Welcome to issue 80 of our journal the editors September 2016 Editorial "New directions” is certainly a key term in Issue 80 of Senses of Cinema. In our dossier on “American Extreme”, we are joined by guest co-editor Jack Sargeant: not, in this case, to make ‘sense’ of these fil...
Cinema and Poetry: T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral Wheeler Winston Dixon September 2016 Feature Articles I’ve always had a curious affection for George Hoellering’s 1951 film adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s verse play Murder in the Cathedral. Eliot composed it...
Imag(in)ing a Nation: Ali Mostafa about the Emergence of Emirati Cinema Alfio Leotta September 2016 Feature Articles What stories is Arab cinema telling? Until recently, Egyptian films were your best bet to find out. Since the late 2000s, however, a new swathe of Ara...
“More publicity means more protection”: An interview with documentary director Sonia Kennebeck Chuleenan Svetvilas September 2016 Feature Articles The quietly powerful documentary National Bird, directed by Sonia Kennebeck, reveals the story of three whistleblowers who speak about their experienc...
Neil Taylor’s Experimental Animation: The Technical Habitus As Aesthetic Trace Dirk de Bruyn September 2016 Feature Articles This essay examines Neil Taylor's animations, situated between the moving image, performance and sculpture and in the shadows of his recognised wire-b...
Shock, Horror, Spirit: Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960): Part One Ken Mogg September 2016 Feature Articles This two-part essay basically concerns Alfred Hitchcock’s relation to Catholicism. My thanks to Senses of Cinema for allowing its publication over two...
Adieu, Carolus (Charles Bitsch, 1931-2016) Sally Shafto September 2016 Feature Articles It is often said that a film set is like a military campaign. Another analogy would be that of a professional kitchen (itself based on the military mo...
All the World’s a Stage: Matías Piñeiro and Hermia & Helena Christopher Small September 2016 Feature Articles This interview with Argentine filmmaker Matías Piñeiro took place at the Locarno Film Festival in August 2016. About all that needs be said about Piñe...
“There is Something Very Strange in Cinema”: An Interview with Whit Stillman Eloise Ross August 2016 Feature Articles “Facts are such horrid things!” writes Mrs Alicia Johnson to Lady Susan Vernon in Jane Austen’s early novella, Lady Susan. In Whit Stillman’s film Lov...
Retrieving the Cinema’s Past: Il Cinema Ritrovato XXXth Edition Peter Hourigan September 2016 Festival Reports For 30 years, Bologna has been the home of Retrieved Cinema – Il Cinema Ritrovato. That idea of “retrieving” cinema is what makes this annual gatherin...
What Is It?: The 27th FID Festival International de Cinéma Marseille James Lattimer September 2016 Festival Reports If the success of a festival is measured by all the many places its films end up, then the Festival International de Cinéma Marseille, or FIDMarseille...
International Cinema, Nationalist Politics: The 17th 2016 Jeonju International Film Festival Marc Raymond September 2016 Festival Reports 2016 marked the 17th year for the Jeonju International Film Festival, held annually in early May in a small southern city in South Korea’s Jeolla Prov...
Bold Origins, Unfolding Futures: The Second Annual Queensland Film Festival Alison Taylor September 2016 Festival Reports On the fiftieth anniversary of the very first Brisbane Film Festival (BFF), and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first Brisbane International Film ...
The 16th T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival: In Search of Emerging Auteur Cinema Martin Kudláč September 2016 Festival Reports Poland cannot complain of a lack of film festivals. The volume is high, but so is the variety as each film festival carves out its own particular prog...
The 22nd Sarajevo Film Festival Courtney Sheehan September 2016 Festival Reports 58 – that’s how many kilograms Mexican filmmaker Dana Rotbart’s baggage exceeded the limit when she tried to board a UN military flight back to Saraje...
The Spectacle of Place: Multinational Cinema at the Sydney Film Festival Ari Mattes September 2016 Festival Reports Every June, Sydney’s winter streets come alive with two festivals of light. For one of these festivals, the promenades around Circular Quay are backed...
