“If ever anyone has the courage and the time to write a great chronicle of the French New Wave, I suspect that Jacques Rivette’s L’amour fou will emerge as the climax and the crisis, the moment when it becomes clear that the load carried by Truffaut and Godard had passed to the least likely of [...]
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Dear readers At Senses we have recently been busy with a new project, which you may have already heard about. The team at Senses of Cinema has recently launched our very first Pozible campaign. For those of you who don’t know Pozible, it is an online crowd funding website where people and groups with a [...]
“Certainly there was a misunderstanding, and I have been hesitant to speak about The Matrix until now.” So said Jean Baudrillard about the Matrix trilogy in a 2003 interview. He was, of course, addressing the referencing of his work in the trilogy, and in particular, the specific citing of his text Simulacra and Simulation in [...]
A father proposes to his teenage daughter a trip together to Death Valley, California. He with dreams of Erich von Strohiem’s silent classic Greed (1923) on his mind (specifically the famous final act staged on location in Death Valley), she, most likely, accompanied by all the accruements of the digital age: iphone, ipod, etc. Such [...]
In dreams I walk with you In dreams I talk to you In dreams you’re mine all of the time We’re together in dreams, in dream –Roy Orbison, “In Dreams” Were dreams the “virtual worlds” of a previous era? Or at least as Freud understood them to be, as wish fulfilments? In this day and [...]
German filmmaker Christian Petzold speaking about fellow German director Dominik Graf had this to say: “Graf’s Sisyphus work is to keep making a film here and there that reminds us of how wonderful streets used to look in cinema, of how great nights used to look, and of how awesome women looked. I am fascinated [...]
I’m sure the irony is not lost on our readers that this new issue of the journal, substantially devoted to two filmmakers, Eric Rohmer and Solrun Hoaas, who both passed away in recent months, coincides with the Easter period of resurrection. Purely coincidental, of course, but the symbolism is inescapable, if strictly unintentional. And yet, [...]
The very first edition of Senses of Cinema appeared on line in December 1999, so it is appropriate that our final issue for 2009 appears, if only just, exactly to the month ten years on. By pure coincidence, 2009 turns out to be a year dove-tailed by two milestone issues: a 50th issue earlier in [...]
After decades of being little more than an exotic location for overseas filmmakers and production companies, Australia was shocked in 1971 with the release of two films that would forever change all notions about what should or could constitute an Australian Cinema. They were, of course, Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout and Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright. [...]
Late in 1999, a Melbourne based independent filmmaker decided to take a well-earned hiatus from his prolific filmmaking activities and thought it would be a good idea to start up a web-based film journal. He soon shared his idea with a close friend and thus, in December of that year, Bill Mousoulis and Fiona Villella [...]
Senses of Cinema would like to apologise to both authors and readers for the lateness of this issue. Senses has undertaken a complete redesign of its website. We had hoped to launch issue 49 with a trial version of that new website, the full shebang being unveiled in all its glory with our 50th anniversary [...]
The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola – Jean-Luc Godard, Masculin féminin: 15 faits précis We believed that ideas were the most important thing; now they stand before us in rows, like dented cans of Coca-Cola. – Roberto Calasso, The Ruin of Kasch Utopian narratives often imply a before and an after, an Eden and après, [...]
As this issue goes on-line in this month of May, it would be remiss not to mention the 40th Anniversary of another seminal month of May long gone. We refer, of course, to the so-called ‘events’ of May 1968 in France that have left an indelible mark on film history. Rather than offer anything specific [...]
Film history is full of byways and back alleys, ‘little histories’ that weave their way on the margins and tributaries that traverse the canonised super-highways of film history. Leave the super-highway and interesting things start to appear. When, in the light of a potential 50th anniversary tribute to the French New Wave, Sally Shafto proposed [...]
Every day, walking up and down the main street of my town, I’d only have eyes for the cinemas, three that showed new films and changed programmes every Monday and Thursday, and a couple of fleapits with older or trashier films that changed three times a week. I would already know in advance what films [...]
Jonas Mekas has acquired the look of a wise old sage. It’s the look of someone who has seen much of the world and retained a sense of wonder – or, the look of someone who has spent a lifetime with his eye fixed to a camera or a screen. It amounts to the same [...]
