Three Bullets for Three Dead Men: Sergio Sollima’s The Big Gundown (1966) José Sarmiento-Hinojosa June 2018 Cinémathèque Annotations on Film Issue 87 When Jonathan Corbett (Lee Van Cleef), in a famous scene from La resa dei conti (The Big Gundown, Sergio Sollima, 1966), places three bullets on a log for three bandits who are chasing him, we can immediately...
Architecture as Mirage: Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003) José Sarmiento-Hinojosa March 2018 Cinémathèque Annotations on Film Issue 86 In cinema, the camera is the dispositif, or the manifestation of phantasmagoria. It’s a relatively mechanical presentation of the Plato’s cave allegory: what we see are only ghosts, phantasms, illusions of...
The Matroyshka Doll of Laughter and Uncertainty: Cristi Puiu’s Sieranevada (2016) José Sarmiento-Hinojosa September 2017 Cinémathèque Annotations on Film Issue 84 In his previous, massively underrated and virtually unseen film Trois exercices d’interprétation (Three Exercises of Interpretation, 2013), Cristi Puiu had already started experimenting with different...
The Matroyshka Doll of Laughter and Uncertainty: Cristi Puiu’s Sieranevada (2016) José Sarmiento-Hinojosa September 2017 Cinémathèque Annotations on Film Issue 84 In his previous, massively underrated and virtually unseen film Trois exercices d’interprétation (Three Exercises of Interpretation, 2013), Cristi Puiu had already started experimenting with different...
Emphasis on Climax: Catherine Breillat’s A Ma Soeur! José Sarmiento-Hinojosa September 2016 Cinémathèque Annotations on Film Issue 80 Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion. - David Cronenberg In A Ma Soeur! (2002) (For My Sister, or Fat Girl for English audiences) Catherine Breillat focuses on a sort...
