By Anees Aref. Often described as “psychological westerns”, these films eschewed the conventional heroes of the old west for more complicated protagonists, flawed and motivated by darker impulses….” The “Noir-Western” sounds like a contradiction in terms. One associates the western with the 19th century American frontier, wide open vistas, horses, cowboys […]
A Futurist Fascination – Strangelove Country: Science Fiction, Filmosophy, and the Kubrickian Consciousness
A Book Review Essay by Jeremy Carr. A well-researched work of personal scholarship, with an array of sources and citations utilized to substantiate D. Harlan Wilson’s own arguments or to initiate new avenues of thought….” D. Harlan Wilson wastes little time establishing the importance of the science fiction genre to […]
Embracing Revolution: Daniel Vidal Toche on The Anatomy of the Horses (KVIFF)
By Yun-hua Chen. I began to feel that this revolution is still happening. The possibility of revolution, or the reasons why revolutions begin, are still present. And if that’s the case, then time is not as we try to understand it in Western society.” —Daniel Vidal Toche Walking from the […]
Call for Proposals – Cinematic Memory: Narrative, Recollection, and Identity (Edited by David Ryan)
August 18, 2025
______________________________________________________________________________ “I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them.”— Leonard Shelby, Memento (2000) “Memories can be vile, repulsive little brutes. Like children, I suppose. But can we live without them?”— The […]
Longing for a Hollywood Ending – Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel
A Book Review Essay by Andrew Kolarik. [Author Pardis Dabashi] makes the case that an understanding of modernist authors’ relationship to cinema might allow their works to be read in a different light….” Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel (The University of Chicago Press) by Pardis […]
Still Underground: Films That Spill – Beyond the Cinema of Transgression
A Book Review Essay by Johannes Schönherr. German scholar Marie Sophie Beckmann discusses inherent contradictions of the ‘spilling’ of the films into other art forms as well as the ‘spilling’ of the films as ‘contained’ entities (films on video) to a worldwide audience in detail.’” When Nick Zedd, the mastermind […]
Cinema as Memory: Olivier Assayas on Suspended Time
By Jonathan Monovich. I wanted to bring a cinema crew within this very intimate space, which is something that movies hardly do. I thought it was a way of exposing myself.” —Olivier Assayas Like other filmmakers who began at Cahiers du Cinéma, Olivier Assayas approaches his films with sophistication. Assayas’ […]
Hola Frida, or What to Do When Life Deals You a Bad Hand
By Jenny Paola Ortega Castillo. The narrative may seem like a raw and harsh retelling of the artist’s story; however, Frida’s numerous illnesses are handled with the utmost respect throughout the film…. Art allowed her to process pain, reclaim her missing identity outside of what illness turned her into and […]
A Pivotal Point: Roman Polanski’s An Officer and a Spy (2019)
By William Blick. A slow burn that simmers into a boil…[and] a compelling exploration of antisemitism and miscarriage of justice….” Roman Polanski’s 2019 political thriller An Officer and a Spy, which will see its U.S. premiere at New York’s Film Forum on August 8, recreates the “Dreyfus Affair,” a pivotal […]
Scenes of Integrity: An Interview with Reza Akhlaghirad
By Ali Moosavi. The road I have travelled on has been a tumultuous one. Some things that I could only dream about in my day-to-day life, I could experience in the lives of the characters that I played. Those feelings of rage and anger, that if you display them in […]