Welcome to Issue 58 of our journal Senses of Cinema March 2011 Editorial Tsai Ming-liang loves movie theatre chairs. Addressing an audience at the National Central University in Taiwan following a screening of his film Face, he is quick to point out to them that the seats in the scr...
On the Uses and Misuses of Cinema Tsai Ming-liang March 2011 Feature Articles The esteemed director of I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone, Goodbye, Dragon Inn and more recently, Face, reflects on a whole range of subjects to do with his films and, more broadly, the cinema in general.
Senses of Cinema-Going: Brief Reports on Going to the Movies Around the World Senses of Cinema March 2011 Feature Articles Taking their cue from the theatre-going exercise that was Chacun son cinema, the editors of this dossier canvassed an international spectrum of scholars and cinephiles on their seminal moments and reflections in general on movie-going.
Todas las cartas (“All The Letters”): An Invitation Linda C. Ehrlich March 2011 Feature Articles Linda Ehrlich previews a forthcoming major exhibition based on ‘video-letter’ exchanges between directors such as Jonas Mekas, José Luís Guerin, Alberto Serra, Lisandro Alonso, and others.
A Tribute to Maria Schneider Moira Sullivan March 2011 Feature Articles Many token obituaries on the actress would have her still under the shadow of one film, Last Tango in Paris. However, her life and career were far more rich and complex.
When Violence is an Axe and Romance is Dark: An Interview with Catherine Breillat Gabrielle Murray March 2011 Feature Articles The controversial filmmaker discusses a range of polemical topics such as sex, violence, feminism, pornography, censorship, and her recent adaptations of classic fairytales.
True Grit: Digerati Go Western? Millennials Go “Back in the Day”? Joseph Natoli March 2011 Feature Articles Joseph Natoli ponders what history and the past mean in the age of social networking.
The Uninvited and Dead of Night: The Transcendent Other Pedro Blas Gonzalez March 2011 Feature Articles Not doubt two of the more fascinating films dealing with the supernatural and the paranormal, and the presence of the ‘other’ that cannot be denied.
King Ludwig II of Bavaria: Representations in the Cinema 1920–1986 Peter Hourigan March 2011 Feature Articles From the silent era and onwards to fimmakers such as Luchino Visconti, Hans- Jürgen Syberberg and Christian Rischert, King Ludwig II has long been an enigmatic figure of fascination for the cinema.
“Chinese Cheers”: Hou Hsiao-hsien and Transnational Homage Nicholas de Villiers March 2011 Feature Articles Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Café Lumière and Le Voyage to Ballon Rouge offer insights in to the nature of transnational cinema in an increasingly globalized film culture.
Transatlantic Auteur: Ernst Lubitsch’s Self-reflexive Comedies of Misunderstanding Michael J. Anderson March 2011 Feature Articles A detailed analysis of the both the stylistic and thematic continuities, and the fault lines, between the German and Hollywood periods of Lubitsch’s work.
Understanding the Socio-Political Background Behind Devil’s Island Sean Schonherr March 2011 Feature Articles Friðrik Þór Friðriksson’s Icelandic drama deals with key issues of that nation's Cold War history, issues that have mostly been overlooked in interpretations of the film.
Celebrating Amazigh Culture: The 5th National Festival of Amazigh Film Sally Shafto March 2011 Festival Reports Organised by L'AMREC (Association marocaine de recherche et d'échanges culturels), (1) the 5th annual National Festival of Amazigh Film was held 15-18...
Searches for Identity: German Films at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival Mattias Frey March 2011 Festival Reports A feeling of cautious optimism pervades Germany for the first time in years. The stock prices of Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen have never been higher; a...
Call It What You Like: Harmony Korine’s Film Curation at CPH:DOX Pamela Cohn March 2011 Festival Reports Well they got some damn songs, now, hell, a man can't even figure out what in the hell's going on, don't you know. But the old songs, usually they was...
Manners of Speech: A Report on the 40th International Film Festival Rotterdam Genevieve Yue March 2011 Festival Reports Has Rotterdam gotten too big? In its 40th year, and under an “XL” banner that included forty new locations to augment the festival’s eight already siz...
