desistfilm

DONATE
Home
Page 7

Main Articles
Main Articles

PANORAMA: JUST DON’T THINK I’LL SCREAM BY FRANK BEAUVAIS

By Mónica Delgado

In the marvelous Ne croyez surtout pas que je hurle (Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream, 2019), French filmmaker Frank Beauvais is on the hunt of something that seems imperceptible to us in films. He recovers those moments that aren’t meaningful to us in the narrative logic of films, since there almost aren’t faces or emblematic takes. Shots that observe ornaments in some bookcase or table, shots of steps, of wheels or flowers, hands that touch something quickly, or some arbitrary detail, too arbitrary to be taken into account.

READ MORE »
2020.02.17
desistfilm

PANORAMA: JESSICA FOREVER BY CAROLINE POGGI AND JONATHAN VINEL

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Travelling around CPH:DOX, Berlinale, IndieLisboa and Toronto, Jessica Forever a strange new creature from Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel, a suburban post-apocalyptic sci-fi that follows a group of rebellious young men and her leader, Jessica, in a struggle to keep surviving against a “virtual” totalitarian regime.

READ MORE »
2020.02.09
Main Articles

PANORAMA: KNIVES AND SKIN BY JENNIFER REEDER

By Mónica Delgado

In Knives and Skin, american filmmaker Jennifer Reeder returns to the motifs of several of her short films, that from some years now share a trademark of rarefied atmospheres, neon and glitter, to embody feminine adolescent universes. If in the remarkable A Million Miles Away (U.S., 2014), it’s a song from Judas Priest, You’ve got another thing coming, that becomes the reverse of the usual adolescent angst (in the voices of a choir class in a public school), here in her most recent feature, some eighties’ songs from New Order, Modern English or Naked Eyes acquire also the inner dimension of dissatisfaction or strangeness.

READ MORE »
2020.01.23
desistfilm

PANORAMA: BILL BRAND – AUGUST GARDEN (2019)

By José Sarmiento-Hinojosa

Scattered in seemingly random order, on the screen, we see the light that traverses the “kinetic fields” of Bill Brand’s latest film August Garden. Made for a group exhibition at Galerie Arnaud Lefebvre (Paris), the film accompanies a series of flower ink paintings, carefully made by the artist. Before, in the first seconds, we’re able to see an animation of August Garden 07 (ink and watercolor on xuan paper, 9″ x13″, 2019), which titillates lively for brief moments.  

READ MORE »
2020.01.18
Main Articles

THE JÄGERSTÄTTER CASE – A MONOLOGUE

by Claudia Siefen-Leitich

The Upper Austrian farmer and sacristan Franz Jägerstätter refused military service in 1943 on religious grounds. He was sentenced to death for “decomposition of military strength” and executed on 9 August 1943. The groundbreaking television film, Der Fall Jägerstätter / The Jaegerstaetter Case (1972) from Axel Corti, is a rare attempt at exploring dissident life in Austria during the Third Reich.

READ MORE »
2020.01.17
Main Articles

PANORAMA: RUN KALYANI BY GEETHA J.

By Giuliano Vivaldi

Geetha J’s debut feature-length film, a Malayalam film premiered at the Kolkata International Film Festival, is an Indian film that merits a wide international audience precisely for its ability to reveal multiple layers of social reality within a tightly structured and delightfully innovative form.

READ MORE »
2019.11.14
desistfilm

PANORAMA: BLACK POND, DE JESSICA SARAH RINLAND

Por José Sarmiento Hinojosa

The natural realm as a metaphor, or the presence of the verbal narration in a sort of proposition of first principles, are ever present in the work of British/Argentinian filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland, and Black Pond (2018) expands on these notions manifesting its presence in a common land in south England, again accompanied by experts -like marine biologists in the past-, in this case, members of the Natural History Society, who occupy the land and study the native insects.

READ MORE »
2019.09.04
Main Articles

MAMA WAS A FLAMIN’ CREATURE – FILM CULTURE 80: THE LEGEND OF BARBARA RUBIN

by Calin Boto

“I’m always here, there, everywhere”. That’s how Barbara Rubin ends one of her candid letters [1] to Jonas Mekas. And so she was, be it in a sanitarium, the Film-Makers’ Cooperative, Warhol’s Factory, Allen Ginsberg’s East Hill Farm, New York or Europe. Rubin was on a rush, and time proved her right. Her sudden death occurred when she was just 35, by that time living under a different name as a converted Hasidic mother of five children.

READ MORE »
2019.08.07
Main Articles

FAMILY TOGETHERNESS REVISITED: FUNNY GAMES U.S.

By Claudia Siefen-Leitich

The first scene also remains the strongest: the small family (mum, dad, son and dog) drives in the family car towards the holiday home in Long Island. The car offers safety, is hermetically sealed, no sound from the outside world penetrates the vehicle, which literally pours itself into the landscape at high speed and routinely moves towards its destination. The sun glitters through the windows and Mama pushes a punk CD into the system.

READ MORE »
2019.07.08