Special Dossier: Tasmania and the Cinema Adrian Danks December 2012 Tasmania and the Cinema Introduction: Tasmania and the Cinema Van Diemen’s Land (2009) Tasmania’s intermittent relationship with the cinema dates back before the first feature film made on its rugged West Coast in 1925, Louise ...
“Change – why should I? I never pretended to be anything than I am”: The Films of Errol Flynn and Raoul Walsh (1) Adrian Danks November 2012 Tasmania and the Cinema “Flynn does not deal in depth, but he has a freshness, a galvanizing energy, a cheerful gaiety (in the old sense) made to inspire boys.” (2) “ never fights his material, playing directly into the staleness. He...
The Cats in the Hats Come Back; or “at least they’ll see the cats”: Pussycat Poetics and the Work of Chris Marker Adrian Danks September 2012 Chris Marker Dossier, Feature Articles For Guillaume-en-Egypte, Polly and Chris This is a slightly revised version of a paper presented at a symposium devoted to Chris Marker in the late 1990s. Each of the speakers was asked to identify and talk ...
“Scorched earth and space”: The Overlanders (Harry Watt, 1946) Adrian Danks September 2012 Key Moments in Australian Cinema The Overlanders is the first of five films made by Ealing Studios in Australia between the mid-1940s and the late 1950s. It provides a fascinating insight into the shifting policies, ideologies and practices of...
Walls and Mirrors: Iranian Films at the 2012 Melbourne International Film Festival Adrian Danks July 2012 2012 MIFF Dossier The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) has showcased the New Iranian Cinema since a special focus in 1993 called “Spotlight Iran”. It has routinely highlighted particular peaks and trends, and has con...
Coeur fidèle Adrian Danks July 2012 2012 MIFF Dossier I just want to say this: you have to love it and hate it at the same time – and love it as much as you hate it. This fact alone proves that the cinema is an art with a very well-defined personality of its own. ...
Between Innocence and Experience: Lee Chang Dong’s Secret Sunshine Adrian Danks June 2012 CTEQ Annotations on Film Miryang (Secret Sunshine, 2007) begins with the sky. Shine-ae (Jeon Do-yeon)’s car has broken-down outside of Miryang (which literally translates, supposedly, as “secret sunshine”), the place where her recently...
“People are waiting”: Elia Kazan and America America Adrian Danks March 2012 CTEQ Annotations on Film Martin Scorsese concludes his A Personal Journey… Through American Movies (co-directed and co-written by Michael Henry Wilson, 1995) with a brief passage from Elia Kazan’s America America (1963). This epic, phy...
Across the Borderline Adrian Danks October 2011 Fred Schepisi Dossier Barbarosa (1982) was the first feature to be made in America by any of the key figures of the Australian film “renaissance” of the 1970s. It sits alongside the initial American films of Gillian Armstrong, Bruce...
“The Raw and the Cooked”: The Peculiar Poetics of Nicolas Philibert’s Un animal, des animaux Adrian Danks October 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film Filmed between 1991 and 1994, Nicolas Philibert’s Un animal, des animaux is a gently extraordinary documentary that follows the refurbishment and eventual reopening of the Zoology Gallery of Paris’ Le Muséum Na...
Don’t Rain on Ava Gardner Parade Adrian Danks June 2011 Melbourne on Film Dossier “I’m here to make a film about the end of the world... and this seems to be exactly the right place for it.” – Ava Gardner (allegedly) (1) Marguerite Duras’ 1979 short Aurélia Steiner: Melbourne, provides an i...
Rooms with a View: Watching John Smith’s Hotel Dairies Adrian Danks March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film Watching John Smith’s playfully inquisitive, profoundly interiorised and often “hushed” Hotel Diaries is a curious and sometimes unsettling experience. Comprised of eight episodes (though the Rotterdam entries ...
Back to the Old House: Krzysztof Zanussi’s Family Life Adrian Danks December 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film “The image of a Socialist paradise is a false one, false because it is static. What is beautiful in life is movement, development, change, part of a pattern of transition in which I take part.” (1) Krzysztof Z...
Humphrey Jennings by Keith Beattie Adrian Danks December 2010 Book Reviews Keith Beattie’s monograph on the seminal British documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings is a significant contribution to the scholarship on this fascinating, mercurial and multi-faceted artist, as well as on B...
The End of Innocence: Ernst Lubitsch’s The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg Adrian Danks October 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg is one of Lubitsch’s most surprising, nostalgic and emotionally engaging films. It represents a “return to Germany” after four years in Hollywood, and can been as something ...
Introduction Adrian Danks October 2010 Arthur and Corinne Cantrill Dossier Arthur (1938-) and Corinne Cantrill (1928-) started their extraordinary filmmaking careers in 1960, and remain two of the most significant and productive figures in the history of experimental cinema. Their wor...
“The film we had imagined”, or: Anna and Jean-Luc Go To the Movies Adrian Danks July 2010 Feature Articles What is the particular dynamic at play in films featuring movie-going? Adrian Danks explores the film-within-a-film mode in range of movies, everything from Sullivan’s Travels to Vivre sa vie and more.
Who’s That Knocking at My Door Adrian Danks April 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film “Like Samuel Fuller, Scorsese fills his movies with personal talismans; like Werner Herzog, he riddles them with documentary subtexts.” (1) Martin Scorsese’s first feature, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, is a...
