By Gary M. Kramer. Agnès Varda was the guest artistic director at the AFI Festival this year. She screened two of her films—Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) and Documenteur (1981)—as well as programmed four other titles: Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959); A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes, 1974); The Marriage of […]
Interview with Bernardo Bertolucci, AFI Festival
November 20, 2013
By Gary M. Kramer. Bernardo Bertolucci presented a 3-D version of his Oscar-winning film, The Last Emperor (1987), at the 2013 AFI Fest in Los Angeles. At a roundtable at the festival, in which Film International‘s Gary Kramer participated, the director spoke about the film as well as issues of censorship. What […]
Bristol Radical Film Festival 2014
November 20, 2013
From the 3rd to the 9th of March 2014 the Bristol Radical Film Festival returns with another packed programme of overtly political documentary and fiction film from around the world. From historical classics to contemporary video-activism, short films and feature productions, we show the films that the multiplexes won’t, in […]
Whitewash: An Austin Film Festival Review
November 19, 2013
By Jacob Mertens. Left buried in the formidable winter of Northern Quebec, Bruce (Thomas Haden Church) dwells in the cramped cabin of a snow plow. He drinks melted ice and eats tree bark, waits for the gas to ebb and the plow’s heat to die, then strikes out to forage […]
The Noir Vision of Max Ophüls, Romantic Fatalist
November 14, 2013
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. Max Ophüls, born Maximillian Oppenheimer on 6 May 1902, Saarbrücken, Germany, was a director known primarily for his romance films, often with sweeping tracking shots, and often taking place in the past. Ophüls’ luxurious camera style is evident in such superb romance films as Letter from […]
Scoring Transcendence: Contemporary Film Music as Religious Experience (2013)
November 13, 2013
A Book Review by Brandon Konecny. In recent years, theology has taken a growing interest in cinema, viewing it as both an effective exegetic tool and an intriguing cultural form worthy of the field’s attention, and this has brought with it the appearance of a number of stimulating works. However, […]
Big Sur: An Austin Film Festival Review
November 11, 2013
By Jacob Mertens. How tempting it would be to open this review with some Kerouac quote, a burst of frayed genius from his late stage novel Big Sur to set the tone. No doubt, it would give a better idea of what Michael Polish’s film adaptation sets out to accomplish, […]
Commentary: Committed to Cypriot Cinema
November 11, 2013
By Stelana Kliris. Filmmaking in a developing country is a little like dancing the tango…one step forward, two steps back. Cyprus is a small island in the Mediterranean with a population of less than a million people. Yet it has a fascinating history, and present for that matter: it is […]
La Notte (1961)
November 9, 2013
By William Repass. “Whenever I try to communicate, love disappears.” When finally—after what seems like an ice age of anticipation—you receive your package in the mail, strip away the bubble-wrap with trembling fingers to reveal Criterion’s sleek new La Notte box-set (complete with blu-ray digital restoration, bonus interviews, and a […]
1970s Rape-Revenge Films and their Remakes: Changing Representations
November 8, 2013
By Victoria Tickle. Rape-revenge films are a controversial sub-genre of films that have been the subject of many critical debates surrounding feminism, moral issues and ethics, as well as the representations of women, violence and gender roles. Rape-revenge films are often categorised as a sub-genre of other larger and more […]