By Yun-hua Chen. The key was having the courage not to rush the pacing. People tried to convince me otherwise—they said it was too slow, that it took too long for the characters to meet. But I stood my ground.” –Désirée Nosbusch With over 30 years of experience as an […]
What the 80s Mean in Czechoslovakia: Alexandra Makarova on Perla
By Ali Moosavi. It was clear for us that we wanted to have an observer’s perspective so that it feels like I am invisible and standing with the camera and looking at these people.” –Alexandra Makarova One of the films showing at this year’s Rotterdam Film Festival is Perla by […]
Limitations and Innovations: An Interview with Filmmaker and Animator Richard Bazley
By William Blick. Speed is a huge advantage in live action. Animation is time consuming, and if you ask an animator to rework a scene, it can take days, maybe even weeks for a few seconds.” –Richard Bazley Richard Bazley has had an illustrious career in animation beginning with his journey on […]
Alchemy, Technology, and the Cinematic Grimoire: E. Elias Merhige’s Begotten (1989)
By Gary D. Rhodes. How of one ounce of Silver maie Silver be noe more.” – Thomas Norton, The Ordinall of Alchimy (1477)* Embodied practice and cinematic technology yields alchemical crucible in E. Elias Merhige’s Begotten, a non-dialogue film of 1989 that the London Film Festival declared “breaks all moulds, […]
A Strange Passion Indeed: Luis Buñuel’s Él (1953)
By Jeremy Carr. This story of hidden obsessions and malicious passions, climaxing in a scene of wild delirium, is like a bipolar soap opera and tragicomedy rolled into one subtly piercing satire of masculinity, authority, and persecution.” A Good Friday mass is underway. Somber music plays while altar boys have […]
Syncretized Equality: Judge Priest, Early American Music, and Singing on the Front Porch
By Richmond B. Adams. John Ford’s Will Rogers vehicle has yet to receive the full credit for the complexities of its cultural commentary…. the present examination will argue that Judge Priest undermines the world it supposedly affirms.” From the middle-1920s through his death in 1946, my maternal grandfather, the Reverend […]
Big Day for a Small Finnish Town: Cinéma Laika
By Jonathan Monovich. Vidak/Felce’s film serves as a meaningful exploration of the role that cinema and movie theaters play in our lives.” Driving through the wooded roads of Karkkila, a small Finnish town, Emmanuelle Felce tells Veljko Vidak “I could live here. You can be in deep nature, beautiful nature. […]
Listening to Freedom: Tommaso Santambrogio on Oceans are the Real Continents
By M. Sellers Johnson. Rather than provoking a kind of response from nothing, we hoped to shape the characters out of the reality of their lives and reality experiences. As a director, I feel that it is more important to listen than to talk.” Oceans Are The Real Continents is […]
Restauranteur, Dance Instructor, Hitman: Kazuo Mori’s A Certain Killer and A Killer’s Key (Arrow Video)
By Thomas M. Puhr. Light on their feet but not rushed, fun but not goofy, these films deliver just about everything you’d want from the hitman genre….” In 1967, Japanese director Kazuo Mori released back-to-back actioners starring Raizô Ichikawa as the archetypal hitman. Coldblooded, principled, calm under pressure—and often seen […]
It’s a Mad World, After All: Marco Ferreri: The Films of an Italian Provocateur
A Book Review by William Blick. In the true spirit of monomaniacal, egomaniacal, and nomadic film auteurs everywhere, Curti brings a vivaciousness to the text that immersed this reader into the brilliant and grotesquely absurdist world of Ferreri.” In film scholar Roberto Curti’s new book Marco Ferreri: The Films of […]