Introduction the editors November 2025 Editorial As Earth rotates another 90 degrees around the sun (all the while continuing to gyre in a malicious circle of ethnonationalism and AI-powered ecocide), Senses of Cinema, as ever, places its hopes on the serious...
My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer Patrick Kelly, Stuart Richards, Stayci Taylor & Cerise Howard November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer The special dossier is edited by Patrick Kelly and Stuart Richards. It features a collection of stories of formative encounters with music videos in r...
A Voice That Saved Lives: The Queer Influence of David Bowie Darryl W. Bullock November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer Editors’ note: The following is the written transcript of a speech originally delivered by the author at My Formative Queers on 16 November 2024. N...
Secretly Watching “Secretly” Stuart Richards November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer This article has been peer reviewed Picture it: Glenroy, 1999. You’re a 13-year-old boy watching rage late on a Saturday night in your bedroom. You...
“Justify My Love”: Revisiting Queer Aesthetics, Politics and Feminist “Sex Wars” Carolyn D'Cruz November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer This article has been peer reviewed After famously being banned from MTV, Madonna's “Justify My Love” (Jean Baptiste Mondino, 1990) was released as...
Effortlessly Sensual: “Slow” by Kylie Minogue Davey Thompson November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer Editors’ note: The following is the written transcript of a speech originally delivered by the author at My Formative Queers on 16 November 2024. O...
Callner and Response: A Personal Meditation Upon a Particular Video Clip – and Others of Its Ilk – With a Lot to Answer For Cerise Howard November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer Author’s note: in order to transmit something of the experiential, pseudo-audience-participatory dimensions of this piece’s two public airings to date...
“This One is for the Boys”: Nicki Minaj, Camp Aesthetics and Digital Diva Worship Connor Mulvaney November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer This article has been peer reviewed The first time I heard a Nicki Minaj song was in the computer lab at school. On Fridays, while we were working,...
Ladies and Gentlefolx, Miss Grace Jones: A Remix Queer Icon Angie Black November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer This article has been peer reviewed Introduction Grace Jones is an iconic figure who resonated deeply with me as a young nonbinary “tomboy” on the c...
fearing k.d. Sam Elkin November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer Editors’ note: The following is the written transcript of a speech originally delivered by the author at My Formative Queers on 14 November 2024. ...
Sex Kylie and the Queer Legacy of “What Do I Have To Do?” Rohan Spong November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer This article has been peer reviewed In recent years, scholars of pop culture and celebrity studies have posited that the career longevity enjoyed b...
Madonna’s “Erotica” and My First Sapphic Love Emily Gray November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer “Push myself into your mind…when you least expect it” Nostalgia for the 1990s is a contemporary trend that is reflected in popular culture of our tim...
Local Gods and Hometown Demons Christos Tsiolkas November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer Editors’ note: The following is the written transcript of a speech originally delivered by the author at My Formative Queers on 14 November 2024. ...
The Other Other Ginger Spice: Becoming a Creative Queer with Wigs, Friends, and Video in Post-Joh Queensland Patrick Kelly November 2025 My Formative Queers: Stories of the Music Videos that Made Us Queer This article has been peer reviewed Introduction It turns out that it’s difficult to consider my formative queer encounters with music videos withou...
Symphonies of Infrastructures: From City Films to Political Fiction Martin Blažíček November 2025 Feature Articles The city and its reflection play a special role in interwar avant-garde cinema. For the wave of city symphonies of the 1920s and 1930s, urbanity repre...
The Remains of a Shipwreck: Víctor Erice’s Close Your Eyes George Kouvaros November 2025 Feature Articles I At the origin of all our lives is the mystery of what came before: the circumstances and events that led to our arrival. This mystery remains. It i...
Cinema Disembodied?: Bi Gan Revisiting the Death-of-Cinema Cliché with Resurrection Xinyuan Wang November 2025 Feature Articles Following his international reputation established with Lubian yecan (Kaili Blues, 2015) and Diqiu zuihou de yewan (Long Day’s Journey into Night, 201...
Leviathan: Whale Bones And Rotten Humanity Ömer Kulak November 2025 Feature Articles Andrey Zvyagintsev's Leviathan (2014) teems with a range of emotions and ideas. The film concerns a father fighting to save his family and property; a...
Calvinism, the Ghost That Haunts Dutch Cinema Abel van Oosterwijk November 2025 Feature Articles In the perpetual domestic debate on the state of Dutch fiction film and the conditions for filmmaking in general, we keep on seeing the return of more...
