About Lynne Sachs Lynne Sachs makes films, installations, performances and web projects that explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences by weaving together poetry, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design. Strongly committed to a dialogue between cinematic theory and practice, she searches for a rigorous play between image and sound, pushing the visual and aural textures in her work with each and every new project. Between 1994 and 2009, her five essay films took her to Vietnam, Bosnia, Israel, Italy and Germany — sites affected by international war – where she looked at the space between a community’s collective memory and her own subjective perceptions.
Recently, after 25 years of making experimental documentaries, Lynne learned something that turned all her ideas about filmmaking upside down. While working on Your Day is My Night in the Chinatown neighborhood of New York City, she came to see that every time she asked a person to talk in front of her camera, they were performing for her rather than revealing something completely honest about their lives. The very process of recording guaranteed that some aspect of the project would be artificial. She decided she had to think of a way to change that, so she invited her subjects to work with her to make the film, to become her collaborators. For Lynne, this change in her process has moved her toward a new type of filmmaking, one that not only explores the experiences of her subjects, but also invites them to participate in the construction of a film about their lives.
Her films have screened at the New York Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto’s Images Festival and Los Angeles’ REDCAT Theatre as well as a five-film retrospective at the Buenos Aires Film Festival. The San Francisco Cinematheque recently published a monograph with four original essays in conjunction with a full retrospective of Lynne’s work. In 2014, Lynne received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Film and Video.
About Ovid With the help of an unprecedented collaborative effort by eight of the most noteworthy, independent film distribution companies in the U.S., Docuseek, LLC launched an innovative, new, subscription video-on-demand service, OVID.tv.
OVID.tv will provide North American viewers with access to thousands of documentaries, independent films, and notable works of international cinema, largely unavailable on any other platform.
OVID’s initial offerings fall into roughly three categories: a) powerful films addressing urgent political and social issues, such as climate change, and economic justice; b) in-depth selections of creative documentaries by world-famous directors; and c) cutting-edge arthouse feature and genre films by contemporary directors as well as established masters. And new films in all three areas will be added to the OVID collection every two weeks.
OVID.tv is an initiative of Docuseek, LLC, which operates Docuseek, a streaming service for colleges and universities which was established in 2012, streaming a library of over 1600 titles.
The eight founding content partners are:
BULLFROG FILMS The leading U.S. publisher of independently produced documentaries on environmental and related social justice issues, in business for more than 45 years, it currently distributes over 750 titles.
THE DGENERATE FILMS COLLECTION dGenerate Films distributes contemporary independent film from mainland China to audiences worldwide. They are dedicated to procuring and promoting visionary content, fueled by transformative social change and digital innovation.
DISTRIB FILMS US An independent distributor of international feature films, Distrib Films US is known for its strong collection of French and Italian fiction feature films.
FIRST RUN FEATURES Founded in 1979 by a group of filmmakers to advance the distribution of independent film, First Run has been honored with a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art for its significant contributions.
GRASSHOPPER FILM A distribution company founded in 2015 by Ryan Krivoshey, dedicated to the release of independent, foreign, and documentary film.
ICARUS FILMS A leading distributor of documentary films in North America, with a collection exceeding 1000 titles. It recently celebrated its 40th anniversary.
KIMSTIM A distribution company dedicated to the release of exceptional independent, foreign, and documentary film.
WOMEN MAKE MOVIES Women Make Movies (WMM), a non-profit feminist social enterprise based in New York, is the world’s leading distributor of independent films by and about women.
Sachs’ Films Selected by MEHDI JAHAN & LIBERTAD GILLS
This 2021 has been a complex year, to the extent that we continue to be subjected to a pandemic, which still continues to limit the ways we access movies. It has also been a year of resilience for a type of experimental cinema, which has perhaps been forced or motivated by the “materiality” of digital. We think of spaces like @preservationinsanity by Mark Toscano on Instagram, which every week projects films from a projector while transmitting that experience live via Live. Isn’t it a kind of lifeline for those of us who find ourselves removed from these kinds of opportunities? Or the imperative of seeing the Thai – Colombian Memoriain a movie theater, not necessarily because of its visual stakes, but because of the demanding sound experience, often neglected: gathered under the darkness of a movie theater to listen attentively. The pandemic has also filled us with noise pollution, and their silence and its subtleties become escape valves, or echoes of a future survival of cinema in times of streaming and torrents.
From Desistfilm, we continue with our commitment to continue to make visible a cinema supported by online festivals above all, and the mission of this type of list is to share this appreciation for a cinema that resists and that continues to transform us. Here is the list of collaborators and friends of Desistfilm, who this year accompanied us in some way, either with their texts, appreciations or other forms of love for cinema.
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This 2021 has been a complex year, to the extent that we continue to be subjected to a pandemic, which still continues to limit the ways of accessing movies. It has also been a year of resilience for a type of experimental cinema, which has perhaps been forced or motivated by the “materiality” of digital. We think of spaces like @preservationinsanity by Mark Toscano on Instagram, which every week projects films from a projector while transmitting that experience live via Live. Isn’t it a kind of lifeline for those of us who find ourselves removed from these kinds of opportunities? Or the imperative to see the Thai Colombo Memoriain a movie theater, not necessarily because of their visual stakes, but because of the demanding sound experience, often neglected: gathered under the darkness of a movie theater to listen attentively. The pandemic has also filled us with noise pollution, and there silence and its subtleties become escape valves, or echoes of a future survival of cinema in times of streaming and torrents.
From Desistfilm, we continue with our commitment to continue to make visible a cinema supported by online festivals above all, and the mission of this type of list is to share this appreciation for a cinema that resists and that continues to transform us. Here is the list of collaborators and friends of Desistfilm, who this year accompanied us in some way, either with their texts, appreciations or other forms of love for cinema.
NICOLE BRENEZ, professor (Sorbonne nouvelle / Fémis), programmer (Cinémathèque française)
The most exciting cinephile event of 2021 for me is the simultaneous release of two magnificent and complementary documentaries / film-essays on Omar Blondin Diop, the young revolutionary filmed by Jean-Luc Godard in La Chinoise (1967) and murdered in prison in 1973: the first in Africa (Senegal) by Djeydi Djigo; the second in Europe (Belgium-France) by Vincent Meessen. This indicates to us the slowness it takes for humanity to light a sparkle of symbolic justice. But also, that perhaps the forever young Omar Diop is sending us the signal to start the general revolt.
(By alphabetic order of the authors, Twelve films)
Omar Blondin Diop le révolté / Omar Blondin Diop the rebel (Djeydi Djigo, Senegal, 2021) Topologie d’une absence / Topology of an absence (Rami El Sabbagh, Lebanon, 2021) Jean Genet: Notre-Père-des-Fleurs / Jean Genet: Our-Father-of-Flowers (Dalila Ennadre, Morocco, 2021) Signe Byrge Sørensen, Our Memory Belongs To Us (Rami Farah, Denmark / France / Palestine / Syria, 2021) Moune Ô, Belgium (Maxime Jean-Baptiste, 2021) Masters of the Land , Mongolia / Belgium (Jan Locus, 2021) Juste un Mouvement / Just a Movement (Vincent Meessen, Belgium / France, 2021) Filmatruc a? verres n ° 2, Oiseaux/ Glass film trick n ° 2, Birds, (Silvi Simon, France, 2021, Film, Installation) Frères / Brothers (Ugo Simon France, 2021) En Corps + (Lionel Soukaz, Stéphane Gérard, France, 2021, Film, Installation) The Visit (Kristi Tethong Canada, 2021) Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 2021)
+ 2 wonderful essays from 2020 I saw only this year: IWOW: I walk on water (Khalik Allah USA, 2020) Fiertés, inc. / Pride, Inc. (Thibault Jacquin, France, 2020)
The most amazing work I read in 2021 is Thibault Elie’s monumental research on Florent Marcie, titled Florent Marcie sur le front de l’information (“ Florent Marcie on the news front ”). I hope it will be published soon, so that cinephiles could share this sum of knowledge and passion.
One of the wittiest and most energetic book ever written about cinema is Jurij Meden’s Scratches and glitches. Observations on Preserving and Exhibiting Cinema in the Early 21st Century , Vienna, FilmmuseumSynemaPublications, 2021. Finally, one doesn’t have to be a diviner to predict that the greatest book of 2022 is Bidhan Jacob’s long-awaited Aesthetics of the signal / Esthétique du signal , to be published next February, fruit of almost 20 years of research, a true event.
ADRIAN MARTIN , Australian film critic, audiovisual essayist
To 2021 Memoir
The name of this online journal has always grabbed me: not Resistfilm , but Desistfilm . Desist: refuse, refrain from doing something, cease or abstain, just stop it. So I will desist from handing in the same old ‘Top Ten Movies’ of the year list here. I want to record some other kinds of filmic phenomena.
I discovered one of my happiest and most surprising film viewing experiences in 2021 through my occasional teaching and tutoring at the EQZE film school in San Sebastián, Spain. A student (Haizea Barcenilla), investigating collective filmmaking involving community groups, screened a 21-minute work from 2016 from the Basque region titled Andrekale, credited to Sra. Polaroiska, which is the name of a duo comprising Alaitz Arenaza and María Ibarretxe. As it began on the screen, I expected nothing: maybe a simple, observational documentary about a local community. I was wrong! Its specific subject is a ‘Street of Women’ in Hernani – a place where women gather to talk, play games, socialize, and so on. The film begins with a camera tracking backward, snaking down a curved path with tightly-spaced buildings of three or floor floors on either side. No human presence at the start. Then women begin to emerge, pouring out of one doorway and then another, and immediately taking up their voluble place at some table or sidewalk display. The camera keeps moving, the frame keeps filling, life keeps flowing – what an explosion, all in one magnificent shot! And an absolutely pure cinematic idea. From that point, I had the sense that almost anything could happen in this film – and it did. Two seemingly demure elderly ladies are seen sipping tea and chatting outdoors. Suddenly, without any prompting, they begin to hurl their cups, their fine chinaware, at a nearby rock face, smashing it all. It goes on and on, a great liberating orgy of anarchistic destruction! There’s more toAndrekale , but I will let you discover that for yourself, if you can. I loved this film, seen by chance, unforgettable.
Thanks to the job of catalog-entry-writing for the Viennale, I encountered, for the first time, the work of UK artist-critic Morgan Quaintance: his recent films A Human Certainty (2021, 20 minutes), and Surviving You, Always (2020, 18 minutes). These films offered me another kind of bracing shock: true minimalism, no slickness, no padding, no easy wash of image or sound to make the materials more palatable. Stories told in written texts, over often mysterious and cryptic image-archives: achingly personal, and also keyed to numerous forms of collective, social breakdown. An uncompromised, unfashionable form of political art.
Watching, over and over, Birth ( https://laughmotel.wordpress.com/2021/08/05/birth/), a 13-minute video by Cristina Álvarez López, was an especially powerful experience for me. She has spent a lot of time in 2021 exploring techniques of superimposition, a skill she has added to her long-conquered dexterity in audiovisual montage. You couldn’t find a more perfect fit between style and subject, form and content, than here: the emotional and psychic schisms of individual subjectivity – fusion and separation, especially in relation to mother and daughter – traced through the joining and merging, splitting and redefining, of spaces, colors, shapes, bodies. Voices on the soundtrack whisper privately or speak in unguarded conversation about loss of self, of ground, of origin, of center. Sobbing tears of depression flow from eyes, but there is distance here, as well as closeness, for the spectator as well as for the maker: the arrangement of image and sound forms takes us to another plateau of empathic contemplation. As she writes: “This is all about what images can do to each other and about how they become something else when affected by the other’s properties: it’s exactly like with people”.
For regular online reading, I like the less institutionalized or commercialized independent sites: Ubiquarian (for which I reviewed Zulfikar Filandra’s fascinating 64-minute feature Minotaur [2020]), Desistfilm , Sabzian . Among book publications devoted to adventurous cinema, I value Jurij Meden’s Scratches and Glitches (Austrian Film Museum), and Erika Balsom’s Ten Skies (Fireflies Press).
I pull of all the modish talk of algorithms, artificial intelligence, non-fungible tokens, digitally-readable and computer-generated imagery. Of Netflix and YouTube. Of whether Marvel Superhero blockbusters are Art or not. All this bears little on the reality of what I watch, from day to day, and what moves me. Cinema is still, fundamentally, what you or I can manage to film, to edit, to shape, to express, and to show to another person. Some people high up the industrial ladder still manage to do that in an intimate, eloquent, touching way, whether they are Leos Carax, Kelly Reichardt or Clint Eastwood: I salute them as a viewer and as a critic. That’s film art to me, just like the far more modestly scaled productions by Abel Ferrara ( Zeros and Ones ) or Marco Bellocchio ( Marx Can Wait); and just like the streaking, no-budget comets in the sky of cinema that I have barely described above.
TOMÁŠ HUDÁK Film critic and programmer based in Bratislava, Slovakia.
If last year I was trying to take advantage of all the online offerings and attend festivals I had never been to physically, in 2021 I had to skip many of them. I was just too tired. But it was not a “Zoom fatigue”, just good ol ‘pressure to be everywhere and see everything, to not waste any time and always be productive. I was slowly burning out (again) and had to throw in the towel many times.
Still, I have seen most of my favorite film of 2021 at home. Notable exceptions are Memoria and What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? which I am so happy that I managed to see in cinema on really huge screen. I spent a lot of time with Peter Watkins films, both watching them and reading about them ( The Journey and La Commune are still waiting for me). I have seen The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On for the first time and it was one of the most devastating film experiences I have ever had. Practices of Viewing , an ongoing series of video essays by Johannes Binotto, is always challenging and illuminating. I learned so much reading Kim Knowles’ bookExperimental Film and Photochemical Practices . Probably no piece of writing made deeper impact on me this year than Abby Sun’s essay On Criticism . Berwick’s BFMAF public discussion about its internal practices was so important and inspirational. I had some great time with NBA and WNBA league passes. And finally, special shout out to Ecstatic Static, Another Screen, Global Media Cultures Podcast and to everyone talking about mental health (in film industry).
