Seeing, and Seeing Through, Art History: The Resurrection of Hilma af Klint in ‘Beyond the Visible’ (Halina Dyrschka, 2019)
Sometime last year, I tweeted: “are Hilma af Klint selfies the new [Yayoi Kusama] infinity mirror selfies?” Selfies taken in…
Germany
‘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…
Women on the Edge: History, Temporality, Sisterhood and Political Militancy in Marge Piercy’s ‘Vida’ and Margarethe von Trotta’s ‘Die bleierne Zeit’
(Crawling titles rise from bottom of frame, white-on-black:) In May, 1972, bombs exploded […] In all, thirty-six people were injured…
Hito Steyerl’s Grey Zone
It’s said that Theodor Adorno asked to have the walls of his lecture hall painted a certain shade of grey….
Intimacy, Distance and Detail in Ute Aurand’s ‘Rasendes Grün mit Pferden’ (‘Rushing Green with Horses’)
Watching Ute Aurand’s Rushing Green with Horses is like being spirited sideways into a pastoral. Shot entirely in 16mm with…
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,…
Failing to Act, Acting to Fail: The Films of Margarethe von Trotta
“How is it that some people decide the fate of others?” asks Rosa Luxemburg in the opening of Margarethe von…
Finding Your Rage: On Club des Femmes’ ‘Revolt, She Said’ Programme
In 2018, feminism is everywhere and nowhere at once. Women, we are told, can now be CEOs, and entrepreneurs and…
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…
No Year of Rest and Relaxation: On Emily Atef’s ‘Three Days in Quiberon’
Near the end of Emily Atef’s Three Days in Quiberon (2018), a cinematic snapshot of the life of Romy Schneider,…
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…
On Valeska Grisebach’s ‘Western’ and its borderlessness
Valeska Grisebach describes her latest feature, Western (2017), as a “dance with the genre”.¹ Here the cinematic evocations of the…
Reconceiving trans womanhood and sexual pluralism in Rosa von Praunheim’s ‘City of Lost Souls’
A seminal figure in the Queer German Cinema and a key proponent of AIDS activism, Rosa von Praunheim has cemented…