I have been wrestling this week with my ambivalent reaction towards the recent Kurt Kren and Viennese Actionist Film near-complete retrospective at the Anthology Film Archives which I found to be both enervating and exhilarating in equal measures. In retrospect, this inability to reconcile with the artist’s body of work seems to stem from Kren’s […]
A pair of decapitated, naked male corpses are recovered from the bottom of a frigid, isolated lake as a team of police officers processes the crime scene in the hopes of recovering their heads in order to aid in the identification of the victims. Observing the idiosyncratically violent and methodical nature of the crime, the […]
Although annotated with a running time of 98 minutes, the print for Uwe Jens Krafft’s Raid on the Bergen Express that was screened for the program turned out to be a British cut of the film that clocked in at slightly less than one hour. With that reservation noted, it is difficult to assess the […]
Like Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Damjan Kozole’s Spare Parts is imbued with a metaphoric yellow haze, a contamination that has tainted the souls of those who move in the periphery of everyday inhumanity and despair. Opening with a seemingly mundane, bookending episode of a mentor meeting his assistant for the first time at a […]
One day, in the rural village of Wagadu, a slumbering griot (traditional tale-teller) named Djéliba is visited by the spirit of an ancient hunter and oracle as he recounts in his dreams the legend of a tribesman on the dawn of civilization who rose up and proclaimed himself king of Mandé with the neutral consent […]
A radio broadcast issues a public service announcement reminding listeners of the third anniversary memorial service for the victims of the Ark of Truth cult disaster, a biological terrorist attack that introduced a genetically engineered virus into the nation’s water supply, leading to the deaths of 128 people and an additional 8,000 illnesses. A quiet […]