Main Articles

Main Articles

MURDER PSALM BY STAN BRAKHAGE

By Lauren Bliss

Murder Psalm is the closest film has come to figuring psychosis. That is not to say that there is anything wrong or sick with Murder Psalm. As Michel Foucault pointed out in Madness and Civilisation, it was the psychiatrists and not the psychotics who fostered the rationalisation and objectification of psychosis as a diagnosis for purposes of power and control. Thus, and in extension of this, I would suggest that the psychosis of Murder Psalm is neither irrational nor unreasonable.

2014.03.14

Main Articles

FILM DIVIDED APART BY NORIO IMAI

By Julian Ross

For Bundan sareta firumu (Film Divided Apart, 1972), Imai’s take on found footage was distinctly material with an emphasis placed on film as object. He further spliced a selection of the films into individual frames that were projected in rotation as slides. Not only the photographed image but also the film material itself became part of the projected image in the slideshow display.

2014.03.14

Main Articles

WORKERS LEAVING THE FACTORY BY HARUN FAROCKI

By Lauren Bliss

Farocki’s technical genius is in his ability to combine the specificity of the cinematic apparatus, the mechanically produced representation of the body, with the modern regimentation of the body to effect an imaging of the process of subjectification. As an invocation to the production line of the factory, with its repetition, regulation, and homogenization, the use of different films showing the same thing figures how the body is shaped, condensed, and squeezed to fit to the mechanical mould.

2014.03.13

Main Articles

OUT OF YOUR RUINS YOU HAVE MADE CREATIONS: THE FILMS OF JOSEPH CORNELL

By Sarah Nichols

In his poem for Joseph Cornell, “Objects and Apparitions,” Octavio Paz writes “Minimal, incoherent fragments:/the opposite of History, creator of ruins,/out of your ruins you have made creations” (1). For me, Cornell is a visual poet; an obsessive hunter-gatherer of images. His shadow boxes, filled as they are with “marbles, metal rings, and other frugally poetic objects” (2), create their own lives, as the best poems do.

2014.03.12

Main Articles

THE BIG STICK/ AN OLD REEL BY SAUL LEVINE

Por Nicolás Carrasco
En The Big Stick, Saul Levine edita fragmentos de cortos de Chaplin centrados en la figura del policía. Al inicio, Levine muestra al personaje del vagabundo siendo acosado tanto por un policía como por un sujeto armado con un cuchillo. Levine repite estos planos en el montaje hasta dar la impresión que Charlot se encuentra atrapado en un laberinto, en una realidad absurda donde la policía es incapaz de protegerlo de quien lo acosa, convirtiéndose ella misma en otro acosador.

2014.03.12

Main Articles

THE MESMERIST BY BILL MORRISON/ PSALM III: NIGHT OF THE MEEK BY PHIL SOLOMON

Por Nicolás Carrasco

A inicios de la década pasada, dos cineastas experimentales reflexionaron sobre la memoria del Holocausto a partir de material fílmico muy deteriorado, proveniente de películas anteriores al ascenso del fascismo en Alemania. Estas películas de género se adelantaron a los sentimientos de miedo, inseguridad y desesperación de esos años trágicos, reflejando el sentir de toda una generación de europeos. Estos cineastas fueron los norteamericanos Bill Morrison y Phil Solomon.

2014.03.11

Main Articles

ON LATENT FEMININITY: TWO FILMS OF DENIS COTÉ

By Petra Popovic

While less mysterious than their predecessors, the last two productions were shocking nevertheless. Unlike the others, they no longer bear witness to a common thread in Côté’s body of work, a core concept arching through all his previous films.

2014.03.09

Main Articles

SPACE/TIME AND WORRIES BY KEN JACOBS

By Lauren Bliss

Space/Time and Worries is kind of Jacobs on Jacobs, where he curates a screening of his works for an audience at the University of Michigan School of Art and Design. The video is uploaded to Vimeo and is thus filtered through the lens of the institutional push for the convenience and innovation of the lecture-at-home; however the images appear as though they had been properly screened in a cinema, somehow the laptop and Internet browser do not detract from the viewing experience. This may be because Jacobs’ instrument of choice is the image itself.

2014.03.08

Main Articles

PERILS, MUTINY AND MAYHEIM BY ABIGAIL CHILD

By Tristan Teshigahara

The reconstructive collage films of Abigail Child do not inject themselves with political context, docufiction form, or profound cinematic meaning.

2014.03.07

Main Articles

PANORAMA: LA BATAILLE DE SOLFÉRINO BY JUSTINE TRIET

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Independent filmmaker Justine Triet, better known for her last shot Vilaine Fille Mauvais Garçon (2012) (which had a good run at Berlinale and a Cesar Award nomination) makes her debut feature film, called Age of Panic (The Battle of Solferino), in which the spheres of the private and the public collapse equally in an interesting parallel route, which depicts the days of the Sarkozy/Hollande election, a breaking point for French internal politics.

2013.11.19

desistfilm

MURDER PSALM BY STAN BRAKHAGE

FILM DIVIDED APART BY NORIO IMAI

WORKERS LEAVING THE FACTORY BY HARUN FAROCKI

OUT OF YOUR RUINS YOU HAVE MADE CREATIONS: THE FILMS OF JOSEPH CORNELL

THE BIG STICK/ AN OLD REEL BY SAUL LEVINE

THE MESMERIST BY BILL MORRISON/ PSALM III: NIGHT OF THE MEEK BY PHIL SOLOMON

ON LATENT FEMININITY: TWO FILMS OF DENIS COTÉ

SPACE/TIME AND WORRIES BY KEN JACOBS

PERILS, MUTINY AND MAYHEIM BY ABIGAIL CHILD

PANORAMA: LA BATAILLE DE SOLFÉRINO BY JUSTINE TRIET

desistfilm