By Elias Savada. In the shadow of glee (for a few) or gloom (for the rest of us) that has been cast over the DC landscape with the arrival of the USA’s new administration, the 19th edition of the D.C. Independent Film Festival arrives this week for a short week’s […]
The Passion of James Baldwin: I Am Not Your Negro
February 13, 2017
By John Duncan Talbird. On the police brutality episode of ABC’s sitcom Black-ish, the teenaged son, Junior (Marcus Scribner), reads out loud from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me (2015). His father, Dre (Anthony Anderson), derisively responds, “Malcolm X said the same thing fifty years ago.” Dre’s father (Laurence Fishburne) […]
Family and Transition: This is Everything – Gigi Gorgeous
By Kate Hearst. Over the course of forty-plus years, Barbara Kopple has made her documentaries with one focus: to be truthful to the voices of her subjects, whether they are coal miners or country singers. In her new film, This is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous, Kopple crafts a heart-gripping narrative capturing the […]
The Heart of Fuller’s Marauders: Film is Like a Battleground – Samuel Fuller’s War Movies by Marsha Gordon
February 7, 2017
A Book Review by Tony Williams. During his lifetime, Samuel Fuller was fortunate enough to receive acclaim from monographs and articles dedicated to his films as well as continue working for as long as possible in film, unlike Buster Keaton and Douglas Sirk. Regardless of championship by Cahiers du Cinema, the […]
At Home in Akron: An Interview with Sasha King and Brian O’Donnell
February 7, 2017
By Tom Ue. Akron is the first film directed by Sasha King and Brian O’Donnell, an independent film written by the latter. Shot on location in Akron, Ohio, the film stars Benny (Matthew Frias) and Christopher (Edmund Donovan), who are linked by a tragic past. In what follows, we discuss the […]
Film Scratches: Public Stories, Private Memories – Tip of My Tongue (2017)
February 6, 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. When filmmaker Lynne Sachs turned 50, she had an impulse to look back and examine her life. (This impulse to take […]
A Conquering Female Spirit in The Brand New Testament
February 6, 2017
By Kate Hearst. First screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015, and recently released in the United States, Belgian director Jaco Van Dormael’s surrealistic fantasy, The Brand New Testament, chronicles a familial struggle between a mean-spirited patriarchal God (Benoît Poelvoorde) and his feisty ten-year old-daughter Ea (Pili Groyne) with humanity […]
Out of the Past: Jack Garfein’s Something Wild on Criterion
By Tony Williams. Something Wild (1961) has nothing to do with the similarly titled well-known 1986 Jonathan Demme film. In fact before the list of Criterion new releases arrived, I frankly confess that I had never even heard of it. How can anyone now claim to have an encyclopedia knowledge […]
Lars-Martin Sorenson’s Censorship of Japanese Films during the U.S. Occupation of Japan: The Cases of Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa
A Book Review by Matthew Fullerton. Lars-Martin Sorenson is probably best known to cinephiles for his interview on censorship during the American occupation of Japan, which accompanies Criterion’s 2007 release of Drunken Angel (1948). At the time, he had just completed his PhD, and Censorship of Japanese Films during the […]
The Cacophony of History: Cinéma Militant by Paul Douglas Grant
January 30, 2017
A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Paul Douglas Grant’s new book Cinéma Militant: Political Filmmaking & May 1968 (Wallflower Press, 2016) is a history of leftist French film – mostly Marxist-Leninist or Maoist – arising out of the student-worker protests of May ’68 and stretching to the late seventies when […]