By David Phelps
Vlácil’s moral grappling seems like its own answer throughout his films. Men are beasts, the world is hell, and innocence can only exist as a symbol, dove or child, unplugged from a brutal reality and dwelling apart in celestial conjecture. Convenient for allegory, the point operates as pretext, subtext, and text of Vlácil’s movies.
By Claudia Siefen
Right eye. Left Eye:
Some rhythmic thoughts on some cinematic poems by Ken Jacobs (1989/97).
By Mónica Delgado
Describing the universe of Lior Shamriz is a complex task. Unclassifiable in itself, the work of this Israeli-born, Berlin-based filmmaker has a vitality and creativity that has referents in cinema, but also in literature, painting, and overall in the mixtures that this burlesque genre offers. Nothing is serious, nothing is indispensable and nothing is definitive in these stories that travel from Berlin to Tel Aviv, where queer and cosmopolitan paradigms (a saturated, necessary but unavoidable cosmopolitism) come first.
By John A. Riley
In Alex de la Iglesia’s second feature, a priest discovers a Biblical code that prophesies Satan’s appearance on Earth. He enlists the help of an LSD-loving heavy metal fan and the presenter of a TV show about the paranormal to prevent this catastrophe, which confusingly involves the priest trying to sell his soul to Satan.
By Lauren Bliss
Much could be said about Ivan Zulueta’s cult classic Arrebato (Rapture, 1980). As a philosophical manifesto for the cinema, it is complex, sensitive, and humorous in its treatment of the question ‘What is cinema, what does it do?’ The film is the story of a struggling horror director José Sirgado (Eusebio Poncela), who is haunted by a strange film sent to him by his ex-lover’s cousin, Pedro (Will More). Pedro sends the film to José in an attempt to uncover its mystery: a frame of Pedro sleeping has disappeared and been replaced with a blood red mark on the reel.
By Julie Grossman
I am grateful for the opportunity to update my introduction to Rethinking the Femme Fatale: Ready for Her Close-Up. The book was originally written to question the assumptions surrounding film noir’s character patterns and, in particular, to explore why we rely so heavily on a narrow construction of the “femme fatale” as malevolent seductress.
Por Adelmo Dunghe
Most semioticians believe that a language is a self-contained semiotic system that can be used to communicate human experience, and that this communication exists within the limits of our language. Pasolini asserts that reality itself–or at least the reality we perceive–is a semiotic system. “It seems to me,” he says, “that the first language of men is their actions. The written-spoken language is nothing more than an integration and a means of such action”.
By Tristan Teshigahara Pollack
In order to decipher the implicit qualities and poetic references in Kiarostami’s oeuvre, a brief discussion on Persian literature is necessary. Provided that ancient Persian is still intelligible for contemporary Persian speakers, the whole span of Persian literature is accessible for reading and thus remains influential.
By John A. Riley
With his third film, Luis Buñuel set out to parody the vogue for exotic ethnographic travelogues while delivering bitterly satirical attacks on poverty and the supposed objectivity of ethnographic and anthropological observers. Buñuel read Maurice Legendre’s account of his experiences in Las Hurdes, Spain, and something about this fervent Catholic’s account of the remote, destitute region fired Buñuel’s creativity.