Here are some of my favorite films I saw in 2021 for the first time:
All Light, Everywhere (Theo Anthony, USA, 2021) Decasia (Bill Morrison, USA, 2002) earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto, Canada, 2021) Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins, Norway, Sweden, 1973) The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Kazuo Hara, Japan, 1987) Gunda (Victor Kossakovsky, Norway, USA, 2020) Landscapes of Resistance (Marta Popivoda, Serbia, Germany, France, 2020) Luukkaankangas – updated, revisited (Dariusz Kowalski, Austria, 2005) Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Colombia, Thailand, United Kingdom, Mexico, France, 2021) A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia, France, India, 2021) Now, At Last! (Ben Rivers, United Kingdom, 2018) Point and Line to Plane (Sofia Bohdanowicz, Canada, 2020) Still Processing (Sophy Romvari, Canada, 2020) This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, Lesotho, 2019) Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another (Jessica Sarah Rinland, United Kingdom, Argentina, 2019) What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze, Germany, Georgia, 2021)
EVE HELLER Filmmaker (Austria)
Backyard (Peggy Ahwesh, 2021, USA, 2 min) Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch, 2017, USA, 18 hours) Anathema (Julie Murray, 1995, USA, 7 min) La Signora di tutti (Max Ophüls, 1934, Italy, 89 min) The Coronation (Talena Sanders, 2021, Mexico, 8 min) Herr Bachmann und seine Klasse [Mr. Bachmann and His Class] (Maria Speth, 2021, Germany, 217 min) Kristallnacht (Chick Strand, 1979, USA, 7 min) Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 2021, 20 min).
Most intricately stirring and thought provoking film program series of 2021:
Carte Blanche. Mark McElhatten— “To The Lighthouse,” Oct 29 – Nov 16, 2021 MoMA
JULIAN ROSS Programmer, curator, film critic
Have feature films
A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia, 2021) Memoryland (Kim Quy Bui, 2021) El Gran Movimiento (The Great Movement, Kiro Russo, 2021) The Story of Southern Islet (Nan wu, Keat Aun Chong, 2020) Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021) Inside the Red Brick Wall (Hong Kong Documentary Filmmakers, 2020) Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021) Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette, 2021) White Building (Bodeng Sar, Kavich Neang, 2021) Feast ( Tim Leyendekker, 2021)
Have short films
Song for dying (Korakrit Arunanondchai, 2021)
Surviving You Always (Morgan Quaintance, 2021)
Maat Means Land (Fox Maxy, 2020)
Manifesto (Ane Hjort Guttu, 2020)
Tellurian Drama (Riar Rizaldi, 2020)
One Thousand and One Attempts to be an Ocean (Wang Yuyan, 2020)
Polycephaly in D (Michael Robinson, 2021)
Isn’t it a beautiful world (Joseph Wilson, 2021)
Glass Life (Sara Cwynar, 2021)
earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto, 2021)
Have first views
Includes two 35mm films, a 16mm double-projection performance and a digital restoration presented in a cinema, as well as online presentations by Another Screen, Light Industry, MUBI, Thai Film Archive, Jeonju International Film Festival and @preservationinsanity.
Silent Light (Stellet Licht, Carlos Reygadas, 2007) La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001) The Round-Up (Szegénylegények, Miklós Jancsó, 1966) Tongpan (Yutthana Mukdasanit, 1977) The Zone of Total Eclipse (Mika Taanila, 2006) Untitled 77-A (Han Ok-hee, 1977) Lost Book Found (Jem Cohen, 1996) Stendalì: Suonano ancora (Cecilia Mangini, 1960) Vital Signs (Barbara Hammer, 1991) Bhuvan Shome (Mrinal Sen, 1969)
JEAN HYEMIN KIM, film scholar / writer / teacher, USA.
10 films I enjoyed this year (New & Old)
The Tsugua Diaries / Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? / Alexandre Koberidze
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy / Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Stray / Elizabeth Lo
A Love Song For Latasha / Sophia Nahli Allison
The Girl from Chicago / Oscar Micheaux
Le Mystère Bunny / Wayne Koestenbaum
Nénette and Boni / Claire Denis
The Velvet Underground / Todd Haynes
10.Belle / Mamoru Hosoda
PETER TSCHERKASSKY , Filmmaker (Austria)
Au bord du monde (Gaspar Noé, F / B / Monaco 2021, 142 min) The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, USA / GB / China 2021, 112 min) Herr Bachmann und seine Klasse [Mr. Bachmann and his Class] (Maria Speth, Germany 2021, 217 min) Jaddeh khaki (Panah Panahi, Iran, 2021, 97 min) Kelti (Milica Tomovic, RS 2021, 106 min) Report (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, CO / Thailand / GB / Mexico / F / China / Taiwan 2021, 136 min) Promenade 1 (Zélie Parraud, F 2021, 1 min) Promenade 2 (Zélie Parraud, F 2021, 1 min) Re Granchio (Alessio Rigo de Righi, Metteo Zoppis, I / AR / F 2021, 106 min) Singing in Oblivion (Eve Heller, A 2021, 13 min) A Police Movie (Alonso Ruizpalacios, Mexico 2021, 107 min.)
DAISUKE AKASAKA . Film Critic (Japan)
Gavagai (Rob Tregenza, 2017) Harley Queen (Carolina Adriazola, José Luis Sepúlveda. 2019) Death will come and he will have your eyes (José Luis Torres Leiva, 2019) White on White (Théo Court, 2019) The floor of the wind (Gustavo Fontán , Gloria Peirano, 2021) Chapter eo chapter (Júlio Bressane, 2021) Luz nos tropicos (Paula Gaitán, 2020) Lúa Vermella (Lois Patiño, 2019) The year of discovery (Luis López Carrasco, 2020) Picasso in Vallauris (Peter Nestler, 2021) Annette (Leos Carax, 2021) First Cow (Kelly Reichardt, 2019) Fourteen(Dan Sallitt, 2019) Wheel of fortune and fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021) Love Mooning (Kunitoshi Manda, 2021) Danses macabres, Squelettes et autres fantasies (Rita Azevedo Gomes, Pierre Léon, Jean-Louis Schefer, 2019)
DAN SALLITT , Filmmaker, USA
My favorite films that were released for the first time in 2021. This list usually grows considerably over the next 18 months or so:
El Planeta (Amalia Ulman, 2021) Souad (Ayten Amin, 2021) Pebbles (PS Vinothraj, 2021) Outside Noise (Ted Fendt, 2021) France (Bruno Dumont, 2021) Who prevents it (Jonás Trueba, 2021) Susanna Andler (Benoît Jacquot, 2021) The Cathedral (Ricky D’Ambrose, 2021) In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo, 2021) Sacred Spirit (Chema García Ibarra, 2021) Wood and Water (Jonas Bak, 2021)
Some excellent older films that I saw for the first time in 2021, in chronological order: Mashenka (Yuli Raizman, 1942); But What If This Is Love? (Yuli Raizman, 1962); Encore (Once More) (Paul Vecchiali, 1988); Aux petits bonheurs (Michel Deville, 1994); Kippur (Amos Gitai, 2000); Beautiful Valley (Hadar Friedlich, 2011); Aferim! (Radu Jude, 2015); Season (André Novais Oliveira, 2018); Short Vacation (Kwon Min-pyo and Han-Sol Seo, 2020).
DENNIS COOPER, filmmaker, writer, USA
Favorite 2021 films (in no order)
Whether Line (Ryan Trecartin & Lizzie Fitch, 2019)
Sisters With Transistors (Lisa Rovner, 2020)
Nature (Artavazd Pelechian, 2019)
Unsprung Der Nacht (Lothar Baumgarten, 1982)
Annette (Leos Carax, 2021)
When We Were Monsters (Steve Reinke & James Richards, 2020)
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson, 2021)
L’anne Derniere A Dachau (Mark Rappaport, 2020)
The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes, 2021)
The Masturbator’s Heart (Michael Salerno)
On The Island (Daniel & Clara , 2021)
I’m Free (Laure Portier, 2021)
France (Bruno Dumont, 2021)
Mudmonster (OB De Alessi, 2021)
About Endlessness (Roy Andersson, 2019)
Tori Kudo Archive
Accidental Luxuriance Of The Translucent Watery Rebus (Dalibor Baric, 2020)
Censor (Prano Bailey-Bond, 2021)
Fat Chance (Stephen Broomer, 2021)
Moments Like This Never Last (Cheryl Dunne, 2020)
Death And Bowling (Lyle Kash, 2021)
JOSE SARMIENTO HINOJOSA Director, desistfilm.com, curator, film critic
2020, 2021 films
Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, 2021)
Transparent, I Am (Yuri Muraoka, 2020)
Luz Nos Tropicos (Paula Gaitán, 2020)
Memory (Apitchapong Weerasethakul, 2021)
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, 2021)
Light Trap (Pablo Marin, 2021)
Zeroes and Ones – Abel Ferrara (2021)
EARTHEARTHEARTH – Daichi Saito (2021)
Drive my Car – Rysuke Hamaguchi (2021)
10.Red Post on Escher Street – Sion Sono (2020)
11.Bela – Prantik Narayan Basu (2021)
12.Saxifrages, Quatre Nuits Blanches – Nicolas Klotz, Elizabeth Perceval (2021)
Steve Polta’s Rituals of Regeneration for Dobra Film Festival
Daniella Shreir for Another Screen :
[Silence] […] [Laughter] + Focus on Mara Mattuschka
The Practice of Disobedience: Carole Roussoupolos & Delphine Seyrig ‘restrospective
For a Free Palestine: Films by Palestinian Women
Marguerite Duras on Television
Eight Films by Cecilia Mangini
Hands Tied / Eating the Other
A One Woman Confessional: Films by Cecilia Mangini
Stephen Broomer’s Art & Trash Videoessay series The Mechanics of Light by S (8) Mostra de Cinema Periferico
First seen in 2021:
Double Labyrinthe – Maria Klonaris, Katerina Thomadaki (1976)
From Today Until Tomorrow – Danielle Hulliet – Jean-Marie Straub (1997)
Blind Beast – Yasuzo Masumura (1969)
A Portrait of Parvaneh Navai – Maria Klonaris, Katerina Thomadaki (1983)
To Camel – Ibrahim Shaddad (1981)
The Margin – Ozualdo Ribeiro Candeias (1967)
The Whole Shebang – Ken Jacobs (2019)
The Spiral Staircase – Robert Siodmak (1946)
Trail on the Road – Aleksei German (1986)
10.One Hamlet Less – Carmelo Bene (1973)
11.Messiah of Evil – Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz (1973)
12.My Winter Journey – Vincent Dieutre (2003)
13.Juvenile Court – Frederick Wiseman (1973)
14.The Crowd – King Vidor (1928)
15.Hangover Square – John Brahm (1945)
16.Flammes – Adolfo Arrieta (1978)
17.Lady Snowblood / Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance – Toshiya Fujita (1973, 1974)
18.Pets – Albertina Carri (2012)
19.Playback – Agustina Comedi (2019)
20.Pull / Drift / The Waiting Sands – Margaret Rorison (2013, 2013)
21.Mirage – Edward Dmytryk (1965)
22.Bourbon Street Blues – Douglas Sirk (1979)
23.The Howling – Joe Dante (1981)
24.The Hot Little Girl – Yasuzo Masumura (1970)
25.Yoshiwara: The Pleasure Quartet – Tomu Uchida (1960)
26.Blood is Redder Than The Sun – Koji Wakamatsu (1966)
27.La Casa Lobo – Cristobal León, Joaquín Cociña (2018)
28.Relativity – Ed Emshwiller (1966)
29.The Long Hair of Death – Antonio Margheriti (1964)
30.Paranoia – Umberto Lenzi (1969)
31.The Whispering Star – Sion Sono (2015)
32.Autour de Jeanne Dielman – Sami Frei (1975)
33.The Amazonian Angel – Maria Klonaris, Katerina Thomadaki (1992)
34.Satan’s Rhapsody – Nino Oxilia (1965)
35.History of Postwar Japan as Told as a Bar Hostess – Shohei Imamura (1970)
36.The Oracle – Roberta Findlay (1965)
37.Eggshells – Tobe Hopper (1969)
38.Black Sabbath – Mario Bava (1963)
39.Mark of the Devil – Michael Armstrong, Adrian Hoven (1970)
40.Madhouse – Ovidio G. Assontis (1981)
41.Her Man – Tay Garnett (1930)
42.Human Being – Ibrahim Shaddad (1994)
43.Another Decade – Morgan Quaintance (2018)
44.Ghosts – André Novais Oliveira (2010)
45.The Carabineers – JLG (1963)
46.Lost Note – Saul Levine (2015)
47.Through the Ruins – Claudio Caldini (1982)
48.Abiding – Ugo Petronin (2019)
49.Bom Bom’s Dream – Jeremy Deller, Cecilia Bengolea (2016)
50.Dark Logic / Gedanken Aus Der Lift / Funes El Memorioso / Vindmoller / Memory of August / Understory – Margaret Rorison (2016, 2017, 2014, 2014, 2014, 2019)
51.The Devil’s Backbone – Guillermo del Toro (2001)
52.Karelia – International with Monument – Andrés Duque (2019)
53.Lake Mungo – Joel Anderson (2008)
MÓNICA DELGADO , film critic, director desistfilm.com
Films released for the first time in 2021
Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, 2021)
Memory (Apichatpong Weresethakul, 2021)
Drive my car (Ryusuke Hagamuchi, 2021)
earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto, 2021)
The great movement (The great movement, Kiro Russo, 2021)
Pejzazi otpora (Lanscape of resistance, Marta Popivoda, 2021)
Diários de Otsoga (Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes, 2021)
Eles transportan a morte (They Carry Death, Helena Girón, Samuel M. Delgado, 2021)
Dangsin eolgul ap-eseo (In Front of Your Face, Hong Sangsoo, 2021)
10.The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili, 2021)
11.Chapter eo chapter (Capitu and the Chapter, Júlio Bressane, 2021)
12.Mad God (Phil Tippett, 2021)
13.A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia, 2021)
14.Saxifrages, quatre nuits blanches (Nicolas Klotz, Elizabeth Perceval, 2021)
15.Ostinato (Paula Gaitán, 2021)
16.Sycorax (Lois Patiño, Matías Piñeiro, 2021)
17.Rock Bottom Riser (Fern Silva, 2021)
18.Annette (Leos Carax, 2021)
19.Pr1nc3s4 (Raúl Perrone, 2021)
20.Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, 2021)
21.Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette, 2021)
22.The Great Void (Sebastian Metz, 2020)
23.The Red Filter is Withdrawn (Minjung Kim, 2020)
24.Zeroes and Ones (Abel Ferrara, 2021)
25.All Light, Everywhere (Theo Anthony, 2021)
26.Light trap (Pablo Marín, 2021)
27.Nuclear Family (Travis Wilkerson, 2021)
28.Ahed’s Knee (Nadav Lapid, 2021)
29.Outside Noise (Ted Fendt, 2021)
30.Sacred Spirit (Chema García Ibarra, 2021)
31.Nuhu Yãg Mu Yõg Hãm: Essa Terra É Nossa! (Isael Maxakali, Sueli Maxakali, Carolina Canguçu, Roberto Romero, 2020)
32.Rêve de Gotokuji par un premier mai sans lune (Natacha Thiéry, 2020)
33.Erial (Javiera Cisterna, 2021)
34.The Canyon (Zacary Epcar, 2021)
35.Surviving You Always (Morgan Quaintance, 2021)
Peruvian films
I’ll wait here until I hear my name (Héctor Galvez, 2021)
The Old Child (Felipe Esparza, 2021)
Programs or tributes in festivals
Eight films by the Italian filmmaker Cecilia Mangini (1927–2021), presented by Another Screen.
