By Orville Lloyd Douglas. Black people are still mentally enslaved; even in the 21st century there is a psychic need by some Black artists to seek white approval and acceptance. The universal acclaim of the independent film Moonlight is due to white film critics, most heterosexual. Black films are made […]
Film Scratches: History Seen Backwards – The Rubric Timestamped (2014)
March 21, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. The Rubric Timestamped is a strange and richly poetic 9-minute film by Luke Szabados, a young American filmmaker. The first shot […]
Film Scratches: Receiving a Face – Scrapbook (2015)
March 21, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Scrapbook is a haunting and fascinating 19-minute short by Mike Hoolboom, based on footage shot in 1967 at Broadview, an Ohio […]
Hugs vs. Handshakes: Life’s Battles in Donald Cried
By Elias Savada. The indie movie Donald Cried joins a growing number of feature films based on a short subject (among my small-budget faves: 1995’s Sling Blade and 2004’s Napoleon Dynamite). It’s a fine feature debut for director (also co-writer, star) Kris Avedisian, based on his 22-minute oil-and-water bromance from 2012, in […]
Keep Telling Yourself, It’s Not a Vacation – Kong: Skull Island
March 11, 2017
By Elias Savada. Kong: Skull Island, Hollywood’s latest outing for its furry Eighth Wonder of the World, has arrived in an energetic, well-mounted, 3-D, IMAX-sized package. King Kong (1933), the species’ black-and-white, ground-breaking original, still reigns as the best big ape/deity movie ever. The new reboot of the monster, despite a somewhat […]
Well-Wrought and Old-Fashioned: Robin Wood’s The Apu Trilogy (New Edition)
March 10, 2017
A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. The film critic Robin Wood (1931-2009) was one of those writers who helped the general public to take cinema seriously as an art form and who, like many critics of the sixties – at least the ones who didn’t become filmmakers themselves – would […]
Work Through All the Fun and Rubbish: An Interview with Cinematographer Chris Challis
By David A. Ellis. Christopher Challis was born in Kensington, London on the 18th March 1919. His father was a motorcar designer and Challis was privately educated at Kings College in London. His first taste of the movie business was working for Gaumont British in their newsreel department. He was a […]
Protecting the Commons in 2017
March 8, 2017
Responding to Hate, Disenfranchisement, and the Loss of the Civil Sphere By Carol Vernallis. Many of us are terrified by the rise in Islamophobia and other racisms, misogyny and homophobia, threats to the environment and increased possibilities for nuclear war, the rise of surveillance and the limits on freedom of speech and […]
Rotterdam 2017: This Is How the Reconstruction Continues
March 8, 2017
By Martin Kudláč. International Film Festival Rotterdam that built its brand on investigating, gathering and curating the future of the world cinema through a long-term focus on emerging auteurs and discoveries possessing an innovative style and/or bold artistic vision started a new chapter in its fifth decade last year. The festival […]
The Aesthetic Majesty of King Hu: A Touch of Zen on Criterion
By Tony Williams. As I write, hours tick away for the latest unimportant event in film history – the Hollywood Academy Awards which will have millions glued to their television sets totally unware both of its worthless significance and the nauseating spectacle of a meritless institution narcissistically patting itself on […]