October 1, 2010

Come Drink With Me (King Hu, 1966)

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 Tree of Life, or how to fail at the impossible

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

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese, 1974)

It was a pleasant surprise to see Alice doesn’t live here anymore. Is it a feminist film? Can a male filmmaker look at a woman through a female perspective?
March 22, 2010

Macunaïma (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, 1969)

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 […]
October 1, 2010

What is independent cinema?

What is independent cinema? Critics and film scholars have wrestled with a definition of independent for most of cinema’s existence.