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 […]
Northern Lights: The 14th Reykjavík International Film Festival
By Randy Malamud. I didn’t see the Aurora Borealis during my October visit to the Reykjavík International Film Festival, probably because I spent every night at the movies, but I did have some spectacular views of them on screen. “The energy of the planet comes from the north,” says a […]
Amplified Isolation: It Takes from Within
October 25, 2017
By Gary M. Kramer. The wordless pre-credit sequence of It Takes from Within sets the tone for this stark, atmospheric drama: three couples crawl, stand, and lie in a bed on an illuminated patch of grass. Gorgeously filmed in luminous black and white, the sequences does not make much sense, […]
The “Complete Italianization” of the Western: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from Kino Lorber
By Tony Williams. This is the moment when the Italianization of the Western was complete. –Alberto Moravia, quoted by Christopher Frayling As most film departments merge into Media conglomerates and student knowledge of past films diminishes due to increasing time constraints, it is all the more important that the world […]
Mark Felt: History as Mysticism
By Christopher Sharrett. One of the characteristics of our militarized society, aside from the constant deluge of cop shows, superhero movies, and inane affirmations of family life, is the erasure of history. We may think we get the past in reliable form via the PBS channels and other “respected” media […]
Balancing Gentleness and Extremity: Avishai Sivan Talks TIkkun
By Martin Kudláč. The 17th edition of the T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival in Wroclaw revisits several Israeli film within their retrospective introducing New Israeli Cinema that the festival considers producing “some of the most interesting cinema in the world.” The thematic sidebar also featured Avishai Sivan’s existential, and in […]
Flight to Salvation: The King’s Choice
October 18, 2017
By Jake Rutkowski. About twenty minutes into The King’s Choice, it hits me: I know absolutely nothing about Norway’s political history. Nor its governmental structure. Nor its involvement in World War II. Nothing. While there are some informational title cards at the start of the film, I found myself bereft of […]
Oneiric Noir: The Chase (1946) from Kino Lorber
By Tony Williams. Based on Cornell Woolrich’s 1944 novel The Black Path of Fear, The Chase (1946) has long required a remastered DVD version though bootleg versions previously available may have added to its reputation as a darker shade of noir appropriately associated with its creative source. It was directed […]
Prison of the Mind: The Big Knife (1955) from Arrow Academy
By Jake Rutkowski. There are few time capsules more compelling to me than works in which Golden Age Hollywood peels back the curtain on its own sordid affairs. What normally proceeds is melodrama in the throes of self-aggrandizement, tempered by winking metatext that points to the absurdity of it all. […]