Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959) Emma Fajgenbaum March 2023 CTEQ Annotations on Film Robert Bresson described Pickpocket (1959), his fifth feature, as an “impatient film”. It took him only three months to outline a treatment, six weeks...
I Remember: Amarcord (Federico Fellini, 1973) Jacob Agius February 2023 CTEQ Annotations on Film Often cited as Federico Fellini’s most autobiographical film and the last of his greats, Amarcord (1973) can also be seen as one of the most autobiogr...
The Lure (Agnieszka Smoczyńska, 2015) Faith Everard December 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Seven jellyfishes, eight jellybabies, Wanna drown in the water and stay dead for ages. Nine jellyfishes, ten jellyfishes, Give me a boyfriend who isn’...
Othering Heights: The Queerest of the Queer in Rosa von Praunheim’s City of Lost Souls (1983) Cerise Howard December 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Prolific activist-filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim was born Holger Radtke in Nazi-occupied Latvia in 1942. He rebranded himself “Rosa”, to serve as a cons...
To walk away, you gotta leave something behind, or a long story short: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) Cerise Howard December 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film For all that it contains resonances of queer musical elders – The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975), the Sandra Bernhard vehicle Without Y...
Lost Paradise: F.W. Murnau’s Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) Andréas Giannopoulos November 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film By the end of the 1920s the success of Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) had made F. W. Murnau a significantly wealthy and commanding figure in Hol...
Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, F.W. Murnau, 1922) Martyn Bamber November 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film 2022 marks 100 years since the release of F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (hereafter referred to...
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927) Jacob Agius October 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film What can one say that hasn’t already been said about F.W. Murnau’s lyrical masterpiece, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927). The film marks the Germa...
Die Finanzen des Großherzogs (The Grand Duke’s Finances, F.W. Murnau, 1924) Jonathan Mackris October 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film The critic Chris Fujiwara once described Nicholas Ray’s Wind Across the Everglades (1958) as a “litmus test” of the auteur theory. Fujiwara intended t...
A Dream of Light and Dark – F.W. Murnau and Faust David Melville October 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film In the age of cinema the Faustian myth became a play of darkness and light, and this play indeed replaced all the words from Marlowe up to Goethe. ...
American Maverick: How Joan Micklin Silver Made Hester Street (1975) Shari Kizirian October 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film After writing and directing several shorts and selling a script about the wives of soldiers missing in action during the Vietnam War (what became Mark...
“There’s meaning in a cup of tea”: Cecil Holmes’ Weekly Review no. 374: The Coaster (1948) Adrian Danks October 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Most discussion of the career of Cecil Holmes focuses, understandably, on the 30-year body of work he completed after migrating to Australia from New ...
Sitting on a Branch, Enjoying Myself (Sedím na konári a je mi dobre, Juraj Jakubisko, 1989) Darragh O’Donoghue October 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film In 1968, Juraj Jakubisko, a graduate of Prague’s legendary FAMU film academy and recent employee of the Laterna Magika theatre, presented his adaptati...
Gazing at the Gaze: Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) Anders Furze September 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Music plays a central role in Portrait de la jeune fille en feu (Portrait of a Lady on Fire, 2019), director Céline Sciamma’s masterful 2019 queer per...
Ma Vie de Courgette (My Life as a Courgette, Claude Barras, 2016) Cristina Johnston September 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Much recent critical literature on cinematic representations of childhood explores the ways in which contemporary cinema bears witness to “a new recog...
Les Olympiades (Paris, 13th District, Jacques Audiard, 2021) Darragh O’Donoghue September 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Jacques Audiard’s Les Olympiades (2021) is adapted from three stories by beloved Californian comics artist and illustrator Adrian Tomine. At every po...
Girlhood (Céline Sciamma, 2014) Holly Willis September 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film You might think of French writer-director Céline Sciamma’s remarkable 2014 film Girlhood as a portrait, one that captures the likeness of a girl, not ...
Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) Louise Cain September 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film The tonalities and textures of our childhood homes stay with us, buried deep within our consciousness: we remember the number of steps in a hallway, t...
