By Noah Charney. Slovenian documentary films are at their best when they do not appear to be documentaries. When we imagine documentaries, we tend to think of the History or Travel Channel variety. That’s the type that I occasionally appear in and have also helped to write and produce, so […]
Uma: Invoking Love, Death and an Elsewhere
Devapriya Sanyal
December 13, 2018
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By Devapriya Sanyal. Uma is Srijit Mukherji’s twelfth film in seven years. It is based on a real story, which by the director’s own admission he found on Facebook. He then set about writing a story based on the Bengali festival of Durga Puja, with an eponymous heroine, for Uma […]
Struggling Adrift: The Raft (Flotten)
By Daniel Lindvall. In May 1973 six women and five men set out from the Canary Islands to cross the Atlantic to Mexico in a twelve by seven metres large raft, the Acali. The ungainly vessel was made of wood, steel and glass, and equipped with a sail but no […]
Reflecting Our Troubled Times: Barnaby Miller on S|T|R|A|Y|S
By Daniel Lindvall. S|T|R|A|Y|S, described by its makers as “a living graphic novel,” portrays a cross section of contemporary Londoners dealing with the effects of financial crisis and austerity. The characters are at once individuals and social types – banker, minimum wage worker, businessman, petit bourgeouis entrepreneur, et cetera. They […]
Art Film Fest 2018: The Time of Its Time
By Robert Buckeye. The centenary of the formation of Czechoslovakia and the half century commemoration of the Prague Spring transformed Art Film Fest in Košice, Slovakia (15-23 June) this year into a seminar on the myriad possibilities and uses of film. Its presentation of films on the inter-city train between […]
The Cinematic Form of the Football Match
July 11, 2018
By Declan Cochran. Introduction (Pre-Match Warm-Up) Cinematically speaking, the filmed football match is a curious phenomenon, one that seems to integrate a number of cinematic techniques whilst, obviously, by definition not being actual cinema. The football match is pure documentary, divorced from the traditional narrative associations that one might have […]
A World of One’s Own: The Endearing Humanity of Pavel Cuzuioc’s Secondo Me
September 9, 2017
By Brandon Konecny. Pavel Cuzuioc is a filmmaker with a flair for creating thoughtful meditations on working-class people, and he doesn’t diverge from this course in his recent documentary Secondo Me (2016), which concerns three employees at different European opera houses. Given its settings and Italian title (which means “in […]
Gilda Lost and Gilda Regained: Concerning The Lady Eve’s Destructive Relationship with Two Sexually Confused Adams
September 5, 2017
By James Churchill. Nobody forgets the first time they experienced Hayworth’s sudden emergence from the bottom of the frame in Gilda. The quick snap of the head that sends her hair in orbit, the calculated smirk, and the snarky, one-word response that lets us know right away who she cares most […]
Highlights from the 2017 TCM Classic Film Festival
August 22, 2017
By Jordan R. Young. To vintage film enthusiasts–more than 28,000 last year–April means it’s time for the TCM Classic Film Festival. The eighth annual event took place over three days and four nights in Hollywood this past April, where attendees feasted on a staggering number of films and an impressive […]
Art Film Fest 2017: 25 Years
By Robert Buckeye. Art Film Fest in Košice, Slovakia (16-24 June) provided greater opportunities for those who seek out film however they can by screening films that were seen recently and awarded at Cannes, Berlin and Venice, including Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman, which won the prize for Best Screenplay […]