In Search of a ‘Feminist Sensibility’: Two Shorts By Deborah Stratman and Lynne Sachs
Vever (for Barbara) dir. Deborah Stratman, 2019 Carolee, Barbara & Gunvor dir. Lynne Sachs, 2018. When the Bay Area lesbian…
Festivals
Review: Notes to Self by Christina Battle – part of Forum Expanded, Berlinale
“MY ALGORITHMS ARE ALL FUCKED UP” I watch the words of this phrase – printed in an all-caps, blue serif font – slowly vanish…
Review: Bora Kim’s ‘House of Hummingbird’ (‘Beol-sae’) – Berlinale
Bora Kim’s House of Hummingbird had its world premiere at Busan International Film Festival last October, but I saw it…
What goes up must come down: Marie Kreutzer’s ‘The Ground Beneath My Feet’ – Berlinale
“She’s not fit for this life,” says Lola to a doctor as they stand together beside her sister’s hospital bed….
Bare life, corrupt elites and surviving in today’s America: On Steve McQueen’s ‘Widows’
While the United States Senate was debating the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh in Washington DC, the trial of a century…
Have you Earned this Parody? On ‘Assassination Nation’
Begin to wonder what you do write about. Or if you have anything to say. Or if there even…
Naomi Kawase’s ‘Vision’: Poetic Worlds and Vegetal Camerawork
Naomi Kawase’s Vision takes place in a rural zone of the Nara Prefecture. This is the region in Japan where…
TIFF Review: Alex Ross Perry’s ‘Her Smell’
Alex Ross Perry’s latest feature, Her Smell, focuses on the career of a rock star, Becky (played by Elisabeth Moss),…
TIFF Review: Margarethe von Trotta’s ‘Searching for Ingmar Bergman’
Searching for Ingmar Bergman opens with acclaimed German director Margarethe von Trotta in Gotland, on the rocky beach from several…
Carol Morley’s ‘Out of Blue’: Refractions of “The Female Investigative Gaze”
Following the TIFF world premiere of Carol Morley’s fourth feature-length film, Out of Blue (2018), the director, seated adjacent to…
Jaume’s World: The Patriarchal Imaginary of Jaime Rosales’s ‘Petra’
Note: Review contains a few of many spoilable plot points. Petra, the sixth feature from Spanish arthouse director Jaime Rosales,…
Cannes Review: Agnieszka Smoczynska’s ‘Fugue’ (‘Fuga’)
There’s a scene in Agnieszka Smoczynska’s second feature film, Fugue, where the husband of amnesiac protagonist, Alicja (screenwriter Gabriela Muskała),…
Cannes Review: Alice Rohrwacher’s ‘Happy as Lazzaro’ (‘Lazzaro Felice’)
The idea for Happy as Lazzaro (Lazzaro Felice) reportedly came to Alice Rohrwacher when remembering an article she had read…
Cannes Review: Jafar Panahi’s ‘Three Faces’ (‘Se Rokh’)
Jafar Panahi’s Three Faces begins with a suicide video that may or not be real. A well-known actress, Behnaz Jafari…
Care at the Margins: Debra Granik’s ‘Leave No Trace’ (2018)
What does it mean to retreat, to withdraw, to leave the village for the forest? Is it a rejection of…
Cannes – Zsófia Szilágyi’s ‘Egy nap’ (‘One Day’)
Zsófia Szilágyi’s debut film One Day (Egy nap) is a study in the purgatory of motherhood and is riddled with…
Baroque Pleasures and Queer Transformations in Evangelia Kranioti’s ‘Obscuro Barroco’
Obscuro Barroco (2018) is shot through with the baroque. Textures of fabric and flesh, caught in movement, guide the essay…
BERLINALE – A remedy against the solitude of war: On Lola Arias’s ‘Theatre of War’ (‘Teatro de guerra’)
Malvinas una representación inconclusa (Malvinas: An Inconclusive Representation), an essay written by Lara Segade for the Argentine film magazine Kilómetro…
Berlinale – Yoko Yamanaka’s ‘Amiko’
I’ve never been sure what lemons are supposed to symbolise and the internet is no help. Are they meant to…
Berlinale – Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Groß’s ‘My Happy Family’
A 52-year-old woman decides to move out of her family home and take an apartment alone. She has no apparent…
BERLINALE – Bojina Panayotova’s ‘I See Red People’ (Je Vois Rouge)
Early on in I See Red People, Bojina Panayotova, the director and protagonist of the documentary, calls her mother, Mirena,…