“Reality Is Always Magic”: Experience (Abbas Kiarostami, 1973) Joseph Sgammato July 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film When Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami unexpectedly passed away in 2016, he was deeply mourned by lovers of cinema. Martin Scorsese gave voice to the world’s loss when he said, “He was one of those rare artists...
The Flipside of Neorealism: Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica, 1951) Joseph Sgammato February 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film What are we to make of Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan, 1951), Vittorio De Sica’s comic fantasy about postwar poverty produced within the artistic parameters of neorealismo? We all know the requirements ...
His Enchanted Gaze: The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi, 1978) Joseph Sgammato October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Among important Italian directors, Ermanno Olmi occupies a curious middle ground. Critics and fans alike may sense that his works offer more substance than many – indeed, perhaps even the majority of – films of...
See, Hear, and Speak of Evil: Three Monkeys (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2008) Joseph Sgammato February 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys, 2008) was the fifth of the eight features that have so far been directed by Cannes favourite Nuri Bilge Ceylan, a leading Turkish filmmaker who has earned international respect for fil...
Naked Came the Stranger: Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (Thom Andersen, 1975) Joseph Sgammato March 2018 CTEQ Annotations on Film University courses on the history of film often begin with the photographic experiments of Eadweard Muybridge, most famously the 1878 sequence of still photographs of a galloping racehorse that showed all four ...
A Woman Asks Why: Maborosi (Hirokazu Koreeda, 1995) Joseph Sgammato June 2017 CTEQ Annotations on Film Maborosi (1995) launched the feature film career of Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda, until then a maker of television documentaries only. Unlike many first efforts that must settle for “promising” status, Ma...
