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. “I don’t know why I do it. I just go away,” announces a young woman in a short blue dress and […]
A World “Whit” Large: Barcelona on Criterion
By Elias Savada. During his initial foray into filmmaking back in the 1990s, Whit Stillman was being hailed as a conquering hero successor to such cinematic titans as Preston Sturges, Leo McCarey, and Ernst Lubitsch, the creators of witty comedies that are still enjoyable many decades after they were made. […]
Led Zeppelin Played Here – or Did They?: An Interview with Jeff Krulik
June 17, 2016
By Jude Warne. “Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is… maybe he didn’t?” – Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) What is proof enough to determine that a historical event did indeed happen? The accounts of firsthand witnesses? Written documented records? Handed-down legends? Where […]
For the Love of the Tale: Matteo Garrone on Tale of Tales
June 16, 2016
By Paul Risker. Matteo Garrone’s Tale of Tales (2015), an adaptation of Italian poet Giambattista Basile’s collection of fairy tales Pentamerone (1634, The Tale of Tales otherwise known as Entertainment for Little Ones) could be seen as the filmmaker’s affectionate ode to storytelling. He journeys deep into the past to adapt early […]
Autobiografiction in Those People: An Interview with Joey Kuhn
By Tom Ue. Born and raised in New York City, writer/director Joey Kuhn makes films that draw inspiration from the nexus of fine art and pop culture. His first feature film, Those People (2015), premiered in competition at SIFF 2015, and has since played over 65 film festivals worldwide. It has won 10 […]
The Real Underground: Jack Sargeant’s Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film
A Book Review by John Duncan Talbird. Jack Sargeant’s new book, Flesh and Excess: On Underground Film, is an exploration of a place, a time, a state of being, a culture, and a certain range of experiences, experiences which have not yet been fully charted because they probably never can […]
“Hello Darkness, My Old Friend”: Criterion’s Only Angels Have Wings
By Tony Williams. If Robin Wood once said on a DVD feature, “If you don’t like Marnie, then you don’t like Cinema”, any encounter with Hawks’s Only Angels Have Wings (1939) challenges any viewer in a similar manner. As Gerald Mast (105) wrote, the film serves as “a cutting edge […]
Skewer You!: The Life of Art Bastard Robert Cenedella
June 10, 2016
By Elias Savada. Unless you’re orbiting the art universe, particularly in the vicinity of its comically subversive galaxy, you’ve probably never heard of Robert Cenedella, who is both a bastard (in the biblical sense) and an artist (in a mostly mythological/fantastical off-the beaten-path way) in Art Bastard, a sprightly designed look […]
Always a Little Better: An Interview with Cinematographer Brian Tufano
June 9, 2016
By David A. Ellis. Cinematographer Brian Tufano BSC, who now teaches cinematography at the National Film School in England, was born in the Shepherd’s Bush area of London in 1939. Before shooting films, he spent twenty-one years working a variety of jobs in the BBC film department, which was based at […]
Robert Lang’s New Tunisian Cinema: Allegories of Resistance
June 8, 2016
A Book Review by Matthew Fullerton. New Tunisian Cinema is a timely book, released three years after the revolution that toppled Ben Ali, the dictator under whom the directors featured in Robert Lang’s study worked for much of their careers. It focuses on eight oeuvres from New Tunisian Cinema, a generation […]