Film
Singing the Blues: Roberto Minervini's What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire?
By Beatrice LoayzaAmerica’s historical amnesia, moral pretension, and giddy culture of violence have long fascinated artists hailing from abroad.
About Some Meaningful Events: African Cinema and 50 Years of FESPACO
By Marius HrdyIn a festival where a major part of the lineup consists of the newest restorations of “Old Hollywood” filmmaking, recent editions of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna have been marked by a refreshing turn towards lesser known cinemas and film industries that are no less interesting.
No Release: Chantal Akerman's My Mother Laughs
By Daniel Witkin“It’s only normal to love your mother,” she tells him, “and there’s no reason to be afraid of committing incest.”
Il Cinema Ritrovato: Forward into the Past
By Celluloid Liberation FrontConsidering Venice’s dwindling reputation, Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato may well soon become Italy’s flagship film festival, if it hasn’t yet already.
In Conversation
ALFREDO SALAZAR-CARO with Joel Kuennen
The spirit of the jaguar welcomes you to her home; nestled in a lush surrounding of jungle and maize fields at the foot of a volcano. This pneuma appears as a small girl with a glowing mask, inspired by Mayan depictions of the jaguar gods.
The Long Morning: J. Hoberman’s Make My Day
By Madeline WhittleMake My Day unfurls as a richly narrated timeline in which the passage of months and years is marked by the inception, arrival, and aftermath of totemic “Movie Events.” The text is structured around straightforward accounts of production histories, interspersed with fragments of the peripheral discourse: magazine profiles, filmmaker interviews, and, extensively, contemporaneous critical readings by the likes of Pauline Kael, Vincent Canby, Andrew Sarris, and others.
Cannes 2019: The Push and Pull between Genre and Auteurism
By James LattimerFollowing a couple of less-than-stellar editions, the Cannes competition returned to a degree of form this year, finding not just a more effective balance between expected quantities and intriguing newcomers—but also managing to assemble them around a loose theme—namely, the push and pull between genre and auteurism and how one can often resemble the other.
Time is Luck: The 5th Annual Nitrate Picture Show
By Gina TelaroliI’m not sure when precisely it hit me—maybe it was as I examined, by hand, the intricacies of the 20th Century Fox logo (from the opening of Otto Preminger’s 1947 film Forever Amber) on a strip of nitrate film stock—but hit me it did, like a ton of bricks, that the first 50 or so years of cinema, save the occasional special screening and site specific film festival, are actually lost forever.
