Low-budget animation is often cruelly considered the poor cousin to its live-action counterpart – the animator has access to locations, actors and special effects that the real-world filmmaker could never afford – but, as with all things that operate at the lower end of the … Read More →
Tag Archives: silent
Rescued by Rover (1905; dirs. Lewin Fitzhamon and Cecil M. Hepworth)
The attitude toward film-making in this country is, unfortunately, one that panders to the Hollywood style and system. British filmmakers, unlike their foreign contemporaries, are primarily raised on films that originate in North America, and have scant knowledge of the wealth and beauty of cinema … Read More →
Cinema Europe (1995; dir. Kevin Brownlow and Dan Carter)
With modern film criticism and theory on UK broadcast television limited to the insipid Mark Kermode and the pointless Matthew Sweet on the BBC, and virtually nothing on other channels, this documentary series seems as much part of yesteryear as the early silents and talkies … Read More →
Art as Cinema: a metaphor
A metaphor for modern cinema can be formed from analogues in the world of painting. It divides films into three unconnected groups. A very small, select number of films can be paralleled by the work of the great masters, in that they are governed by … Read More →
Lisa e il diavolo (1974; dir. Mario Bava)
Cinema is necrophilia. The act of desiring now aged or decayed faces, trapped by the illusion of action that seems to exist in the present tense, but were in fact created and forgotten years ago. The sepulchral nature Bava’s masterpiece encapsulates the sentiment precisely: the … Read More →
Stalker (1979; dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)
Our recent reviews of films based on works by the Strugatsky Brothers – read the others here and here – come to an end with this adaptation by themselves and Soviet art-house favorite Tarkovsky. This was the only adaptation that they openly approved of and, … Read More →
Utazás az alföldön (1995; dir. Béla Tarr)
Hungarian Béla Tarr is one of a handful of filmmakers who, in the past twenty years, have consistently challenged the antiquated practices and misguided theories of readily accepted film-making ideas. His films only came to prominence in the West during the late 1990s, and he … Read More →