“Daredevils of the Red Circle and Other Cliffhangers” is a blog on serials by Geoffrey Mayer, the author of Encyclopedia of American Film Serials (McFarland, 2017). At last they truly were face to face – the head of the great Yellow movement, and the man who fought on behalf of the entire white […]
Larry Cohen in Conversation with Tony Williams: on Bone (1972)
April 11, 2019
To celebrate the life of Larry Cohen (1936-2019), Film International will excerpt portions of Tony Williams’s interviews with the filmmaker from Larry Cohen: Radical Allegories of an Independent Filmmaker, rev ed. (© 2015 Tony Williams by permission of McFarland & Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640. www.mcfarlandbooks.com). Larry Cohen (LC): With a little bit […]
Hope from the Past: Dziga Vertov: Life and Work (Volume 1: 1896-1921) by John MacKay
Tony Williams
April 10, 2019
A Book Review Essay by Tony Williams. In 1904, Lenin once wrote a monograph, “One Step Forward, two Steps Back” (1) that later appeared in Volume 7 of his Collected Works. Despite the relevance of an appropriate historical context, the name of a former Bolshevik leader will obviously raise hackles […]
Not “Just Another Giallo”: The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (Arrow Video)
April 9, 2019
By Rod Lott. If the first two minutes of Riccardo Freda’s The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (1971) had failed to grab me, the next two of this 1971 giallo certainly would. Indoors at night, a beautiful woman suddenly becomes the opposite as acid is thrown in her face […]
In Retrospekt: An Interview with Esther Rots and Dan Geesin
Yun-hua Chen
April 8, 2019
By Yun-hua Chen. With a puzzle plotline that resembles Memento, Retrospekt focuses on two women, Mette and Lee Miller, whose life at home is tumultuous in different ways. Mette, very convincingly portrayed by Circé Lethem, is on parental leave after having her second child. Her husband is not as family-centered […]
Crimes and Pastimes: Screwball
Jake Rutkowski
April 5, 2019
By Jake Rutkowski. It’s hard to view the discourse around baseball’s most recent and protracted steroid use scandal as anything other than a proxy culture war, an outlet for the basest pearl-clutching and ideological chest-pounding. The pieces are all there: an institution steeped in perpetual nostalgia, aided by a media […]
The Last Silent Hound: Der Hund von Baskerville (1929)
Tony Williams
April 4, 2019
By Tony Williams. Like the recently restored Behind the Door (1919), Der Hund von Baskerville was shown at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival but was supposedly believed lost at one time. However, due to collaboration between Flicker Alley and the Polish film archive Filoteka Narodowa, this last silent version […]
Too Much and not Enough – 1968 and Global Cinema, Edited by Christina Gerhardt and Sara Saljoughi
Mads Larsen
April 3, 2019
A Book Review by Mads Larsen. The timing could hardly be better. Every month seems to throw more gasoline onto the political fire that this edited volume hopes to be a part of. But while editors Christina Gerhardt and Sara Saljoughi have written an introduction with ambitions that – if […]
Living the Truth: Claus Räfle on The Invisibles
Tom Ue
April 2, 2019
By Tom Ue. Claus Räfle has directed over forty feature-length documentaries for German television. Die Heftmacher earned the Grimme Award for best work of TV journalism. Der Kandidat, received honorable mention at the Max Ophüls Awards. His documentaries Blitzhochzeit in Dänemark and Die Stunde davor each received nominations for Best […]
Everywhere and Nowhere: Kent Jones’ Diane
Jeremy Carr
April 2, 2019
By Jeremy Carr. There is so much potential tragedy in the first twenty minutes of Diane that the film appears instantly in danger of over-stressing the point of its dramatic tension. This subdued, 2018 release, the debut narrative feature from Kent Jones – director of the documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015), director of the […]