Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. In Flowers and Bottoms, an amusingly strange six minute film by Christos Massalas, we begin by watching the back of a […]
Film Scratches: A Quest on Wheels – The Oneiric Bicycle (2016)
January 7, 2019
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. In The Oneiric Bicycle, Sam Klickner’s 22 minute surreal fable, we see a young bicyclist (Natalie Miller) wearing a red scarf […]
Film Scratches: Compelling Mystery – The Visiting Lament (2016)
January 7, 2019
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. In The Visiting Lament, Sam Klickner’s breathtaking five minute short, he uses a simple composition of figures in a blank, grey […]
Of Masculinity, Mortgages, Moral Redemption, and MeToo: My “Practically Perfect” Thoughts on Mary Poppins Returns
By Elizabeth Toohey. Because I wasn’t planning to write about Mary Poppins Returns, but only to watch it recreationally with my six-year old, I did something verboten for a reviewer, which was to read a few reviews before actually viewing the film. Manohla Dargis’ scathing pan of the sequel for the […]
Film Scratches: Words Unsaid – Carta a Boris (Letter to Boris, 2015)
December 20, 2018
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Carta a Boris is Pablo Molina Guerrero’s moving eight minute portrait of a childhood friend, apparently a suicide. During the film […]
Film Scratches: Faking Your Childhood – A Stroll Down Sunflower Lane (2016)
December 20, 2018
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. A Stroll Down Sunflower Lane, a 14 minute experimental film by Egyptian filmmaker Mayye Zayed, is a strange project of artificially […]
Nicolas Roeg, 1928-2018
By Dean Goldberg. On November 23th, 2018, a particularly cold and rainy Saturday afternoon, my friend, Jonathan David, a commercial director living in Los Angeles, texted me a headline about the death of director Nicolas Roeg: “I heard this on BBC Radio and immediately thought of you,” it chimed. Unfortunately, […]
Film Scratches: Self-Portrait of the Self-Portraitist – Astrid’s Self-Portrait (2015)
December 5, 2018
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Astrid’s Self-Portrait is Rena Riffel’s experimental feature about a woman obsessively documenting her own life. The opening of the film, labeled […]
Film Scratches: Conditioned Responses – Recent Short Work by Steven Lapcevic (2014-2018)
December 5, 2018
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. In the mesmerizing and terrifying worlds created by 3d animator Steven Lapcevic we’re all just puppets, hyper-conditioned by the media into […]
Announcing “Daredevils of the Red Circle and Other Cliffhangers” by Geoffrey Mayer
December 1, 2018
Film International is pleased to welcome “Daredevils of the Red Circle and Other Cliffhangers,” a new blog on serials by Geoffrey Mayer. This blog will continue his work in his book Encyclopedia of American Film Serials (McFarland, 2017). Below Mayer discusses his book research and focus in upcoming entries. Serials seem so […]