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.
On Bodies: ‘The House Is Black’ and the Politics of Corporeal Representation(s)
In his essay “The Queen of Sheba,”1 Iranian critic Hesam Amiri recounts the reactions that The House Is Black (1963) received from reviewers upon its release. The common thread among all of the predominantly negative reviews was that the film was deemed “too feminine” or (contradicting the prior claim) that it was not actually directed by Forough Farrokhzad, but by her partner, the prominent filmmaker and writer Ebrahim Golestan…
DVD Review: ‘Light Years’ by Gunvor Nelson (Re:Voir video)
by MLP Fog Pumas (1967) opens on the inverted black and white of a negative image of a naked girl, lying in an empty bathtub. The camera then […]
TROUT FUN #5 – Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937), dir. Sadao Yamanaka
TROUT FUN is a special column in which Ultra Dogme contributors spend time with a film of their choosing, free from virtually any restrictions. Previous TROUT FUN articles […]
Forever the Geography: National Mutability in ‘Krabi, 2562’ (2019) + Nazar’s ‘Guerrilla’ (2020)
Looking over what I have seen and heard in this mess of a release year so far, I realized that two of my favourite works of art – one a movie, another an album – are tied together by their decision to depict a particular place, or identity, with an intentional formal wooliness.
UDVFF 13: Disappearances + Intonations
A collection of shorts and features whose curation was loosely inspired by two books (Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance by Ackbar Abbas and Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to Recent Times by Marissa Moorman) and a couple of projects I’m working on. The state of the world and that great gift of free association also played their parts.
UDVFF 11: Agitated Meditation
Editor’s Note: Welcome to the eleventh program of our Virtual Film Festival, which offers a weekly watching schedule of moving image works available for free streaming. Previous programs […]
UDVFF 9: Transgressing the Limits of the Uncanny
Living in isolation, apart from friends and families has proven a frightening and exhausting experience for many. With all exterior distractions cut from our lives, we often have no other choice but to steer our attention and gaze inward.
UDVFF 8: “This is your home, you’re part of everything”
This week we are happy to share links to three nearly-feature-length titles made available by FRACTO and Anthology Film Archives.