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.
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.
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 5: Let Us Now Praise Famous Men – Interrogations and Alternatives
Editor’s Note: Welcome to the fifth program of our Virtual Film Festival, which offers a weekly watching schedule of moving image works available for free streaming, and curated […]
Album Review: ‘Mystic Familiar’ by Dan Deacon
Dan Deacon – in his lyrics, interviews and in the goofball soapbox aspect of his live performances – is loose-tongued and lucid about the headspace which produced his fifth and newest album, Mystic Familiar (2020)
Compilation: International Women’s Day 2020
Join us in celebrating women artists of the world!
Women’s Day: The Limits of Intimacy and Language in the Genealogical Cinema Of Sofia Bohdanowicz
Over the course of three features, several shorts and an amalgamation of fiction and non-fiction, Canadian filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz has deepened her expression of how family wields a powerful and complex influence over an individual’s sense of self.