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Close-Up X 2

A look back at some Iranian shorts and a feature documentary which have an element of reflexivity which is common to most Iranian cinema.

Human Conflict, or the legacies of superfluous men

Each of us is human and has value, but we are not equally valuable—our resources (knowledge, skills, talents, and monies), and relationships to others, determine the extent of our value. Sometimes we feel inferior because we are. The work of people such as Plato and Shakespeare is not important because they are Greek or English but because of how they illuminate the human condition, an illumination not limited by language, national borders, or time.

Forever Godard

A review of Jean-Luc Godard's Forever Mozart.

David Owen Russell’s I ♥ Huckabees

An analysis of the film's engagement with philosophical discourse in a comedic mode.

Montreal, 2004, the Film Year in Review

A year of film viewing in Montreal.

Rodney Evans’s Brother to Brother; or, “James Baldwin is Dead”

There are works that are less important for what they are than for what they inspire us to think about, and one such work is Rodney Evans’s “Brother to Brother”

What I Remember of the Films I’ve Seen

Films come and come; and do so quickly enough that it’s hard to know if any of them are of much importance—before a decent, public conversation can occur, they’re gone. Films reviewed include: Hero, We Don’t Live Here Anymore, Vanity Fair, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Motorcycle Diaries, Kilometer Zero, Stage Beauty, Kinsey, Alexander.

Around the Films of Bill Morrison

Recent films of New York filmmaker Bill Morrison have been concerned with the particular struggle between film and its material medium. There is a conflict between the image and matter which ruins the narrative of the original, twisted by the gnawing power of time, but which at the same time produces a paradoxical tale of ruins, born out of this double resistance of the filmic image and its material.

Plus belle que la beauté est la ruine de la beauté

The fact that Decasia (USA, Bill Morrison, 2002) has had many screenings at an equal amount of very diverse feature and documentary film festivals is testament to its slippery nature.

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The Cinematic Poetry of Bill Morrison

This essay is a response to having seen a two programme retrospective of Bill Morrison’s work on April 28 and April 29, 2004 at La Cinémathèque Québécoise.

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