Editorial the editors July 2022 Editorial This MIFFmas, we’re bringing you two dossiers derived from what’s on offer at the 70th edition of the Melbourne International Film Festival. Guest editors John Edmond and Alison Taylor cover the breadth and dep...
This Is Not A Ritual: An Introduction to Lucile Hadžihalilović Alison Taylor & John Edmond August 2022 The Natural Models of Lucile Hadžihalilović Lucile Hadžihalilović’s films have the structure of allegories. Time after time they are described in terms of surrealism and symbolism, fairy tales, ...
Rites of Passage, Fluidity and Metamorphoses: The Imagery of Education in Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Innocence, Evolution and Earwig Anton Bitel August 2022 The Natural Models of Lucile Hadžihalilović Coming of age is often conceptualised in religious terms as a rite of passage and an initiation into adulthood, - and so Lucile Hadžihalilović's films...
Outside In: Lucile Hadžihalilović and Gaspar Noé’s Les Cinémas de la Zone Tim Palmer August 2022 The Natural Models of Lucile Hadžihalilović When they named their production company Les Cinémas de la Zone, Lucile Hadžihalilović and Gaspar Noé made a statement of intent, a clear conceptual p...
Trains of Thought in Earwig Anne Billson August 2022 The Natural Models of Lucile Hadžihalilović There is in France a sign at railway crossings: "Un train peut en cacher un autre." One train can hide another. Beyond its primary warning that travel...
An Interview with Scriptwriter Geoff Cox John Edmond August 2022 The Natural Models of Lucile Hadžihalilović Interview conducted via email from July-August 2022. How did you come to work with Lucile Hadžihalilović. It's clear how Lucile and yourself would ...
Before Innocence: The Real-World Malaise of La Bouche de Jean-Pierre Beatrice Layoza August 2022 The Natural Models of Lucile Hadžihalilović When it comes to the work of Lucile Hadžihalilović, there is an after Innocence (2004) and a before it. Those films that come “after,” like Evolution ...
Hadžihalilović’s Metaphysical Pictures Henri de Corinth August 2022 The Natural Models of Lucile Hadžihalilović Lucile Hadžihalilović’s cinema can be understood in terms of the artistic notions of the pittura metafisica – the “metaphysical picture,” coined by pa...
Lucile Hadžihalilović: The Alchemy of Nightmares Laurence Reymond August 2022 The Natural Models of Lucile Hadžihalilović A rare and singular figure of French cinema, Lucile Hadžihalilović has developed a body of work, filled with haunting images, mysterious characters an...
De Natura: The Child-Centric Cinema of Lucile Hadžihalilović Tim Palmer August 2022 The Natural Models of Lucile Hadžihalilović Lucile Hadžihalilović opens De Natura (2018) with a signature triptych. First, an extreme close-up ― ten seconds on a young human’s eye, flecks of or...
Butterflies in a Box: Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Insect Poetics Janice Loreck August 2022 The Natural Models of Lucile Hadžihalilović Lucile Hadžihalilović has declared herself a cinematic entomologist of sorts. Discussing her process in an interview following her breakout film, Inno...
Film Rituals: Interview with Lucile Hadžihalilović Alison Taylor & John Edmond August 2022 The Natural Models of Lucile Hadžihalilović This extended conversation with Lucile Hadžihalilović is grounded in the experience of life, film and filmmaking. The interview was conducted by dossi...
MIFF At 70 Wendy Haslem August 2022 MIFF at 70 Seventy years ago, in January, 1952, The Australian Council of Film Societies presented a program of international films in Olinda, on the outskirts o...
Art and Loathing in The African Desperate Laura Henderson August 2022 MIFF at 70 The African Desperate (Martine Syms, 2022) captures the vital, painful moments of transition in the life of an MFA student on the eve of her graduatio...
Give Me Pity! Kirsten Stevens August 2022 MIFF at 70 Amanda Kramer’s Give Me Pity!, screening this year at MIFF, offers a hyper-real, hyper-saturated, and at times nightmarish portrait of one women’s des...
Fire of Love Wendy Haslem August 2022 MIFF at 70 “There are so many ways to tell a story, so many ways to read the world.” Fire of Love (Sara Dosa, 2021) is drawn from the Krafft archive, a collecti...
Bird, Planet, Cinema: The Living Bodies of Shaunak Sen’s All that Breathes Alicia Byrnes July 2022 MIFF at 70 In his 2022 documentary, All that Breathes, Shaunak Sen conjures a nostalgic image of the Delhi skyline dotted with kites. The lower plane of the wide...
