Blog
ESSAYS
October 1, 2010
In its perspectives and traditions, African cinema draws the spectator into its narrative, nurturing a symbiotic relationship with life itself.
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
Wong Kar-Wai is considered influential. In the Mood for Love (2000) was a big commercial success for him. How does it compare to Wong Kar-Wai’s other work?
October 1, 2010
What is independent cinema? Critics and film scholars have wrestled with a definition of independent for most of cinema’s existence.
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 […]
October 1, 2010
The transatlantic slave trade was one of the most disruptive acts in history, separating Africans from their backgrounds, traditions, and identities. This has had a significant impact on diaspora films.
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
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
Hou Hsiao Hsien’s depiction of life in Flowers of ShanghaÏ explores the inherent contradictions in the era’s Chinese society.
March 26, 2010
he City and the Dogs, based on the popular novel of the same name by Mario Vargas Llosa, is an allegory of power in South America.
June 3, 2011
“Most critics really don’t get it.”, as they say. I feel compelled to respond to the casual filmgoers who don't understand the critic’s perspective.
March 22, 2010
Knocks at my door explores the political instability that has plagued Latin-American countries and Third-world countries in general.
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