Looking In: The 69th Locarno Film Festival and its Outsider Perspectives Jaimey Fisher September 2016 Festival Reports When, in May, long-time festival regular Ken Loach took his second Cannes Palme d’Or for I, Daniel Blake, there was understandable moaning from many q...
Rudolph, Alan Steven Rybin August 2016 Great Directors December 18, 1943, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Alan Rudolph is one of cinema’s most unashamed romantics, and a distinctively self-reflexive one. Although h...
Brooks, Albert Christian Long August 2016 Great Directors b. 22 July 1947, Beverly Hills, CA, USA When Success is Failure Albert Brooks has been called the “West Coast Woody Allen,” a nickname which acknowl...
Dead? Far From It: The End of Cinema?: A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age by André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion Kate Balsley September 2016 Book Reviews André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion’s The End of Cinema?: A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age demonstrates that cinema has still not reached its e...
What is New about “New Europe” in Contemporary European Cinema?: East, West and Centre:. Reframing Post-1989 European Cinema by Michael Gott and Todd Herzog (eds.) Lukas Brasiskis September 2016 Book Reviews Despite the fact that twenty-six years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and thirteen years have passed since the first group of for...
No Appeasement: Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet: Writings by Sally Shafto (ed.), and Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet by Ted Fendt (ed.) Daniel Fairfax September 2016 Book Reviews A touchstone for the highly politicised debates in film criticism during the 1960s and 1970s, the work of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet appea...
Francomania Exposed!: Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco by Stephen Thrower Whitney Strub September 2016 Book Reviews When Jesús “Jess” Franco won a prestigious Spanish Goya Award in 2009, it represented a victory from below, a truly grassroots push from fan communit...
Filmmaker, musician and poet: Jim Jarmusch: Music, Words and Noise by Sara Piazza Adriano Tedde September 2016 Book Reviews A student of literature at Columbia University coming from small-town Ohio, in the 1970s the young Jim Jarmusch embraced New York’s urban culture, bec...
Pearls of the Deep, or Five Masterly Apprentices’ Guides to Bohumil Hrabal’s Gift of the Gab Cerise Howard September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film The 1960s' Czechoslovak New Wave was lightning in a bottle, a glorious film miracle born of an unrepeatable collision of societal and political factor...
The Vanguard of Marketa Lazarová John Edmond September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film Vladislav Vančura cleared the path for Marketa Lazarová (Frantisek Vlácil, 1967). Modernist, playwright, filmmaker, resistance figure, and author of t...
Ratcatcher Carlota Larrea September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film In Ratcatcher, Lynne Ramsay conjures beautiful images out of the grimness of a council estate in 1970s Glasgow in the middle of a rubbish collectors’ ...
Morvern Callar: A Girl Abroad Kristy Matheson September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film In the opening scene of Lynne Ramsay’s sophomore feature, the almost soundless world is bathed in the colourful glow of a Christmas tree. A young woma...
Gasman (1998) Tanya Farley September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film By the time Lynne Ramsay made her third short film, Gasman, the spotlight was already firmly cast on the 29-year-old Glaswegian. Since graduating from...
Emphasis on Climax: Catherine Breillat’s A Ma Soeur! José Sarmiento-Hinojosa September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion. - David Cronenberg In A Ma Soeur! (2002) (For My Sister, or Fat Girl ...
A Real Young Girl: Catherine Breillat’s Adolescent Wonderland Maria San Filippo September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film Although not released until 25 years after its production, Une vraie jeune fille (A Real Young Girl, Catherine Breillat, 1976/2000) stands now as an a...
The Devious Conflict: Love and Sex Dissected in Catherine Breillat’s Romance (1999) Joanna Di Mattia September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film “I am eternally, devastatingly romantic, and I thought people would see it because ‘romantic’ doesn’t mean ‘sugary.’ It’s dark and tormented – the fur...
