Features

By Kelly Burt. The film Where the Wild Things Are (2009), based on the 1963 children’s book of the same name by Maurice Sendak, offers an intimate experience of a child’s world. It focuses on the central character, Max, a nine-year-old boy who uses his imagination in an attempt to […]

By Devapriya Sanyal. The two great wars of the twentieth century would change everything for humankind once and for all; both materially and spiritually. These wars formed the basis for diverse artistic depictions and found their way into various works both during the war, after the war and in peacetime […]

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. Betty White has always been ahead of her time. This has been both a blessing and a curse. Most people, even scholars who specialize in television history, have little to no knowledge of the importance of Betty White in early live television, in the invention of […]

By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “Anyone can make a $100 million dollar movie, but to shoot a feature film in 12-14 days, with a budget that’s probably less than the phone bill on a major studio film is monumental. To do it every four weeks and then release the film three […]

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.”                     (Luis Buñuel 2013: 174) I’m always attracted to films that cause an uproar, critical polarization, […]

By Christopher Sharrett. I hesitated as I began this essay, chiefly because I came across some interviews with Derek Cianfrance, whose work is the subject of these remarks. What he has to say struck me as banal, or immature, or conservative, particularly in his expression of a yearning for the […]

By Anthony Killick. Film festivals have always operated as nodes in a network of global power relations. Set within this field of social and economic tensions, they act as spaces in which our view of the world is formed through our interaction with films. The ways in which these spaces […]

By Christopher Sharrett. While writing an essay on the post-Vietnam film Rolling Thunder, I thought of William Wyler’s much-applauded 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives, about three veterans returning at the close of World War II. I revisit this film often, but as much as I appreciate it […]

By Wheeler Winston Dixon.            “I said no to Hollywood. There you have no freedom to create.” (Bielinsky to Federico Fahsbender) “Film audiences won’t find in [The Aura] an accessible or agreeable story. Also, the film doesn’t show a bit of sympathy or good intentions for any of the […]

By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “Watch new blood on the eighteen inch screen The corpse is a new personality Watch new blood on the eighteen inch screen The corpse is a new personality.” (Gang of Four, “5:45,” from the album Entertainment! [1979]) Television shows such as I Was Impaled (2012-) and […]