But none of them, not even Husbands (1970), incurred the […]
The Art House Convergence Regional Seminar 2014
July 24, 2014
By Mark James. It’s fitting that “Art House Convergence” spells it with two separate words. Without the specificity that the term “Arthouse” commands in the film world, “Art House” can enjoy a far wider interpretation. The Art House Convergence, which started as an adjunct to the Sundance Film Festival in […]
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
July 24, 2014
By Jeremy Carr. Even if we weren’t told at the start that Picnic at Hanging Rock was about a group of girls who disappeared Saturday, Feb. 14, 1900 and were never seen again, it would become apparent almost immediately that this 1975 film was not going to end happily, or […]
Hide Your Smiling Faces (2013)
July 22, 2014
By Jude Warne. In his 1854 book Walden, Henry David Thoreau sets forth a crucial instruction: “Resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” This, perhaps, is the overarching message of Daniel Patrick Carbone’s first feature film Hide Your Smiling Faces. In the proverbial end (or, for the sake of […]