First edition of Prismatic Ground, a festival centered on experimental documentary (USA). It’s wonderful when a new experimental film and video festival comes out. I loved the films of Anita Thacher.
Bette Gordon at Playdoc International Film Festival (Spain). An important tribute to a great American filmmaker. Her film Variety is indispensable. Pleasant that this fest has been able to show this film.
Homage to filmmaker Paula Gaitan at Tiradentes Film Festival (Brazil) and a retrospective at Frontera Sur Film Festival (Chile). Paula is one of the great Latin American filmmakers and her work is being revalued in the last few years. Nuhu Yãg Mu Yõg Hãm(Essa Terra É Nossa! By Isael Maxakali, Sueli Maxakali, Carolina Canguçu and Roberto Romero, 2020) at Sheffield Doc Fest. A film of an indigenous community obtaining the most important award. It is not frequent. The Big Headed Boy, Shamans & Samurais , by Bibhusan Basnet and Pooja Gurung (Nepal) at Lima Alterna Film Festival.
FARID RODRIGUEZ, program Lima Alterna Fest
In order of preference
Babi Yar. Context (Sergei Loznitsa, Ukraine)
Wood and Water (Jonas Bak, Germany)
The bones (Joaquín Cociña and Cristóbal León, Chile)
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Japan)
10.Terranova (Alejandro Alonso Estrella and Alejandro Pérez, Cuba)
11.Rock Bottom Riser (Fern Silva, United States)
12.Husek (Daniela Seggiario, Argentina)
13.A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces (Shengze Zhu, China)
14.Nullo (Jan Soldat, Austria)
15.The great movement (Kiro Russo, Bolivia)
16.Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, Romania)
17.Sacred Spirit ( Chema García Ibarra, Spain)
18.Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir, Ethiopia)
19.In Front of Your Face + Introduction (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
20.9 (Martín Barrenechea and Nicolás Branca, Uruguay)
12 of 2020 seen in the 21
Dau. Degeneration , by Ilya Khrzhanovskiy and Ilya Permyakov (Russia)
Digital Video Editing with Adobe Premiere Pro: The Real-World Guide to Set Up and Workflow , by Hong Seong-yoon (South Korea)
Ailleurs, Partout , by Isabelle Ingold and Vivianne Perelmuter (Belgium)
The Big Headed Boy , Shamans & Samurais, Bibhusan Basnet and Pooja Gurung (Nepal)
Sweetie, You Won’t Believe It , by Yernar Nurgaliyev (Kazakhstan)
The Wasteland , by Ahmad Bahrami (Iran)
Liberty: An Ephemeral Statute , by Rebecca Jane Arthur (Belgium)
Eyimofe , by Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri (Nigeria)
Mama , by Dongmei Li (China)
February,by Kamen Kalev (Bulgaria)
Catavento , by Joao Rosas (Portugal)
Day in the Life , from the Karrabing Film Collective (Australia)
12 Great Movies of the 20th Century First Seen in 2021
Distant Journey , by Alfréd Radok (Czechoslovakia, 1949) Dracula , by Terrence Fisher (United Kingdom, 1958) Operazione paura , by Mario Bava (Italy, 1966) The bird with the crystal feathers , by Dario Argento (Italy, 1970) Muna Moto , by Jean-Pierre Dikongue-Pipa (Cameroon, 1975) One People , by Pim de la Parra (Surinam, 1976) Beirut, Never Again , by Jocelyn Saab (Lebanon, 1976) Next of Kin , by Tony Williams (Australia, 1982) Beirut, My City , by Jocelyn Saab (Lebanon, 1983) Winter adé, by Helke Misselwitz (East Germany, 1989) The Belovs , by Viktor Kossakovsky (Russia, 1992) Little Angel, Make Me Happy , by Uzmaan Saparov (Turkmenistan, 1993)
Peruvian Movies
Pneumatic conduction, by Genietta Varsi Notes on Connection III , by Andrea Franco Arquitectura entre species , by Mauricio Freyre I ‘ll wait here until I hear my name , by Héctor Gálvez Las_chicas.mp4 , by Ximena Medina, Romina Bran, Valeria Marín and Francesca Bobbio
VICTOR GUIMARÃES, film critic (Kinetics / With eyes open) and programmer (FICValdivia, FENDA) –Brazil
14 imaginary double bills in 2021:
Memory (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021) + El Cuervo, la Yegua y la Fosa (Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, 2021)
The sonic depth of delusion.
The Whole Shebang (Ken Jacobs, 2019) + Agua del Arroyo que Tiembla (Javiera Cisterna, 2021)
A film is an image being born from the viscera of another image.
Detours (Ekaterina Selenkina, 2021) + Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette, 2021)
Landscape as fiction. Fiction as landscape.
Open Monte (María Rojas Arias, 2021) + Notes for a Déjà Vu (Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, 2021)
Truly facing the present requires some anachrony.
Antonio Valencia (Daniela Delgado Viteri, 2020) + Self-Portrait: Fairy Tale in 47 KM (Zhang Mengqi, 2021)
The politics of tenderness.
The Sky is Red (Francina Carbonell, 2020) + One Image, Two Acts (Sanaz Sohrabi, 2020)
Prison break.
Drive my Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021) + Chapter eo Chapter (Julio Bressane, 2021)
The theater of passion.
Il n’y Aura Plus de Nuit (Eléonore Weber, 2020) + Zeros and Ones (Abel Ferrara, 2021)
A plunge into the darkness of our times.
Rodson ou (Onde o Sol Não Temdó) (Clara Chroma, Cleyton Xavier y Orlok Sombra, 2020) + Love is a Dog from Hell (Khavn, 2021)
Cinema is full of sound and fury.
Rua Ataléia (André Novais Oliveira, 2021) + Summer (Vadim Kostrov, 2021)
The delicate rigors of light.
south (Morgan Quaintance, 2020) + A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia, 2021)
A fistful of burning images.
Nuhu Yãg Mu Yõg Hãm: Essa Terra É Nossa! (Isael Maxakali, Sueli Maxakali, Carolina Canguçu, Roberto Romero, 2020) + Voltei! (Glenda Nicácio & Ary Rosa, 2021)
The musical heart of political cinema.
Nosferasta (Adam Khalil & Bayley Sweitzer & Oba, 2021) + El Gran Movimiento (Kiro Russo, 2021)
How many times can a film mutate and still be awesome?
I would like to celebrate the work of two great platforms for showing films that made our lives better this year: Another Screen and Prismatic Ground. Also, the peak of my cinephile year was discovering the work of the Sudanese Film Group – especially Jamal (1981) and Jagdpartie (1964) by Ibrahim Shaddad – during the Flaherty Seminar programmed by Janaína Oliveira.
VICTOR PAZ MORANDEIRA , film critic and programmer, Spain
Ten highlights of my 2021: eight queue filmmakers will remain in the memory
Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Memory : A fit Apitcha, comfortable in Colombian terrain developing his usual themes and aesthetics. The novelty is the sound treatment, literally from another world.
Leos Carax – Annette : Total creative freedom without fear of ridicule, without barriers. It is a joyous, complex and uncomfortable film in terms of subject matter and form. Adam Driver is an acting beast.
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi: Roulette of fortune and fantasy + Drive My Car . Few times in the history of cinema will someone have made two masterpieces in one year. I like both their elaborate plot structure, their narrative pulse and the outstanding direction of the actors, supported by excellent dialogues. At the end of the day, I think I connect with the sensibility of Japanese, and that is what makes me adore him.
Yuri Ancarani – Atlantide . As if you catch one of A full throttle but with boats through the canals of Venice and give it an air of a documentary YouTuber with urban music hitting your eardrums. The edition is radically to applaud.
Pedro Almodóvar – Parallel Mothers : A brave film in which the man from La Mancha shows himself open-heartedly around the concepts of motherhood and historical memory. That last scene is breathtaking, one of the best Almodóvar has ever shot. Penelope Cruz has never shone so bright.
Abel Ferrara – Zeros and Ones : The best film that exists about confinement, no matter how much it disguises itself as a psychotic thriller. Ferrara lets her apocalyptic paranoias flow in a new exercise in cinema as therapy. Just as cryptic as his recent tapes, but less allegorical, more direct. Very playful with the digital image. A cry of a free caged artist.
Alexandre Koberidze – What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (What do we see when we look at the sky?) Beautiful and original urban symphony in the form of an elegant romantic comedy.
Ridley Scott – The Last Duel . Crude Rashomon vintage film about how elusive the truth can be. I like him that he doesn’t judge the characters and presents his versions of events without Manichean tricks. Put together an intelligent feminist speech without the need to present yourself as a militant. What a piece of actress Jodie Comer.
An ideal shorts session
In Flow of Words (Eliane Esther Bots, 2021) + Surviving You, Always (Morgan Quaintance, 2020) + Imperdonable (Marlén Viñayo, 2020) + Le quattro strade (Alice Rohrwacher, 2021). They are films that, with different approaches to non-fiction cinema, speak of our current reality with rigor and each one of them from its own singularity.
Classics (re) discovered
The complete work of Márta Mészáros, which MUBI is recovering using new restorations from the Hungarian Film Library; and two tapes by Bette Gordon, to whom Play-Doc dedicated a complete cycle this year: The United States of America (1975, along with James Benning) and Variety (1983).
RAÚL CAMARGO , director of the Valdivia Film Festival, Chile.
15 films, in alphabetical order:
– A night of knowing nothing , by Payal Kapadia.
– Open mount , by María Rojas Arias.
– Water from the creek that trembles , by Javiera Cisterna.
– Under the sky , by Diego Acosta.
– Diários de otsoga , by Maureen Fazendeiro & Miguel Gomes.
– The Great Movement , by Kiro Russo.
– In front of your face , by Hong Sang-soo.
– The bones , by Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña.
– Luto , by Pablo Martín Weber.
– Memory , by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
–My brothers dream awake , by Claudia Huaiquimilla.
– Ste. Anne , by Rhayne Vermette.
– Summer by Vadim Kostrov.
– Une histoire de cheveux (Sibérie) , by Boris Lehman.
– What do we see when we look at the sky? by Aleksandre Koberidze.
15 special mentions, in alphabetical order:
– A morte branca do feiticeiro negro , by Rodrigo Ribeiro.
– Antonio Valencia , by Daniela Delgado.
– Bad luck banging or loony porn , by Radu Jude.
– Dry winter by Kyle Davis.
– Eles transportan a morte , by Helena Girón & Samuel M. Delgado.
– Uruguay is not a river , by Daniel Yafalián.
– Grandma’s scissors by Erica Sheu.
– Notes, incantations. Part II: Carmela , by Alexandra Cuesta.
– One image, two acts , by Sanaz Sohrabi.
– What will be of the summer , by Ignacio Ceroi.
– Retour à Reims (Fragments) , by Jean-Gabriel Périot.
– Short vacation by Kwon Min-pyo & Seo Hansol.
– Train again , by Peter Tscherkassky.
– Tonalli , from Colectivo Los Ingrávidos.
– Tropico de Capricornio, by Juliana Antunes.
PABLO GAMBA , film critic and teacher, Venezuela, Argentina
Terranova , by Alejandro Alonso and Alejandro Pérez (Cuba, 2021)
Israel , by Ernesto Baca (Argentina, 2021)
The promise of return , by Cristián Sánchez (Chile, 2020)
Sol de campinas, by Jessica Sarah Rinland (Brazil, 2021)
Watchmen , by Paz Encina (Paraguay, 2021)
The Wind Floor , by Gloria Peirano and Gustavo Fontán (Argentina, 2021)
The dog that does not shut up , by Ana Katz (Argentina, 2021)
35combro5 , by Raúl Perrone (Argentina, 2021)
Window boy would also like to have a submarine , by Alex Piperno (Uruguay-Argentina-Brazil, 2020)
10.Dark journey light , by Tin Dirdamal (Mexico-Vietnam, 2021)
Terranova’s approach to Havana , which may seem unusual, delusional, is the successful result of the search for an honest way of looking at one of the cities and one of the countries in the world on which preconceptions weigh the most, the cliches. It is also an expression of Cuban cosmopolitanism, a way of seeing the country in the world that can be very different from how the world sees this country.
