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editorial
welcome to Issue 11
of our journal!
Bringing Out the Dead (Martin Scorsese, 1999)Into the first year of the millennium, the vastness of the twenty-first century lying before us, and the cinema is well and truly alive. If there is one film that emerges as a clear favourite across the 2000 lists in this issue it is Claire Denis' Beau Travail. A film with a singular form that goes beyond traditional narrative to find its rhythm in choreographed bodies, pure emotion and fragments of memory. Film in 2000 saw the American Independent scene take a new turn with David Gordon Greene's George Washington, the continuing prevalence of Iranian cinema on the festival circuit (Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us, Pahani's The Circle) and a small wave of samurai films: Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Oshima's Gohatto, Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: the Way of the Samurai and even Charlie's Angels. And perhaps it was Jarmusch's meditation on the relation between the ancient past and the present, and the enlightenment of text, that haunted me the most. Another film to play out, in its own truly innovative way, the relation between a remote past and the digital present was The Wind Will Carry Us which worked by isolating every single element (voices, conversations, actions, atmospheric sound) and rearranging them carefully, sparingly, ultimately confirming its belief in the natural order of things.
2000 also saw the wonderful rise of populist cinema: Erin Brockovich, American Movie and the Farrelly brothers' riotous Me Myself and Irene, ingeniously subverting everything in its path. With equal rigour, 2000 also became the time for the musical film, a point which Mark Peranson makes in this issue's collection of lists, evident in films like In the Mood for Love, Platform and also Beau Travail. The most controversial contribution here being Dancer in the Dark, which is already making history with the extreme, oppositional reactions it is provoking. There was room for the classical beauty and charm of Lynch's The Straight Story and Eastwood's Space Cowboys in 2000 and for Scorsese's truly dark and haunting view of the modern world subsumed by addiction, vice, loneliness, and mutilation - quite literally a human hell - that left one man searching desperately for the touch of God, in Bringing out the Dead.
Judging from the 2000 lists in this issue, international film festivals, Cinémathèques, SBS-Television (for Australians), DVD and local exhibitors with a progressive agenda play an instrumental role in one's yearly film intake. Not only are such outlets the necessary gateways into the riches of world cinema and film history they also balance the multiplexes and boutique art-house cinemas that so dominate the film landscape in any country.
Apart from the sizeable focus on world and Australian cinema in 2000 in this issue, there is an excellent section on Eastern European cinema that features among other gems a wonderful interview with legendary Dusan Makavejev and an overview of the independent film scene in war-torn Serbia by Boris Trbic. Other topics covered in the issue include Italian cinema, philosophy in film, Jean Eustache, DVD releases, current releases and festivals.
A big thankyou to everyone who contributed in one form or another to this issue, including all the writers, and helpers Ben Zipper and Mairead Phillips.
And finally, a big 2000 thankyou to the Senses of Cinema Godfather, Adrian Martin.
We hope you continue reading Senses of Cinema, which celebrates its first year birthday this month!
And here's to film in 2001!
Fiona A Villella Go to Contents Issue 11
our missionSenses of Cinema is an online film journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema. It has been set up to address a lack of cinephilic writing in local discourse, that is, writing sprung from the desire to think and write seriously, knowledgeably and passionately about film.
Senses of Cinema is unique in its eclecticism: it encourages articles of all styles (casual, personal, academic, critical, impressionistic and poetic - or a combination of these), analytical approaches (thematic, psychoanalytic, etc) and subject matter. The only criteria that we prescribe are that all articles are demonstrably passionate, serious, intelligent and insightful reflections and/or analyses on the topic of cinema.
Senses of Cinema promotes various divergent "voices" that speak to a wide and diverse audience. It aims to bring together a mix of writers: established and emerging, theorists and un-published cinephiles, filmmakers and film programmers, and local and international writers.
We are particularly committed to discussing art, independent, experimental and third world cinemas (everything from Renoir to Antonioni to Solàs to Oshima to Morrissey to Jost to Friedrich to Snow, feature films as well as short films) , theorising new encounters with digital technologies, and promoting writing that increases one's understanding and appreciation of cinema.
We recognise that an object as ephemeral and ethereal as cinema continues to fascinate, to provoke, to inspire, to turn on, to evolve. And it is in relation to this object that we seek to facilitate and encourage expression and appreciation.
Want to contribute to this journal?
Click on the words above to read our guidelines for writers.
about us
Editor - Fiona A Villella, 26, studied film at Melbourne University and has since gone on to write for many publications, including Metro, Real Time, IF and C'TEQ annotations. She is also an independent filmmaker, has worked around the film scene, and lived and worked in NYC for 6 months. She is also co-curator of the Melbourne Filmoteca and a board member of the Melbourne Cinémathèque. Her favourite directors are Martin Scorsese, Robert Bresson, Eric Rohmer, Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, Spike Lee, Claire Denis and Julie Dash.
You can email Fiona.
You can email Bill.
Senses of Cinema acknowledges the financial assistance of the Australian Film Commission
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