Editorial the editors November 2024 Editorial Dear Readers: welcome to Issue 111 of Senses of Cinema, a journal in which the serious and eclectic discussion of moving images past, present, and future never dies, no matter the historical ruptures all around...
“A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque Adrian Danks November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque The special dossier is edited by Adrian Danks and Olympia Szilagyi, with editorial assistance from Digby Houghton. It draws on various accounts of...
MUFS and the Melbourne Cinémathèque: Some Reflections on Decades of Stimulating and Formative Filmgoing Michael Campi November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque 2024. Just the other day, with continued reports in the media of migrations of people across state and national borders, I was asked where, if I had t...
My Nights are More Beautiful Than Your Days: My Times with The Melbourne Cinémathèque Michelle Carey November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque The Melbourne Cinémathèque had existed in my imagination well before I ever attended. Like many, I wasn’t sure if it was an actual place (a little pie...
From Joseph Losey’s M to Jeni Thornley’s Island Home Country: The Melbourne Cinémathèque and Australian Film Culture Adrian Danks November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque Dedicated to Michael Koller, without whom none of this would have been possible. You have to adapt and remain the same. The Melbourne Cinémathè...
Friends, Strangers, and the Night: The Filmmakers Lurking in the Dark of the Cinémathèque Andréas Giannopoulos November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque In his account of the Melbourne University Film Society’s (MUFS) activities in the 1960s, Adrian Danks highlights the organisation’s facilitation of f...
From the Union Theatre to the Glasshouse and Beyond: Exploring One of Melbourne Film Culture’s Pivotal Transitions Digby Houghton November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque His name plagues me. Everywhere I go I can hear it. Whenever I ask somebody for information pertaining to the Melbourne Cinémathèque, it’s not long be...
Pushing the Envelope Peter Hourigan November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque Undergraduate years are full of the excitement and wonder of working out where you are in your life. In undertaking your course studies, you are plann...
A Potted, Semi-Reliable Account of “27” Years of Cinémathèquing Cerise Howard November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque Somewhere at home I’ve squirreled away Melbourne Cinémathèque calendars dating back to 1999 – though this was not my sporadic first year of attendance...
Happy 40th (and 75th) Birthday, Dear Cinémathèque John Hughes November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque The Melbourne Cinémathèque is a beacon, always has been. Not that I’d know. It was in early 1971 when I first met Robin Laurie, Sasha Trikojus and Ber...
How to Tell People About a Film Society Dylan Rainforth November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque Some fragmentary notes towards a visual history of the Melbourne Cinémathèque’s calendars, flyers, publications (including CTEQ: Annotations on Film) ...
From MUFS to the Melbourne Cinémathèque: Our Evolving Journey Through Cinema Part I Michael Koller November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque MUFS In the early 1970s, major Hollywood films were generally released within a relatively short worldwide window, while many non-English language an...
Opening the Archive Eloise Ross November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque A book I bought earlier this year at the Il Cinema Ritrovato Book Fair in Bologna – a haven for cinephiles accompanying an annual festival that celebr...
Who Commenced It: Starting Out at the Cinémathèque Jake Wilson November 2024 “A very open-ended canon”: The Many Histories of the Melbourne Cinémathèque I’ve never kept a viewing diary, as I know many cinephiles do. But to some extent the Melbourne Cinémathèque has kept one for me. Browsing through som...
Sadie and Her Sisters: Tracking a Classic Hollywood Character Type Rob Nixon November 2024 Feature Articles Judging by films produced in Hollywood’s Classic period, from roughly the early 1930s to the late 1950s, there was a time when, on just about any remo...
Go Your Own Way: Billy Wilder and the Fine Art of Independent Cinema Donald Brackett November 2024 Feature Articles “If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny, or else they’ll kill you.” – Billy Wilder Billy Wilder was an amazingly versatile cinematic art...
From Witness to Performer: The Evolving Interview Methods in Wang Bing’s Documentaries Huirong Ye November 2024 Feature Articles Chinese director Wang Bing’s latest filmography continues to push the boundaries of documentary filmmaking, transforming the humble interview from mer...
Digging out a Classic: Albie Thoms’ Sunshine City Dirk de Bruyn November 2024 Feature Articles In Australia it has been impossible to elicit much sympathetic appraisal from critics who seem distressed by the relation of personal film to amateur ...
How Will You Live? Miyazaki’s Critique of Japanese Imperialism and Dialectic with Takahata in The Boy and the Heron Daniel T. Roberts November 2024 Feature Articles Miyazaki Hayao’s recent and perhaps last work, Kimitachi wa dō ikiru ka (The Boy and the Heron, 2023) announces itself as a dramatic departure from it...
