Issue 61

The cinema turns every viewer into a detective. Murray Pomerance goes in search of “signs” and their significance in films.

Originally published in early 1950, this is, quite possibly, the first time Rivette commits his views on cinema to print. And fascinating thoughts they are in the light of his writing and filmmaking to come.

A true poet of the cinema, the director of, amongst others, Russian Ark and The Sun, talks philosophy, religion, aesthetics and the Russian soul.

Using interview footage of Sokurov and combining it with other elements, the filmmakers produce a contemplative video-essay on the director.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of France’s first filmmakers’ co-op, the Collectif Juene Cinéma. Marcel Mazé, founder and president, discusses its fascinating history.

Though he shared a San Francisco studio loft in the 1960s with friends Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, John Korty eschewed the studio system and devoted himself to making low budget films the equal of any thing that emerged from the American independent cinema of the time.

The folly of Lars von Trier’s words at Cannes should not taint the achievements of this mesmerising and haunting film.

As fate would have it, this colossal film stands as Raul Ruiz’s swansong. No better way to end a long and labyrinthine career.

David Phelps provides a comprehensive analysis of the stylist features of one of the great directors of the Japanese New Wave.

Considered one of the best offerings from recent Iranian cinema, Joseph Burke argues that one of the achievements of A Separation is to “make us believe again in a moral world.”

The director of Look Both Ways and My Year Without Sex passed away earlier this year. Jonathan Dawson pays homage to a distinctive talent.

David Phelps provides a comprehensive analysis of the stylist features of one of the great directors of the Japanese New Wave.

“You bump into experiences, films, each other, opinions...on the internet you’re always searching for something, but during a festival you’re not look...

Festival Business The opening weekend of the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival also signalled the beginning of TIFF’s second year in the $20...

Over the course of nine years, DocLisboa has grown in stature into one of the key European shop windows of modern non-fiction film. Lisbon's documenta...

“Representation is a denial of participation” – Muammar Gaddafi in The Green Book Used to the soothing distraction film festivals offer in the form ...

A lot of people seem to think that art or photography is about the way things look, or the surface of things. That’s not what it’s about for me. It’...

Recine, the International Festival of Archival Cinema, is the stuff a cinephile’s dreams are made of. Its slate bulges with beloved classics, prem...

The Film Festival Cottbus: 21 this year! One might then pause to consider, with the festival attaining maturity (if we were to arbitrarily decide that...

The inaugural Iranian Film Festival Australia kicked off in Brisbane on 4 August 2011 in spectacular fashion with a sell-out screening of Asghar Farha...

Despite a diverse line-up, the 14th Revelation International Film Festival will doubtlessly be remembered as the year of David (Stratton) and Margaret...

b. November 3, 1950 – Nazareth, Israel From his first film, Al Dhakira al Khasba (Fertile Memory, 1980), Michel Khleifi displays the narrative-docu...

In Bigger Than Life (1956) schoolteacher Ed Avery fragments in the broken medicine-cabinet mirror that his wife Lou furiously slams shut when in a pha...

One night, in the autumn of 1929, Raoul Walsh was driving along a desolate highway in the Utah desert, scouting locations for his next movie. Suddenly...

Australian screen classics are seminal for a range of reasons: whether it is a particular title’s popularity and impact upon popular culture, its cult...

A few years back in The Cinema Book, Rob White proposed that one reason why it took so long for Anglo-American academics to absorb Gilles Deleuze was ...

I have been a David Lynch fan for many years. His cryptic narratives and the sense of dread that pervades his films have always gripped me. As a forme...

Les Diaboliques (1955) is a tale of cold-blooded, calculated murder and suspense. Murder and suspense are always billed together in this kind of film,...

During the course of a conversation in the crime drama Quai des Orfèvres (1947) between the photographer Dora Monier (Simone Renant) and the investiga...

The idea of the lost or broken film is central to cinephilia, but its implications are ambiguous. On the one hand, it allows the film lover to constru...

At first glance, it might seem that a film about Picasso should have been directed by anyone other than Henri-Georges Clouzot, the famous misanthrope ...

“You don’t know what fear is. But you’ll see. It’s catching. It’s catching like smallpox. And once you get it, it’s for life.” - Dick in Le Salaire...