protestors outside the Indie Spirit Awards bravely call for a Free Palestine and these Hollywood hacks don’t acknowledge it, just makes jokes about it. so much for being the ‘cool, edgy, independent’ crowd. cowards.
akerman’s first three (solo) features include a redefining of structural cinema that put her in the same circles as michael snow, one of her most emotionally resonant portraits of queer malaise and melancholy which she also starred in, and the literal greatest film of all time
a few years ago when I was semi-popular on filmtok I got in huge trouble for suggesting that Schindler’s List is a failure because it was made by a guy without any real ideology and it shows. hardly surprised by this.
spoilers? for KOTFM
the ~dream sequence following the mother’s death is the closest a hollywood film has gotten to recreating the feel of a weerasethakul sequence
When is Criterion going to invest in Manoel de Oliveira? or more Jacques Rivette? We’re all eagerly anticipating Brakhage volume 3, Werner Schroeter is in desperate need, hell even Godard needs a great box set- at least Histoires du Cinema needs a good physical release!
This is the most despicable, ugly, offensive, insane, cruel… there aren’t words for how calculatingly evil the regime and their PR is. Meanwhile more than 500 Palestinian children are dead…
The notion of “one perfect shot” has done irreversible damage to society. Good cinematography in the popular consciousness has become shit like euphoria clips or wes anderson
Went on a tinder date in Italy with a random girl. When I asked where she was from she said “Oh, it’s a small town you’ve probably never heard of it… WALLA WALLA” 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮 WHY CANT I ESCAPE
wow b*rbie is the most politically regressive films I’ve seen touted as feminist. gender-essentialism, corporate apologia, neoliberal slop whose final scene makes a point to exclaim very loudly that women are their genitals.
Everyone who participated in this event, filmmakers and critics alike, must reckon with how rotten this institution is and what their motivations were for participating. Putting career ahead of solidarity when there was a clear boycott called for is a morally vacuous position.
Berlinale Files Criminal Charges Over the Spreading of Anti-Semitic Posts / Criticism of Statements Made by Artists at the Berlinale Award Ceremony
See full press release via:
I might suggest, as others have, that more people should read actual criticism in the form of blogs/publications/magazines/books etc. You’ll find it much more rewarding!
some of the most interesting things I’ve learned about Med Hondo in my research so far- had beef with JLG, was into avant garde Brazilian cinema, almost made a Toussaint Louverture epic with Danny Glover, tried to make a Malcolm X film (he didn’t like Spike Lee’s) also a Che film
Okay, as this is probably my final week of unemployment I’ve decided to speed run some Straub/Huillet to ground me in marxist principles before selling my labor. What are your favs? I’ve previously seen these
@WillSloanEsq
It’s the kind of nightmare the culture tried to hypothesize for years- the ‘what would you do if there were nazis today’ question. Turns out a lot of people actively love/defend concentration camps. And somewhere more cynically, even more people don’t care at all.
I mean, Straub-Huillet’s FIRST feature is Not Reconciled, it’s probably the most important political film of the 20th century and established something resembling an entirely new film language that they would expand upon in Bach/Othon- both of which redefine ‘brecht’ for cinema
I’m not defending this review as a masterclass of writing, it was just an off-the-cuff reaction, but this is an absolutely insane thing to comment on it. If you read ‘institutions of power’ and think of jewish people before the bourgeoise…
I think it’s cool that you’ve seen 82 films not in the english language, and ranked them all. I can’t wait till you finish the list, hope you can hit 100!
The REAL Best Directors lineup
Claire Denis (Stars at Noon)
Claire Denis (Both Sides of the Blade)
Hong Sang-Soo (The Novelist’s Film)
Hong Sang-Soo (Walk Up)
Michael Bay (AmbuLAnce)
I haven’t seen the Zone of Interest yet (no real ‘interest’ in glazer’s take on the holocaust) but the academy’s embrace of it made me guffaw at a time when pro-Palestinian voices calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza are being blacklisted by hollywood.
this is the origin of my profile picture (had it for ~2 years) the first Teo Hernández I watched, lived in Florence for like 6 months just before watching. made quite an impact!
good criticism is political, but there’s a specific brand of “liberal” criticism that wrote off american sniper / 15:17 to paris as the racist fantasies of a right-wing reactionary when they’re probably some of the most radical anti-war films hollywood has produced this century
maybe we’re getting too niche, consider Malick’s first three! I’ll leave it here. These aren’t on the level of the others mentioned above but they’re certainly leagues better than Eggers’.
Contrarily, this is an era of unprecedented access to the art film, thanks to digitization efforts, streaming platforms like mubi, filmatique, revoir etc and boutique labels offering physical media! also kg and okru
Now streaming for free on our site:
FIVE FILMS BY ELLIE EPP
- trapline (1975)
- current (1986)
- notes in origin (1987)
- bright and dark (1996)
- last light (2015)
Five shorts by the Canadian avant-garde filmmaker, plus an essay by Sophia Satchell-Baeza (
@SophiaSB1
)
speaking of Eisenstein… are you seriously not going to call this the greatest three film run in history, let alone the man’s first three films! He literally invented a parallel socialist cinematic language which functions as a textbook for experimental film in its montage
are there “listening spaces” in the real world? not listening bars but spaces dedicated exclusively to music. like a theatre for music. just put on an album and listen to it on some crazy hifi setup with the public. everyone’s quiet. does this make sense
I’m not defending this review as a masterclass of writing, it was just an off-the-cuff reaction, but this is an absolutely insane thing to comment on it. If you read ‘institutions of power’ and think of jewish people before the bourgeoise…