Beyond Cleverness – A Cheater’s Guide for Embracing Innocence: An Interview with Alejo Moguillansky (Part 2) Hamed Sarrafi November 2024 Interviews Alejo Moguillansky is the kind of filmmaker who doesn’t just think outside the box – he tears it apart, reimagines it, and then dances around whatever...
An Interview with Pia Marais Gary M. Kramer November 2024 Interviews South African writer/director Pia Marais travels deep into the Brazilian jungle for Transamazonia, her hypnotic fourth feature. Rebecca (Helena Ze...
Illusionary Mirror: An Interview with Kumar Shahani Arindam Sen November 2024 Interviews This conversation took place at Kumar Shahani’s residence in Kolkata on a balmy afternoon in January 2024. Shahani was visibly ailing but the mind fec...
An Interview with Francesco Costabile Gary M. Kramer November 2024 Interviews Director and cowriter Francesco Costabile’s Familia, which premiered at this year’s Venice Film Festival, is an intense drama inspired by true events....
Portions of an Immense Lava: Notes on a Film Seminar Designed as an Open Map Anuj Malhotra November 2024 Festival Reports In attempting to encircle the potential thesis that inhabits the very nucleus of the curatorial composition for this year’s edition of the Flaherty Se...
Venezia 81 Patricia Di Risio November 2024 Festival Reports Lido, Venice. The Venice Film Festival is always a sizzling event, with the glitz and glamour of numerous major stars (e.g. Antonio Banderas, George ...
Immersion: Diving full-bodied into the 72nd Melbourne International Film Festival Paul Jeffery November 2024 Festival Reports The 2024 edition of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) took steps to emerge from Covid-era regression, offering 210 features and 66 shor...
Untold Stories: The 49th Toronto International Film Festival Kohei Usuda November 2024 Festival Reports The 49th edition of the Toronto International Film Festival was not without its controversies. By far the biggest story to come out of TIFF 2024 w...
Locarno in a Holding Pattern While Redressing the Riven Social Fabric Jaimey Fisher November 2024 Festival Reports Much of the news before and after the Locarno Film Festival this year concerned the appointment of a new president of the festival, Maja Hoffmann, aft...
29th Busan International Film Festival: Ocean of Cinema Maja Korbecka November 2024 Festival Reports For several years now the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) has been on the top of my list of film festivals to go to. Over the last 29 edition...
Strategies of Tension, or, Il Brivido Del Proibito the ‘Violent Italy: Italian Crime Films’ retrospective at the 72nd San Sebastián International Film Festival Neil Young November 2024 Festival Reports With an acknowledgement of thanks to Fabrizio Fogliato On 25 September 1967, a Milan bank-heist went violently, tragically awry: as the escaping ro...
Zetterling, Mai Eli Vannata November 2024 Great Directors b. 24 May 1925, Västerås, Sweden d. 17 March 1994, London, United Kingdom “Is it possible to change people and the world we live in? You tell me. Ca...
Delon, Alain Mark Lager November 2024 Great Actors b. 8 November 1935 Sceaux, France d. 18 August 2024 Douchy, France Alain Delon’s ancestry covers the diversity of France, Paris and Switzerland from...
Her, To a Great Extent, Shared: On Marguerite Duras’s My Cinema Hannah Bonner November 2024 Book Reviews In an interview from 1967, filmmaker and writer Marguerite Duras stated, “I don’t think a film is ever capable of replacing the private relationship a...
Annals of Light in Hannah Goodwin’s Stardust: Cinematic Archives at the End of the World M. Sellers Johnson November 2024 Book Reviews “What archives of humanity will exist after the end of the world” (p. 1)? This existential enquiry opens Hannah Goodwin’s monograph, Stardust: Cinemat...
Reverse Shot: Twenty Years of Film Criticism in Four Movements: The Way of the Dinosaur Tony McKibbin November 2024 Book Reviews Reverse Shot is a magazine that has for the last twenty years hazardously found for itself a place between the journalistic review and the academic es...
Nicole Brenez’s On the Figure in General and the Body in Particular: An Introduction to Figurative Analysis in Cinema Emmanuel Bonin November 2024 Book Reviews Figure, Body, Figurative Invention, Cinema: As a young researcher, theorist, film critic, and associate professor (maître de conférences), Nicole Bren...
Between Cineanthropology and Distraction: Revisiting Béla Balázs’ Visible Man at 100 Paul Dobryden & Ervin Malakaj November 2024 Book Reviews Béla Balázs (1884–1949) is known as the great theorist of the cinematic face. For the Hungarian writer and critic, film captured the expressivity and ...
