ESSAYS
October 1, 2010
In its perspectives and traditions, African cinema draws the spectator into its narrative, nurturing a symbiotic relationship with life itself.
March 22, 2010
One of the most interesting aspects of South-American cinema is its post-colonial perspective. Having lived myself and being raised in a Third-world country, I can identify and relate to the plight of South-American characters, living up to their (displaced) roots while fighting their imposed colonial heritage. I’ve seen firsthand the social stratification that the colonial rule instilled into the indigenous […]
March 22, 2010
Although separated by more than a decade, Funny Dirty Little War and Macunaïma both try to provoke social change by using satire.
October 1, 2010
In Come Drink With Me, King Hu considers each of the director’s tools, using camera movement differently than editing or the wide-screen space.
July 24, 2011
The world is whole beyond human knowing. -Wendell Berry The Tree of Life, by renowned director Terrence Malick, is years in the making. Its history starts even before Malick’s previous film, The New World, was distributed in 2005. After generating a substantial amount of ink in the media, and hot on the heels of the film’s highly publicized win of […]
March 22, 2010
What I found most interesting in The World Of Apu is how much the representation of India came so close to my vision of Haiti, my native country.
October 1, 2010
What is independent cinema? Critics and film scholars have wrestled with a definition of independent for most of cinema’s existence.
March 22, 2010
Argentina has one of the most impressive cinematography in the world. Within that cinema, Fernando E. Solanas is a director of seminal importance. In his essay, Towards a Third cinema, Solanas and his co-writer, Octavio Getino, galvanize the overall revolutionary ideas of the time into the concept of a decolonization cinema, denouncing the weak, liberal arts that have, up until […]
September 28, 2010
David Ehrenstein condemns melodramas like Coming Home for perpetuating the illusion that they can affect social change instead of creating real change.
September 28, 2010
Hou Hsiao Hsien’s depiction of life in Flowers of ShanghaÏ explores the inherent contradictions in the era’s Chinese society.
March 26, 2010
In Felicidades,several lives intersect on Christmas Eve in Buenos Aires as they all strive not to spend the holidays alone.
March 22, 2010
Knocks at my door explores the political instability that has plagued Latin-American countries and Third-world countries in general.