Tomboy (Céline Sciamma, 2011) Faith Everard September 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film “I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide” - Emily Brontë, Stanzas When the word “tomboy” first came i...
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov, 1965) Wheeler Winston Dixon July 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film “Directing is fundamentally the truth as it's transformed into images: sorrow, hope, love, beauty. Sometimes I tell others the stories in my screenpla...
Shockproof (Douglas Sirk, 1949): The Insanity of Romantic Desire Wheeler Winston Dixon May 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film “There is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.” – ...
The Grotesque Loves of Jealousy, Italian Style (Ettore Scola, 1970) Tiia Kelly May 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film A florist named Adelaide (Monica Vitti) sits behind a concave glass window, quietly observing something we cannot see. She’s handed a drink by the wea...
A Geography of Fractured Desire: Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse (1962) Danica van de Velde May 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse (The Eclipse, 1962) opens rather enigmatically with the fatigued denouement of the relationship between the film’s ...
Il Deserto Rosso (Red Desert, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964) Boyd van Hoeij May 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Michelangelo Antonioni’s Il deserto rosso (Red Desert, 1964) was the Italian filmmaker’s first feature in colour. This might seem like a major change ...
‘You Can’t Make an Omelette…’ – Modesty Blaise (Joseph Losey, 1966) and the Art of Breaking Eggs David Melville May 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film “We must try to be more conspicuous!” - Monica Vitti, Modesty Blaise A typical scene in Modesty Blaise (Joseph Losey, 1966) takes place in a hip Am...
Fritz Lang’s Spione (1928) Shari Kizirian May 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film It begins like any good spy thriller should, with a fast-paced action-filled set up, here done in a style so clipped and cryptic it leaves us breathle...
An entertainment: Fritz Lang’s Ministry of Fear (1944) Andréas Giannopoulos May 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Graham Greene’s 1943 novel The Ministry of Fear – a “wrong man” story set during the London Blitz in which a recently institutionalised person acciden...
Out of the Shadows: Cloak and Dagger (Fritz Lang, 1946) Ian Olney May 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Fritz Lang’s Cloak and Dagger (1946) is a far more interesting film than its middling reputation suggests. A spy story about an American physicist rec...
“A pin for me ’at”: Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt (1941) Adrian Danks May 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Man Hunt is the first of a string of four bold anti-Nazi films – along with Hangmen Also Die! (1943), Ministry of Fear (1944) and Cloak and Dagger (19...
Fritz Lang in America: While the City Sleeps (1956) Wheeler Winston Dixon May 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Fritz Lang’s penultimate American film, While the City Sleeps (1956), is a serial killer drama, much like Lang’s classic film M (1931). Robert Manners...
M (Fritz Lang, 1931) Digby Houghton May 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Fritz Lang’s M (1931) is a cry for despair representing the dying moments of a free Germany before the reign of terror was concentrated under Adolf Hi...
The value of reproduction and the reproduction of value: Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010) Anders Furze March 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film “In even the most perfect reproduction, one thing is lacking: the here and now of the work of art – its unique existence in a particular place. It i...
A Wedding Suit (Abbas Kiarostami, 1976) Alicia Byrnes January 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Godfrey Cheshire, film critic and author of the volume Conversations with Kiarostami, describes A Wedding Suit as “a gem-like masterpiece that anticip...
Children of the Revolution: Abbas Kiarostami’s First Graders (1984) Adrian Danks January 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Avaliha (First Graders, 1984) is a fascinating transitional work in Abbas Kiarostami’s career. Although it is, in many ways, a precursor to both Khane...
And the road goes on: Fellow Citizen (Abbas Kiarostami, 1983) Jean-Baptiste de Vaulx January 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film In 1983, when the late great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami made his medium-length documentary Fellow Citizen, Iran was still in the throes of its...
Some Enchanted Evening: Mitchell Lesien and Preston Sturges’ Remember the Night (1940) Adrian Danks January 2022 CTEQ Annotations on Film Mitchell’s Leisen’s Remember the Night (1940) is most commonly discussed as the last film Preston Sturges wrote before becoming a director. It is ofte...
