Welcome to Issue 55 of our journal the editors July 2010 Editorial German filmmaker Christian Petzold speaking about fellow German director Dominik Graf had this to say: “Graf’s Sisyphus work is to keep making a film here and there that reminds us of how wonderful streets u...
Correspondence Nile Southern and Bernard Eisenschitz July 2010 Feature Articles Letter from Nile Southern on his father, Terry Southern's, contribution to Easy Rider. And, Bernard Eisenschitz's letter alerts us to more of value on Eric Rohmer.
“‘I Build a Jigsaw Puzzle of a Dream-Germany’: An Interview with German Filmmaker Dominik Graf” Marco Abel July 2010 Feature Articles On the evidence of this absorbing and articulate interview alone, Dominik Graf is worthy of being better know outside the borders of the German speaking world. He not only offers insights into his own filmmaking practice and aesthetic, but also a range of fascinating observations covering the last forty or so years of German cinema and cultural history.
The Berlin School – A Collage Michael Baute, Ekkehard Knrer, Volker Pantenburg, Stefan Pethke, Simon Rothhler July 2010 Feature Articles In their our words a number of individuals closely associated with the Berlin School offer a informed panorama of ideas regarding the history, aesthetics and cultural politics of a ‘movement’ that offers much to a new understanding of contemporary German cinema.
Running on Failure: Post-Politics, Democracy and Parapraxis in Thomas Elsaesser´s Film Theory Drehli Robnik July 2010 Feature Articles With a long and distinguished body of writing to his name, Thomas Elsaesser is justly recognised as one of the foremost film historians and critical theorists of his generation. Drehli Robnik examines the rich tapestry of ideas that informs his work.
Petra’s Place Marsha McCreadie July 2010 Feature Articles An apartment, several women, and much angst make up the elements to one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s most alluring and contentious films.
Carnal Spirituality: the Films of Carlos Reygadas Tiago de Luca July 2010 Feature Articles Above all the body, in all its carnality, grotesqueness, obsceneness and pain, informs Reygada’s films, but so too the spirituality, religiousness and poetry of the cinema of Carl Dreyer, Robert Bresson and Andrei Tarkovsky.
Michael Lucas and the Pornography of Migration Max Cavitch July 2010 Feature Articles The DVD Men of Israel has put gay porn magnate Michael Lucas on the map in a major way, and as Max Cavitch argues, “It’s a DVD that tempts viewers to peer across the porn/non-porn audience divide precisely because it rivets attention to other kinds of boundaries—especially those that define the contemporary Middle East and the lives of its sexual minorities and of gay men in particular.”
Loose Ends in Night Moves Bruce Jackson July 2010 Feature Articles Essentially a film about failure, Arthur Penn’s 1975 film comes closest to best capturing the haunting malaise that descended on post-Watergate America. Bruce Jackson takes a fresh look at a detective film without ultimate answers.
Fahrenheit 451: A Brave New World for the New Man Pedro Blas Gonzalez July 2010 Feature Articles Pedro Blas Gonzalez discusses Ray Bradbury’s novel and François Truffaut’s 1966 film in equal measure, and argues that as “studies of a type of human temperament that revolves around an anti-humanism that prides itself in destruction” they remain as prescient as ever.
Lulu in Rochester: Louise Brooks and the cinema screen as a tabula rasa Robert Farmer July 2010 Feature Articles Ironically enough, Louise Brooks’ real fame arrived many years after abandoning her acting career. Robert Farmer analyses the life, the films and the screen persona of an actress who was turned into an icon of modernity.
“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.
Darryl F. Zanuck: 19th Century-Fox Tom Stempel July 2010 Feature Articles Can a producer be considered an auteur? Possibly not, but Tom Stempel offers insights in to how Zanuck’s personal view of American history stamped the many films he produced during his reign as a studio mogul.
Irish Brother Feeney: Francis Ford in John Ford’s films Charles Barr July 2010 Feature Articles A few issues back Senses published Tag Gallagher’s exhaustive career study of producer/director/actor Francis Ford. Picking up the thread, Charles Barr offers a discussion on his acting roles in brother John’s films.
Mapping Australia: Cinematic Cartographies of (Dis)location Jane Mills July 2010 Feature Articles Jane Mills makes a number of telling observations about some shared traits between the art of maps and the cinema, and furthermore, dissects the narrative, cultural and ideological function of the many maps in Baz Luhrman’s film.
BAFICI 12: In Praise of Anti-Cine! Or, I Come Back Because I Want To Jay Kuehner July 2010 Festival Reports As I flipped through the book Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals (1) on my flight to Argentina, the unofficial testimony for BAFICI – the Buenos Aires Festi...
Art and Artifice: German Films at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival Mattias Frey July 2010 Festival Reports If one measures a national cinema in numbers and percentages, then 2009 was an annus mirabilis for Germany. Not only were admissions and box office up...
