By Gary M. Kramer Edge of Seventeen is writer Todd Stephens’ seminal and semi-autobiographical 1988 coming out film. Directed by David Moreton (after Stephens stepped down), the film concerns Eric (an excellent Chris Stafford), who comes to terms with his sexual identity in 1984 Sandusky, Ohio. Eric’s best friend is […]
CGI and the Audience: Things Better Left Unsaid
By Fred Wagner. The Show of Shows (2015), a recently released documentary made out of archive footage shows the lost world of the circus – a cornucopia of acts the like of which were once the vanguard of kitsch but that now seem so alien you can look at them […]
The Battle for Fair Remuneration: A Slovenian Drama with International Consequences
By Edgar Tijhuis. Sometimes it seems like time stood still in Slovenia. In 2009 Variety magazine reported about a “royalty battle” in central and eastern Europe. Television producers and other rights-holders of audiovisual material, were allegedly losing up to 10 million euros a year in royalties, as the international collecting […]
Reframing Realism in My Beautiful Laundrette
February 9, 2016
By William Repass. “You’re dirty. You’re beautiful.” “What is it that the gora Englishman always needs? Clean clothes!” In the world of Stephen Frears’ and Hanif Kureishi’s 1985 cult classic, My Beautiful Laundrette—a world meant to recreate, in-miniature, a South London turned upside down by Thatcherism—cleanliness is not only a […]
Shakespeare on Film – The Bard’s Big Screen Odyssey
February 9, 2016
By Cleaver Patterson. A cold and blustery January morning at London’s BFI Southbank, saw the launch of Shakespeare on Film, the BFI’s latest themed season which promises to be their biggest and most ambitious to date. Shakespeare, often referred to as England’s national poet, is one of cinema’s most filmed […]
The Languid Approach of Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s The Assassin
January 30, 2016
By Cleaver Patterson. In 8th century, Tang Dynasty China, Nie Yinniang (Qi Shu) has lived for many years, isolated from her family in a remote temple, where she has been trained in martial arts, becoming one of the country’s most feared assassins. Only when she is sent by her teacher […]
(((1973)))
January 27, 2016
Kurt Vonnegut Hunter Thompson Norman Mailer Tom Wolfe William Burroughs Jonathan Miller William Burroughs Jr Jacob Bronowski Robert Hughes Bob Woodward Carl Bernstein Peter Maas Germaine Greer Ray Connolly Geoffrey O’Brien Pauline Kael Grover Lewis Leonard! Bernstein! “There was a point in ’73 where I knew it was all over,” […]
Traces of Postindian Survivance: Two Short Films by Jeff Barnaby
By John Garland Winn. Jeff Barnaby, a Mi’kmaq First Nations director, was four years old when the Quebec Provincial Police raided his Restigouche Reservation to restrict salmon fishing rights. The events of the raid are explored in Alanis Obomsawin’s documentary Incident at Restigouche (1984) and, as Barnaby recalls, are forever […]
The 2015 FrightFest Report
January 23, 2016
By Cleaver Patterson. Modern films can be hard to categorise: with so many increasingly open to different interpretations it is often hard to single out one core theme or trait. Fortunately though, this is not a problem often encountered by those that fall within the horror genre, and particularly for […]
Films for the People – The 2015 Ljubljana International Film Festival
January 19, 2016
By Erica Johnson Debeljak. The 26th Ljubljanski mednarodni filmski festival (LIFFE) took place from November 11 to November 22 last year. It is the fifteenth incarnation of this festival under the catchy acronym LIFFE, which doesn’t match the initials of the name in the Slovenian language, but perfectly captures the […]