Responding to Hate, Disenfranchisement, and the Loss of the Civil Sphere By Carol Vernallis. Many of us are terrified by the rise in Islamophobia and other racisms, misogyny and homophobia, threats to the environment and increased possibilities for nuclear war, the rise of surveillance and the limits on freedom of speech and […]
Film Scratches: Navigating the System – The Ensemble of Rules (2015)
February 19, 2017
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. The Ensemble of Rules, a feature film by Eliseo Ortiz about the process of becoming a naturalized US citizen, combines documentary […]
Film Scratches: Camera + Hormones = Snooping: Stop (2014)
February 19, 2017
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. Stop, a 28-minute short by Lydia Janbay and Matt O’Connell, realistically recreates the look of a VHS home video circa 1995, […]
2017 D.C. Independent Film Festival
By Elias Savada. In the shadow of glee (for a few) or gloom (for the rest of us) that has been cast over the DC landscape with the arrival of the USA’s new administration, the 19th edition of the D.C. Independent Film Festival arrives this week for a short week’s […]
Film Scratches: Public Stories, Private Memories – Tip of My Tongue (2017)
February 6, 2017
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. When filmmaker Lynne Sachs turned 50, she had an impulse to look back and examine her life. (This impulse to take […]
Film Scratches: Channeling Visions Through Machinery – Robot Pavlov Sputnik (2014)
January 17, 2017
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. Robot Pavlov Sputnik is a complex and gorgeous eight-minute animation by Oliver Hockenhull. The video derives inspiration (and a main layer […]
Film Scratches: Never-ending Metamorphosis – A Cherenkov Radiation Jewelry Box Meltdown (2015)
January 17, 2017
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 Cherenkov Radiation Jewelry Box Meltdown is a three-minute computer-animated short of radical beauty by Oliver Hockenhull. It can be classified […]
Writing Our Future: The Inauguration, Alternate Inauguration Ball, and Protests
January 14, 2017
January 19th to the 21st will bring Trump’s inauguration, a Peace Ball (with Angela Davis and Solange), and street protests, including the Inauguration Day Freedom Protest on Freedom Plaza, DC, the Bridge Together in Golden Gate Park, and the 200,000 Women’s March. How can we quickly document and analyze these […]
Festival of Ghibli at TIFF: A Quick Take with Chance Huskey of GKIDS
By Tom Ue. From 24 December to 10 January, the Toronto International Film Festival screens Spirited Away: The Films of Studio Ghibli, a programme of 22 feature films from one of the world’s most influential film studios. In what follows, I discuss the enduring appeal of Ghibli films with Chance […]
Film Scratches: Eloquence Without Words – The Kingdom of Shadows (2016)
December 14, 2016
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 family group sits, nearly motionless, yet seething with tension, in a living room with peeling wallpaper and dead leaves blowing […]