Une Veille Maitresse (The Last Mistress) Lee Hill September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film Catherine Breillat’s Une Veille Maitresse (2007) opens with the title card, “au siècle de Cholderlos de Laclos” (in the period of Cholderlos de Laclos...
Anatomy of Hell: A Feminist Fairy Tale Gwendolyn Audrey Foster September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film I’d like to be able to report that Catherine Breillat’s Anatomy of Hell (Anatomie de l'enfer, 2004, adapted by the director from her 2001 novel Pornoc...
Flight of the Red Balloon (Le voyage du ballon rouge, 2007) Darragh O’Donoghue September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film Flight of the Red Balloon was part of a planned series of films made in collaboration with the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to celebrate the museum’s 20th b...
Coloured Judgement: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s The Assassin (2015) Frederick Blichert September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first film in eight years was also his first foray into the wuxia genre. With The Assassin, he joins other top-tier auteurs like Joh...
Visit or Memories and Confessions Eloise Ross September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film Visita ou Memórias e Confissões is Manoel de Oliveira’s lasting cinematic elegy: a visit to a house filled with evidence of a life well lived, an expl...
The God Anhedonia: Manoel de Oliveira’s Francisca David Heslin September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film “Unhappiness is a form of renouncement; it has nothing to do with disgrace. She is the most torrid of lovers, and for her we’ll sacrifice everything.”...
A Thesaurus of Gestures: Harun Farocki’s Workers Leaving the Factory (1995) and The Expression of Hands (1997) Nace Zavrl September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film Harun Farocki died suddenly in July 2014, but his formidable intellect lives on in a remarkable body of work, as acute and prescient now as ever befor...
Repeat, Develop, Adapt: Harun Farocki’s Interface (1995) Conor Bateman September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film 1. Throughout his work, the late German filmmaker/artist Harun Farocki was fascinated by what he termed “operational images”. Operational images are t...
An Archaeology of the Filmic Essay: Untangling Harun Farocki’s Still Life (1997) Danica van de Velde September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film From the opening moments of Harun Farocki’s Stilleben (Still Life, 1997), the viewer is charged with not merely unconsciously accepting what is placed...
The Time to Live and the Time to Die Kevin Lee February 2006 CTEQ Annotations on Film The Time to Live and the Time to Die/Tong nian wang shi (1985 Taiwan 138 mins) Source: NFSA Prod Co: Central Motion Pictures Corporation Dir: Hou H...
A City of Sadness Acquarello May 2003 CTEQ Annotations on Film A City of Sadness (1989 Taiwan 157 mins) Source: Chinese Taipei Film Archive/Eracom Prod Co: 3-H Films/Era Prod: Chiu Fu-sheng Dir: Hou Hsiao-hsien...
Footage Fetishist: The Merry Widow Adrian Danks December 2002 CTEQ Annotations on Film The Merry Widow (1925 USA 150 mins) Source: ACMI/NLA Prod Co: MGM Prod, Dir: Erich von Stroheim Scr: Benjamin Glazer, Erich von Stroheim, from the ...
Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges Allan James Thomas March 2002 CTEQ Annotations on Film Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges (Images of the World and the Inscription of War, 1988 W. Germany 75mins) Source: ACMI/NLA Prod, Dir, Scr:...
The Passion According to Andrei: Andrei Rublev Anna Dzenis July 2001 CTEQ Annotations on Film This article was originally published in Metro 110 (1997). * * * Andrei Rublev (1966 USSR 146mins) 35mm Source: Film Alliance Prod Co: Mosfilm Di...
Introduction: American Extreme Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Jack Sargeant September 2016 American Extreme This dossier brings together a collection of articles on a number of filmmakers and filmmaking practices a little beyond Senses of Cinema’s typical focus. This serves as an introduction to and consideration of ...