In a rare 1967 monograph, now long out of print, the Italian director Valerio Zurlini published a poetic account of an evening in the company of the great painter Balthus (Balthazar Klossowski, 1908-2001), entitled Una serata romana con Balthus (A Roman Evening with Balthus). Six years earlier, Andre Malraux, France’s Minister for Culture, had appointed [...]
In 2006, some big Hollywood hitters came out to play, by which we mean Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann. Each of their recent films are highly represented in our 2006 World Poll, but, significantly, with differing emphasis. Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, together or individually, uniformly figure amongst [...]
“Put an amen to it. There’s no more time for praying.” That is a line of dialogue from the famous burial scene in John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), quoted by Tim Cawkwell in his article, “Perfect Storm, Imperfect Death”, and featured in this Issue. Among other things, in discussing the burial-at-sea sequence in The Long [...]
And so, Senses of Cinema has reached its 40th issue. To celebrate this milestone, the journal has collaborated with ten artists from the prominent dotmov media arts collective to pay tribute to ten of the world’s most important film directors as voted for by readers of the journal. In its inaugural issue of December 1999, [...]
Certain films are like time capsules, or so they seem to us in hindsight. Libido (1973) being a case in point. As a four-part film with episodic variations on a theme, it has its antecedents in European portmanteau films such as Les Sept péchés capitaux (The Seven Capital Sins, 1962), RoGoPaG (1963) and Amore e [...]
As expected, this current issue of Senses of Cinema contains the 2005 World Poll. As old as Senses itself, this is the sixth such edition of the ‘year in review’ poll. Inevitably, it has changed and mutated over the course of time, but it still adheres to the basic principles of that first edition. Then, [...]
Cameron Crowe: The lore is that Lubitsch died in the arms of a prostitute, is that true? Billy Wilder: No. Not in the arms. After they were through. He had finished with the lady, and he had gone into the bathroom. That’s when it happened. William Wyler and I were pallbearers, and when we were [...]
One of the most anticipated dates in the local cinephile’s calendar of events is the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF). Fortuitously, this issue of Senses of Cinema comes online almost concurrently with the commencement of the Festival. Over 19 days some 400 or so films will be screened. It offers an ideal opportunity for local [...]
The title to the opening article in this current issue of the journal, “A Matter of Time, A Labour of Love”, may also well serve to delineate the twin constraints under which this issue was produced. Little time and much labour (but done with love, as a journal like Senses duly deserves). Michelle Carey in [...]
Now we are five! Into the second half of the first decade of the twenty-first century and changes are afoot for this periodical. In December 1999, the first issue of Senses of Cinema appeared online and here we are, five years later, still spellbound by this most captivating of artforms. Five years. It feels like [...]
Here in Australia, this month has seen Prime Minister John Howard and his conservative government re-elected with an increased majority, despite widely expressed dismay over our involvement with the disaster of Iraq. With the US election just around the corner as I write, it’s not the easiest moment to stay focused on cinema. Nor does [...]
Marvelling at a scene in The Dreamers in which an auditorium of students sit bug-eyed at a screening of Shock Corridor, Maximilian Le Cain writes in this issue “…Bertolucci emphasises the energy with which the cinephiles engage with the film through his dynamic camera that penetrates Fuller’s images with the urgency of a mind taking [...]
For this issue, we considered launching a wide-ranging investigation into the current state of Australian film culture. Then we realised this would bore everyone to tears. The decline of public broadcasting, the mediocrity of recent feature films, the well-documented woes of the inadequately resourced and managed Australian Centre for the Moving Image – these are the [...]
As in previous years, our first issue for 2004 leads off with a collection of lists of the best films of the last 12 months, by a wide range of cinephiles and critics. We’re honoured by the unprecedented number of writers who took up the invitation to participate in this year’s World Poll, and since [...]
In recent weeks, members of the Australian film and television industry have been up in arms at the possibility of Australia’s cultural industry being undermined by current free trade agreements with the US. A key theme echoed throughout the outcry has been that local film and TV production is intrinsic to national identity and that [...]
A number of articles here approach the outer limits of cinema: cinema outside the space of the movie theatre; cinema where the focus is no longer on the screen (Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone [1973]); cinema without film strip, projector, sound or image (Valie Export’s Tapp und Tast Kino [1968]). As Export has stated [...]
Recent months have been marked by two well-publicised controversies around the issue of freedom of speech in Australia. Firstly, there was the appalling decision by the Board of Review and the Office of Film and Literature Classification Board to impose Refused Classification status on Ken Park (Larry Clark & Ed Lachman, 2002) – a critically [...]
