Cao Fei’s ‘Blueprints’ finds freedom in fantasy
Cao Fei’s ‘Blueprints’ begins in a room decorated to look like a mid-20th century foyer in China: the kind you…
Essays
Against Inheritance: Stanya Kahn’s ‘No Go Backs’
Stanya Kahn’s latest short film ‘No Go Backs’ (2020) opens with two teenage boys pissing into the grassy scrub with…
There is the sound, too, of a ticking clock: A Time-based Reading of Anne Charlotte Robertson’s ‘Five Year Diary’
In 1981, in Boston, Massachusetts, Anne Charlotte Robertson bought five rolls of Super 8 film with which to record her…
Describing the World Otherwise: Anne Charlotte Robertson’s ‘Five Year Diary’
Anne Charlotte Robertson started keeping a diary when she was 11 and never stopped. By the time the artist died…
Pretty Little Cults
“I see what you mean about the pageantry,” remarks Dani (Florence Pugh) in Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019) as she scrolls…
Towards a Quilombo Cinema: An Afro-Brazilian Feminist Roundtable
A conversation between Everlane Moraes, Janaína Oliveira, Kênia Freitas, and Tatiana Carvalho Costa. Translated by Lillian Maguire and Natalia Davies….
The Luxury of Savouring in Kelly Reichardt’s ‘First Cow’
One of the pleasures of Kelly Reichardt’s narrative films is that their plots (where they exist) never feel artificial: the…
A Language of Traces: The short films of Mati Diop
“My characters rarely find themselves where they want to be in the world: there is always somewhere to escape from,…
Dreamscapes and Ethnospheres: Ben Rivers and Anocha Suwichakornpong’s ‘KRABI, 2562’ (2019)
Describing the motivation behind his feature The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not…
Strike on Film: Madeline Anderson’s ‘I Am Somebody’ (1970)
This essay was originally published in Another Gaze 04 (March 2020) i. Your colleagues probably won’t want to strike until,…
Mr Zuckerberg, Tear Down My Wall
A common narrative about social media goes like this: something something anxiety and deep insecurity; it’s hard to see an…
Locating the Lesbian Hand in Barbara Hammer’s Early Works
Barbara Hammer’s ‘Double Strength’ (1976) opens with a sequence of sepia photographs featuring Hammer and her then-partner, Terry Sendgraff, a…
Those Who Keep and Those Who Throw Away: On Hoarding in ‘Grey Gardens’, ‘The Gleaners and I’ and ‘Tidying Up With Marie Kondo’
“That’s all I need: an ordered life” —Edith ‘Little Edie’ Bouvier Beale, Grey Gardens Early last year, I experienced my…
Towards a Diffractive Cinema: The Video Works of Amanda Melissa Baggs (1980–2020)
Amanda Melissa Baggs, also known as Mel Baggs, died on 11 April 2020. This essay was originally published in print…
Cinema, Carcerality and Covid-19: On Watching Brett Story’s ‘The Prison In Twelve Landscapes’ (2016)
How do you represent the prison system cinematically? A certain syntax of images springs to mind: a concrete wall, coils…
As a Woman in America, Always: Eliza Hittman’s ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’
Autumn, the 17-year-old protagonist of Eliza Hittman’s sophomore film Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020), first stands out because of her…
The Talking Cinema of Barbara Hammer (1939 – 2019)
“I’ve never shown ten of my films in chronological order before. I’m going to be sitting there with you and…
‘Olivia’ by Olivia
Midway through Olivia, headmistress Mlle Julie (Edwige Feuillère), going to bed, notices light under the door of one of her…
‘Still Moving’: Ulrike Ottinger’s Shifting Archive of Identity
An experimental documentary that unpacks a personal archive without exposition, narration, or dialogue, Ulrike Ottinger’s Still Moving (2009) relies instead…
“Not my country, not my home, nobody in the whole world”: The Life and Cinema of Lorenza Mazzetti (1928 – 2020)
When she arrived at the British border off the ferry from France in 1951, Lorenza Mazzetti’s Italian passport was stamped…
Red, White, Yellow, Black: A Multiracial Feminist Video Collective, 1972-73
On two nights – one in December 1972, the other April 1973 – the multiracial, multimedia feminist art collective Red,…