Clouzot’s L’Enfer and the importance of taking risks by Daniel Fawcett

09.03.10
L'Enfer - George Henri Clouzot In 1964, director Georges Henri Clouzot was given an unlimited budget and complete creative freedom to make L’Enfer. He was fifty-seven years old and had made many successful films. What does a director in such a privileged position do? A more commercially minded person, a more sensible person, would have played it safe and made something to mirror past successes. But Clouzout ...
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When artists are put to purpose by Angela Kingston

25.02.10
Anisa Mayet by Charlotte Ginsborg The meaning, value and purpose of art cannot consciously be determined: these come as after-effects, and can only be understood once the artwork has been made. We learn all this as a habit of mind at art school, and it’s one aspect of our understanding of the term ‘independent’, as applied to artist-filmmakers. True artists’ films are self-initiated, and free from ...
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An exclamation: Sergei Paradjanov by Ajay Hothi

22.02.10
The Colour of Pomegranates, Sergei Paradjanov Paradjanov! Flamboyant non-conformist! Anarchic filmmaker; a thorn in the side and a spit in the face of Soviet Russia! Three times imprisoned, who spent five years in a labour camp! Who was lobbied on behalf of by Tarkovsky, Yves Saint Laurent, Francoise Sagan, Godard, Truffaut, Fellini, Bertolucci, Marcello Mastroianni, Antonioni and John Updike! Paradjanov’s Soviet Union is an exclamated sense of ...
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No Heroes Redux by Campbell

15.02.10
The Bressonian protagonist (Angus Brown in 'They Call Me...Don't Call Me...' - John Sealey 2006) Campbell considers the No Heroes film programme, selected for the Progress Report exhibition at Iniva. Iniva was founded with the ethos originating from the artistic and political initiatives of the ‘new internationalism’ and the Black Arts movement of the 1980s. Professor Stuart Hall, provided a blueprint for its remit which was to ...
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International Film Festival Rotterdam 2010

10.02.10
Wednesday Morning Two A.M. by Lewis Klahr Rotterdam: “audience..industry..with space for ideas and reflection” APEngine loves the inspirational International Film Festival Rotterdam. More than any other of the big film festivals, by a long chalk, it embraces the breadth of contemporary film practice, and it does so with consideration and in depth. Certainly, a lot of business goes on – Cinemart participants pitch all day in seclusion. But ...
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Helen De Witt on Sexploitation – Riding the Wild Pink Horse

27.01.10
The Immoral Mr. Teas (Poster), Russ Meyer A season of Sexploitation films for the BFI last year, curated by Julian Marsh III, brought tantalising new terms into the vocabulary of underground film fans – the ‘nudie-cutie’ and the ‘roughie’ being two. Both are the names given to two of the subgenres of Sexploitation, which is, of course, itself a subgenre of the Exploitation film, a form ...
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Thessaloniki Report by Rosemary Heather

13.01.10
Karpo Godina , I Miss Sonia Henie (1972) Rosemary Heather reports on Serbian Kino Clubs, Carmelo Bene, Timothy Carey, and Jeff Keen at the Experimental Forum at the 50th Thessaloniki International Film Festival. The Experimental Forum section at the 50th Thessaloniki International Film Festival offered such a rich viewing experience it is difficult to know where to begin when discussing it. The quality of the presentation was ...
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