Dāvis Sīmanis’ The Year Before the War, which premiered in the Big Screen Competition section of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in February, has all the potential to be one of the great festival hits of the year.
Diary: Fondly Remembering Festivals
Rounding up a well-overdue collection of memories from this year’s IFFR, Berlinale, and online festivals.
Compilation: Dogme Year Zero
Hello and welcome to the first-ever crossover episode between Ultra Dogme and Cinema Year Zero.
Review: ‘Days’ (2020, dir. Tsai Ming-liang) – London Film Festival
by Ruairí McCann Near the end of Tsai Ming-liang’s film Afternoon (2015) — a conversation, filmed across 134 minutes and 4 shots, between Tsai and his muse Lee […]
Review: ‘Time’ (2020, dir. Garrett Bradley) – London Film Festival
Time (2020) is Garrett Bradley’s second feature and a concept which is explained from manifold points of view and forms of expression.
Review: ‘American Utopia’ (2020, dir. Spike Lee) – London Film Festival
Stop Making Sense (1984) is a cornerstone in the intersection between pop music and cinema; a concert film in which one of the best bands of the fertile crescent that was the post-punk years is at their most ambitious, cohesive and passionate as a live act, captured intelligently by the great Jonathan Demme, also in his prime. In other words, it is a zenith that American Utopia could never be expected to reach.
Within the Divide: Steve McQueen’s ‘Small Axe’ (2020) – NYFF
Between 1970 and 1984, the BBC undertook the Play for Today drama anthology project, commissioning more than 300 television plays––most of which were adapted from plays or novels––that would typically run anywhere between 50 to 100 minutes.
Review: ‘Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets’ (2020, dir. Turner Ross & Bill Ross IV) – LFF
Once John Cassavetes, when talking about the heavy drinking in his film Husbands (1970), compared the camaraderie of being in a bar to that of being in a war.
Review: ‘The Disciple’ (2020) by Chaitanya Tamhane – London Film Festival
Early in writer-director Chaitanye Tamhane’s second feature, The Disciple, the mastery of Hindustani classical music is described as an ‘eternal quest’, which will require ‘sacrifice and no surrender’. Later, its polar opposite is expressed, encouraging practitioners to take a step back and look at what they do within its historical context.