An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl) Nonie May July 2022 MIFF at 70 An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl, 2022) is a triumph for Irish-language cinema. Directed by Colm Bairéad, this coming-of-age narrative, set against a b...
Respecting the Lives of Others: Bergman Island, Hommage and Anaïs in Love Anthony McKibbin August 2022 Feature Articles “There aren’t many films about female creativity”, Mia Hansen-Løve says, “and even fewer that consider the art and craft of cinema from a woman’s poin...
Protestploitation ’70: Revisiting Zabriskie Point and Strawberry Statement Selen Ozturk July 2022 Feature Articles The revolution may not have been televised, but it was certainly filmed. In 1970, youth rallied in droves and studios rolled out the little red carpet...
More than a Wink: The Nature of Reality in Blow-Up and Las Babas del Diablo Will Hair July 2022 Feature Articles Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) contains obvious differences from its source material, Julio Cortázar’s short story Las Babas del Diablo (1959...
Suicide and Genius: Insights into One Episode of Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams Matthew Michaud & Justin Richardson July 2022 Feature Articles In 1990, Akira Kurosawa, one of Japan’s greatest directors, released his antepenultimate film Yume (Dreams). At the age of 80, this was to be the most...
Interrogating Identity: The Fractal Self in Le petit soldat Michael James Beck July 2022 Feature Articles Jean-Luc Godard’s Le petit soldat (The Little Soldier, 1963) would have been his second feature film release following his career-defining À bout de s...
Bigger than life, or stranger: Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela: Part III Thomas Austin July 2022 Feature Articles Vitalina Varela (2019) is the seventh feature film by the Portuguese director Pedro Costa. It tells the true story of a woman from Cape Verde who trav...
“Resistance is the driving force of the film”: An Interview with Davy Chou Maja Korbecka July 2022 Interviews Cambodian-French writer-director Davy Chou’s third full-length film, Return to Seoul, which premiered in Un Certain Regard at the 2022 Cannes Film Fes...
The Plains: Conversation with David Easteal Maria Giovanna Vagenas July 2022 Interviews In The Plains, David Easteal’s astonishing feature debut, we are invited to virtually take a place in the back seat of the car of the protagonist, a m...
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? The 56th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival Cerise Howard August 2022 Festival Reports While there was a KVIFF last year (held uncharacteristically in August, from the 20th to the 28th) and a 16-film-strong roaming festival-in-miniature ...
Sundance Film Festival 2022 Bérénice Reynaud August 2022 Festival Reports Sundance 2022 espoused the to and fro of the volatile situation of the pandemic. The Festival was supposed to be hybrid: each film afforded several in...
Normality: The 2022 Cannes Film Festival Daniel Fairfax August 2022 Festival Reports “Back to normal” was undoubtedly the prevailing ethos of this year’s Cannes film festival. This was to be expected after the cancellation of the festi...
36th Cinema Ritrovato Gets Covid in the Tail Roger Macy July 2022 Festival Reports Cinema Ritrovato had never gone away in 2020 and 2021 but now there was no online alternative and most festival-goers were back at the usual venues to...
Keeping the Fires Burning: A Week at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival Jonathan Mackris July 2022 Festival Reports Two topics have come up every time I’ve discussed the 2022 San Francisco Silent Film Festival: One: This is the first edition of the festival after...
New Territories and Old Dreams of Independence – Chinese and Hong Kong documentaries at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival Judith Pernin July 2022 Festival Reports Almost three years into the pandemic, online festival screenings have become a new norm, and while they meet our needs to catch up with new production...
The 22nd Nippon Connection Refuses to Age Roger Macy July 2022 Festival Reports The Japanese film festival in Frankfurt, Nippon Connection, kept going in ’20 and ’21 as a digital-only festival, so kept its easy number co-ordinatio...
Whither German Cinema? Observations from the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival Marco Abel July 2022 Festival Reports And there he is: perhaps not entirely unlike those famous bespectacled eyes in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz-age novel The Great Gatsby (1925) that stare...
Man of Cinema: Jean-Louis Comolli (July 30, 1941–May 19, 2022) Daniel Fairfax July 2022 Obituary Critic, film theorist and filmmaker, Jean-Louis Comolli died in his adoptive home city of Paris on May 19, 2022, at the age of 80. An editor of Cahier...
Trafic at 30, End of a Film Journal Emmanuel Bonin July 2022 Book Reviews Being a French speaker brings many advantages in this world, but few so dear to my heart as being able to read through any release of Trafic, the cine...