Random Talking Points: The 63rd Cannes Film Festival 2010 Brandon Wee July 2010 Festival Reports Few would have missed the chorus of lament sung mostly by the American and British press about this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Now a standard respon...
Going South in 2010: Thinking Global, Talking Local: The 24th Fribourg International Film Festival Cerise Howard July 2010 Festival Reports To retain only the word cinema, without an adjective. – Edouard Waintrop, Director of the Fribourg International Film Festival (FIFF) (1) This pocke...
Transforming Landscapes and Programmatic Shifts: The 24th Image Forum Festival Brian Coffey July 2010 Festival Reports The 2010 edition of Tokyo’s Image Forum Festival once again coincided with the series of Japanese national holidays collectively known as “Golden Week...
Indie Traces: The 7th IndieLisboa Gianluca Pulsoni July 2010 Festival Reports What does “indie” mean? Technically, this word comes from a parlance associated with contemporary music. According to Webster Online its meaning as an...
Intimate Intransigence: the 11th Jeonju International Film Festival Chris Fujiwara July 2010 Festival Reports The 11th edition of the Jeonju International Film Festival, held from late April to early May 2010, was the farewell one for chief programmer Jung Soo...
“Moving Images Around the World”: The 7th Orphan Film Symposium Rachel Wilson July 2010 Festival Reports Loosely defined as “all manner of films outside of the commercial mainstream”, orphan works include educational, ethnographic, government, experimenta...
À Propos de Pamplona: The 6th Punto de Vista Festival Internacional de Cine Documental de Navarra Dana Linssen July 2010 Festival Reports The taxi driver that brought me to Pamplona Airport first took a detour through the suburbs. For free. His alternative route led us through concrete a...
Against the Practice of the Mild: The 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival Jay Kuehner July 2010 Festival Reports At a slot in the 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival program called Porchlight: True Stories From the Frontiers of International Filmmaking...
The Image and its Discontent: The 29th Sundance Film Festival and the 18th Pan African Film and Arts Festival Bérénice Reynaud July 2010 Festival Reports Handsome Men and Narrative Holes – Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Howl (US Dramatic Competition) The best thing you could say about the Opening...
A Double World of Undigested Memory: The 57th Sydney Film Festival Paul Macovaz and Daniel Fairfax July 2010 Festival Reports Pioneer Room Rhapsody A slightly cagey throng of greying cinemagoers mill nervously in the lower foyer of Sydney’s State Theatre. Red liveried ushe...
Focus on Eastwood: Clint Eastwood and Issues of American Masculinity by Drucilla Cornell, Aim for the Heart: The Films of Clint Eastwood by Howard Hughes, Clint Eastwood: Evolution of a Filmmaker by John H. Foote Deborah Allison July 2010 Book Reviews Since the mid-1970s, Clint Eastwood’s life and career have provided material for innumerable books, documentaries and magazine articles. While writers...
Encountering Cinema: Casablanca: Movies and Memory by Marc Augé Tony McKibbin July 2010 Book Reviews “Some strange destiny”, John Thompson claims in The Cinema Book, “seems to have determined that the cinema is written about in France with superior pe...
Film Curatorship: Archives, Museums, and the Digital Marketplace edited by Paolo Cherchi Usai, David Francis, Alexander Horwath and Michael Loebenstein Jan-Christopher Horak July 2010 Book Reviews It’s tough being an archivist these days. The digital revolution has shaken the profession to its very foundations. All those hallowed archival values...
Diasporas of Australian Cinema edited by Catherine Simpson, Renata Murawska and Anthony Lambert Jonathan Rayner July 2010 Book Reviews There have always been earnest concerns for the relevance and representativeness of the Australian cinema: over the past few decades since feature pro...
Screen Theorizing Today: A Celebration of Screen’s Fiftieth Anniversary edited by Annette Kuhn Alex Ling July 2010 Book Reviews It is difficult to overstate the impact the British journal Screen has had on the discipline of film and television studies. For the past 50 years, th...
Modular Narratives in Contemporary Cinema by Allan Cameron Matthew Campora July 2010 Book Reviews One of the more interesting developments in the cinema of the past 15 years or so has been the surge of mainstream films with complex narratives. Cons...
Making (New) Waves: Milos Forman’s Black Peter Adam Bingham July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film Following the quasi-documentary Konkurs (Audition, 1964), Cerný Petr (Black Peter) marked the feature debut of Milos Forman, the most famous, arguably...
Days of the Eclipse John A. Riley July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film Aleksandr Sokurov’s Dni zatmeniya (Days of the Eclipse) “centres” on Dmitry Malyanov (Alexei Ananishnov), a Russian doctor sent to an isolated village...
