Tyler Thier writes on Jiří Trnka’s antifascist, animated bricolages, placing their subversive tactility in opposition to frictionless and fascist AI imagery.
Illusional Civilization: Bahram Beyzaei’s Journey
Faranak Nateghi on the context and poetics of Journey (Safar, 1972), Bahram Beyzaei’s metaphorical portrait of Tehran as a modern city of dazzling surfaces and transparent class inequality and alienation.
I Saw a Dry Leaf in a Field of Flowers: Locarno 78 and the Texture of Cinema
Arta Barzanji reports from this year’s Locarno Film Festival on the experimentation of Alexandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf and Radu Jude’s Dracula.
Faces in Death: Michael Roemer’s ‘Dying’
Devin Leong on the poetics of Michael Roemer’s 1976 documentary, Dying.
Subtle Spacecrafts & Shifting Climates
Emma Fuchs on the ‘subtle science fiction’ approach to depicting the vicissitudes of climate change and modernity in Still Life, Lazzaro Felice and Bacurau.
An Unsettled Materialism: The Super 8 Films of Jean-Claude Rousseau
Avalyn Wu draws on Cezanne to discuss Jean-Claude Rousseau’s penetrating and vivid materialist filmmaking.
Do These Images Give Voice?: ‘Machete Gillette…Mama’ (1989)
Ruairí McCann on Larry Gottheim’s Machete Gilette…Mama, a travelogue marked by ghosts and perceptual vicissitudes.
Archival Surprises: On the Re-Emergence of ‘Nujum an-Nahar’ in Film Historiography
Najrin Islam on Ossama Mohammed’s Syrian satire, Nujum an-Nahar (Stars in Broad Daylight, 1988) and the politics of its new restoration.
Kaleidoscopes of Solidarity: Light Field 2025
Dan Ziegler writes on San Francisco’s Light Field Film Festival 2025.
Amir Naderi: Fragmented Modernities
Alonso Aguilar on the striking abrasions and velocities of Amir Naderi’s international modernist cinema.