A teenage girl lies on a towel, stealing glances at a man swimming in an indoor pool. The man, who might be her mother’s age, whips around as if sensing someone’s gaze and the girl flinches out of sight, slipping as she does into prayer — intoned and feverish, like an incantation: mother most chaste mother most pure mother without fault…
Blu Review: Two Silent Films by John Ford (Eureka!)
by Ruairí McCann Produced and released by Eureka Entertainment’s Masters of Cinema line, this new Blu-ray boxset of two early silent John Ford westerns is most welcome. Not only […]
Diaspora and Disappearance: ‘Letter From Your Far-Off Country’ and ‘Maat Means Land’
In our first piece of ‘Prismatic Ground’ coverage, Ruairí McCann compares ‘Maat Means Land’ and ‘Letter From Your Far-Off Country’
The Awkward Altbau – Urban Structures and Dreams of the Future in Konrad Wolf’s ‘Solo Sunny’ (1980)
The destruction of a building: more important than the brief moment of the blast are the hours leading up to the detonation.
Book of Judith
One of my most memorable experiences during lockdown was reading Deadline at Dawn, British critic Judith Williamson’s sparkling collection of essays from the eighties.
On how things actually play out
To be regarded as an artist, as a person, rather than a ‘woman filmmaker’, a ‘woman’.
JD 2.0
Since the official start of the pandemic one year ago, I have found myself thinking about Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975) every now and then.
Winter for Rose
I am absolutely tickled by the fact of a filmmaker named Rose making a name for herself with a ‘Bouquet’ series, collecting flowers.
Your Laughter is Spit in the World’s Face: Milla (2017) and Valérie Massadian
“Instead of offering closeted conservative condemnation, or liberal handwringing and outsized guilt, Massadian has been making a cinema of the ‘animal’ intensities and lucidity of childhood and the often debilitating growing pains of young adulthood.”