By Anna Arnman. Så jävla metal (which translates as ‘So damned metal’) is a Swedish documentary about the nation’s heavy metal scene, from the early 1970s until now. It is based on hundreds of interviews with bands and performers like November, Neon Rose, Europe, Yngwie Malmsteen, Arch Enemy and In […]
Saving London’s Cinema Museum: French Sundaes
By Deirdre O’Neill. For the next six months as part of its ongoing fundraising effort The Cinema Museum is hosting a season of French films that will, hopefully, provide a snapshot of French cinema over the last 80 years. The programme has been curated by Jon Davies and will screen […]
‘In the Field’
September 14, 2011
‘In the Field’ is our virtual take on a talent campus — programs that many film festivals these days are implementing — with the aim of supporting young scholars and emerging writers. So please join us in welcoming our new authors, and in our efforts to champion these budding artists […]
Saving London’s Cinema Museum: Silent Clowns
August 30, 2011
By Deirdre O’Neill. Sometimes it’s easy to forget film has a history and that silent cinema is that history. And sometimes it is easy to think of silent cinema as a genre. But as Bryony Dixon silent film archivist at the BFI Southbank has pointed out silent cinema is not […]
Print, the Legend: Andrew Rossi on Page One – Inside the New York Times
By Matthew Sorrento. In the early 1930s, just after the birth of sound in movies, an older medium was running through the newer one. Newspaper movies, or reporter characters onscreen, regularly appeared to remind viewers that events are only as vital as how they are covered. The great newspaper films […]
Wine Before the Massacre
By Rajko Radovic. Before picking up an automatic weapon a man savours a glass or two of a vintage wine. He wants the moment to last. He looks around and sees his surroundings with new eyes. Then comes the police uniform. He masks himself so he can become what he […]
Chris Cunningham Live
By Jamie Isbell. A large black curtain slowly parts and reveals three grey screens. Then a dense and inconsistent ripple of excitement erupts from a shuffling and enthusiastically rowdy crowd flooding the Roundhouse in North London on this evening of June 1st, 2011. It takes a few minutes of chants […]
The Implication of “WOW”
By Gary McMahon. “Films should be made with innocence,” someone said Orson Welles said, and someone else said Charles Laughton knew exactly what Welles meant if indeed he said it when Laughton directed his own first-time masterpiece. Let’s not get hung up on whether and when Welles said it and […]
The Spirit of Journalism: Requiem for News of the World
By Celluloid Liberation Front. ‘Representation is a denial of participation’ (Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi in The Green Book) ‘They can sneer all they like, I’ll keep the 15000 extra copies’ (Keith Rupert Murdoch) Slap the Monster on Page One gave the title to Marco Bellocchio’s film about media manipulation of social […]
The New Flesh: A Critical Analysis of 1980s Metamorphosis Cinema
By Alexander Kirschenbaum. ‘Am I different somehow? Is it live or is it Memorex?’ (Seth Brundle [Jeff Goldblum] in David Cronenberg’s The Fly [1986]) For the purposes of this article, ‘metamorphosis cinema’ refers to a specific canon of 1980s-produced feature films that are about transitional physical states, about the grotesque […]