Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. In Dream City, a short feature, American filmmaker Emma Piper-Burket documents her friendship with Diana Jaf, a young Kurdish Iraqi woman. […]
Film Scratches: Recent Short Films of Jacques Spohr
May 29, 2018
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Jacques Spohr is a French filmmaker now based in Athens. Here is a sampling of his recent shorts. Les Coups du […]
Film Scratches: The Words Behind The Dance – Una Mina (2016)
May 29, 2018
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Una Mina is an eight minute dance film by Argentinian filmmaker María Papi. The footage shows actress Gesche Picolin performing tango […]
De Palma’s Scarface at 35: a TriBeCa Panel
April 24, 2018
By Gary M. Kramer. Brian DePalma’s 1983 remake of Howard Hawks’ Scarface, with a script by Oliver Stone, had a special 35th anniversary screening at the TriBeCa film festival with DePalma, Pacino, and costars Michelle Pfeiffer and Steven Bauer in attendance. The film received raucous applause when it started and […]
Call for Contributions: The Mondo Film and its Legacy
March 5, 2018
Contributions are invited for a special edition of Film International devoted to the “mondo” shock documentary film. The mondo genre was created in the 1960s by Gualtiero Jacopetti, Franco Prosperi and Paolo Cavara with their first feature Mondo Cane (Italy, 1962). The genre quickly became an international sensation, hated […]
And the Animated Shorts Nominees Are…
By Elias Savada. The Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts in competition for the ceremony this Friday are a disparate, probing set. They include Lou, the 7-minute Pixar entry directed by Dave Mullins and produced by Dana Murray. If you saw Cars 3 at the Cineplex last summer, this charming, colorful CGI work was the better […]
Film Scratches: Pulling Meaning out of the Shots – Incident Reports (2016)
October 27, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Incident Reports, the brilliant feature-length essay film by Mike Hoolboom, has an ingeniously flexible form. It is comprised of short segments, […]
Film Scratches: Prelude (2014)
October 27, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. Prelude is a 7 minute film by Simon Welch about a young girl (Mel Z) practicing a Bach prelude on the […]
Film Scratches: Untangling Political Violence – Anál-isis Callejero (Street Anal-ysis, 2012)
September 27, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. In Anál-isis Callejero (Street Anal-ysis), Chilean filmmaker Pablo Molina Guerrero’s nine minute meditation on political violence, we see a complex montage […]
Film Scratches: Blowing Out the Candles – Hurricane (2017)
September 27, 2017
Film Scratches focuses on the world of experimental and avant-garde film, especially as practiced by individual artists. It features a mixture of reviews, interviews, and essays. A Review by David Finkelstein. In Hurricane, Carla Forte’s powerful 5 and a half minute dance film in black and white, all of the footage is […]