By chance more than design, this issue has a sombre cast to it. Some of the films discussed here explore contemporary scenarios of social alienation and sexual abjection; others touch on the historical enormity of the Holocaust. As several contributors underline in different ways, films on such emotive subjects are obliged to negotiate pressing ethical and formal dilemmas [...]
But first of all he looked for the woman’s face, at the end of the jetty. He ran toward her. And when he recognized the man who had trailed him since the underground camp, he understood there was no way to escape Time, and that this moment he had been granted to watch as a [...]
A significant section of this issue is devoted to the year just passed. It’s more then a little difficult, and somewhat misleading, to attempt a summary or generalisation about a year in film especially when one’s annual intake is so specific (influenced as it is by time, place, taste, and so on). With that qualification [...]
In a recent French documentary profiling female directors, Women Behind the Camera (Jean-Marie Nizan, 2001), Agnès Varda observes, “Little by little, by studying or with a bit of cheek, women have invaded the field of cinema”. It is a telling comment, particularly Varda’s choice of verb. The implications are clear: that cinema as a ‘field’ [...]
There is nothing connected with the staging of a motion picture that a woman cannot do as easily as a man. – Alice Guy-Blaché, 1913 As editors of the Special Women’s Issue of Senses of Cinema, we could not have expressed it more eloquently. This special issue was conceived as an opportunity to highlight how [...]
Senses of Cinema is growing and changing. Our philosophy of cinema remains the same: to stay outside the mainstream system of distribution and promotion that rules public film culture, and to champion what is innovative, challenging, personal and under-recognised in the art of cinema. With all the usual provisos, of course – that we seek [...]
Parts of this article are now hosted on the PANDORA archive of the National Library of Australia and Partners. Several key threads make their way through this issue: the theme of nation and identity; of immigration and racial intolerance; of cinema as affective and political (Kandahar) and cinema as inexpressive of matters of history and [...]
During a recent film radio show, a well-known local film commentator threw to his listeners an intriguing, provocative question: how on earth did David Lynch convince a bunch of hard-nosed business folk – who care nothing for film as art – to invest millions of their dollars into a film that ruthlessly goes against the [...]
Well, it’s hard to believe yet another year has just passed. Banal observations aside, it seems that the more technologically advanced Western society becomes, the faster the pace of everyday life: greater amounts of information, faster speed at which it is delivered, greater urgency to be up with the latest, to see and read it [...]
In this issue, Senses of Cinema reflects on recent events in America and the integral role played by the media in the representation and experience of these events. There’s no doubt that any attempt to ‘read’ the horror of September 11 in terms other than the loss of human life risks the charge of profound [...]
The relation between cinema and reality changed on September 11. All distinction between screen fantasy and the crises of history seemed to disappear in a flash. Immediately, people registered the horror they were witnessing (on the streets of New York or on TV elsewhere) in terms of American action blockbusters or surrealist art. Immediately, there [...]
The heart of this issue is the John Cassavetes spotlight. The range of voices, thoughts and approaches to discussing his films’ unique style and legacy in this issue and in a related dossier in Canadian film journal Cinema Scope, testifies to the strong passion and interest in Cassavetes’ cinema today and to the fact that [...]
Is it Christmas in July or is this the Film Festivals issue? Either way you look at it, festival fever is about to hit the cities of Melbourne and Brisbane. A month prior, Sydney recently closed its major film festival for 2001 and in this issue Needeya Islam provides an interesting report on a festival [...]
“For me, making films and not making films are not two different ways of life. Filming should be a part of living, something normal and natural. Making films hasn’t changed my life very much, because I made them before by writing criticism, and if I had to return to criticism, it would be a way [...]
In an essay titled “Falling Out Of Love”, Serge Daney coins a beautiful phrase – ‘clothes pegs cinema’ – or at least what the translator has concocted as the English equivalent. Daney explains it as such: “.when we ‘take in a movie’, we have to hold it in the depths of our eyes, and cannot [...]
If this issue seems like a hodgepodge of themes and topics then that’s because it is. One thing that Senses of Cinema aimed to achieve when it was first set up was an eclecticism in topics and a seriousness in its approach toward cinema. When one’s choice for writing on film was either sound-bite, hype-driven, [...]
