Main Articles

Main Articles

INTERVENTION (MEDIATION) FOR THE SOUL: THE FILMS OF LIOR SHAMRIZ

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.

2013.03.29

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DAY OF THE BEAST BY ALEX DE LA IGLESIA

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.

2013.03.29

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ARREBATO BY IVAN ZULUETA

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.

2013.03.23

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FROM “RETHINKING THE FEMME FATALE: READY FOR HER CLOSE-UP”

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.

2013.03.20

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A NATURAL, LIVING FILM: PASOLINI’S “WRITTEN LANGUAGE OF REALITY”

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”.

2013.03.18

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ABBAS KIAROSTAMI:IN SEARCH OF THE FRIEND

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.

2013.03.18

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LAS HURDES BY LUI BUÑUEL

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.

2013.03.15

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PANORAMA: TRAVELING LIGHT BY GINA TELAROLI

By Jose Sarmiento

Traveling Light dwells on the subject of travel in all its metaphysical sense, either as a documentary of travel, as a recreation, or as a mixture of both. The departure, the sense of loss and moving away of territory, the longing and nostalgia of a simple voyage: Feelings and sensations piled up and captured by the artificial eye.

2013.02.18

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PANORAMA: WILD AND PRECIOUS BY BILL MOUSOULIS

By Mónica Delgado

Under the eye of a camera which follows its characters with the immediacy and texture of digital cinema, Bill Mousoulis proposes a fiction contextualized in the current Greek economic crisis, which works not as a backdrop for the film, but as a symbolic spleen for its lead character, an old Italian filmmaker drawn to the political chaos and social critique in Athens, desperate to document it, away from him family and friends.

2013.02.18

Main Articles

PANORAMA: LA LEGGENDA DI KASPAR HAUSER BY DAVIDE MANULI

By Jose Sarmiento

Manuli, who has been deeply involved with dance music since his first experimental works, seems to be more worried about expressing this dance culture as a basic element of this deliberately obscure film.

2013.02.17

desistfilm

INTERVENTION (MEDIATION) FOR THE SOUL: THE FILMS OF LIOR SHAMRIZ

DAY OF THE BEAST BY ALEX DE LA IGLESIA

ARREBATO BY IVAN ZULUETA

FROM “RETHINKING THE FEMME FATALE: READY FOR HER CLOSE-UP”

A NATURAL, LIVING FILM: PASOLINI’S “WRITTEN LANGUAGE OF REALITY”

ABBAS KIAROSTAMI:IN SEARCH OF THE FRIEND

LAS HURDES BY LUI BUÑUEL

PANORAMA: TRAVELING LIGHT BY GINA TELAROLI

PANORAMA: WILD AND PRECIOUS BY BILL MOUSOULIS

PANORAMA: LA LEGGENDA DI KASPAR HAUSER BY DAVIDE MANULI

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