By Film International. The editors’ Top 10 and Overrated 10 include films that were released in the editors’ respective regions during 2015. They have been selected by Daniel Lindvall (editor-in-chief, based in Stockholm, Sweden), Jacob Mertens (review and festival editor, based in Madison, WI, USA) and Matthew Sorrento (interview and […]
Fleeting Reconciliation: Colliding Dreams
February 25, 2016
By Elias Savada. The nightmare that surrounds the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East has never been an easy one to suppress. It’s been one step forward, two steps back for too long. A peaceful solution seems distant to proponents of the competing ideologies. Or to just the plain bystander. Colliding […]
A Look Back at Edge of Seventeen
February 25, 2016
By Gary M. Kramer Edge of Seventeen is writer Todd Stephens’ seminal and semi-autobiographical 1988 coming out film. Directed by David Moreton (after Stephens stepped down), the film concerns Eric (an excellent Chris Stafford), who comes to terms with his sexual identity in 1984 Sandusky, Ohio. Eric’s best friend is […]
The Deceptively Simple Magic of Only Yesterday (1991)
February 24, 2016
by John Duncan Talbird. At the midpoint of Isao Takahata’s animated Only Yesterday (1991) narrator-protagonist Taeko gives us a lesson on the making of rouge: on the picking of the safflower, on its pounding to mush, on its drying in the sun in little discs. She tells us of the […]
Not Quite Dark Enough
By Elias Savada. Dark is another day (and night) in the life of a West Virginny girl in the Big City. It begins with a lesbian couple au naturel yet, also, oh so much in despair. Their lovemaking could be interpreted as break-up sex (at least for one of them). […]
CGI and the Audience: Things Better Left Unsaid
By Fred Wagner. The Show of Shows (2015), a recently released documentary made out of archive footage shows the lost world of the circus – a cornucopia of acts the like of which were once the vanguard of kitsch but that now seem so alien you can look at them […]
The Battle for Fair Remuneration: A Slovenian Drama with International Consequences
By Edgar Tijhuis. Sometimes it seems like time stood still in Slovenia. In 2009 Variety magazine reported about a “royalty battle” in central and eastern Europe. Television producers and other rights-holders of audiovisual material, were allegedly losing up to 10 million euros a year in royalties, as the international collecting […]
Denmark vs. Afghanistan: The Moral Dilemma of A War
February 16, 2016
By Elias Savada. In a world forever at war, Denmark doesn’t float to the top of the list as a country promoting military involvement in remote venues. Interventions have been few and far between since World War II, with its percentage of defense expenditures generally sliding over the last 60 years […]
Beyond the Myths of Mt. Everest: Jennifer Peedom on Sherpa
February 16, 2016
By Paul Risker. “I feel like it was a risk and I feel proud that I pulled it off,” says Jennifer Peedom of her Everest expose Sherpa (2015). The documentarian’s intentions are certainly noble, adopting the medium to capture a view of a world dramatised in fiction, explored in other documentaries, […]
“All My Treasures”: On Ingrid Bergman – In Her Own Words (2015)
By Tony Williams. Critic-director Stig Bjorkman, well known for his studies on directors such as Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman, has made an intriguing documentary on this well-known star to which he has also collaborated on the screenplay. Most documentaries either concentrate on abundant clips from films already well known […]