History’s Gender Bias: The Case of Maria Plyta, the First Greek Female Director Betty Kaklamanidou November 2025 Feature Articles Maria Plyta is the first Greek female director. She helmed her first film in 1950 and directed her swan song in 1970. She worked within the commercial...
Non-BL Shipping: Cultural Negotiations of Queernarrating in Shōnen Anime Jean Isabel Magcamit November 2025 Feature Articles Shōnen, which literally means “young boy,” has evolved into a key marketing category and genre in Japanese media, primarily targeting boys and adolesc...
Isabelle Ingold and Vivianne Perelmuter: Two Films Jon Jost November 2025 Feature Articles Ailleurs, partout (Everywhere, anywhere), 2020, 1h 27m Director(s): Isabelle Ingold, Vivianne Perelmuter Les Recommencements (New Beginnings), 202...
“Nothing Needs To Exist”: In Conversation with Colectivo Los Ingrávidos Cristóbal Escobar November 2025 Interviews Many worlds are walked in the world. Many worlds are made. Many worlds make us The world we want is a world where many worlds fit. – Fourth Decl...
“Volcanic Time Is About the Birth of Life, And From Its Destruction Comes Birth Again”: In Conversation with Malena Szlam Cristóbal Escobar & Amanda Barbour November 2025 Interviews What happens when artists abandon the reflex to control – when they trade meticulous planning for an openness to chance, or when they prioritise direc...
An Interview with Christian Byers Ivan Cerecina November 2025 Interviews “Cinema is death at work.” – Jean Cocteau Around about the time I first saw Christian’s Byer’s new film, Death of an Undertaker (2025), I happened ac...
An Interview with Philippe Lesage Edward Frumkin November 2025 Interviews My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed i...
An Interview with Syeyoung Park Gary M. Kramer November 2025 Interviews South Korean writer/director Syeyoung Park’s sophomore feature film, The Fin (2025), establishes him as a director to watch. His beguiling dystopian t...
An Interview with Claire Denis Gary M. Kramer November 2025 Interviews Claire Denis returns to Africa, the setting for several of her films (Chocolat, White Material, and Beau Travail among them), for her latest feature, ...
“Storytelling is always dealing with the aftermath”: An Interview with Christoph Hochhäusler on Death Will Come Marco Abel & Jaimey Fisher November 2025 Interviews Christoph Hochhäusler’s densely layered seventh feature, La mort viendra (Death Will Come, 2024), is a French-language neo-noir unfolding primarily in...
Dutt, Guru Ashish Dwivedi November 2025 Great Directors b. 9 July 1925, Karnataka, India d. 10 October 1964, Mumbai, India A portrait of Guru Dutt. Courtesy of National Film Archive of India, Pune. 100 ...
Terayama, Shuji Keoni Tsotsoros November 2025 Great Directors b. December 10, 1935, Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture, Japan d. May 4, 1983, Tokyo, Japan Like his contemporary Mishima Yukio, the playwright, poet, ess...
Lavant, Denis Indigo Bailey November 2025 Great Actors “I still believe in the beauty of the act,” replies Monsieur Oscar, Denis Lavant’s shapeshifting cipher in Holy Motors (2012), when asked by Michel Pi...
Of Omnipresent, Absent Friends, of Unprepossessing Men and Putting Female Voices to the Front: The 59th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (and its Shadow Festivals) Cerise Howard November 2025 Festival Reports In my write-up in Senses of last year’s 58th KVIFF, I led with commentary on the ubiquity of celebration of Jiří Bartoška’s 30 years as festival Presi...
Locarno 2025: Good Trouble or Unruly Women (Understandably) on the Run Jaimey Fisher November 2025 Festival Reports Last year’s Locarno Film Festival was the first under the newly appointed president Maja Hoffmann, an important (and extremely wealthy) Swiss patron o...
HOODLUM TIME: Lillian Hellman in San Sebastián Neil Young November 2025 Festival Reports In ocean-lapped spots like San Sebastián on Spain's Atlantic coast, the tide turns twice a day. In the wider world, the process can take rather longer...
Activism and Allure: Official Selection Opposing Urges at the 73rd San Sebastian Film Festival Carmen Gray November 2025 Festival Reports Palestinian flags held aloft by protesters lined the length of the red carpet leading into the sleek, prismatic cubes of the Kursaal Congress Centre, ...