Blue Benjamin Bannan November 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993) is the result of a series of improvised experiments, culminating in a film comprised entirely of a single shot of the satura...
Jubilee Darragh O’Donoghue November 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film “God save the Queen…” In 1952, Princess Elizabeth became the Queen of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, the Dominions, etc. With the UK suffering from...
Listen to England: Derek Jarman’s The Queen is Dead Adrian Danks November 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film Derek Jarman was an extraordinarily productive artist. Across his 30-year creative life he worked within a wide range of formats, practices and forms,...
The Garden Brian Hoyle & Jo George November 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film Derek Jarman had every right to expect that The Garden, his eighth feature film, would be his last. When it was released in 1990 the filmmaker, artist...
In the Shadow of the Sun Luke Aspell November 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film In the Shadow of the Sun is the title of two films, substantially identical but materially distinct. The first, a silent Super 8 film made between 197...
Imagining October Luke Aspell November 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film Imagining October (1984) represents the culmination of two periods of transition in Derek Jarman’s work: his movement towards an explicitly political ...
Derek Jarman’s The Last of England Danica van de Velde November 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film Painted in 1855, Ford Madox Brown’s artwork The Last of England captures a boat scene that was inspired by the emigration to Australia of sculptor Tho...
Vibrational Assemblages and the Queer Quotidian: Glitterbug Dylan Rowen November 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film His obsession with texture, shape and light was why, in his work, each design element, each object, is so charged with significance; and why his inter...
A Failure of Seriousness: Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein Austin Lancaster November 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film WITTGENSTEIN I’d quite like to have composed a philosophical work which consisted entirely of jokes. KEYNES Why didn’t you? WITTGENSTEIN ...
Caravaggio Michael Charlesworth November 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film John Berger, the celebrated writer and critic, wrote a personal letter to Derek Jarman after he had watched Caravaggio (1986). "You have made a master...
Island Home Country Sian Mitchell October 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film In revisiting Jeni Thornley’s 2008 documentary essay film, Island Home Country, I am struck by the thematic parallels between her personal journey to ...
Maidens Jeni Thornley October 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film Maidens is an extraordinary mixture of feminist and cinematic riddles… while it is a very personal odyssey it is also a discourse on independent fem...
Film for Discussion Jeni Thornley October 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film I became involved in Film for Discussion (Martha Ansara & Sydney Women’s Film Group, 1973) after meeting American activist Martha Ansara at an ant...
Memory Film: A Filmmaker’s Diary Janice Loreck October 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film Memory Film: A Filmmaker’s Diary (2023) is, according to Australian filmmaker Jeni Thornley, her last film. Moments into the film’s opening, an intert...
On Nikos Koudouros’ 1922 Vrasidas Karalis October 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film When in 1978, Nikos Koundouros released his visual meditation on the events of 1922 in what Greeks call the Asia Minor catastrophe, the country was go...
“A voice that shouts”: Nikos Koundouros’ The Magic City Andréas Giannopoulos October 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film In 1953 in Athens, a group of friends – acquainted either through their past membership with leftist militant groups or their imprisonment together du...
Quiet Figures in an Arid Landscape – Young Aphrodites Rolland Man October 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film Realism in cinema seems to me today both boring and insufficient. Nikos Koundouros “This picture has won awards at both Berlin and Salonika for best...
The Ogre of Athens Frankie Kanatas October 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film Voted in 2006 as the greatest Greek film of all time by the Pan-Hellenic Association of Film Critics, Nikos Koundouros’ second feature, O Drakos (The ...
Those Wonderful Movie Cranks Cerise Howard October 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film I always say that the 20th Century brought two unfortunate events: the invention of the atom bomb and the invention of the sound film. - Jiří Menzel ...
Larks on a String Amelia Leonard September 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film For a film addressing matters of political oppression, state sponsored disappearances and forced labour camps, one wouldn’t be blamed for thinking the...
Capricious Summer Alexander Back September 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film Is the arrival of a cinematic New Wave first detected at a film festival? There are few earlier places for the public to notice – between the breaks, ...
Black Test Car Martyn Bamber September 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film Yasuzo Masumura has an eclectic filmography that spans many genres. American film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, an ardent champion of Masumura, notes tha...
Blind Beast Darragh O’Donoghue September 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film The traditional visual art of Japan – such as popular woodblock prints and handscrolls – was a shaping influence on the films of Yasuzō Masumura. He u...
Irezumi Faith Everard September 2024 CTEQ Annotations on Film "Will you walk into my parlour?" said a spider to a fly; " 'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy…" "Oh no, no!" said the little fl...
