By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. As an internationally acclaimed Japanese/American artist, Yayoi Kusama rejects any Orientalist assumptions about her work or her self. Yet her playful performances and challenging happenings of the 1960s at times featured images of her wearing the traditional Japanese kimono. Kusama seemingly catered to the audiences of […]
The Aesthetic of Shadow: Lighting in Japanese Cinema (2013)
October 17, 2013
Book Review by Brandon Konecny. Historically, the skillful manipulation of light and shadow has contributed to the distinctiveness of a number of canonical cinemas. From Weimar “street films” to the golden age of horror in the 30s, German Expressionism to detective noirs, lighting has provided filmmakers various ways with which […]
Conspirators: A San Francisco Film Society Hong Kong Cinema Review
October 16, 2013
By Janine Gericke. Conspirators is the third film in Oxide Pang’s Detective trilogy, beginning with The Detective (2007) and The Detective 2 (2011). All three films star Aaron Kwok as detective Chan Tam. Pang should be somewhat familiar to American audiences, having given us a remake of his own film […]
San Francisco Film Society Presents French Cinema Now | November 7-10, 2013
October 13, 2013
By Mark James. Celebrating its sixth year of bringing some of the best contemporary French film to the Bay Area, this year’s French Cinema Now lineup features the latest from famous directors along with some fine examples of the new — succinctly capturing a snap shot of the year’s most […]
Behind Enemy Lines: An Interview with Frankenstein’s Army Director Richard Raaphorst and Star Alexander Mercury
October 12, 2013
By Cleaver Patterson. This summer the groundbreaking horror film Frankenstien’s Army took Film4 FrightFest by storm, and is now set to do the same on a wider scale with its release on DVD. The film’s Dutch director Richard Raaphorst and its Russian star Alexander Mercury recently explained to Cleaver Patterson […]
Blue Caprice
October 12, 2013
By Christopher Sharrett. The advertisements for this film by Alexandre Moors contain the blurb “based on the true story of the DC snipers.” One would think that the claim of “true story” would have run its course (at least for those seriously interested in the medium) in film advertising decades […]
A Complicated Story: A San Francisco Film Society Hong Kong Cinema Review
October 11, 2013
By Janine Gericke. I was surprised to learn that A Complicated Story was made as a student film by first-time filmmaker Kiwi Chow, with executive production through the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts’ film production program and the legends Johnnie To and Bill Kong. Not a bad way to kick […]
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
October 9, 2013
By William Repass. “I know that I look like Hitler, and I’m gonna prove it right now!” Since any discussion of German-American director Ernst Lubitsch must devolve, sooner or later, into a feeble attempt at pinning down the so-called “Lubitsch Touch,” let us resign ourselves the inevitable, and see if […]
The Unbearable Lightness of Gravity; The Depth and Resonance of Adore
October 6, 2013
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. I’m always in a bad mood after I see a bad movie, especially when I have hopes that the film will be an altogether different experience. Such was the case today with Gravity (2013), the latest feature from director Alfonso Cuarón, which has been playing to […]
European Civil War Films: Memory, Conflict, and Nostalgia (Eleftheria Rania Kosmidou, 2013)
October 5, 2013
A Book Review by Budd Wilkins. ‘In his essay on “Screen Memories,” [Freud] argued that troubling or traumatic memories tend to find expression through highly distorted symbolic forms’ (3). This one line perfectly encapsulates the core idea explored throughout European Civil War Films. A nation suffers a kind of trauma […]