Who gets to be ‘the people’? Astra Taylor’s ‘What Is Democracy?’ and Gabrielle Brady’s ‘Island of the Hungry Ghosts’
An impromptu interview on a beach in Miami. A casually dressed white woman in her thirties is perched comfortably on…
2018
Dominga Sotomayor’s Unstable Utopias: ‘Too Late To Die Young’ (‘Tarde para morir joven’)
Utopias critique by differentiation, springing from a lack. They work, writes Lucy Sargisson, “by creating distant spaces whence to interrogate…
On Looking but not Seeing: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s ‘Never Look Away’
The title of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look Away (2018) is an imperative: don’t look away from art, evil,…
The (Not So) Queer Failure of Chanya Button’s ‘Vita and Virginia’
Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West met at a party.i According to historical records this was a dinner party, but in…
A Different Kind of Duration: Lila Avilés’s ‘The Chambermaid’
The Hotel, Room 47: an open suitcase; mussed bedsheets; a torn postcard of Venetian sights, its eight pieces carefully re-assembled….
No other voice: Claire Denis’s ‘High Life’
Claire Denis’s latest film, High Life, opens with an exchange of voices: the cry of a baby, Willow, and the…
Watching Bo Burnham’s ‘Eighth Grade’ with my teenage sister
“It’s like I’m waiting in line for like a rollercoaster,” says 14-year-old Kayla to the very small, potentially even non-existent…
De-fetishising the Commodity: Xiaolu Guo’s ‘Five Men and a Caravaggio’
Five Men and a Caravaggio is true to its title: a story of five men, each from different artistic professions,…
On Solitary Companionship: ‘A Wild Stream’ (‘Una corriente salvaje’) by Nuria Ibáñez Castañeda at Cinéma du Réel
Nuria Ibánez Castañeda’s Una corriente salvaje (A Wild Stream, 2018) opens on Omar, wading waist-deep off a remote beach in…
“Only The Lonely”: Sex Work under Capitalism in Isa Mazzei and Daniel Goldhaber’s ‘Cam’
Isa Mazzei and Daniel Goldhaber’s Cam (2018) begins with camgirl Lola entertaining her male clients with a series of erotic…
The Precarious Politics of Yorgos Lanthimos’s ‘The Favourite’
In The Monstrous Feminine, Barbara Creed outlines the horror we associate with images of the interior made exterior. Drawing on…
Which of Hundreds of Selves?: Josephine Decker’s Coming-of-Age Trilogy
Josephine Decker’s world is full of secrets. There is something powerful about her ability to craft characters – mostly women…
On Necessary and Unnecessary Love in Karyn Kusama’s ‘Destroyer’
Small talk is boring. We hate it, and it’s obvious why – it’s a begrudgingly necessary preamble to any purposeful conversational exchange,…
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…
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…
‘Can You Ever Forgive Me’: An Ode To Queer Failure
In 2015, Todd Haynes’s Carol explored some of the complexities surrounding lesbian experience in ‘50s New York. The film, beautifully…
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…
Two people in a house: Catherine Corsini’s ‘An Impossible Love’ (‘Un amour impossible’)
The poster for An Impossible Love shows a man with his back turned, eyes averted, hands in pockets. He’s facing…
Notes on Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Roma’
The first plane in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma sails across a snatch of sky mirrored in soapy water; the next, in…
Super-ego, super-charged: Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Suspiria’
While Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name (2017) received general acclaim last year, one particular critique cut through the…
Learning to Care: Adina Pintilie’s ‘Touch Me Not’
To be intimate and vulnerable with another involves being honest with oneself, or so the saying goes. This task is…