A Fuller View: The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I’ll Kill You! by Lisa Dombrowski Adrian Danks April 2010 Book Reviews Lisa Dombrowski’s The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I’ll Kill You! is an important contribution to the growing scholarship on and broader cultural fascination with the work of the self-consciously iconocl...
On the Home Front: Newsfront (Phillip Noyce, 1978) Adrian Danks September 2009 Key Moments in Australian Cinema, Special Dossiers
Free at Last: Robert Connolly’s Balibo Adrian Danks July 2009 MIFF Premiere Fund/Post-Punk Dossier, Special Dossiers Robert Connolly’s Balibo (2009) is one of the strongest and best Australian films of recent years, and a welcome, committed return to the territory and approach of such political thrillers of the 1980s as H...
Shooting the President: Bruce Conner’s Report Adrian Danks April 2009 CTEQ Annotations on Film Report (1967 USA 13 mins) Filmmaker: Bruce Conner Sound: Extracts from the LP record Four Days That Shook the World Completed over a three-year period, Bruce Conner’s Report is one of the key works of...
Documentary Display: Re-Viewing Nonfiction Film and Video by Keith Beattie Adrian Danks April 2009 Book Reviews Keith Beattie’s Documentary Display: Re-Viewing Nonfiction Film and Video is an extremely valuable and refreshing contribution to the burgeoning field of documentary film studies. Beattie’s book takes as its fo...
“God was wrong”: Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life Adrian Danks March 2009 CTEQ Annotations on Film Bigger Than Life (1956 USA 95 mins) Prod Co: Twentieth Century-Fox Prod: James Mason Dir: Nicholas Ray Scr: Cyril Hume, Richard Maibaum, based on the article “Ten Feet Tall” by Berton Roueché Phot: Joe M...
Léon Morin, Prêtre Adrian Danks March 2009 CTEQ Annotations on Film This annotation previously appeared in Senses of Cinema, no. 10, November 2000. A selected filmography for producer Carlo Ponti is at the tail of this article. Léon Morin, Prêtre (1961 France 117 mins...
Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories edited by Karen L. Ishizuka and Patricia R. Zimmermann Adrian Danks February 2009 Book Reviews Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories is a significant and often extremely rich contribution to the existing writing and research on the overlapping fields of home movie and amateur film ...
A City of Forgetting: The 32nd Hong Kong International Film Festival Adrian Danks August 2008 Festival Reports 18 March - 6 April 2008 The Hong Kong International Film Festival is a curious beast, a marathon survey of selected Asian and broader international films that have been released over the previous year. I...
“Pure Artifice”: Fritz Lang’s Moonfleet Adrian Danks August 2008 CTEQ Annotations on Film (1) Moonfleet (1955 USA 88 mins) Prod Co: MGM/Loew’s Incorporated Prod: John Houseman Dir: Fritz Lang Scr: Jan Lustig, Margaret Fitts, based on the novel Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner Phot: Robert Pla...
Petulia, mon amour Adrian Danks August 2008 CTEQ Annotations on Film This is a revised version of an article that first appeared in CTEQ: Annotations on Film no. 4, 1996. Petulia (1968 USA 105 mins) Prod Co: Petersham Pictures/Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Prod: Raymond Wagn...
“… I’m Gone”; or Seven Characters in Search of an Exit: Some Reflections on Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There. Adrian Danks March 2008 Feature Articles One of the most discussed films on recent release. Is it a measure of the film’s qualities or a result of the enduring fascination with all things Dylan? Danks separates the substance from the hype.
“You Press the Button, We Do the Rest”: Some Thoughts on Péter Forgács’ The Land of Nothing Adrian Danks March 2008 CTEQ Annotations on Film The Land of Nothing (1996 Hungary 62 mins) Dir, Ed, Research: Péter Forgács Phot: László Rátz, and other sources Mus: Tibor Szemzõ The events recorded by the private cinematographer behave like a parado...
A Man Out of Time: John Boorman and Lee Marvin’s Point Blank Adrian Danks November 2007 CTEQ Annotations on Film Point Blank (1967 USA 92 mins) Prod: Judd Bernard, Robert Chartoff Dir: John Boorman Scr: Alexander Jacobs, David Newhouse, Rafe Newhouse, from the novel The Hunter by Richard Stark Phot: Philip H. Lathr...
Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema 1928-1954 (Kino International) Adrian Danks November 2007 DVD Reviews Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema 1928-1954 is a laudable, curious and at times frustrating collection of French and mostly American experimental films made across a 25-year-period. It is a sequel of kinds to ...
Don’t Look Back: Come and See Adrian Danks August 2007 CTEQ Annotations on Film This annotation previously appeared in Senses of Cinema, no. 20, May–June 2002, and in Senses of Cinema, no. 6, May 2000. Come and See (1985 Soviet Union 142 mins) Source: AFTRS Prod, Dir: Elem Klimov...
“Air… You can’t see it, so why talk about it?” Conversing with Raoul Walsh’s The Strawberry Blonde Adrian Danks August 2007 CTEQ Annotations on Film The Strawberry Blonde (1941 USA 97 minutes) Prod Co: Warner Bros. Dir: Raoul Walsh Scr: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, based on the play One Sunday Afternoon by James Hagan Phot: James Wong Howe E...