ANDREEA PATRU , programmer and film critic (Romania / Spain)
Features
Petit Maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021) The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, 2021) The Tale of King Crab (Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis, 2021) The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, 2021) Vengeance Is Mine , All Others Pay Cash (Edwin, 2021) The Girl and the Spider (Ramon Zürcher, Silvan Zürcher, 2021) The Tsugua Diaries (Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes, 2021) The Dorm (Roman Vasyanov, 2021) A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia , 2021) All Light, Everywhere (Theo Anthony, 2021) Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021) Dirty Feathers(Carlos Alfonso Corral, 2021) What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Aleksandre Koberidze, 2021) North by Current (Angelo Madsen Minax, 2021) The Souvenir: Part II (Joanna Hogg, 2021)
Shorts
Civil War Surveillance Poems (Part 1) (Mitch McCabe, 2020)
Naya (Sebastian Mulder, 2021)
In Flow of Words (Eliane Esther Bots, 2021)
Creature (María Silvia Esteve, 2021)
Beast (Hugo Covarrubias, 2021)
SEBASTIAN WIEDEMANN , Filmmaker, film scholar, editor and curator at humanacine.com (Colombia)
In no particular order:
Open Monte (Maria Rojas Arias, Colombia, 2021) Dark Pacific (Camila Beltrán, Colombia, 2020) Bicentennial (Pablo Alvarez Mesa, Colombia, 2020) Memory (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Colombia / Thailand, 2021) To Ultima Floresta (Luiz Bolognesi, Brazil , 2021) A Cosmopolítica Dos Animais (Juliana Fausto & Luisa Marques, Brazil, 2021) Fluxus Fungus (Tuane Eggers, Brazil, 2020) Seed, Image, Ground (Abelardo Gil-Fournier & Jussi Parikka, Spain / Finland, 2020) Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 2021) Signal 8 (Simon Liu, Hong Kong, 2019)
+ Online Retrospectives
Bruno Varela – Mexico (Camara Lucida Film Festival, Ecuador, 2021)
Jürgen Reble – Germany (Filmmuseum München, Germany, 2021)
Becoming Earth by Ursula Biemann – Switzerland (Art Museum at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia, 2021)
Carrabing Film Collective – Australia (Forumdoc.BH Film Festival, Brazil, 2021)
ÁNGEL RUEDA , director S8 Mostra de Cinema Periférico, Spain
A list of some of the films, programs and cycles that I want to highlight from this 2021, mostly seen in the theater and some in online programs.
– Earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto, 2021)
– Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette, 2021)
– Flowers blooming in our throats (Eva Giolo, 2020)
– Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky, 2021)
– Configurations (James Edmonds, 2021)
– Bethanien Tetralogy (Deborah S. Phillips, 2020)
– Letter from Your far-off Country (Suneil Sanzgiri, 2020)
– The Fantastic (Maija Blåfield, 2020)
– One Image, Two Acts (Yek Tasveer, Do Bardasht) (Sanaz Sohrabi, 2020)
– Spinoza / Ongodist(Bruno Delgado Ramo, 2021)
– Meihodo (Jorge Suárez-Quiñones Rivas, 2020)
– # 005 and # 006 (Yonay Boix, 2021)
– Light Trap (Pablo Marín, 2021)
– Be careful out there (Alberto Gracia, 2021 )
– Bravío Flash ( Ainoha Rodríguez, 2021)
– Sacred Spirit (Chema García Ibarra, 2021)
– Eles Trasportan a Morte (Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado, 2021)
– Husek (Daniela Seggiaro, 2021)
The following Film Performances:
– Listening Exercises 2. Film performance by Helena Girón and Samuel Delgado. 2021
– Kicked with the front foot on the dark side of the deck. Film performance by Esperanza Collado. 2021
– “A Lecture by Hollis Frampton”, performed by Valentina Alvarado Matos and Carlos Vásquez Méndez. 2021
– Echo Chamber. Film performance by Valentina Alvarado Matos and Carlos Vásquez Méndez. 2021
The carte blanche produced by Jean-Claude Rousseau at the (S8) Mostra de Cinema Periférico 2021, which included the following titles:
– La Chambre (Chantal Akerman, 1972)
– Standard Time (Michael Snow, 1967)
– Césarée (Marguerite Duras, 1979)
– Surface Tension (Hollis Frampton, 1968)
– Films Sans Caméra Stst (Giovanni Martedi, 1975)
– Taris, Roi de L’eau (Jean Vigo, 1931)
The cycle on the 40 years of Light Cone, curated by Elena Duque and Yann Beauvais for the Seville European Film Festival 2021.
– SESSION 1. LANDSCAPE / ECOLOGY. http://festivalcinesevilla.eu/peliculas/ciclo-light-cone-sesion-1-paisajesecologia
– SESSION 2. GENDER / IDENTITY http://festivalcinesevilla.eu/peliculas/ciclo-light-cone-sesion-2-generoidentidad
– SESSION 3. CINEMA AS MATERIAL http://festivalcinesevilla.eu/peliculas/ciclo-light-cone-sesion-3-el-cine-como-material
ORISEL CASTRO . Filmmaker, programmer and coordinator of the Master in Documentary Film, EICTV
Year of returning to Cuba, to film school, to Glauber Rocha. Less solo films and more in the living room, with the students. The island of the island. The most important is divided into: what I saw on the big screen programmed by Jorge Yglesias, the teacher; what I saw on the computer, sometimes through MUBI, especially to program EDOC and what I saw to think of professors for the Master’s in Documentary Film that I coordinate at EICTV.
I. What I saw in the Glauber Rocha room
– Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, 2021)
– The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, 2021)
– Annette (Leos Carax, 2021)
– The Spirit of the Beehive (Víctor Erice, 1973)
– Last year in Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961)
– Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999)
– In a certain way (Sara Gómez, 1974)
II. Alone and for EDOC
– Victoria (Sofie Benoot, Liesbeth De Ceulaer, Isabelle Tollenaere, 2020)
– Bosco (Alicia Cano, 2020)
– Things we don’t do (Bruno Santamaría, 2020)
– Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
– Princes Cyd (Stephen Cone , 2017)
– The Quince Sun (Víctor Erice, 1992)
– Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2021) thanks to Jules for “the refuge”
III. Casting for mastery
– Playback: rehearsal of a farewell (Agustina Comedi, 2020)
– In the image and likeness (Jessica Sarah Rinland, 2019)
– My Mexican Bretzel (Nuria Giménez, 2020)
– Arabia (Affonso Uchoa, 2017) in the presence of the director, also in the EICTV room, when he came to teach the Experimental and Hybrid Cinema class.
– Recollection (Kamal Aljafari, 2015) in the presence of the director, on the recommendation of the master’s students. A great revelation for me.
December Bonus
– Memory (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021)
A haunted projection in a mixing studio in a foreign country, full of familiar thoughts and sonorous ghosts. A true sonic attack on the heart of cinephilia. I was awakened by the memory of The Sleeping One (Pascal Aubier, 1966) and I showed it in class the next day. A song in the chest …
LIBERTAD GILLS , filmmaker, film critic, video essayist, Ecuador
I imagine my list as a program that would be shown in this order:
Belmarsh Christmas Day Soundscape (Julian Assange, Stella Morris)
Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky)
Birth (Cristina Álvarez López)
Dreams Under Confinement (Christopher Harris)
Covid Messages (John Smith)
Quebrantahuesos (Martin Baus)
Notes, Imprints (On Love): Part II, Carmela (Alexandra Cuesta)
Figure & I (Lynne Sachs)
Light Year (Bruno Varela)
Mutationem (Maile Costa Colbert)
Light Trap (Pablo Marin)
+
a long: Under the sky (Diego Acosta)
+
video essays:
“Young (Women) Filmmaker (s)” (Katie Bird)
Edge (Catherine Grant)
Murky Waters (Jaap Kooijman and Patricia Pisters)
Once Upon a Screen: Explosive Paradox (Kevin B. Lee)
+
“Unmaking Cinema”: conversation with Raphael Montañez Ortiz at Light Cone
Program by Cecilia Mangini at Another Gaze
“Practicing Abolition Futures” with Pooja Rangan, Brett Story, Christopher Harris & Alex Rivera at UnionDocs
State of Cinema 2021 by Nicole Brenez
+
in Ecuadorian cinema:
Equatorial Program at Cámara Lúcida Festival
JUAN CARLOS LEMUS POLANÍA, Film Critic and director of Cine con Acento podcast
A list of the movies that moved me the most in 2021
2021 was the year in which we realized that nothing was going to change if not to get worse. More so when we have been depleted by overexposure to everything, to the immeasurable of knowledge, of attention. This being, knowing and doing everything and for everything has become imperative for many of my contemporaries. More so when Bauman’s liquid has appeared in gaseous: and the Berlinale I could see her in her pajamas while stopping Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy because the water bill came to the door. But resistance — to which one can cling, to which one puts faith — in my case goes through the adjective given to a certain cinema: slow. The works that I will list do not all fit into the aforementioned category, but for the most part they walk through that introspection,
Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc (Bad Luck Banging or Lonely Porn, Radu Jude, 2021 Berlinale 71) Golden Bear for the Romanian director with this satire that on the surface shows the life of a couple and the no border between the private and the public , diluted today by technology, with its blow it has called in past decades the “weaker sex”. And meanwhile he talks about the social cost of entering Europe for his country. Understanding its metaphor, it would be multiple penetration received with feigned pleasure, just like in hardcore porn.
Azor (Andreas Fontana, 2021, Berlinale). The Swiss director surprises with this dramatic thriller set in Argentina to talk about how corruption is engendered and who are the progenitors. The big bankers, of course from the white countries that have third world countries listed as corrupt, do not fare very well in this DNA test to certify paternity.
Gûzen to sôzô (Wheel of fortune and fantasy, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021, Berlinale 71) Replicating the first Christians, Hamaguchi creates his Holy Trinity in this work. I do not think I fall into a solipsism when I say that we have become used to gruesome, and sometimes even brutal, narratives and make these our masterpieces – did Romanticism abuse us? -. So when this wonder of compassion and humanity is revealed; of solidarity and human warmth; It is possible to classify it as brilliant and subversive from distancing itself from the self to reaching the we. And more today than before, or as always, a necessary balm.
Annette (Leos Carax, 2021, Cannes 74). The French director brings this musical in which he is related to the tradition of his fellow sociologists dedicated to radiographing the state of the art of human behavior at a certain time. Carax undresses us in this narcissism and struggle of egos, at the point of social networks, which has become our daily life. This particular moment where high and low culture coexist in marriage, where sexist violence is increased by professional jealousy and where we exploit even the most precious in search of wealth as a synonym of success.
Memory (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021, Cannes 74) The first film I saw by this director was at Cannes 2015, and it left my head scratched for a long time, something that led me to become interested in his work and try to find meaning, or a message. I found relationships between the physical and what is not seen, but which is. However, with Memoria I feel that the Thai is going to more and can only be carried away in the trance in which the viewer is induced to see his cinema. A sensory experience that speaks of being, being and transcendence. As a Colombian, you can read what we have been hiding in order to forget when what we must collectively remember.
Compartment No. 6 (Juho Kuosmanen, 2021, Cannes 74) A budding separation and a journey kick off this road trip, but on rails and very claustrophobic. A trip in a train car that allows two worldviews to meet and then some understandings to emerge. The Finn is another of those who proposes this kind of vital companionship, of detaching armor to make the fucking path of life calmer and cushion the shocks.
The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes, 2021, Cannes 74). The Californian’s documentary is special for fans and informative for neophytes. Haynes imitates his idols and breaks some of the rules, making his work formally disruptive and that form is already a message — I bet on Warhol’s blessing. The lives of Nico, Tucker, Reed, Cale and how the avant-garde was made music in an unthinkable and little exposed sixties nihilism, which would later bring to punk. Also a memory about the cool pose, which has already been marked since Wilde’s decadence and that pretentious way of being in the cold, boring world and of no surprise and therefore conservative and elitist.
Drive my Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2021, Cannes 74) Handling personal and moral losses. The weight that we have left and that we must continue to carry as we can. But it seems that the Japanese sum up stoicism and temperance, according to the protagonists without actually teaching us. Hamaguchi repeats on the list with plenty of reasons. Because in addition to those moral forces mentioned, it also gives way, once again, to human communication beyond words, where hugs, looks, affection, subtleties have a place. And compassion and tenderness.
The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, 2021, Venice 78) And the donkey returns to the wheat, however. Campion flaunts the purest postmodernism in his mix of film genres with such mastery that The Power of the Dog doesn’t have a bump. And from western to drama and thriller and something else. What and where is the power of the dog? Perhaps in that he domesticated us insofar as he made us believe otherwise.
The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, 2021, Venice 78) You already remember Travis. And it is that the protagonists of Schrader are in search of personal redemption through the other. And just as I have mentioned compassion for the other as a force that supports and helps us, perhaps among those on the other side is revenge. This one that in certain cases is necessary to the point of stupidity. Also, I add that this is the year of Oscar Isaac with this magnificent role for which we will remember.
Colophon
To pay the debt with last year (before): So many souls (Nicolás Rincón Gille, 2019. Just released this year due to its cancellation in 2020 by COVID). To contribute with the commercial fee: No Sudden Move (Steven Soderbergh, 2021, HBO Max). The usual: The empire of the senses (Nagisa Oshima, 1976). The classic: The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie (Luís Buñuel, 1972). The unforgettable: Mimosas (Oliver Laxe, 2016). The Colombian: Bicentennial (Pablo Álvarez-Mesa, 2020).
ALDO PADILLA , Cinemancia Festival programmer and critic, Bolivia – Chile
In astronomy there is often talk of “looking back” when looking at planets outside the solar system, we look at them hundreds or thousands of years ago while it seems impossible to think of that planet in the present. The cinema of this 2021 seems in the same way a cinema of a past world, since although two years have passed since the beginning of the pandemic and its multiple waves, the masks and the radical changes that the world has undergone seem something alien to a cinema that by its nature usually takes more than two years from its filming to its presentation, will 2022 be a cinema with masks, with social distances, with slight references to a world that is no longer the same? For now, the films that have referenced the global pandemic seem to have understood human fragility (The Great Movement),
Top 10
The Great Movement , Kiro Russo, Bolivia, 2021
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? , Alexandre Koberidze, Georgia, 2021
Rêve de Gotokuji par un premier mai sans lune , Natacha Thiéry, France, 2020
10.Beyond the night , Manuel Ponce de León, Colombia, 2021
PAOLA VELA, Peruvian visual artist and filmmaker
Movies (short and long) seen through platforms like MUBI, by festivals like MUTA or Lima Alterna, or thanks to friends who sent me the private links from VIMEO.
