By Jonathan Monovich. It’s always tempting to speed up the process and save money by using CGI, but I think we’re at a period where we’re drowning in CGI. Now, with the advent of AI, I think stop motion has never been appreciated as much as it is now.” —Adam […]
Made in Chicago: Andrew Davis on his Career and Disturbing the Bones (CIFF 2024)
By Jonathan Monovich. Born in Chicago’s South Side, Davis understands exactly where his characters should be, when they should be there, and why they should be there.” Throughout his career, Andrew Davis found a way to make Chicago the city of spectacle on the big screen. There have been plenty […]
Complicated Feelings – John Bleasdale on The Magic Hours: The Films and Hidden Life of Terrence Malick
By M. Sellers Johnson. A lot of the people who worked for Malick have a lot of affection for him and want to protect him. They have this complicated feeling that they’re really keen to tell stories but they don’t want to be seen to be spilling the beans. Having […]
“Hitchcock is Grammar”: Mark Cousins on My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock
By Jonathan Monovich. A lot of people talk about the scary Hitchcock, the manipulative Hitchcock, or the anti-feminist Hitchcock, but in looking at his films I wanted to see what really were the themes and where the humanity was in his work.” Mark Cousins Mark Cousins has dedicated his life […]
Shedding Old Skin: Ramon and Silvan Zürcher on The Sparrow in the Chimney
By Yun-hua Chen. For me, the third installment of the trilogy is about liberation and breaking out of certain emotional or psychological prisons, shedding old skin so that new skin can grow. The sparrow is important because of this potential for freedom and flight.” —Ramon Zürcher From cat to spider, […]
Space and Its Limitations: Zhu Zhengfan on Stranger
By Yun-hua Chen. I was initially attracted to the concept of space, but space brought many limitations, which I actually like because they encourage exploring more possibilities.” Composed of snippets that capture different hotel rooms inhabited by various “strangers”, Chicago-based Chinese director Zhengfan Yang is acutely sensitive to how spaces […]
To Fully Live Out Their Lives: Theo Cuthand on The Lost Art of the Future
By Àbigaïl Yartey. When I was starting out as a queer indigenous filmmaker in the 1990s, there wasn’t a lot of us making work. Since then, there has been a lot of people who’ve gotten into this arena….for me it was wanting to bring back queer elders, or queer people who […]
The Rhythm of Real Life: Michał Chmielewski on Roving Woman
By Savina Petkova. I think in the long take, we observe the rhythm of real life…. if we would cut between different emotional states, it would be artificial.” It would be reductive to call Roving Woman, the debut feature by Polish filmmaker Michał Chmielewski simply a road movie. That it […]
We Need to Talk About Yu-ning: Nelicia Low on Pierce
By Yun-hua Chen. We are nothing if not thorough in our deception of others.” –Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer Nelicia Low’s Pierce is a poignant portrayal of deception, a kind of deception that one falls into willingly out of blood bonding, also reminiscent of We Need to Talk […]
La Bête Humaine – Robert Singer on Beyond Realism: Naturalist Film in Theory and Practice
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. It is my wish that Beyond Realism would inspire active dialogue and research with other disciplinary practices, academics, and film lovers. I would enjoy hearing a geneticist discuss the child serial killer in pigtails and speculative heredity in Mervyn Le Roy’s The Bad Seed (1956) or a […]