Features
It is only through environmental context that its sparse narrative reveals itself, and even then the game is content to leave things unexplained by its wild, cosmic ending.
Roy Andersson's film captures the planning, action, and aftermath of a mass protest against a planned Davis Cup tennis match in Sweden against Rhodesia. It is a vivid record of 1960s political protest and of a wealthy European nation’s racism.
This is a game explicitly about narrative, adaptation, and the multifaceted nature of games as a medium. The game was produced by Remedy, a studio now blessed with not only the budget to fully realize their vision but also implicit permission to experiment from a gaming public weary of copy-paste open world games.
Unlike the moving-image installations presented as part of group exhibitions like documenta and the Venice Biennale, Villa Medici focuses squarely on the theatrical presentation of its selection—which, considering the Renaissance-era backdrop, makes for some surreal viewing environments.
Haynes is doing something extraordinarily delicate and difficult in May December, reminding viewers, with the lightest of touches, that we are all implicated and indulgent in the processes of social, cultural, and sexual exploitation that define the modern consciousness.
Buy this new anthology exclusively from Museum of the Moving Image's online shop or in the Museum's store on-site.
A Few Great Pumpkins
The Haunting, Cat People, Possibly in Michigan, The City of the Dead, Dragonwyck, The Eternal Daughter, Ghostwatch.
It seems a mistake to retroactively graft the now-vaunted legacy of The Blair Witch Project onto the final product . . . the believability of fictionalized found footage has never only had to do with the question of what an audience knows going in.
Released in 1999, a year now fetishized as the last great flowering of the domestic cinema, American Movie encapsulates the shaggy, aspirational optimism of a quashed era, and one worthy of romantic remembrance.
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.
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.
Touching the Screen
In this special conversation for Touching the Screen, five critics discuss potential angles from which to approach video games as art.
If Breath of the Wild found new possibilities for player choice in exploration, Tears of the Kingdom offers enticing glimpses of what is to come as game designers rise to meet the challenge of endlessly creative audiences.
Fox remains underappreciated, even though his name is universally known. Fox is perhaps the sitcom performer who most successfully translated his innocent ebullience and endearing kineticism from television to film.