We asked our contributors to select a film they have written about in some form in the past. It could have been a review, a term paper, a passionate email, or a Post-it note. The writer may disagree with what they wrote, or they may stand by it. Nevertheless, they are now a different person, and we wanted to know about their personal journey with this particular film.
So often in writing on experimental cinema (to say nothing of art in general) one is confronted with polarities of intuition and concept, emotion and intellect, feeling and form. Williams’s film demonstrates that while such distinctions may be legitimate, they need not be reified into strict dualisms.
I took it all in with the wonderstruck child perspective the film cherishes, but over time some ambivalence has crept into my relationship with this beloved, hugely ambitious, and complex movie.
As my admiration for Saint Laurent has grown over the years, I have come to think that maybe some films are not made for festival viewing, or are at least best seen in relative isolation, away from the hustle and bustle of an event like Cannes or Venice.
Mostly using shots in which witnesses sharing their testimonies turn their backs turned to the camera, de la Orden emphasizes their spoken memory while avoiding a visual exhibition of atrocities.
Melancholy co-exists with tenderness and tranquility; the isolation felt by the characters slowly eases as their connections to the world around them become more apparent.
Using pirated media, found/remixed footage, and some clever edits, the two-person Australian art collective known as Soda Jerk has constructed a film, Hello Dankness, that attempts to illustrate the five-year span from 2016 to 2021 across several acts.
Anaita Wali Zada, a first-time actor who fled Afghanistan in 2021 with her sister after working for several years as a TV presenter and journalist, is often the lone subject of these images. Her composed, stoic face entrances just as it conceals a dull ache for something Donya struggles to name.
Touching the Screen
Part 2 of a special conversation on games and art featuring Destiny 2, Final Fantasy, Hitman, Tower of Druaga, Pathologic 2, and more.
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Touching the Screen
Incisive analysis in games criticism is still hard to find. In part one of this special conversation for Touching the Screen, five critics discuss potential angles from which to approach video games as art.
The films of Ira Sachs have balanced their slender narratives with richly resided-in evocations of people and milieus, surveying the uneasy and often breakable bonds between lovers, companions, and kin. But Passages is the first of his dramas whose leanness feels effectively and exhilaratingly taut.
The depictions of trans people and in particular sex workers can be centered around the desires of cis straight men; in contrast, Kokomo City, in which the participants can simply be, feels like an act of resistance.
This 168-minute opus from documentarian Claire Simon exposes the mystery and marvels of what it physiologically and emotionally means to be human in a body that inevitably blooms and wilts.
The film feels emotionally authentic, and while its narrative runs the risk of being a litany of heartbreaking moments, its unparalleled specificity and peerless performances, particularly the two non-actor leads, preserve its integrity.
Oppenheimer, with its achronological historical narrative, crosscuts among different time frames, and though it has just one inevitable outcome (the annihilation of humanity), its biopic structure gives it an inherent tidiness it is constantly working against.