Film Criticism |

Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema by David Desser

January 9, 2018

In Eros Plus Masscre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema, David Desser examines the creative and revolutionary spirit that defined the 1960s Japanese new wave movement (nuberu bagu) apart from the facile identification and synchronicity associated with the coincidental emergence of the French new wave, and more importantly, refocuses his exposition within the… read more »

Editions Dis Voir: Wong Kar Wai by Jean-Marc Lalanne, David Martinez, Ackbar Abbas, and Jimmy Ngai

December 27, 2017

Consisting of three critical essays and an extended interview with the filmmaker, the Editions Dis Voir publication Wong Kar-wai provides an evocative, thoughtful, and articulate introductory framework into the signature aesthetics and recurring themes of Wong’s cinema. In the overview essay Images from the Inside, Jean-Marc Lalanne equates Wong’s films to the disintegrating, abstract remnants… read more »

Editions Dis Voir: Tsai Ming Liang by Jean Pierre Rehm, Olivier Joyard, and Danièle Revière

December 27, 2017

The Editions Dis Voir publication, Tsaï Ming Liang, consists of two sections: a compilation of critical essays that examine key elements of Tsai’s intensely personal cinema, Bringing in the Rain by Jean-Pierre Rehm and Corporal Interference by Olivier Joyard, and an extended interview with Tsaï Ming-liang entitled Scouting by Danièle Revière that discusses his influences,… read more »

Editions Dis Voir: Bruno Dumont by Sébastien Ors, Philippe Tancelin, and Valérie Jouve

December 27, 2017

The Editions Dis Voir publication, Bruno Dumont, opens with a short chapter entitled The Work of a Filmmaker that seems to characterize Dumont’s films within the context of the distinctive cinema of Robert Bresson. Through referential allusion to the informal, fragmented passages of Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematographer, Dumont’s artistic methodology, similarly captured in kernelled… read more »

Disintegration in Frames by Pavle Levi

December 27, 2017

Pavle Levi’s insightful and well-argued book, Disintegration in Frames: Aesthetics and Ideology in the Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Cinema examines the evolution of the national Yugoslav and regional post-Yugoslav cinema within its shifting political and cultural landscape – initially, in the context of individual expression under the repressive government of Josip Broz Tito, then subsequently, as… read more »

DEFA East German Cinema, 1946-1992, edited by Seán Allan and John Sandford

January 9, 2018

DEFA East German Cinema, 1946-1992 retraces the unique achievements and continued relevance of the East German national film studio, Deutsche Film-AG (DEFA), from its origins as a Soviet-assembled group of experienced postwar filmmakers called filmaktiv tasked to draft a plan to revive the German film industry, to the sale of the studio to the French… read more »

Close Up – Iranian Cinema: Past, Present and Future by Hamid Dabashi

December 27, 2017

Hamid Dabashi presents a comprehensive, passionate, and insightful personal account on the evolution of Iranian art cinema in Close Up – Iranian Cinema: Past, Present and Future. By presenting the works of key films and filmmakers within the contextual framework of Iranian history – in particular, from the state-sponsored, forced modernization programs initiated by the… read more »

Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film by Dina Iordanova

December 27, 2017

In Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film, Dina Iordanova proposes a reframing of Eastern European cinema (and by extension, film culture studies) away from conventional, western-centric paradigms that tend to evaluate post World War II cinema from the “other Europe” within the context of cold war politics… read more »

Chris Marker: Memories of the Future by Catherine Lupton

December 27, 2017

I have always felt an indefinable kinship towards Chris Marker’s films that were not particularly related to the overt intellectuality of his work or his espousal of left-leaning ideals. However, it was not until the first chapter in Catherine Lupton’s book on the filmmaker, Chris Marker: Memories of the Future that this gravitation took on… read more »

BFI Modern Classics: A City of Sadness by Bérénice Reynaud

December 27, 2017

In the BFI Modern Classics publication, A City of Sadness, Bérénice Reynaud provides a comprehensive, articulate, and insightful critical analysis of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s seminal and artistically groundbreaking film on the once-taboo subject of the ‘hidden’ history of Taiwan, providing a compelling examination of the film through the intrinsic social context of a culturally broader Chinese… read more »

Afterlife