By Robin Wood. Introduction Kiarostami’s development has been remarkably swift, each stage marked by radical change. Essentially, he has moved from a traditional ‘realist’ narrative cinema, strongly influenced by Italian neo-realism. through various intermediate stages, to an experimental formalism. The shifts are by no means arbitrary: all his work, […]
Louise Brooks: The Martyrdom of Lulu
By Dan Callahan. In the long last years of her life, Louise Brooks, isolated in Rochester, New York and utterly tired of living, would end telephone conversations with the order, “Bring a gun.” Her friends were shocked by this macabre request, which must have delighted her. Even as an elderly […]
Against and For Irreversible
By Robin Wood. To call Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible(Irréversible, 2002) controversial would be an understatement. It has had its defenders, but their voices have been largely drowned out by the rage the film has aroused, with horror stories of mass walkouts at the Cannes Festival screening, and subsequent denunciations by critics […]
Dark Shadows around Pinewood and Ealing
By Robert Murphy. The Ever-growing Empire of Film Noir The critical concept of film noir, once confined to atmospheric American thrillers and crime films like The Woman in the Window (1944), Double Indemnity (1944), Out of the Past (1947), Gilda (1946), The Lady from Shanghai (1948) and The Postman Always […]
Claire Denis: Cinema of Transgression: A 2-part article
By Robin Wood. Part 1: Introduction and Chocolat. Introduction: Claire Denis and Nadine Gordimer. The tension between standing apart and being fully involved; that is what makes a writer. That is where we begin. (Nadine Gordimer, Introduction to Selected Stories, 1975*). I discovered the films of Claire Denis and the […]
Permanent State of War: A Short History of North Korean Cinema
By Johannes Schönherr. Like the leading article in the Party paper, the cinema should have mass appeal and should keep ahead of new developments, thus playing a mobilizing role in each stage of the revolutionary struggle. – Kim Il Sung I. 7th Pyongyang Film Festival of Non-Aligned and Other Developing […]
The Way of a Gaucho: The Career of Hugo Fregonese
By Santiago & Andrés Rubín de Celis. Very little has been written by critics and film reviewers in the English language about the films of the Argentinean director Hugo Fregonese. His Hollywood years, from 1950 to 1956, including a whole of eleven films, were only a short period within his […]
Visual Representations of Disconnection in Ichikawa Kon’s An Actor’s Revenge
By Daniel Gronsky. An Actor’s Revenge(Yukinojo Henge, 1963) is one of director Ichikawa Kon’s more infrequently remarked upon films. Despite the exceptional quality of the film, An Actor’s Revenge is often passed over in favor of examining Ichikawa’s earlier, more popular works, such as Conflagration (Enjo, 1958), Fires on the […]
Real Queer Arabs
March 26, 2011
By Omar Hassan. In the post-Brokeback Mountain era of film-making, cinematic representations of homosexuality no longer conjure up lengthy debate or public controversy. Producers have developed the assumption that the LGBT community (who are generally believed to possess a higher disposable income) are hungry for media to consume. As such, […]
Tribute to Arthouse Actress Maria Schneider
By Moira Sullivan. Maria Schneider plays Jeanne in Last Tango in Paris, a young woman who confronts her sadistic attacker Paul, played by a much older Marlon Brando, and shoots him. Schneider sums it up: “I must say that the murder in the end of the film did me much […]