By Amy R Handler. In the interview below, Australian filmmaker Aaron Stevenson suggests that screenwriter Gary Whitta may have plagiarized Stevenson’s film Freedom Deep (1998, complete ‘Final Director’s Cut’ in 2008) when penning the script for The Hughes Brothers’ recent film, The Book of Eli. When confronted with Stevenson’s statements, […]
From Short Story to Film to Autobiography: Bergman’s Intermedial Variations
By Maaret Koskinen. (These are excerpts from In the Beginning Was the Word: Ingmar Bergman and His Early Writings [Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 2002], originally published in Film International 1, vol. 1. no. 1, 2003.) One autumn a few years ago the author of this article was in the process […]
Camus and Carné Transformed: Bergman’s ‘The Silence’ vs. Antonioni’s ‘The Passenger’
By John Orr. The Silence(Tystnaden) (1962) and The Passenger(1974) are two of the great modernist films of their period, and two of the most enduring. From the standpoint of a new century neither is dated and both are richly rewarded by DVD rewatching. Yet their genesis lies in a previous […]
Walter Hill: Last Man Standing
By Patrick McGilligan. Walter Hill’s first produced script was in 1972, but his films are a throwback to the Golden Age and to storytelling traditions that seem increasingly endangered in today’s Hollywood. He brings a modern swagger to old-fashioned genres. He relishes stories that center on male heroics, with cinematic […]
You Don’t Know What Love Is
By Daniel Garrett. The book Annie Proulx’s short story ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is amazing: detailed, observant, naturalistic and smart, it is a story about men and land and love and society – in Wyoming, a state of mountains and valleys, greenlands and deserts. Annie Proulx’s language is mostly spare, though a […]
Let’s Kill the Moonlight in Electric Park: a Futuristic Interpretation of Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg’s Dear Wendy
By Angela Tumini. Introduction There were times in Europe when the traditions of the past were thrown aside and rejected in favor of the spirit of experimentation, and when manifestos were a recurrent avant-gardist feature expressed in extreme rhetoric, intended for shock value in order to achieve a revolutionary effect. […]
29th Vancouver International Film Festival, October 2010
By James Udden. It is hard to imagine a film festival better run that the Vancouver International Film Festival, now completing its 29th year during the first two weeks of October 2010. Hardly the largest or the most famous of film festivals, this does not seem to concern the organizers, […]
10th ERA New Horizons International Film Festival, Wroclaw 22 July – 1 August, 2010
A Report by Rob Dennis. Judging from the selections in the International Competition, boundless cheer was never likely to be a hallmark of the 10th Era New Horizons Film Festival, held in the welcoming and lively Lower Silesia town of Wroclaw. Festival director Roman Gutek promised a programme highlighting the […]
Festival International du Documentaire de Marseille, July 7-12, 2010
By Philip Cartelli. “Everything is burning. The universe is burning. I am burning.” So repeats the main character in Reason, Discussion and a Story (Jukti Takko Aar Gappo, 1974), one in a retrospective of films by the idiosyncratic Indian-Bangladeshi filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak (1925-1976) at this year’s Festival International du Documentaire […]
The 15th Annual San Francisco Silent Festival, July 15-18, 2010
By Janine Gericke. The 15th Annual San Francisco Silent Festival did not disappoint, offering everything from the genius of George Méliès to the majesty of a newly restored Metropolis. This year’s theme seemed to echo that of previous years: What’s lost has now been found. Friday’s Amazing Tales from the […]