A Brief Interview with Filmmaker Pavel Bardin by Amy R. Handler. Considering Russia’s role in taking Hitler down during WW2 and that its soldiers liberated death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Monowitz-Buna, and Majdanek, it’s questionable how and why Hitler has risen again in that part of the world, where neo-Nazism seems […]
‘For foreigners the Japanese toilet really must be something amazing’: An Interview with Ogigami Naoko
By Doris Lang and Johan Nordström. Of the Japanese female directors active in recent years, Ogigami Naoko (b. 1972) is among those who has garnered the most attention, both at home and abroad. In 1994, after graduating from Chiba University’s Image Science program, she went to the United States to […]
In Memoriam: Robin Wood
By Michael Tapper. When thinking about Robin Wood, his book Personal Viewsalways comes to mind. He published it in 1976 – a transitional period between what he called his life as ‘an ideal bourgeois man’ and his coming out as a gay, feminist and socialist in his manifesto ‘Responsibilities of […]
Exodus collides with the Kedma
By Robin Wood. This article discusses (ultimately!) two films about the founding of modern Israel: Otto Preminger’s Exodus(Hollywood, 1960), and Gitai’s Kedma(2002). Both titles are also the names of the ships from which the Israelis land in Palestine – legally, in Exodus, illegally (by just four days!) in Kedma. It […]
Revenge is Sweet: The Bitterness of Audition
By Robin Wood. Auditionstands apart from the rest of Miike Takashi’s other films to date: this seems to be the general consensus, and it is confirmed by the three other films by him I have seen. It is the only one of the four that interests – more than interests, […]
Only (Dis)Connect; and Never Relaxez-Vous; or, ‘I Can’t Sleep’
By Robin Wood. Claire Denis: Cinema of Transgression, Part 2 (Read Part 1 here.) What it isn’t I have before me two statements about I Can’t Sleep(J’ai pas sommeil, 1994) by reputable and intelligent critics: 1. On the cover of the video, Georgia Brown (who used to write for The […]
Running Track: 50 Scores from World Cinema
By John Caps. Some seasons ago, Lincoln Center’s Film Comment magazine published an annotated survey of the history of Hollywood film music, “Soundtracks 101.” There I took readers from the beginning of descriptive/narrative soundtrack scoring in 1933’s King Kong through latter day experiments in sight/sound correlation like Waking Life where […]
The Most Dangerous Man in America: An Interview with Rick Goldsmith
By Amy R. Handler. The case of Daniel Ellsberg and the ‘Pentagon Papers’ is re-visited in a fascinating documentary by Rick Goldsmith and Judith Ehrlich. It is not surprising that their film, The Most Dangerous Man In America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers was a 2010 Academy Award nominee. […]
Pieces of Momoko Ando: A Conversation With the Director of Kakera
By Johan Nordström and Doris Lang. Momoko Ando, born in 1982, is one of Japan’s hot and upcoming new directors, whose debut film Kakera: A Piece of Our Liferecently had a simultaneous release in England and Japan, after first having played the festival circuit. Momoko Ando, the daughter of actor-director […]
Peter Strickland: Director of Katalin Varga
By Henry Rowsell. Prior to the release of his debut feature length film, Peter Strickland was not a well known name in the British film industry, however Katalin Varga(2009), a harrowing vengeance noir cast against the dramatic and intermittently haunting landscape of Transylvania, has drawn the critical acclaim of judges […]