The Pornographic Imagination Manifest: Notes On Usama Alshaibi’s The Amateurs (2003) Jack Sargeant September 2016 American Extreme “I think there was something internally stimulating to go (to) that space, collectively there was a high, a mutual fantasy, we forgot we were making anything – it seemed like the performance was really for one ...
Fear of a Black Phallus: Jamaa Fanaka’s Welcome Home Brother Charles (1975) Dean Brandum September 2016 American Extreme When African-American filmmaker Jamaa Fanaka passed away in 2012, director of the UCLA Film & Television Archive Jan-Christopher Horak stated that Fanaka was dismayed that his films were picked up by a vid...
Divine Dog Shit: John Waters and Disruptive Queer Humour in Film Stuart Richards September 2016 American Extreme John Waters is an icon of queer cinema, known for his use of grossness and bad taste. However, it is not grotesqueness alone that makes queer film akin to Waters’ work; his humour is distinctly politically di...
Deracination, Disembowelling and Scorched Earth Aesthetics: Feminist Cinemas, No Wave and the Punk Avant Garde Maura Edmond September 2016 American Extreme This article discusses cinematic extremes - on-screen sex and violence but also extremes of grain and texture and production cultures - in the work of several women directors closely associated with the undergr...
“A Malignant, Seething Hatework”: An Introduction to US 21st Century Hardcore Horror James Aston September 2016 American Extreme Abstract >> Hardcore horror meets at the intersection between pornography and horror. Films such as Fred Vogel’s August Underground trilogy, Shane Ryan’s Amateur Porn Star Killer series, Lucifer Valent...
Goodbye, McFly: Crispin Glover’s ‘It’ Trilogy and the Cinema of Reaction Keva York September 2016 American Extreme In directing the taboo-themed It trilogy Crispin Hellion Glover broke away from his iconic role as George McFly in blockbuster Back to the Future (1985). In What is it? (2005) Glover’s insistence that he is n...
Making Revolutionary Love: Radical Sex and Cooptation in the Films of Bruce LaBruce Jasmine McGowan September 2016 American Extreme Using the starting point of the MoMA retrospective of the works of Bruce LaBruce, this article confronts the shifting perceptions of LaBruce as a transgressive provocateur of cinema. I argue that his most recen...
What’s Inside a Girl?: Porn, Horror and the Films of Roberta Findlay Alexandra Heller-Nicholas September 2016 American Extreme “You know the money shots in porn films? Well, this was just a different substance: it was red” – Director Roberta Findlay on the relationship between pornography and horror “Roberta is a pioneer, a ground-br...
The Invisible Exploding Woman Alexandra Heller-Nicholas September 2016 American Extreme In July 1974 in the seaside city of Sarasota, Florida, television journalist Christine Chubbuck pulled out a gun while broadcasting the news and shot herself in the head on live television. The whereabouts of t...
Mashup Videos and the Queer Archive Whitney Monaghan September 2016 New Directions in Screen Studies While queer representation in mainstream television is increasing, queer teens remain in a marginal space in screen culture. Often limited to a comi...
Corporeal Affects and Fleshy Vulnerability: Nonprofessional Performance as Process in L’humanité and Battle in Heaven Michel Rubin September 2016 New Directions in Screen Studies Conventional performance modes are fashioned upon a premise of the portrayal of a coherent fictional character whose actions can be said to service th...
Apparatus Theory in the Age of “New” Media: Three Cases from Cahiers du cinéma Daniel Fairfax September 2016 New Directions in Screen Studies This article seeks to interrogate the role of the image in confronting changes to the ways they function within what we may term ‘new media’, and the ...
Language matters Chloe Benson September 2016 New Directions in Screen Studies Queer film festivals have politicised origins and tend to be imbricated in complex gender and sexual identity politics. Language plays a central rol...
In Her Shoes: Flipped-realities and Female Perspectives in Comedy Screenwriting Stayci Taylor September 2016 New Directions in Screen Studies This article examines flipped-reality screenwriting, particularly in comedy form, and its ability to destabilise the ‘norms’ and ‘universals’ of mai...
