Lying About Homework (Abbas Kiarostami, 1989) Kenta McGrath July 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film “It’s a film about homework.” Or so Abbas Kiarostami tells a group of schoolboys who approach him on the street and ask what he’s filming. “Have you ...
Realism, Morality and Care in Where Is the Friend’s House? (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987) Sandra E. Lim July 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Kahne-ye doust kodjast? (Where is the Friend’s House?, 1987), is the first of three interrelated films in Abbas Kiarostami’s “Koker trilogy”, named af...
“Reality Is Always Magic”: The 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 ...
Looking for LGBT+ History: Barbara Hammer’s Nitrate Kisses (1992) Gwendolyn Audrey Foster July 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film “For if one history is lost, all of us are less rich than before.” — Barbara Hammer Barbara Hammer’s first feature-length film, Nitrate Kisses (1992)...
Hard Labour: Cecil Holmes’s Captain Thunderbolt (1953) Adrian Danks April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film This is an extended and amended version of an article that first appeared in Directory of World Cinema: Australia & New Zealand, edited by Ben Gol...
Adrift in the Shadows of Fog: Forget Love for Now (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1937) Rolland Man April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film In his book In Praise of Shadows Junichiro Tanizaki identified in 1933 the attraction to shadows as one principle of Japanese aesthetics: “We delight ...
Kiss Me, Stupid (Billy Wilder, 1964) Martyn Bamber April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Skewering celebrity vanity, the allure of success and the obsession with fame, Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) takes a long, hard look at these subjects and is...
A journey through 1930s Japan: Mr. Thank You (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1936) Nicholas Bugeja April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film The bus driver (Ken Uehara) at the heart of Mr Thank You derives his eponymous sobriquet from what he says to those roving through rural Japan when th...
Starstruck (Gillian Armstrong, 1982) Ben Kooyman April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Pauline Kael, the great American film critic, was decidedly lukewarm on Australian cinema. In an interview with Cinema Papers, she elaborated that “Mo...
The Masquerade is Over: Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) Adrian Danks April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) was one of the projects closest to Billy Wilder’s heart – an organ that some commentators question even exi...
The Servant (Joseph Losey, 1963) Martyn Bamber April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film The subject of The Servant (1963) is the English class system and its tensions in swinging sixties London. The battleground for this class struggle is...
G’day Comrade: Cecil Holmes’s Three in One (1956) Adrian Danks April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film This is an extended and amended version of an article that first appeared in Directory of World Cinema: Australia & New Zealand, edited by Ben Gol...
That which is planted: A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Douglas Sirk, 1958) Grant Bromley April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to ...
Creating light, sharing concern: Little Women (Gillian Armstrong, 1994) Kristi McKim April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Necessity is indeed the mother of invention. Somehow, in that dark time, our family, the March family, seemed to create its own light. – Jo March (Wi...
A cinema of resistance: My Brilliant Career (Gillian Armstrong, 1979) Gabrielle O'Brien April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Loneliness is a terrible price to pay for independence. Sybylla, don’t throw away reality for some impossible dream. - Aunt Gussie (Patricia Kennedy)...
Bad love: The Night Porter (Liliana Cavani, 1974) Jeremy Carr April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film There has scarcely been a more unsettling and perversely potent love story than that which stimulates the precarious heart of Liliana Cavani’s Il port...
Stalag 17 (Billy Wilder, 1953) Brad Weismann April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Stalag 17 is not the original prisoner-of-war film, nor the first escape film. Its most notable predecessors include such films as Mervyn LeRoy’s I am...
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010) MaoHui Deng April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film The narrative of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Loong Boonmee raleuk chat (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, 2010) follows the last days of it...
Pass it on: Mysterious Object at Noon (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2000) Kenta McGrath April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Mysterious Object at Noon. Even at a first glance, Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s first feature has one of the most evocative t...
The kids are not alright: Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959) Claire White April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film “Children are always pretending,” Lora Meredith (Lana Turner) consoles her friend Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore) after the latter’s daughter, Sarah Jan...
Romance, escapism and war in Ornamental Hairpin (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941) Nicholas Bugeja April 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film In Hiroshi Shimizu’s 1941 film, the titular object of the ornamental hairpin firmly holds the story in place; the lynchpin of it, so to speak. On a fa...
Rubble romance: A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder, 1948) Jeremy Carr March 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film A United States congressional envoy flies over bombed-out Berlin, its members on their way to the East German city to evaluate the morale of occupying...
Voices from an Empty Room: Ernst Lubitsch and Angel (1937) David Melville March 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood. – Oscar Wilde The term “sophisticated comedy” has become a lazy critical shorthand for any film i...
“Welcome to Bottleneck”: Peak Hollywood in Destry Rides Again (George Marshall, 1939) Adrian Danks March 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Despite a directorial career in film and television that spread from the mid-1910s to the early 1970s, taking in a series of sustained collaborations ...
Carnal Spirituality: Desire (Frank Borzage, 1936) Rolland Man March 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film There seems to be a curious near-unanimity among critics and historians of cinema that attributes the paternity of Desire (1936) to its producer, Erns...
Death in an Italian Garden: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Vittorio De Sica, 1970) David Melville February 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Dear friend, I congratulate you. Disaster endears beyond Fortune. – Emily Dickinson Il giardino dei Finzi Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Contin...
Resisting War and Patriarchy: Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960) Gwendolyn Audrey Foster February 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Vittorio De Sica’s wartime drama La ciociara (Two Women, 1960) had a decidedly peculiar genesis. Adapted from a 1957 novel by Alberto Moravia, with a ...
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...
The Tribulations of the Working Class: Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948) Sandra E. Lim February 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948) marked Vittorio De Sica’s eighth directorial credit in a prolific filmmaking career, which had included wo...
Behind the Veil: The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966) Danica van de Velde January 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film In a 1968 interview with Cahiers du cinéma, former Cahiers editor-in-chief and filmmaker Jacques Rivette made the provocative comment that “the cinema...
Into the Web: The Spider’s Stratagem (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970) Wheeler Winston Dixon January 2020 CTEQ Annotations on Film There’s an overwhelming sense of stasis in the images of Strategia del ragno (The Spider’s Stratagem, 1970), as the film effortlessly embraces both na...
Intimate Interiors: The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies, 1992) Joanna Di Mattia October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film The Long Day Closes (1992), like each of Terence Davies’ nine films, lives and breathes within interior spaces. When Bud (Leigh McCormack), the film’s...
“Judge Tenderly of Me!”: Terence Davies’ Letter to Emily Dickinson in A Quiet Passion (2016) Danica van de Velde October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film Terence Davies’ Emily Dickinson biopic A Quiet Passion (2016) opens with Miss Lyon (Sara Vertongen), the headmistress of Mount Holyoke Female Seminary...
Autoluminescent: Rowland S. Howard (Lynn-Maree Milburn & Richard Lowenstein, 2011) Darragh O’Donoghue October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film I was the magician’s apprentice … I was his psychotic sidekick, the boy wonder to murder’s masked man. This may read like a lurid Nick Cave fairytale...
Hear That Lonesome Whippoorwill: Terence Davies’ The Neon Bible (1995) Adrian Danks October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film I was interested in the nature of the book, which is actually about failure. And very few things in America seem to me to be about failure, because it...
Defeating the Sexual Predator: Beggars of Life (William A. Wellman, 1928) Gwendolyn Audrey Foster October 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film William A. Wellman was known throughout his career as a tough director who made grimy, realistic movies about tough people surviving desperate situati...