Four Roads (2021) by Alice Rohrwacher Terranova (2021) by Alejandro Alonso Estrella and Alejandro Pérez Serrano The Cloud in her Room (2020) by Xinyuan Zheng Lu Private Collection (2020) by Elena Duque One thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean ( 2020) by Yuyang Wang 13 Ways of Looking a Blackbird (2020) by Ana Vaz Felix in Wonderland (2019) by Marie Losier
Three Peruvian voices working outside Peru: No One Cried (2021) by Daniel Jacoby Notes on Connection III (2021) by Andrea Franco The Old Child (2021) by Felipe Esparza
Short films seen in person in museums Plastic Limits – For the Projection of Other Architectures (2021) by Rosa Barba, short film as part of her solo exhibition In a Perpetual Now at the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Germany. Framer Framed (2021) by Ramaya Tegegne, documentary film as part of the group exhibition The Equality of the Possibility at the Kunstverein Bielefeld, Germany.
Discoveries / reviews of Peruvian filmmakers from the past thanks to Corriente Encuentro Latinoamericano de Cine de No Ficción, friends who sent me the links, or YouTube. 3 x 16 (2007) by Marcos Arriaga Beijing (1988) by Rose Lowder Cimarrones(1975) by Carlos Ferrrand Niños (1974) from the Liberation without Rodeos Group Vision of the Jungle (1973) from the Liberation without Rodeos Group
RODRIGO GARAY YSITA , Co-editor of Correspondences, Berlinale Talents student and member of FIPRESCI (Mexico)
I never thought a Wes Anderson movie or car commercial would end up among my favorites of an entire year, but here we are. I am very excited about what I saw in 2021. I was accompanied by darker movies last year, but now I notice a game search on this list. I feel restless, in a good way.
***
I never thought a Wes Anderson flick or a car commercial would end up among my year-long favorites, but here we are. I’m truly moved by my 2021 picks. Last year I turned to more somber films, but now I feel a spirited pursuit in this list. I feel restless, in a good way.
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze, 2021)
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson, 2021)
What will be of the summer (Ignacio Ceroi, 2021)
The Canyon (Zachary Epcar, 2021)
Das Mädchen und die Spinne (Ramon Zürcher and Silvan Zürcher, 2021)
Day is Done (Dalei Zhang, 2020)
Friends and Strangers (James Vaughan, 2021)
earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto, 2021)
A táxi do Jack (Susana Nobre, 2021)
10.Looking for Venera (Norika Sefa, 2021)
11.Flowers blooming in our throats (Eva Giolo, 2020)
12.Blutsauger (Julian Radlmaier, 2021)
13.The founders (Diego Hernández, 2021)
14.Rock Bottom Riser (Fern Silva, 2021)
15.Feast (Tim Leyendekker, 2021)
16.Jesus Egon Christus (David Vajda and Sasa Vajda, 2021)
17.È Stata la mano di Dio (Paolo Sorrentino, 2021)
This year I also took the time to go back to old favorites of mine that I hadn’t seen in years — like Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, 1980), The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969) or Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984) – and confirm my resounding love for them.
***
This year I also took the time to revisit old favorites of mine that I hadn’t seen in years —such as Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, 1980), The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969) or Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984) -, confirming my resounding love for them.
RENATO LEÓN , journalist and film critic from Peru
My favorite movies that I saw this 2021 (theaters, streaming, festivals, Torrent), in order of preference.
Drive my car by Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
Memory , by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
The card counter , by Paul Schrader.
Wheel of fortune and fantasy , by Ryusuke Hamaguchi.
Annette , by Léos Carax.
Petite maman , by Celine Sciamma.
Malignant by James Wan.
The innocents by Eskil Vogt.
Benedetta , by Paul Verhoeven.
10.Bergman Island by Mia Hansen-Løve.
11.Esquirlas , by Natalia Garayalde.
12.Night of fire , by Tatiana Huezo.
13.Power of dog by Jane Campion.
14.Un médecin de nui t, by Elie Wajeman.
15.La Nuée , by Just Philippot.
16.Spencer , by Pablo Larraín
17.Nobody by Ilya Naishuller.
18.The Green Knight by David Lowery
19.Val by Ting Poo and Leo Scott.
20.Cruella by Craig Gillespie.
Series:
Succession , Season 3 (HBO Max).
Midnight Mass (Netflix).
Small Ax .
Them (Prime Video).
The white Lotus (HBO Max).
Mare of easttown (HBO Max).
Servant , Season Two (Apple TV +).
Hellbound (Netflix).
Sex Education , third season (Netflix).
10.Scenes from a Marriage (HBO Max).
Films more inflated than a hot air balloon:
Titane by Julia Ducournau.
Cry male , by Clint Eastwood.
Nomadland by Chloé Zhao.
FRANCISCO ÁLVAREZ RÍOS , programmer and director of the Cámara Lúcida festival, Ecuador
Non-fiction circuits, or experimentation fiction:
Just a Movement by Vincent Meessen The great movement by Kiro Russo Rock Bottom Riser by Fern Silva The Invisible Mountain by Ben Rusell The moon represents my heart by Juan Martín Hsu Taming the garden by Salomé Jashi One image, two acts by Sanaz Sohrabi A night of knowing nothing by Payal Kapadia Ste. Anne by Rhayne Vermette Eles transport a morte by Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado
Experimental circuit:
earthearthearth by Daïchi Saïto Train Again by Peter Tscherkassky Pentalfa Neón by Bruno Varela The Canyon by Zacary Epcar Zero Lenght Spring by Ross Meckfessel 2020 by Fried Von Gröller Epoca is Another Thing by Ignacio Tamarit and Tomas Maglione Notes on connection III by Andrea Franco Tonalli from the Colectivo Los Ingrávidos Night Reflection (IV) by Benjamin Ellenberger
Ecuadorian circuit:
Dawn of Datura by Jean-Jacques Martinod and Bretta Walker Winds of Chanduy by Mario Rodríguez Dávila Notes, incantations: part II, Carmela by Alexandra Cuesta Open sky / Open sea / Open ground by Libertad Gills and Martin Baus Bearded vulture by Martin Baus
ALONSO CASTRO , Peruvian film critic
In no order of priority:
– Charm Circle , Nira Burstein (2021)
– Luto , Pablo Martín Weber (2021)
– My last adventure , Ezequiel Salinas, Ramiro Sonzini (2021)
– Window boy would also like to have a submarine , Alex Piperno (2021)
– Her socialist smile , John Gianvito (2020)
– The Wheel of Fortune , Ryusuke Hamaguchi (2021)
– Une chanson d’anniversaire , Jaques Perconte (2021)
– The dog that does not shut up , Ana Katz (2021)
– A l’abordage , Guillaume Brac (2020 )
– Otsoga Newspapers, Miguel Gomes (2021)
– Notes on Connection III , Andrea Franco (2021)
– Les choses qu’on dit, les choses qu’on fait , Emmanuel Mouret (2020)
– The bones , Cristóbal León, Joaquín Cociña (2021)
AARON CUTLER (Mutual Films / The Moviegoer), United States / Brazil
Some movies I loved in 2021 (and as always, I apologize to all the works I forgot):
– All of Your Stars Are but Dust on My Shoes (Haig Aivazian)
– Blind Body (Allison Chhorn)
– The Canyon (Zachary Epcar)
– earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto)
– Home When You Return (Carl Elsaesser)
– The red filter is withdrawn (Minjung Kim)
– Rua Ataléia (André Novais Oliveira)
– sem title # 7 : Rara (Carlos Adriano)
– Light Trap (Pablo Marín)
– Untitled (34bsp) (Philipp Fleischmann)
– Wasteland No. 3: Moons, Sons ( Jodie Mack)
– What is it that you said? (Shun Ikezoe)
Some samples that will impress me:
– ” I Am Independent ” – Jeonju International Film Festival. The beautiful book published in conjunction should also be mentioned .
– Quinzaine des Réalisateurs – 2021 edition
– Paulo Rocha Retrospective – São Paulo International Film Festival
A thought: One of the first values I discovered in the cinema was a healthy opportunity to get out of the house. Always when I read about a new virtual programming now, even the most interesting one, I end up remembering that. The physical movie theater will always have its value.
MALENA MARTÍNEZ CABRERA , filmmaker, Peru
Films by Florent Marcie A.I. at War. France 2021, 107min
[Retrospective Film as a subversive art of the Vienna Filmmuseum. Curated by Roger Koza]
SAÏA. A front line at night in Afghanistan . France, 2000, 30 min.
Films of Grace Passô: Republic . Brazil, 2020, 15 min. Vaga carne by Grace Passô, Ricardo Alves Júnior, Brazil 2019, 45 min.
[Flaherty International Film Seminar]
In a certain way . Sara Gomez. Cuba 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977. 73min.
[Filmfestival Viennale]
Other films from the Retrospective Film as a subversive art, a tribute to Amos Vogel from the Vienna Filmmuseum.
Demain et encore demain, journal 1995 Dominique Cabrera. France, 1997, 79 min. [Curated by Birgit Kohler]. Cage rain . César González, Argentinien, 2019, 82 min. [Curated by Roger Koza] brouillard # 14 by Alexandre Laroes, Canada, 2013, 10 min. Lightning dance by Cecilia Bengolea, Argentina, 2018, 6 min. [Curated by Nicole Brenez] What am I doing in this very visual world? Manuel Embalse, 2020, AR, 64 min. [This Human World Festival (online)].
Other films seen at the Flaherty International Film Seminar, online.
The Klan comes to town by Deanna Bowen. Canada, 2013, 20 min. Sum of the parts what can be named by Deanna Bowen. Canada, 2010, 19 min. Yãy Tu Nunãnã Payexop: Encontro de Pajés (Meeting of Shamans) of Sueli Maxakali, Brazil, 2021, 23 min. Jamal (A Camel) from Sudanese Film Group, Sudan, 1981, 14 min. Public service announcemente from Athi Patra Ruga, South Africa, 2014, 15 min. Thaumamorphic Video 2: Massage by Teddy Ogborn, US, 2020, short. [Fellows screenings]
Films by the duo Gray Cake (Alexander Serechenko, Ekaterina Pryanichnikova): Dreams of the Machine . Russia, 2021, 14 min. Backlash , Russia 2020, 4min Vremyanka , Russia, 2’33 ”
Uncanny Dream Cycle of Ars Electronica Animation Festival 2021
Etéreo y Lejano de Juan Llacsa, DOCLA, Moyobamba, Peru, 2021 1’41
[DOCLA School social networks]
Peruvian longs
Genaro’s betamax , Miguel Villalobos, 2015, 114min
[Cineaparte.com, Peruvian film platform].
Seen in Focus Peru at the Latin America Festival of Biarritz
Films by Omar Forero Complex Cases . Trujillo, 2018, 81 min. Chicama . Trujillo, 2012, 75 min. Manco Capac by Henry Vallejo, Puno, 2021, Among these trees that I have invented by Martín Rebaza, Trujillo, 2021, 78 min.
BonusVista again in 2021. AI by Steven Spielberg, US, 2021, 146 min.
MARIANA DIANELA TORRES VALENCIA , visual artist, video essayist, Mexico
10 or 15 Favorite Movies 2021
Sedmikrásky (Vera Chytilová, 1966)
Where Is My Friend’s House? (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)
Ozols (Laila Pakalnina, 1997)
Selva Tragica (Yulene Olaizola, 2020)
Double Phase (Takashi Makino, 2020)
Glimpses from a Visit to Orkney in Summer 1995 (Ute Aurand, 2020)
Holiday (Holiday) (Azucena Losana, 2021)
The road is made by walking (Paula Gaitán, 2021)
What will be of the summer (Ignacio Ceroi, 2021)
Labor of Lov e (Sylvia Schedelbauer, 2020)
S4D3 (Raúl Perrone, 2021)
Underground pulses (Elena Pardo, 2020- 2021-…)
Neon Crystals(Bruno Varela, 2021)
All the light we can see (Pablo Escoto, 2020)
The wait (Celina Manuel, 2021)
WILDER ZUMARÁN , film critic, Peru
This year, due to different factors, I have seen very little cinema. I saw little and, above all, I was aware of what could be seen in Peru and at festivals in Latin America. I think this list reflects well the intermittent journey that 2021 has been for me. A political year, a bit tragic, energetic at times, suffocating many times. A year, for me, however, of great brief moments with the cinema.
Luz nos Tópicos , by Paula Gaitán
Los conductos , by Camilo Restrepo
La France contre les robots , by Jean-Marie Straub
Chaco , by Diego Mondaca
First Cow , by Kelly Reichardt
Fauna , by Nicolás Pereda
Like the sky after it rains , by Mercedes Gaviria
The Whole Shebang , by Ken Jacobs
Playback. Essay of a farewell , by Agustina Comedi
Of all the things to know , by Sofía Velázquez
Esquirlas , by Natalia Garayalde
+
Sutís Interferências , by Paula Gaitán
Poilean , by Claudio Caldini
Sisters with transistors , by Lisa Rovner
Peruvian films
Of all the things to know , by Sofía Velázquez
The Old Child , by Felipe Esparza
pov: you have dystrophy and you are going to turn 25 artificial years , by Claudia Vanesa Figueroa
Spotlights and curatorial proposals
Spotlight María Galindo and Mujeres Creando – Transcinema
Spotlight Paula Gaitán – Frontera Sur
Traversed Peruvian cartographies: Heterogeneous routes and horizons in five decades of audiovisual production – Corriente. Latin American Non-Fiction Film Encounter
Discoveries
María Galindo and Mujeres Creating
Kinuyo Tanaka [Thanks to Marianela Vega]
Carolee Schneemann’s trilogy [thanks to Ivonne Sheen]
The disappearance (and the future return?)
