Sacred Places, 2009

During the Q&A, Jean-Marie Téno remarked that he was inspired to shoot Sacred Places as a result of seeing dramatic changes to the format of the 2009 FESPACO film festival in Burkina Faso, where the practice of holding open-air simulcasts of featured films for public viewing around the festival grounds in Ouagadougou – often, their […]

The Colonial Misunderstanding, 2005

In an early episode of The Colonial Misunderstanding, a reverend from Cameroon who is working towards the restoration and proper attribution of a native Jamaican missionary, Joseph Merrick’s historical importance in the Christianization of the country during the early half of the 1800s (a historical suppression that, in the light of colonialization in the latter […]

Antonio Gaudi, 1984

Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Antonio Gaudi is a spare, astonishing, and haunting documentary on the designs of famed turn of the century Spanish architect, Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926). A profound influence on the Spanish art nouveau movement, Gaudi’s sensual adaptation of Gothic, Middle Eastern, and traditional architecture is a truly a unique artistic vision. Teshigahara immerses the viewer […]

Novel City, 2008 / Horizontal Boundaries, 2008

Novel City, 2008 (Leslie Thornton) While Leslie Thornton’s 1983 film Adynata posed questions of exoticism and alterity in its cultural examination of China, Novel City represents a different, yet equally jarring notion of otherness – one borne of China’s rapid industrialization, economic transformation, and cultural amnesia at the turn of the century. Interweaving excerpts from […]