By Paddy Mulholland
In the spirit of the later turning point of 1998, in that near-comically optimistic decade for the West, the narrative shifted momentously and purposefully. All efforts were put toward ending the conflict – bygones had to be bygones now, forgiveness had to be no longer sought but unconditionally proffered, the buzzword became “reconciliation.”
By José Sarmiento Hinojosa
Two 2020 films I saw which were decidedly different from one another but shared a common element that made them exceptionally good and drove me to write a piece about them (in this series of impossible dialogues between films I am planning to do) were the dance/coreography documentary Shelly Belly Inna Real Life by Argentinian filmmaker, dancer and choreographer Cecilia Bengolea and 80,000 ans, a dreamlike split screen film by Christelle Lheureux.
By Joe Miller
The James Stanley Brakhage Collection at the University of Colorado Libraries offers researchers a spectacular opening scene; seven folders into Box 1, the files of his correspondence with Kenneth Anger begin, and they continue far into box two – dozens of fat folders stuffed with densely typed letters and handwritten notes spanning 30 years of friendship, much of it on Anger’s cool pentagram or pyramid-and-flying-saucer stationary.
By Paddy Mulholland
The slow death, the anguished stagger of a wounded labourer in Evolution of a Filipino Family (2004), the gradual, forced mental disintegration of a sex slave in Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012), is not in Lav Diaz’s latest, Genus, Pan. (2020). Noted as one of the Filipino filmmaker’s shortest features to date, it’s also one of his most direct, most confrontational, least overtly compassionate.
by Claudia Siefen-Leitich
Doesn’t the modern, enlightened observer, who feels isolated in his existence, have the tendency to look for information in the form of a work of art? The observer approaches the work of art in the hope of adding a small, universal insight to his or her own endeavour, to make sure of himself or herself with the help of the truth. With this expectation, one approaches in particular the image produced and the running image is included here. Film, painting and sculpture as material reality, which can be experienced directly by the viewer through the senses and thus generates truth.
By Nicole Brenez*
During this pandemic season, french filmmaker and plastic artist Marylène Negro has made her films available at: http://www.tousdesindiens.com/marylene_negro.
We rescued this wonderful text by Nicole Brenez for the occasion, about Marylène’s masterpiece “X+”
We’re honoured to premiere online the new Jacques Perconte film, Avant L’effondrement Du Mont Blanc (Before the collapse of Mont Blanc, 2020). Accompanying the film, is a text by José Sarmiento Hinojosa, both in English and Spanish, below.
Estamos honrados de estrenar online el nuevo filme de Jacques Perconte, Avant L’effondrement Du Mont Blanc (Antes del colapso del Mont Blanc, 2020). Acompaña el filme un texto de José Sarmiento Hinojosa, en inglés y español, debajo.
Durante las siguientes cuatro semanas, replicaremos parte del programa “Mujeres en la Resistencia”, curado por Desistfilm y Nicole Brenez. Serán seis filmes de realizadoras de distintas partes del mundo, que han dedicado estos trabajos para dejar testimonio de distintas manifestaciones de resistencia política, enfocadas en problemáticas esenciales del mundo que nos rodea: migración, revolución, memoria, violencia y censura.
by Claudia Siefen-Leitich
Ben Highmore, in the European discussion of Roland Barthes’ concept of emptiness or “drift” of contemporary life, argues that this emptiness is “the ordinary, as it is constantly hidden and obscured by a number of powerful forces… [like] the spectacular extravagances of industrial culture. For Highmore, therefore, the ordinary is not “empty” but “submerged”, hiding in a vastness of shadows. For him, everyday life is an accumulation of small things that together form a larger thing, a “field of experience” in constant change.
By Courtney Stephens
Isolation, like movies, has different genres. There is a type of isolation that is sought and generative, what is called solitude. Another takes the form of a test or experiment; backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail by oneself, or Thoreau at Walden Pond.
Directors:
Mónica Delgado Ch.
José Sarmiento Hinojosa
ISSN 2311-7451
© Desistfilm 2020
Lima Perú. All rights reserved.