Moroccan Cinema Alive: The 12th Festival National du Film, Tangier Sally Shafto March 2011 Festival Reports “We are conscious of cinema’s role in society.” – Nour-Eddine Saïl, Director of the Centre Cinématographique Marocain Tangier: the city that inspire...
Last Year’s Revolutions: The 51st Thessaloniki International Film Festival Bill Mousoulis March 2011 Festival Reports It’s not easy being Greek. As an outsider, I can see it in their faces, faces etched with struggle, pain, desire, hope. Of course, this is a cinematic...
Greek Cinema – Emerging from a Landscape in the Mist: The 51st Thessaloniki International Film Festival Petro Alexiou March 2011 Festival Reports The misty mornings and evenings at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival evoke a cinematic atmosphere that by turn feels celebratory and melanc...
Communing With the Dead: The 11th Tokyo FILMeX Brad Nguyen March 2011 Festival Reports In an early scene from the opening night film of FILMeX 2010, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, a dying man is ...
Carné, Marcel Ben McCann March 2011 Great Directors b. 18 August 1906, Paris, France d. 31 October 1996, Clamart, Hauts-de-Seine, France Cinema is the art of forming a team. –Jean Cocteau Carné’s ...
The Mystical Gaze of the Cinema: The Films of Peter Weir by Richard Leonard Jay Daniel Thompson March 2011 Book Reviews Peter Weir is one of Australia’s best-known and most prolific directors. In The Mystical Gaze of the Cinema, Richard Leonard explores the theme of mys...
The Problem Body: Projecting Disability on Film edited by Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotić Katie Ellis March 2011 Book Reviews At some point, most discussions of the representation of marginalised groups in cinema (and the media in general) lament the absence of whichever grou...
Akira Kurosawa: Master of Cinema by Peter Cowie Chris Gosling March 2011 Book Reviews “Cinematic beauty,” Akira Kurosawa told Bert Cardullo in 1992, “must be present in a film for that film to be a moving work.” (1) And Kurosawa’s films...
Film Noir: Hard-Boiled Modernity and the Cultures of Globalization by Jennifer Fay and Justus Neiland Tessa Chudy March 2011 Book Reviews The fabulous and fascinatingly contested thing that is film noir is not only alive and kicking, it appears to be undergoing something of a re-evaluati...
Wake in Fright by Tina Kaufman Lindsay Coleman March 2011 Book Reviews In a recent conversation with a friend, the question was raised, “What exactly constitutes an Australian film?”The subject matter in combination with ...
Senso Pasquale Iannone March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film Released in 1954, Senso was Visconti’s fourth feature and is recognised as a milestone in the director’s career. Not only did it mark a decisive move ...
Le Amiche Hugo Santander Ferreira March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film There is a freshness to Le Amiche that will always surprise new generations of moviegoers. An early feature by Michelangelo Antonioni, it introduces u...
A Woman Under the Influence Inge Fossen March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film A Woman Under the Influence is a rarity. It manages to be both an incisive commentary on sexual politics, and one of the great heterosexual love stori...
The Awful Truth and the Smallest Injustice in Film History Michael J. Anderson March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film In accepting his “Best Director” Oscar statuette for The Awful Truth, Leo McCarey famously opined that Academy voters had given him the award for the ...
Ball of Fire Brian Wilson March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film Ball of Fire is not Howard Hawks’ best comedy. Compared with the director’s greatest achievements within the genre, Twentieth Century (1934), Bringing...
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek James L. Neibaur March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film American films of the 1940s were far different from their predecessors of the 1920s and 1930s. Brash upstart comics from radio and vaudeville who foun...
My Man Godfrey David Sanjek March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film While William Powell’s eponymous butler in My Man Godfrey is characterised as the “forgotten man”, perhaps the film’s director, Gregory La Cava (1892-...
Nothing Sacred Melinda Harvey March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film “Nothing Sacred solves no peace problems, Nothing Sacred solves no labour problems, Nothing Sacred solves absolutely nothing but your entertainment pr...
Rooms with a View: Watching John Smith’s Hotel Dairies Adrian Danks March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film Watching John Smith’s playfully inquisitive, profoundly interiorised and often “hushed” Hotel Diaries is a curious and sometimes unsettling experience...
