Come inguaiammo l’esercito

Dec 30, 2003 — In 1936 the rise of Hitler in Germany and the Popular Front in France created within the French Left a new sense of solidarity with the Soviet Union. In that context the Russian immigrant producer Alexander Kamenka asked Jean Renoir...

Sep 29, 2003 — In May 1981, in the midst of shooting Lola, Rainer Werner Fassbinder sketched out his next film project: Sybille Schmitz. On the cover, he had written, “Story for a Feature Film*.” The asterisk pointed to this footnote: “It is possible...

Sep 29, 2003 — “Gray literature” is the term German film historians use to describe the material written purely for publicity purposes and made available to the press, but not meant for official publication. Often this gray literature, which is only accessible to film...

Sep 29, 2003 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder dedicated his final energies to bringing the lost, gray years of postwar Germany back to life.

Aug 18, 2003 — The third installment in Ingmar Bergman’s trilogy about religious faith sees the auteur coming to terms with the pious rigidity and strangled emotional life of his own upbringing.

Jun 23, 2003 — The following text is from Michael Töteberg’s presentation of a collection of Fassbinder screenplays (The Merchant of Four Seasons, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Fontane Effi Briest), which were published in Germany as Fassbinders Filme, Band 3 (Fassbinder’s Films, Vol....

Jun 23, 2003 — Ermanno Olmi’s seldom-cited debut feature, the 1958 Time Stood Still, is a wonderful film, but it was the one-two punch of his second and third films that put him on the international movie scene map. Il Posto and I Fidanzati...

Jun 23, 2003 — One of the most unusual features of Italian cinema of the late ’50s and ’60s is the way that it affords us multiple perspectives on the same event, namely the economic boom following the postwar recovery. Where the directors of...

Jun 9, 2003 — In Stan Brakhage’s films we enter into momentary perceptual transactions in which we trade unhindered assimilation of images for intensified contact with pictorial or sensory features that might otherwise go unnoticed.

May 26, 2003 — Transcription of a speech given by long-time Derek Jarman collaborator and friend, actress Tilda Swinton