Transcinema
CARLOS ESQUIVES , Peruvian film critic
These are the recent movies seen this year that I liked the most. It is worth mentioning that my presence in physical theaters has been almost nil, which has limited me to see commercial premieres. I also add to the failure to see important recent releases of the Netflix platform so far. Here is my list, in no order of preference.
The Father (Florian Zeller, 2020)
A Man on a Camera (Guido Hendrikx, 2021)
The Viewing Booth (Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, 2019)
A Very Long Exposure (Chloé Galibert-Laine, 2020)
Piccolo Corpo (Laura Samani, 2021)
Digital Video Editing with Adobe Premiere Pro: The Real-World Guide to Set Up and Workflow (Hong Seong-yoon, 2020)
Mother Lode (Matteo Tortone, 2021)
Friends and Strangers (James Vaughan, 2021)
Petite maman (Céline Sciamma, 2021 )
The Killing of Two Lovers (Robert Machoian, 2020)
Between Two Dawns (Selman Nacar, 2021)
The Taking(Alexandre O. Philippe, 2021)
Who prevents it (Jonás Trueba, 2021)
Our happiest days (Sol Berruezo Pichon-Riviere, 2021)
Annette (Leos Carax, 2021)
The Green Knight (David Lowery, 2021)
Memory (Apichatpong Weerasethakul , 2021)
CRISTIAN SALDÍA , Filmmaker, director and programmer at the Frontera Sur Festival (Chile)
Memory (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) Eles transportan a morte (Helena Girón, Samuel M. Delgado) Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky) Un monde flottant (Jean-Claude Rousseau) In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo) Esquirlas (Natalia Garayalde) Les Antilopes (Maxime Martinot) Water from the creek that trembles (Javiera Cisterna) Bicentennial (Pablo Álvarez-Mesa) Saxifrages, quatre nuits blanches (Nicolas Klotz, Elisabeth Perceval) The great movement (Kiro Russo) The floor of the wind (Gustavo Fontán, Gloria Peirano ) The sky is red(Francina Carbonell) Light trap (Pablo Marín) Pão e Gente (Renan Rovida) Diários de Otsoga (Maureen Fazendeiro, Miguel Gomes)
MEHDI JAHAN , Filmmaker (India)
Favorite first time views of 2021 / Films seen for the first time which reinforced my faith in Cinema this year:
FEATURES (in no particular order):
1. Fertile Memory | Michel Khleifi | Palestine | 1980
2. Wedding in Galilee | Michel Khleifi | Palestine | 1987
3. Leila and the Wolves | Heiny Srour | Lebanon | 1984
4. Radiograph of a Family | Firouzeh Khosrovani | Iran | 2020
5. Pride | Manuel Mur Oti | Spain | 1955
6. O Cangaceiro (The Bandit) | Lima Barreto | Brazil | 1953
7. Sunday Afternoon (Sunday Afternoon) | Antonio De Macedo | Portugal | 1966
8. Daichi no Komoriuta (Lullaby of the Earth) | Yasuzo Masumura | Japan | 1976
9. Duel to the Death | Ching Siu-Tong | Hong Kong | 1983
10. Onna (Woman) | Keisuke Kinoshita | Japan | 1948
63. Ville Marie | Alexandre Larose | Canada | 2010
64. Fluorescent Gir l | Janie Geiser | USA | 2018
65. Cathode Garden | Janie Geiser | USA | 2015.
FAVORITE CINEMA EVENTS / FESTIVALS (which led to the discovery of a great wealth of Cinema previously unknown to me or a rediscovery / revaluation of works of filmmakers / artists I admire):
1. State of Cinema 2021 (Projections. Provisionals. Provisions) by Nicole Brenez + Dossier (On the Earth / At the Bottom of the Heart) compiled by Nicole Brenez and Gerard-Jan Claes for Sabzian
2. Films by Palestinian Women | Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal (Curated by Daniella Shreir)
3. MUTA International Festival of Audiovisual Appropriation
4. DOBRA – Festival Int’l de Cinema Experimental
5. Moscow International Experimental Film Festival
There is a certain tension between the statements “any revolution is possible” and “no revolution is possible”, which seem to be the most obvious difference between the two translations of one of the texts of Marguerite Duras , but they are not opposite, because the inevitable, at least according to the old Marxist tablets, communist the revolution is postponed indefinitely – and the whole world is not frozen in a state of delicate equilibrium, is not moving towards general consumer welfare, but is rolling towards its own end. “Any revolution is possible,” which means that it is devoid of meaning and future, “no revolution is possible,” which means they will continue indefinitely – until the very end.
Duras writes:
“There is no longer any point in feeding us films about socialist hope. Or capitalist hope. There is no point in feeding us films about social justice, economic justice, and any other upcoming justice. You don’t need films about work. About values. About women. About youth. About the Portuguese. About the Malays. About intellectuals. About the Senegalese.
There is no point in feeding us fear films. About the revolution. About the dictatorship of the proletariat. About freedom. About straw scarecrows. About love. It doesn’t make sense anymore.
There is no point in feeding us films about cinema.
We don’t believe in anything anymore. We believe. Joy: we believe: nothing else.
We don’t believe in anything anymore.
There is no point in making your films anymore. It doesn’t make sense anymore. It is necessary to make films, realizing that there is no more meaning.
Let cinematography end, this is the only cinematography.
Let the end of the world come, let it end, this is the only policy “… [one]
The notorious stability of Belarus is finally destroyed, now the end of the world is approaching us, we have become part of a larger world. Even migrants are no longer in the news, on the fabulous Mediterranean Sea, where you can die in joy, but next to us, on our gray streets. Our prisons are as full as ever. A quick, gentle, beautiful “revolution” did not work, which means that you can finally get down to business. The illusion of a welfare state has collapsed, so you can strive for it. The main film festival of the country was de facto destroyed by the officials who seized it, and both main “national” film projects were afraid to release them – it means that cinema matters.
To have an end means to have a future.
Main events of the year:
1. The main event was absence. At the end of 2021, we can say for sure that the protests and repressions in Belarus, although they caused some increase in interest in our country in the international media (and, as a result, at festivals), activist, engaged cinema, the creators of which would try to directly take part in what is happening around them did not appear. Not a single film, not a single director or partisan group of authors. Either the cinema itself is not keeping up with the current communities, yielding to the “new media”, or it is here that it has not acquired a critical mass in order to give rise to autonomous activity. The adage “there is no Belarusian cinema” stuck in my teeth is so annoying precisely because over and over again it turns out, albeit not completely, but partly true. Films, however, were at foreign festivals.Nikita Lavretsky – “Liberation” . Despite all the street scenes and the fact that the film “Nikita”, even occasionally remaining alone, looks at the world around it through a computer screen, the film itself is rather inwarda person living in troubled times. Awkward jokes about taking your own brother to the woods to the historical place of executions, nervous cries of “listen to me” and a predictable ending – perhaps the most accurate hit on the nerve of Minsk in 2021. Winter is in the yard, activism is paused or moved abroad, where the emigrated Belarusian mounts her old fears and hopes with shots of pacified cats (“Dear Revolution” by Tasha Orlova). The cat is always pleased with himself and always strives to improve the quality of life. So the philosopher John Gray believes that we’d better be like cats.
5. The Refurbished Truck (Le camion, 1977) by Marguerite Duras (Gaumont, 2021) and her film book, recently translated into English, The Darkroom (Contra Mundum Press, 2020).
12. “Shock Wave 2” (Chai dan zhuan jia 2), Herman Yau, Hong Kong, China, 2020
13. “Shalom, daddy!” (Shiva Baby), Emma Seligman, 2020
Returned cinema (online retrospectives, restoration and digitization of selected films):
Pirate torrent trackers remain the most extensive, convenient and publicly available movie archives, but traditional cinematics, funds, streaming services (and not only specialized ones like Mubi, but also giants like Netflix and Amazon), rental companies, as well as individual enthusiasts also store, digitize and show movies. Let not a single film be lost, even if only one person needs it.
1. “ A Season of Classic Films” of the Association of European Cinematheques, which included not so much obvious “classics” as films like the wonderful “Maria do Mar” (1930) by Jose Leitana de Barros.
2. A large-scale project of the Polish Film Institute, which has restored many Polish films and several thousand newsreels, from 1945 to 1994, and made them publicly available with English subtitles.
3. Retrospective Anthology Film Archives, among which the most noteworthy was “Anthology Baltic modernist film» (Baltic Modernist Cinema Anthology).
4. Retrospective of John Jost, hosted by the Munich Film Museum.
6. The Potato Eaters Collective YouTube channel , where enthusiasts post the rarities of Indian cinema.
7. YouTube-channel Modern Chinese Cultural Studies , where the historian of Chinese cinema Christopher Rea shares little-known Chinese films, as well as videos dedicated to them. He also recently published an excellent book, Chinese Film Classics, 1922-1949 (Columbia University Press, 2021).
8. Online program “Vidkritiy archiv”, conducted by the Dovzhenko Center.
1. “Alice in Wonderland” (Ali au pays des merveilles), Juhra Abuda, Alain Bonnami, France, 1976 (Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2021)
2. “Thunderbolt”, Joseph von Sternberg, USA, 1929 (Kino Lorber, 2021)
[1] Translated by Maxim Karpitsky based on the publication: Duras, Marguerite, Ifland, Alta, Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Darkroom. – Contra Mundum Press, 2021 .– P. 54
The lines quoted are the full text of the First Application for the film Truck ( Le Camion , 1977), a sketch of the idea for a future film. [Back]
Welcome to the 99th and final podcast from THE SCREEN’S MARGINS of the year! What a year it’s been, and what better way to round out 2021 than by…okay there’s nothing special, it’s just B Peterson and Witney Seibold talking good film that’s available on Ovid.tv, aka the premise of OLL OBOUT OVID! We talk Alain Renais’ 1956 tribute to libraries, Madeline Anderson’s documentation of Civil Rights activism and activists, Lynne Sachs’ experimental explorations of history, language and the documentary form itself, Jill Li’s chronicling of a democratic movement in Southern China, and more besides! We hope you enjoy, and thank you for your time.
Agitate is group show that spotlights leading voices in contemporary avant-garde film and video – a collection of multidisciplinary artists whose work grapples with and transcends the nihilism at the core of white patriarchy, cinematic expression, and the mediated reality that dominant cultures spawn.
AGITATE ESSENTIAL CINEMA: LEADERS IN AVANT-GARDE FILM + VIDEO
Agitate Essential Cinema Volume 1 screens in-person at Chicago Filmmakers on Saturday, December 18th at 7:00pm!
Agitate Essential Cinema Volume 1 includes the work of Nazlı Dinçel, Karissa Hahn, Sylvia Toy St. Louis, Lynne Sachs, Morrison Gong, Gisela Guzmán, Kelly Gallagher, J.E. Sharpe, Xiaoer Liu, Anu Valia and Sara Suarez. These artists, in concert, express resistance and exuberance in equal measure, each using unique dimensions of cinematic space, ranging from abstract-material to narrative approaches, presenting a collage of phenomenological records of identity and a rebuttal to the term: “Essential Cinema”.
Through this series, we are looking to create a new cinematic cannon that is not defined by white patriarchy but by the vast explorations on space and identity led prominently by those who do not identify as white and male. These are visions inherent to the avant-garde, especially in 2020.
Agitate is an all-inclusive international avant-garde that promotes artists of all types, all genders, and all races. It was founded by Xiaoer Liu, Gisela Guzmán, and M. Woods, but it has no leadership structure, and everyone has an equal voice. Anyone can be a leader in Agitate. This is Agitate’s first traveling screening series. It is a renegotiation of the term “Essential Cinema”.
Chicago Filmmakers Firehouse Cinema
In-person screenings are held at Chicago Filmmakers firehouse cinema located at 1326 W Hollywood Ave in the Edgewater neighborhood. Please be sure to arrive 15 minutes prior to showtime and be ready to present your order confirmation number for admission. Proof of full vaccination or a negative Covid-19 PCR test result is required to attend all screenings and events.
★ 12/26 ㊐ One-day limited screening!
Screening starts from 15:00
▼ Films (a total of four works / total of 58 minutes) Bent Time Vever (For Barbara) So Many Ideas Impossible To Do All A month of Single Frames (for Barbara Hammer)
[Requests and Notices] ★ Please be
sure to wear a mask inside the building.
▶ ︎Online tickets are on sale from 0:00 3 days before to 30 minutes before the screening!
* If the screening schedule is being adjusted, the above may not apply.
▮ Bent Time
USA / 1984/22 minutes
Director / Shoot / Edit: Barbara Hammer
Music: Pauline Oliveros
A work inspired by the remarks of scientists who advocated that light rays bend at the edge of the universe and that time also bends. Along with the meditative original score of electronic musician Pauline Oliveros, the scenery of Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico and the cityscape of Newyork, taken with a 9mm wide-angle lens, feels like time is distorted. Bring.
Ⓒ Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York
▮ Vever (For Barbara)
USA / 2019 / English / Color / Digital / 12 minutes
Director / Editing / Sound: Deborah Stratman
Shooting / Voice: Barbara Hammer
Text / Local Recording: Maya Deren Figure
: Sadaji Ito Music: Catherine Bournefeld, Sadaji Ito , George Hardau
Courtesy of: Pythagoras Film
A work created by Maya Deren and Barbara Hammer starting from their respective unfinished projects. A video of Hammer traveling on a motorcycle in Guatemala in 1975 is linked to a story about the rituals in Haiti that Delen met in the 1950s and his experience of failure. Three filmmakers of different generations explore the possibility of replacing the power structure of which they are part.
▮So Many Ideas Impossible To Do All
USA / 2019 / Color / Digital / 11 minutes Director / Edit :: Mark Street
Hammer, who was looking to create a work from the records of the correspondence between Jane Waudening (Brachage) and Barbara Hammer from 1973 to 1985, told the filmmaker Mark Street in 2018 that all the materials and “Jane”· A work produced by taking over the footage of “Brackage” (1974). Draws a complex friendship that connects Wodening and Hummer’s long distance.
