Introduction the editors July 2025 Editorial Issue 114 Welcome, dear readers, cinephiles, and co-conspirators, to Issue 114 of the Internet’s most serious and eclectic discussion of cinema! As the world continues on a downward spiral of violence and authoritarianism, Senses is left with no choice but to remain committed to the emancipatory power of cinema and its rigorous reflection. To that end, this Issue is packed with no less than 12 Feature articles, orbiting and interrogating the moving image from a constellation of (often interlinked) angles. Children are seen playing in Matilde Nardelli’s chronicled essay on Francis Alÿs’ Children’s Games video series (1999 – ongoing) as presented in London’s Barbican Art Gallery. Children also feature – alongside dogs – in the outstanding and deeply emotional performance by Milo Machado-Graner in Anatomie d’une chute (Anatomy of a Fall, 2023), studied by Elvira Berzins. Ideology is at stake both in Mark T. Kettler’s analysis of Dracula (the novel) plus Murnau’s and Eggers’s versions of Nosferatu (1922 and 2024, respectively) and in Carwan Dourandich’s study of Yol (Yılmaz Güney and Şerif Gören, 1982) and Dāne-ye anjīr-e ma’ābed (The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024), two different films made under authoritarian regimes. Kettler, however, reads within the images, while Dourandich describes the shooting of the films to address collective resistance. A very different type of resistance – a sardonic confrontation with the shackles of postwar conservatism – is explored by Sérgio Dias Branco in his study of Alfred Leslie and Robert Frank’s Pull My Daisy (1959), a landmark Beat film narrated by Jack Kerouac. Elsewhere in the Features section, Philip Brophy provides an in-depth analysis of Woman Sitting after Killing (Chantal Akerman, 2001), an installation that featured at the “Travelling” Chantal Akerman exhibition held in Paris late last year, making a series of connections to key Seyrig films such as L’Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais, 1961) and India Song (Marguerite Duras, 1975). Further original analysis is provided by Susana Bessa on the films to date of Canadian auteur Sofia Bohdanowicz, while Jamie Steele, drawing from Ulrike Kofler’s Gina (2025), considers how gender incentives and other progressive policies have benefitted emerging Austrian filmmakers. Adithya Kamesh explores the psychological effects of climate change as presented in P. S. Vinothraj’s Koozhangal (Pebbles, 2021), whilst Henrique Brazão uses a theoretical framework to unpack the curious effects of the use of long takes in two recent films about love: Passion simple (Simple Passion, Danielle Arbid, 2020) and Past Lives (Celine Song, 2023). Peter Verstraten and Sarv Gersten wrap up our rich Features section with exciting interrogations of two recent – and very different – highlights of adventurous Euro-American cinema: Halina Reijn’s Babygirl (2024) and Yashaddai Owens’s Jimmy (2024), respectively. The Interviews section includes conversations with Eastern European filmmakers of non-fiction works, such as Alina Maksimenko, Beata Bubenets, and Peter Kerekes. These sit alongside interviews with Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Pinho and American filmmaker Neo Sora. “Resistance” is a key leitmotif of our rich Festivals section. Xiang Fan and Shaghayegh Raoufi reported from London’s Open City Docs, which this year hosted – among several thought-provoking sidebars – one devoted to films about the Sanrizuka movement: a series of struggles that swept across the titular rural community in the Greater Tokyo Area in the ‘60s, and saw farmers oppose the Japanese government’s projects to build an airport on their land. Miriam Ellen covered Dubai’s Reel Palestine Film Festival, which painted a multifaceted and timely picture of life across Palestine and the diaspora, while Pelin Çılgın wrote about Istanbul Fakefest, an “unofficial” festival surreptitiously set up by the city’s queer community once the Istanbul Film Festival axed its queer-only section. Libertad Gills travelled to Berwick-upon-Tweed, a seaside town sandwiched between England and Scotland, and looked at the many ways in which the Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival’s program spoke to cinema’s porous identity. Elsewhere in Europe, Olivia Popp attended Visions du Réel to focus on a few autoethnographic encounters: films that examined the different roles of the “self” onscreen. From the Canary Islands, former Senses editor Tara Judah covered the Las Palmas International Film Festival, and looked at the curious clash between its envelope-pushing slates and the mainstream venues where these were hosted. On the other side of the Atlantic, Joshua Bogatin visited the 9th Annual Nitrate Picture Show, an indispensable event devoted to the preservation of films shot on the long-defunct celluloid nitrate. Last but not least, Duncan Caillard reported from Māoriland, a festival committed to exploring life across Indigenous communities around the world. Three Great Directors are spotlighted in this issue. Angelos Koutsourakis surveys the extensive, ever-intriguing, and dramatically underresearched opus of East German cineaste Konrad Wolf, a seminal figure of what Koutsourakis (via Masha Salazkina) understands as world socialist cinema. Benjamin Rider, meanwhile, reconsiders Ousmane Sembène as not only the oft-cited ‘father of African film’, but also as a transcultural, linguistically inventive humanist. And Tushar Gidwani builds a theoretical framework, “surreal realism,” to understand the deeply political and aesthetically provocative work of Mrinal Sen, an Indian auteur often shadowed by Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak. Colette de Castro completes our roster of Greats with a discerning text on the infinite appearances (or what de Castro terms ‘singular impermancences’) of Great Actor Tilda Swinton. In our Book Reviews, regular contributor Tony McKibbin addresses Colin McArthur’s poignant critical thinking on Scottish cinema as compiled in Cinema, Culture, Scotland. Arindam Sen glosses the collection of documents gathered in About Narration: Materials, Comments, Interventions, edited to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Harun Farocki and Ingemo Engström’s eponymous film-essay. Closing this Issue, Duncan Caillard articulates a highly nuanced reading of Daniela Berghahn’s conflicting Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference in Contemporary Transnational Film. Wherever and however these inspired texts find you (and in whatever direction they propel you next), we hope you enjoy Issue 114 of Senses of Cinema.