Alexander Nevsky Greg Dolgopolov March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film Aleksandr Nevskiy (Alexander Nevsky) is not central to Eisenstein’s theory of montage and is not considered to be one of his most important works, at ...
Ivan the Terrible Parts I and II Andrew Grossman March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film By the time Sergei Eisenstein completed Ivan Groznyy (Ivan the Terrible Part I) in 1944, the widespread experimentalism that had characterised the Sov...
October: The End of a Revolution Shari Kizirian March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film In 1926, the October Revolution Jubilee Committee pulled Sergei Eisenstein, Grigorii Aleksandrov, and cameraman Eduard Tisse away from Generalnaia Lin...
Film-Work John Cumming March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film From 1953 to 1958, the Waterside Workers Federation Film Unit (WWFFU) produced, distributed and exhibited 11 documentary films on issues affecting Aus...
La Guerre est finie Lisa Broad March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film Departing somewhat from the delicate, insular modernism of L’année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad, 1961) and Muriel ou Le temps d’un ret...
Stavisky… Jonathan Dawson March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film Alain Resnais was a contemporary of the nouvelle vague, that group of largely Cahiers du Cinéma aligned critics-turned-filmmakers that most famously...
Dangerous Encounters – First Kind Tony Williams March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film Dai yat lai aau him (Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind/Dangerous Encounters – 1st Kind) was the third film directed by Tsui Hark. Following his s...
Once Upon a Time in China Pedro Blas Gonzalez March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film Combining social satire, a thematic preoccupation with Chinese nationalism and the changing tide of technological development, and a lot of action, Wo...
Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain Louise Sheedy March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film Xin shu shan jian ke (Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain), Tsui Hark’s explosive fantasy epic, was made and released during an equally dynamic perio...
Shanghai Blues David Cairns March 2011 CTEQ Annotations on Film A typically colourful, good-natured and silly romp from director-producer-legend Tsui Hark, this historical-romantic-slapstick comedy takes a time-hon...
“You and the earth, Cathy. That’s all I want.” Sons of Matthew (Charles Chauvel, 1949) Andrew Katsis March 2011 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Sons of Matthew was unquestionably Charles Chauvel’s most polished and assured effort to that point, despite a notoriously arduous production period t...
Marbuk Struts His Stuff: Jedda (Charles Chauvel, 1955) Peter H. Kemp March 2011 Key Moments in Australian Cinema “You silly lubras. All the time you talk about this new boy Marbuk. He’s the same as any other boy.” - Jedda (Ngarla Kunoth) to Aboriginal station wo...
“A pointed condemnation of an effete Western society”: The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (Bruce Beresford, 1972) Greg Dolgopolov March 2011 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Contemporary Australian cinema has lost any sense of spontaneity or carnivalesque excess in the prison house of worthiness and realism. Aside from gen...
Chicks Don’t Surf: Puberty Blues (Bruce Beresford, 1981) Rose Capp March 2011 Key Moments in Australian Cinema The penultimate scene in Puberty Blues is for most viewers including this writer, the defining moment in the film. Over the course of the narrative, s...
Bubby’s Cosmic Moment: Bad Boy Bubby (Rolf de Heer, 1993) Lindsay Coleman March 2011 Key Moments in Australian Cinema The annals of world cinema contain their share of anti-clericalism, atheism, and blasphemy. Yet the Australian film Bad Boy Bubby, directed by Rolf de...
Performance Anxiety: Shine (Scott Hicks, 1996) Fincina Hopgood March 2011 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Australian cinema rarely embraces the bold, hyperbolic flourish of full-blown melodrama; our family melodramas tend to remain grounded in a realist ae...
“It’s tangled”: Lantana (Ray Lawrence, 2001) Christie Long March 2011 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Ray Lawrence’s Lantana is a multi-strand narrative drawing four couples into a web of love, deceit, sex and death.This film adaptation of Andrew Bovel...
The Camera in the Iron Helmet: Ned Kelly (Gregor Jordan, 2003) Daniel Eisenberg March 2011 Key Moments in Australian Cinema Mark Juddery has claimed that, without film, Edward “Ned”Kelly could not be the national icon he is today (1). When viewing Kelly’s cinematic legacy, ...