Experiments in Cinema 2025: The Persistence of Grass-Roots Experimentation Dirk de Bruyn November 2025 Festival Reports Experiments in Cinema in Albuquerque, New Mexico has just turned twenty. In the lead up to the 2025 edition, Basement Films, the non-profit organisati...
Sarajevo, As Told By Other People: The 31st Sarajevo Film Festival Olivia Popp November 2025 Festival Reports Every so often it becomes necessary to rewatch this iconic bit from Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, "Where is Balkan?", a lighthearted reminder of...
Korean Cinema at the Vanishing Point: The 30th Busan International Film Festival Marc Raymond November 2025 Festival Reports The 30th Busan International Film Festival was a curious mixture, both a continuation of the festival of the past decade as well as a return to the fe...
Reflections on The Skin of Film, 25 years on Laura U. Marks November 2025 Book Reviews It’s often the case that artists develop an idea first, in audiovisual form, and theory catches up with it later. It was my good luck to witness a mov...
Beyond the Anglosphere 2025: Books from Peru and Serbia Abel Muñoz-Hénonin & Nace Zavrl November 2025 Book Reviews A few years ago, Senses of Cinema became an internationally produced journal with editors beyond Australia. This partially changed the scope of sights...
Who Shall Heal Murder?: Lino Brocka’s Cain and Abel Austin Lancaster November 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film “Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your ...
Bona Darragh O’Donoghue October 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film All Manila’s a stage in the cinema of Lino Brocka. The usual distinctions between public and private, individual and collective, blur to bewildering e...
Mapping Resistance: Lino Brocka’s Manila in the Claws of Light Tito Ramos Quiling, Jnr. October 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film Morning seeps into the alleys of Manila’s Chinatown. Vendors open their stalls as kalesas rattle and trash is swept away. The air thickens with the sc...
Negotiating truth and beauty: Lino Brocka’s Insiang Danica van de Velde October 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film During an interview discussing first world and third world cinemas, filmmaker and scholar Hamid Naficy asked Filipino auteur Lino Brocka about the gen...
Revelation, Sumud, and the Ethics of the Gaze in Suleiman’s It Must Be Heaven Sandra E. Lim October 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film In It Must Be Heaven (2019), Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman writes, directs, and stars as a version of himself, a character identified only by hi...
Quiet Resistance: Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention Danica van de Velde October 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film Following a three-minute opening sequence that is completely devoid of dialogue, the first words uttered in Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman’s Yado...
Chronicle of a Disappearance Indigo Bailey October 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film “A neutralised angel, in my case, wingless,” Elia Suleiman says of the fictionalised self who appears throughout his oeuvre, likening his double to th...
The White Dove Alexander Back September 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film Some decades before Frantisek Vláčil released his first film Holubice (The White Dove, 1960), Pablo Picasso painted L’enfant au pigeon (Child with Dov...
Making Home: Adelheid Jamie Jungyoon Tak September 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film Above all, František Vláčil’s Adelheid (1969) is a film about the place and (dis)placement of home. How to define home? The warmest corner of the worl...
Better Jump Down a Manhole, Light Yourself a Candle: The Devil’s Trap Cerise Howard September 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film Long his most widely disseminated work, František Vláčil’s baroque Middle Ages masterpiece Marketa Lazarová (1967) often serves as a discombobulating ...
Two Monks Brad Weismann August 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film For a long time, Dos monjes (Two Monks, Juan Bustillo Oro, 1934) has been categorised as one of Mexico’s first two horror movies, along with Fernando ...
From Märchenland to Mexico: Macario’s International Fairy-Tale Journey Deborah Allison August 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film In the spring of 1959, the Oscar-winning American special-effects maestro John Fulton visited Mexico at the invitation of the Production Council of Cl...
Lust Souls: The Phantom of the Monastery Salvador Carrasco August 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film Some films are better served if we assess them in terms of their historical context, considering whatever the director’s intent might have been in mak...
A Violent Beauty – María Candelaria, an Elegy for Things That Bleed David Melville August 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film “There are things that bleed if you only touch them.” – Alberto Galán, María Candelaria María Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, 1943) opens with a monta...
Enamorada Niamh Thornton August 2025 CTEQ Annotations on Film In Enamorada (Emilio Fernández, 1946) María Félix is Beatriz, daughter of a wealthy landowner in Cholula, central Mexico. Pedro Armendáriz is General ...
