Hell or High Water: The Wasteland After

By Christopher Sharrett. Anyone of any consciousness who has toured the Southwest knows that it consists of pockets of great wealth surrounded by desert. Structurally, this is not unlike the rest of America, except that in the North and elsewhere we are generally concerned with dying cities: corporate citadels surrounded […]

Finding My Film Legs: Sean Ellis on Anthropoid

By Paul Risker. British filmmaker Sean Ellis’ Anthropoid (2016) tells the story of Operation Anthropoid, a daring chapter of the Second World War whose objective was the assassination of the Nazi third in command, SS Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. While the Second World War is a dark chapter of history that […]

BFI London Film Festival 2016 – Programme Launch

By Cleaver Patterson.  You can always tell summer has come to an end and autumn is on the way when the BFI holds the programme launch for its annual celluloid viewing extravaganza which is the BFI London Film Festival. Going by the film trailers—which played to the assembled press at […]

Behind the Scenes of the Webseries Subject to Change

By Tom Ue. Subject to Change is a new series that focuses on a group of LGBTI teenagers. Its first episode aired on YouTube, where it was warmly received. In what follows, I discuss the series with Daniel Mercieca, Thomas Buxereau, and Rory Delaney. Daniel, its creator and director, has worked […]

Rare Welles No Longer Unseen: Chimes at Midnight and The Immortal Story on Criterion

By Tony Williams. Long awaited by many, following either unavailability or dubious accessibility via duped 16mm copies, unwatchable VHS copies, and bootlegged DVDS, two of Welles’s most accomplished achievements are now available, thanks to the Criterion Collection’s high standard of reproduction. I first saw Chimes at Midnight theatrically in the […]

The 35th International Sergio Amidei Award for Best Film Script

By Simonetta Menossi.  The International Sergio Amidei Award for Best Film Script is a yearly event that takes place in Gorizia, Italy. The Award is entitled in the memory of Sergio Amidei (1904-1981), one of the most famous screenwriters of Italian Neorealism. He worked with director Roberto Rossellini for whom […]

Hope in the Search of Lost Films by Phil Hall

A Book Review by Irv Slifkin. Phil Hall did a great service to film fans seeking the forgotten and obscure with his regular column “The Bootleg Files” that ran for years on the FilmThreat.com (regrettably defunct). A film programmer, publicist in indie film, author of six previous books and prolific writer, Hall […]

Once There Were Bawdy Tales: Nosrat Karimi’s Matrimonial Comedies

By Ramin S. Khanjani. Of all directors associated with the pre-1979 “Iranian New Wave,” Nosratallah Karimi probably presents one odd case for study. With the inconsistent critical reception of the films he has to his credit as an actor and director,[1] Karimi is classified as belonging to a borderline sub-group […]