▮ A Month Of Single Frames (For Barbara Hammer)
USA / 2019 / English / Color / Digital / 14 minutes Director: Lynne Sachs, Barbara Hammer Photo: Barbara Hammer Editing / Text (on-screen): Lynne Sachs 66th Overhausen Short Film Festival Grand Prix Winner
In 1998, Barbara Hammer kept a diary, recording various sounds and landscapes around him while staying in a seaside hut in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA, where neither electricity nor water was available. This work was created as a process of confronting one’s own death, entrusting all the records created at that time to the filmmaker Lin Sachs. Along with the eyes of observing the quietly buzzing colors and sounds of nature, thoughts about loneliness and aging emerge.
In the words of renowned film avant-gardist Hans Richter, essay films “’make problems, thoughts, and even ideas perceptible … they ‘render visible what is not visible.’” From Chris Marker and Agnes Varda to Travis Wilkerson and Trinh T. Minh-ha, filmmakers and artists have been using the genre of essay filmmaking to explore new modes of blending fact, fiction, and experience to capture essential truths. A constantly evolving and flexible form, essay films are used to document cultural and historical moments, evoke a feeling, unravel an auto-biography, and respond to critical social turning points with a challenging mix of traditional documentary conventions, personal nuance and experimental artistry.
Join UnionDocs and filmmaker Annie Berman to explore the practice of this shape-shifting genre as it stands today. Open to filmmakers, students, artists, scholars, and anyone else interested in the topic, this three-day intensive enables participants to explore new methodologies in crafting their own work in conversation with other makers.
Participants in this workshop will have the opportunity to engage with a wide variety of practitioners. Annie will begin the workshop, using as a jumping-off point her film, The Faithful, which will screen as a public, kick-off event the night prior. She will then be joined in conversation by Akosua Adoma Owusu, who will discuss her work in the essay film as it pertains to the construction of historical memory and cultural identity. On the second day, this particular discourse will be expanded by Dónal Foreman (The Image You Missed) and Suneil Sanzgiri (Letter from Your Far-Off Country), both of whom will discuss the sociohistorical, trans-Atlantic, and diasporic aspects of their respective practices. The weekend will then close out with essay film icons Lynn Sachs and Alan Berliner, who will ground participants in their longstanding, essayistic practices and provide food for thought regarding the evolution of the form up until now.
NOTE: This workshop will require in-person participation from all participants. Each participant must present proof of vaccination and a negative COVID test administered within 72 hours of the workshop’s start. Any and all questions, please reach out to grace@uniondocs.org.
https://thefilmstage.com/the-best-documentaries-of-2021/ The state of surveillance, intimate music celebrations, Helen Keller’s socialist ethos, refugee tales, examining the scars of abuse in the Catholic Church, and living a life solely through cinema—just a few of the subjects and stories this year’s documentaries brought us. With 2021 wrapping up, we’ve selected 16 features in the field that left us most impressed.
All Light, Everywhere (Theo Anthony) Attica (Stanley Nelson and Traci Curry) The Beatles: Get Back (Peter Jackson) Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito)Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir)Film About a Father Who (Lynne Sachs)Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen)Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream (Frank Beauvais)No Ordinary Man (Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt)Procession (Robert Greene)Sabaya (Hogir Hirori)Summer of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (Amir “Questlove” Thompson)The Witches of the Orient (Julien Faraut)The Two Sights (Joshua Bonnetta)The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes) The Viewing Booth (Ra’anan Alexandrowicz)
Ela Bittencourt Anne at 13,000 ft Attica Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn Beginning El Planeta Faya Dayi Film About a Father Who France Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream Mother, I Am Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You. Saint Maud The Power of the Dog The Viewing Booth What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
Mackenzie Lukenbill (Film Comment)
El Planeta
Slow Machine
The Souvenir Part II
Bergman Island
North By Current
Test Pattern
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Film About a Father Who
Undine
The Velvet Underground
Ema
The American Sector
Paris Calligrammes
Chris Shields
Annette
Nina Wu
Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue
Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts
About Endlessness
Film About a Father Who
Beginning
Raging Fire
Screen Slate Best Movies of 2021: First Viewings & Discoveries and Individual Ballots
The Inheritance Pig Whirlybird I Blame Society So Late So Soon Annette The Card Counter Film About a Father Who The American Sector Delphine’s Prayers
NELLIE KILLIAN These are my 30 best watches of 2021: new, new to me, and rewatches.
Back Street (Stahl) 1932 Trade Tattoo (Lye) 1937 5th Ave Girl (La Cava) 1939 The Ox-Bow Incident (Wellman) 1943 The House on Telegraph Hill (Wise) 1951 The Revolt of Mamie Stover (Walsh) 1956 One Hundred and One Dalmatians (Luske & Reitherman) 1961 Charulata (Ray) 1964 The Pumpkin Eater (Clayton) 1964 Petulia (Lester) 1968 Indecent Desires (Wishman) 1968 Top of the Heap (St. John) 1972 The United States of American (Gordon & Benning) 1975 Night of the Hunted (Rollin) 1980 Shoot the Moon (Parker) 1982 The Stuff (Cohen) 1985 That’s Life (Edwards) 1986 Faceless (Franco) 1987 White Hunter Black Heart (Eastwood) 1990 Deep Blues (Mugge) 1992 Cabin Boy (Resnick) 1994 Secrets & Lies (Leigh) 1996 Honey Moccasin (Niro) 1998 The Gates (Maysles) 2007 Project X (Nourizadeh) 2012 Subject to Review (Anthony) 2019 Patrick (Fowler) 2020 Film About a Father Who (Sachs) 2020 Dear Chantal (Pereda) 2021 What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Koberidze) 2021
CHRIS SHIELDS 1. Annette 2. Nina Wu 3. Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue 4. Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts 5. About Endlessness 6. Film About a Father Who 7. Beginning 8. Raging Fire
Seventh Row: Best Documentaries of 2021 & Best Films of 2021 Lists
Best Docs We spent a large part of 2021 writing an ebook called Subjective realities: The art of creative nonfiction. Seventh Row as a publication has always been interested in nonfiction cinema, but it wasn’t until Subjective realities that we realised just how much vital work is being done right now in the documentary landscape.
You’ll see on this list films like Still Processing, Procession, and North by Current, that question how filmmaking can be a tool to help people process grief and trauma. You’ll find films like No Ordinary Man and John Ware Reclaimed, which use documentary as a way to reclaim historical narratives about marginalised people. There’s films on this list that interrogate family bonds, colonialism, and immigration, all in innovative and deeply empathetic ways. They prove that there’s no greater tool than nonfiction to question how stories are told, and to tell new ones.
Best Films On today’s Seventh Row Podcast episode on the best films of 2021, we concluded that it’s been an exceptional year for cinema, so much so that even our top ten couldn’t hold all the films we thought were enduringly special. What’s also striking is that, to find the incredible films that populate our top thirty of the year, we had to look outside of the USA, even though that’s the country that usually dominates awards and trade publications’ lists. Our list only features three American films, all of them documentaries, compared to last year’s ten.
5. Film About a Father Who feels like a culmination of a career of family-focused work; it’s ambitious, attempting to take in the whole scope of Ira Sachs Sr.’s life. In non-chronological fragments, through footage spanning from the present day back to 1965, Sachs seeks to understand the complicated, unknowable figure of her father. In the end, the film doesn’t aim to be a comprehensive character study of Ira Sachs Sr.; Sachs realises that she has only so much access to her father’s mind, especially now that his declining health means that he can’t speak that much. Instead, she works with what she does have: access to herself, and to an extent, her siblings, to examine the bruises that a father leaves on his children, and how they attempt to heal.” Read the full profile.
Doc Corner: The 25 Best Documentaries of 2021 (and where to see them)
Dear readers, I watch a lot of movies. Then again, what else was I supposed to do throughout yet another pandemic year with city-wide lockdowns and curfews? Which is why it was no real struggle at all to think of enough titles to make this list of the 25 best documentaries of 2021. Nor why I do not consider it the least bit excessive. Movies are great, so let’s celebrate them!
23. FILM ABOUT A FATHER WHO, Lynne Sachs From my review: It’s a deeply personal work of biography (via autobiography), of course. … Sachs, in fact, builds her own cinematic grammar to help construct an understanding of her father, reckoning with the mistakes that lead to where they all are in 2020. [Where to see it: Streaming on the Criterion Channel]
The state of surveillance, intimate music celebrations, Helen Keller’s socialist ethos, refugee tales, examining the scars of abuse in the Catholic Church, and living a life solely through cinema—just a few of the subjects and stories this year’s documentaries brought us. With 2021 wrapping up, we’ve selected 16 features in the field that left us most impressed. If you’re looking for where to stream them, check out our handy guide here.
All Light, Everywhere (Theo Anthony) Seemingly birthed from some kind of virtuosic computer algorithm or beamed directly from outer space, Theo Anthony’s debut feature Rat Film was a peculiarly engaging, wholly fascinating documentary. Using the population of rats to chart the history of classism and systemic racism throughout Baltimore over decades, it heralded an original new voice in nonfiction filmmaking. When it comes to his follow-up All Light, Everywhere, Anthony casts a wider focus while still retaining the same unique vision as he explores how technological breakthroughs (and pitfalls) in filmmaking have reverberated throughout history to both embolden and trick our perceptions of perspective. To thread these strands and see its modern-day effects, the majority of the film looks at the engineering behind police body cameras, and the extensive use of those devices and other surveillance equipment to support officers in cases where evidence might otherwise come down to only verbal testimonies. – Jordan R. (full review)
Attica (Stanley Nelson and Traci Curry) There’s a moment towards the end of Stanley Nelson and Traci Curry’s documentary Attica where a white state trooper is seen putting his fist in the air while screaming, “That’s White Power!” The other men around him smile and cheer because they’ve scored a victory for white men in blue. They’ve just taken back the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility after a five-day stand-off where about 1,200 inmates rebelled and took 42 staff members hostage to negotiate prison reform. And they did it, in their own words, with “White Power.” How is “White Power” defined? Well, as the footage and first-hand accounts reveal, it means knowingly picking off unarmed Black and Brown men with high-powered artillery after saying they wouldn’t be hurt. “White Power” is white supremacy. And cowardice. – Jared M. (full review)
The Beatles: Get Back (Peter Jackson) Let’s not ignore the key flaws: the digital grading can run far more egregious than Smooth Ringo, at times flattening these historic images to resemble 480p YouTube content; whether it be victim of available material or poor contemporary instinct, some editing (especially in part one) tries to keep our attention when we’re really here for the minutiae; and even to this Beatles freak it’s a mite too long. And yet. You realize, no, you’ve really never seen Lennon and McCartney talking one-on-one, in private, about basic tasks of running their band, and while you saw that one piece of incredible footage in Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s Let It Be, that was 11 years ago on Google Video. (Let’s not even get into now-clear implications the 1970 film is something of a hit piece.) In full view of its seven-and-a-half hours, Peter Jackson’s documentary is nearly impossible to discount: it seeks a vision of genius at work and finds it in the struggle of friends about to come apart. – Nick N.
Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito) You may have known that Helen Keller was a comrade, a life-long socialist and member of the Industrial Workers of the World; in Her Socialist Smile, John Gianvito assembles Keller’s political addresses and writings into a portrait of a warrior for social justice and a passionate, insightful proselytizer of Marxist thought. She instigated a Braille translation of Bakunin and advocated for a general strike during the first Red Scare. Now, in a time of national self-criticism, when seemingly no American monument is safe from revisionism, Helen Keller emerges from Her Socialist Smile to appear even more inspiring, relevant, and righteous than in the official narrative—appears, perhaps, the only truly based person they teach you about in elementary school. – Mark A. (full review)
Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir) “Look how far God has brought us. We can only go where God guides us to. We are exactly where God wants us to be.” These are the first words spoken in Jessica Beshir’s ruminative and ravishing feature debut Faya Dayi, and it establishes a conversational dialogue with a higher realm that carries through the rest of this graceful, ethereal journey through Ethiopia. Specifically exploring the trade of the khat leaf––a hallucinatory plant used by Sufi Muslims for religious meditation but has now become Ethiopia’s most lucrative cash crop––Beshir deeply immerses the viewer into daily work, spiritual ponderings, and questions of life’s purpose. At times recalling Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s striking black-and-white debut Mysterious Object at Noon and the vivid chiaroscuro work of Pedro Costa, Faya Dayi shares a similar approach to mixing documentary and narrative elements to form a transportive ethnographic survey. – Jordan R. (full review)
Film About a Father Who (Lynne Sachs) While director Lynne Sachs admits her latest documentary Film About a Father Who could be superficially construed as a portrait (the title alludes to and the content revolves around her father Ira), she labels it a reckoning instead. With thirty-five years of footage shot across varied formats and devices to cull through and piece together, the result becomes less about providing a clear picture of who this man is and more about understanding the cost of his actions. Whether it began that way or not, however, it surely didn’t take long to realize how deep a drop the rabbit hole of his life would prove. Sachs jumped in to discover truths surrounding her childhood only to fall through numerous false bottoms that revealed truths she couldn’t even imagine. – Jared M. (full review)
Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen) There have, of course, been a great many animated films about deeply serious subjects, many in recent years—Persepolis to Anomalisa to Waltz With Bashir. Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee can now comfortably fit on this shelf of profoundly affecting films. Indeed, this 2021 Sundance Film Festival premiere ranks as one of the most uniquely memorable animated films of the last decade. It is remarkably successful as a study of the refugee experience, as a coming-of-age drama set against a backdrop of fear and danger, and as a tribute to one individual’s ability to survive and even flourish. – Chris S. (full review)
Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream (Frank Beauvais) After watching over 400 films in the span of just four months, director Frank Beauvais reflects on his life and what led to this cinematic hibernation in Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream, an impressive, rapidly edited, deeply personal cinematic essay. Created solely from clips of the films he watched, it’s far from the kind of video essays that dominate YouTube, rather selecting the briefest of moments, and usually the least-recognizable of shots, to craft self-exploration of a reflective, questioning mind. – Jordan R.