The Firemen’s Ball Pedro Blas Gonzalez July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film The creative process is difficult under any circumstances and in any milieu. However, it becomes excruciatingly difficult under the all-seeing, intrus...
Konkurs Darragh O’Donoghue July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film Alonzo de Monçado: “When a powerful agency is thus exercised on us, - when another undertakes to think, feel, and act for us, we are delighted to tran...
Milos Forman’s Loves of a Blonde: Pop Culture, Rebellion and Sexual Liberation in the Eastern European Bloc Constantin Parvulescu July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film Lásky jedné plavovlásky (Loves of a Blonde) is a hybrid film. It brilliantly walks the thin line between bitter and sweet, between understated tragic ...
Mr. Klein Christopher Weedman July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film Joseph Losey’s Monsieur Klein (Mr. Klein) is one of the exiled American director’s finest accomplishments. Shot in both Paris and Strasbourg between D...
Igla (The Needle) Greg Dolgopolov July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film 1988 was a high point in the cultural transformations that exploded under perestroika. The films produced under these new conditions bore the malignan...
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Michael Healey July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film Try to imagine an actor other than Jack Nicholson starring in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Gene Hackman? Not randy enough. Paul Newman? Too good-n...
Partie de campagne Wheeler Winston Dixon July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film Jean Renoir is arguably the greatest artist that the cinema has ever known, simply because he was able to work effectively in virtually all genres wit...
Writing on Water – From the Depths of La piscine David Melville July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film “You have to change your own desires, not the order of the world.” - Maurice Ronet to Alain Delon, La piscine There are the reasons why we love movi...
Plein soleil David Sanjek July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film The first of five novels Patricia Highsmith published about her murderous protagonist Tom Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) begins with the epony...
Rocco and his Brothers Hamish Ford July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film Directed by the unique figure of Luchino Visconti – heir to one of Milan’s richest families, a communist, and gay – Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and...
Milos Forman’s Taking Off: The Foreigner Seeks to Understand and Laughs Alexander C. Ives July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film Visiting foreign observers to the Republic of the United States of America have always been easily taken with its amber waves of grain and purple moun...
West of Zanzibar Brian Darr July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film Tod Browning is simultaneously one of the most compelling and neglected figures of Hollywood’s silent film era. Such a statement may seem paradoxical ...
The Unknown Michael Koller July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film WARNING: This article divulges most of the film's major plot elements. "Don't step on it, it might be Lon Chaney." - A 1927 quip. As in any art fo...
Le Cercle rouge Michael Healey July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film Jean-Pierre Melville’s movies have been called distant or abstract, but that’s not quite right. His decorous criminals and dogged policemen ...
The Sacrifice Gino Moliterno July 2010 CTEQ Annotations on Film The last of what would turn out to be a mere handful of films by this major director, a relatively meagre opus which nevertheless houses some of the...
The Story of the Kelly Gang (Charles Tait, 1906) Stephen Gaunson July 2010 Key Moments in Australian Cinema From its original duration of 70 minutes, sadly, only 18 minutes of The Story of the Kelly Gang remains. Thankfully though, the final spectacular scen...
Mike and Stefani (R. Maslyn Williams, 1952) Dirk de Bruyn July 2010 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Mike and Stefani is a neo-realist-style drama influenced, according to Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper (1), by the work of Roberto Rossellini and Robert F...
Not Quite 360-degree: Wake in Fright (Ted Kotcheff, 1971) and Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008) Hugh Marchant July 2010 Key Moments in Australian Cinema “If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.” - Billy Wilder A 360-degree pan is a virtuoso statement, acting to convinc...
The choice fruit of The Mango Tree (Kevin Dobson, 1977) Brian McFarlane July 2010 Key Moments in Australian Cinema It’s not as though there was nothing else going on in Australian cinema in the 1970s, but the combination of period piece, eye-catching locations, lit...
A Girl’s Own Story (Jane Campion, 1984) Anton De Ionno July 2010 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Jane Campion has been a dominant force in world cinema for nearly two decades. Shot delicately in black-and-white, A Girl’s Own Story is an early shor...
Aliens Among Us: Sally Marshall is Not an Alien (Mario Andreacchio, 1999) Jake Wilson July 2010 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Where’s she from anyway? The outback? The moon? Worse. L. A. - friends of Rhonnie (Thea Gumbert) in Sally Marshall is Not an Alien At the end of t...
Somersault (Cate Shortland, 2004) Brodie Lancaster July 2010 Key Moments in Australian Cinema In 2004, a benchmark was set for Australian filmmaking when writer-director Cate Shortland’s feature debut, Somersault, was chosen for Official Select...
Storylines in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia (2008) Lisa French July 2010 Key Moments in Australian Cinema As the landscape teems with the dust of a thousand cattle stampeding towards him, Nullah (Brandon Walters) takes a stand on the edge of a precipice. A...
