At Night: Making Room for the Other in the Paris Underground
I must confess that I usually take against films that adopt a pamphleteering style and wear their ideology too openly,…
Sightlines
It Takes a Whole Neighbourhood to Make a Film… and an Alligator
In few cases has the decision to live according to an idea of cinema found such explicit expression as it…
Brave New Love: An Essay on Infidelity
If Los Días Libres can be understood as a pre-feminist film, even though gender is addressed in an extremely discreet…
Destroy All Girls: A Feel-Good Movie with a Pebble in Its Shoe
By way of a disclaimer, Destroy All Girls is an almost clandestine slogan used by Senate, a skate brand that…
Locarno, Los Días Libres: The Year of the Eclipse
While the Venice Film Festival made the bizarre and, at the very least, anachronistic decision to select only one film…
You Don’t Belong Here: A Lament for a Generation Adrift
About fifteen years ago, I wrote an article for JL entitled “Not All Romanians Are Quirky”, after being surprised by…
Ulididdu Sampige Maatra: A Poem in Motion
Old Pond A Frog Jumps In Sound of Water It is Matsuo Bashō’s most celebrated haiku (1686). On the surface, it looks…
The Divine Ideal of Killing: In and Out of This World
The Divine Ideal of Killing, by AriobarzaN, is almost a cinematic UFO. A refreshing and intriguing work that departs from…
Dreaming Lhasa: A Homeland That Exists Between Dreams
The first thing Dreaming Lhasa teaches you is how to wait. It asks you to wait through silences, unfinished conversations,…
The “Mise-en-scène” of Power: The Football Match in Ken Loach’s Kes
A memorable episode of a football match in cinema—especially when depicted by a director like Ken Loach—acquires significant symbolic and…