No Ordinary Man (Aisling Chin-Yee and Chase Joynt) In 1998, Dianne Middlebrook published Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton, and the narrative around Billy Tipton’s life was warped. The truth was that Tipton, a successful jazz musician who lived from 1914 to 1989, was a transgender man who lived most of his life pretending to be a cisgender man. When he died, medical examinations revealed that Tipton had been assigned female at birth, which was news to Tipton’s ex-partner Kitty Kelly and their three adopted children. A media circus ensued that presented Tipton as a woman who posed as a man to get ahead in a sexist music industry. Middlebrook’s biography perpetuated that false narrative. – Orla S. (full review)
Procession (Robert Greene) It begins with a press conference wherein Michael Sandridge, Tom Viviano, and Mike Foreman—all survivors of abuse—discuss how the Catholic Church in Kansas allowed priests to groom and assault them. It’s an obviously tense scene, in large part because of how the Church has engaged in a coordinated cover-up spanning decades, moving pedophiles around to deflect and confuse while simultaneously expanding the number of their victims. Foreman is justifiably enraged as he incredulously scoffs at the fact that the establishment has propped itself upon the salvation of statutes of limitations rather than the empathetic, Christian principles dictated via confession. Those in power would rather hide and lie than admit their complicity while sanctimoniously asking us to believe they’re God’s chosen few. – Jared M. (full review)
Sabaya (Hogir Hirori) Tense and gripping, Hogir Hirori’s documentary Sabaya never positions itself as a thriller. There’s no need. Barring a few cards of scene-setting exposition, this vital dispatch embeds viewers with a rescue operation in the Middle East, and does so with a degree of first-person access that’s not just instantly bold: it’s nerve-janglingly scary. – Isaac F. (full review)
Summer of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (Amir “Questlove” Thompson) The biggest block party of 1969 took place over six weeks in central Harlem. Clustered together into the rocky confines of Mt. Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park), 300,000 people spent their summer grooving to a free outdoor concert series that featured some of the world’s best gospel, blues, and R&B singers alive. At the intersection of the country’s racial and social revolution, the “Harlem Cultural Festival” offered a cathartic and electric musical experience for those in attendance, combining song and spoken word that inspired and unified. It was also largely forgotten. Which makes Summer of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) both a documentary and a rectification of history. – Jake K. (full review)
The Witches of the Orient (Julien Faraut) Never doubt a documentary filmmaker’s propensity to eke out the narrowest of niches. We’ve had films on spelling bees and İstanbullu kitties, but the latest comes to us from Japan, via France, and the story of the unlikely heroes of the 1964 Japanese Women’s Olympic volleyball team––and their still less likely second act in the world of anime. The Witches of the Orient offers some flare to go with that intriguing duality: a stylish structure in which footage of the team’s greatest feats are intercut with corresponding animations from the TV shows they later inspired. – Rory O. (full review)
The Two Sights (Joshua Bonnetta) To quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail, for documentarian Joshua Bonnetta, the Scottish Outer Hebrides is something of a “very silly place.” This is not to denigrate the remote cluster of islands on Scotland’s northern tip, and its inhabitants––far from it. More that, when taken as a whole, Bonnetta has been able to uncover a vast cluster of eccentricity on these sparsely populated lands, where people can see, hear or intuit things others can’t, and then tell of it gladly. Empirical science would question this, of course, but Bonnetta’s interviewees seem to transcend that, and instead carry knowledge more common to the animist practices of early homo sapiens, or maybe another plane of human evolution altogether. To cite a timely cinematic reference point, the desired end-goal of the Bene Gesserit breeding project in Dune, is this ability to intuit the future––the cutting-edge of human evolution in author Frank Herbert’s computer-absent neo-feudal world. – David K. (full review)
The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes) If you told people in 1967 that Andy Warhol’s house band just released one of the most revered rock albums of all-time, they would ask what they’re called, and when you told them they would laugh. As far as the public was concerned, there were a hundred acts capable of that historical success in the ‘60s, and none were called the Velvet Underground (or Nico). To a certain extent they would be right. It would be another decade before the banana-adorned The Velvet Underground & Nico would have its pop cultural comeuppance and over half a century before the glam avant-garde group would receive definitive documentary treatment by one of the best living filmmakers. But as history and said doc have proven, we would have the last laugh in that exchange. – Luke H. (full review)
The Viewing Booth (Ra’anan Alexandrowicz) Reality has become an illusion. Look no further than Ra’anan Alexandrowicz’s latest documentary The Viewing Booth. He began it as an exercise to see how different people view the same non-fiction footage through their own personal lens of identity. He found seven students with an interest in Israel that were willing to be filmed while screening a selection of YouTube videos he hand-picked as representative of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians where it concerns the occupied territories. Twenty were uploaded by sources with obvious pro-Israeli military ties and twenty others were uploaded by organizations like B’Tselem in pursuit of documenting human rights violations taking place in Jerusalem. How would these co-eds react to each? How would they be impacted by the content? Could their positions be shifted? – Jared M. (full review)
“Thoughts on Making Films with Barbara Hammer” by Lynne Sachs Published in Camera Obscura, Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies Duke University Press Volume 36, Number 3 (108) Dec. 2021
Abstract This personal essay articulates filmmaker Lynne Sachs’s experiences working with experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer. Sachs conveys the journey of her relationship with Hammer when they were both artists living in San Francisco in the late 1980s and 1990s and then later in New York City. Sachs initially discusses her experiences making Carolee, Barbara and Gunvor (US, 2018), which includes Hammer, the conceptual and performance artist Carolee Schneemann, and the experimental filmmaker Gunvor Nelson. She then discusses her 2019 film, A Month of Single Frames, which uses material from Hammer’s 1998 artist residency in a Cape Cod shack without running water or electricity. While there, she shot film, recorded sounds, and kept a journal. In 2018, Hammer began her process of dying by revisiting her personal archive. She gave all of her images, sounds, and writing from the residency to Sachs and invited her to make a film with the material. Through her own filmmaking, Sachs explores Hammer’s experience of solitude. She places text on the screen as a way to be in dialogue with both Hammer and her audience. This essay provides context for the intentions and challenges that grew out of both of these film collaborations.
Barbara Hammer and I met in 1987 at a time when the Bay Area was affordable enough to become a mecca for alternative, underground, experimental filmmaking. She taught me the fine, solitary craft of optical printing during a weekend workshop, thus beginning a friendship that eventually followed us across the country to New York City. We were able to see each other often during the last few years of her life. Between 2015 to 2017, Barbara agreed to be part of the making of my short experimental documentary Carolee, Barbara and Gunvor (2018) a three-part film that includes Carolee Schneemann and Gunvor Nelson. I met all three women in the late 80s and early 90s in the San Francisco experimental film community and kept in close touch with each of them, both in person and through virtual correspondences, for many years. All three were renowned artists and beloved friends, just a generation older than I, who had embraced the moving image throughout their lives. From Carolee’s 18th Century house in the woods of Upstate New York to Gunvor’s village in Sweden to Barbara’s West Village studio, I shot film with each woman in the place where she found grounding and spark.
Barbara believed that I would see her at her best on a Tuesday, the day of the week in which she would be most energetic after her chemotherapy treatments. That afternoon, I “directed” Barbara to run along a fence as fast as she could toward the camera, without realizing that I had calibrated the f/stops on my camera to reveal the shadow from the fence across her body, creating a fabulous series of stripes in the resulting image. I returned to Barbara’s studio during another chemo period. As we stood together holding our cameras, I thought about her films Sanctus (1990) and Vital Signs (1991), which she was making when we first met in San Francisco. In Barbara’s prescient words, these films “make the invisible, visible, revealing the skeletal structure of the human body as it protects the hidden fragility of interior organ systems.” (Barbara Hammer, Electronic Arts Intermix, description of 16mm film, 1990). That afternoon in her studio, Barbara picked up one heavy 16mm camera after another. She then proceeded to dance with her furniture, embracing that robust physicality so many of us associate with her performative work. In this, my first collaboration with Barbara, I had the chance to photograph her trademark interactions with absolutely any objects she could get her hands on. For both of us, these moments of creative intimacy became the gift we somehow expected from our open, porous artmaking practice. We both wanted more, and by 2018 Barbara had figured out the way to make it happen.
Barbara asked me to come to her home to discuss something she needed to say in person. I immediately faced a complicated set of emotions. This was around the time she gave the talk “The Art of Dying or (Palliative Art Making in the Age of Anxiety)” at the Whitney Museum. Inspired by Rainer Marie Rilke’s book Letters to a Young Poet, she ruminated on the experiences of living with advanced cancer while making art. In her performative lecture, she shared examples from her art-making practice and deeply considered, lucid thoughts on her experience of dying. I knew that this tête-à-tête would involve some kind of good-bye, but I had no idea that she had decided to share a part of her personal archive, and thus a part of her being on this earth, with me. Filmmaking, in the tradition that Barbara and I have espoused for most of our lives as experimental makers, involves a deeply focused solitary period of introspection. A complementary aspect of our practice, however, calls for playful, engaged exchanges with all of the people in the film — both in front and behind the camera. Fundamental to Barbara’s sense of herself as an artist was her commitment to deep and lasting intellectual engagement with her fellow artists in the field, particularly other women who were also trying to find an aesthetic language that could speak about the issues that meant so much to us. By asking me to work with her, alongside her but not “for” her, Barbara, a feminist filmmaker, was actually creating an entirely new vision of the artist’s legacy.
As I sat at her side in the apartment she shared with her life partner Florrie Burke, she explained to me that she had obtained funding from the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio for this endeavor. There was money and post-production support for her to invite three other filmmakers (Deborah Stratman, Mark Street, and Dan Veltri) to complete films from her archive of unfinished projects. Barbara vividly described to me her 1998 artist residency in Provincetown, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
For one month, she lived and made her art in a shack without running water or electricity. While in her Dune Shack, as it is still called, she shot 16mm film with her Beaulieu camera, made field recordings, and kept a journal. Barbara’s only instructions to me were very simple: “Do absolutely whatever you want with this material.”
Knowing her work as I did, it was not surprising to me that she was able to face her imminent death in this open, intimate, transparent, and sensual way. From Sanctus and Vital Signs — both of which excavated her own shock and sadness in the face of the AIDS epidemic — to Evidentiary Bodies (2018), which confronted and embraced her own cancer, Barbara developed a precise visual aesthetic that traced her own relationship to her end. Whether she was using her phenomenal optical printing and matting techniques in the studio or performing for the camera, she found an astonishingly inventive cinematic language to explore the resonances of both disease and death. It was with Evidentiary Bodies, her final work that was at the core of her Whitney talk, that she so eloquently witnessed her departure.
About that film, Barbara wrote of herself in the third person:
“The work is experienced and perceived through the performer’s body as we breathe together remembering that cancer is not a ‘battle,’ cancer is a disease. There are aberrant cells not ‘deadly foes.’ She is not ‘combative’ and ‘brave,’ she is living with cancer. She is not going to win or lose her ‘battle.’ She is not a ‘survivor,’ she is living with cancer. There is not a ‘war’ on cancer; there is concentrated research.”
Barbara always had an uncanny ability to understand herself from the inside out and from the outside in. Her films were visceral and personal. They were also exhilaratingly political. As I read through Barbara’s Dune Shack journal, I noticed that she referred to herself in the first and the third person, moving between from the I to the she.
“This morning I began the film. I didn’t shoot it. I saw it. The dark triangular shadow of the shack out the west end window of the upstairs bedroom would shrink and disappear as I sat sweating, single-framing second by second.”
“She had turned 60 today. She was almost the age her mother was when she died, regretful of not living her dreams and desires out into an old age. How resentful she would feel were she to die three years from today. Die without having had her pet dog, her country home, her long lazy days gardening and walking in the yard. Die without knowing the outcome of her partner’s work. The sadness of departure. The inevitable ending of breath and blood coursing. The complete and thorough blankness. “Is this why we make busy,” she wondered, “so that we won’t have time or space to contemplate the heart wrenching end to this expanse called life?”
While writing the text for my own film, the words I placed on the screen came to me in a dream the day I was to begin my final edit at the Wexner Center. By this time Barbara had died. I quickly realized that this kind of oneiric encounter could become a posthumous continuation of the dialogue I had started with Barbara the year before, during the making of Carolee, Barbara, and Gunvor. Since I would never again be able to speak to her about her life or the ontological nature of cinema or the textures of a sand dune, I would converse with her through A Month of Single Frames, the title I chose for my 14-minute film.
Through my writing, I tried to address Barbara’s celebration of solitude and cinematic embodiment. Ultimately, my text on the screen over Barbara’s images functions as a search for a cinematic experience that brings us all together in multiple spaces at once. It is also an embrace of an ambiguous second person you who might be Barbara herself or might be anyone watching the film.
This is how I see you.
This is how you see yourself. You are here.
I am here with you.
This place is still this place.
This place is no longer this place. It must be different.
You are alone.
I am here with you in this film. There are others here with us. We are all together.
Time less yours mine
Barbara’s imprint on my own filmmaking practice is profound. I observed in her work a conscious physical relationship to the camera. For the most part, she shot her own films and in turn found her own distinct visual language for talking about women’s lives, liberation, love, struggle, awareness, and consciousness. Discovering Barbara’s films released something in my own camerawork; my images became more self-aware, and more performative. Thinking about Barbara’s radical, improvisational and totally physical cinematography continues to push me to dive deeply and fully into my body as I am shooting.
In Carolee, Barbara and Gunvor, I brought Barbara together on screen with two other pioneers of the American avant-garde. In an email, she wrote these words to me after seeing the film for the first time: “Hi Lynne, I had a chance to watch your lovely film! I was surprised at how energetically I performed for your camera. I’m honored to be grouped with such strong and remarkable filmmakers. Love, Barbara.” As aware of each other as they were of themselves, the film’s two other subjects also acknowledged her.
Carolee, who sadly died shortly before Barbara, wrote: “I loved seeing Barbara with those old Bolex cameras,” and Gunvor commented on how “Barbara moves so fast and vigorously as she walks toward the camera!”
These two films are my gifts to these women and to our shared audiences. Carolee, Barbara and Gunvor and A Month of Single Frames together attempt to reveal the great mind-body weave of Barbara Hammer’s life: her commitment to cinematic embodiment, her openness about dying, and her deeply held desire to find common space for women of all generations.
