Rossellni never looks away. He never flinches. But he never misses an opportunity to celebrate what’s good in humanity either.
Rossellini’s War Trilogy
American Mythologies: Frank Capra Values
“The art of Frank Capra is very, very simple: It’s the love of people. Add two simple ideals to this love of people: the freedom of each individual, and the equal importance of each individual, and you have the principle upon which I based all my films.”
He Who Strikes First, Hits Twice: The Urgent Cinema of Santiago Álvarez
“Álvarez’s work … was a shining example of a poverty row aesthetic forged from necessity. His films were … an example of “urgent cinema”, keyed to raising public consciousness about current issues such as racism, housing conditions and police brutality in various parts of the world.”
Mind Your Manners: I Am Cuba
“As a form of resistance to the unblinking long take, Maria smashes her eyelids tightly shut, inhabiting her own privacy for the first time that night.”
Bang Bang: Saute ma ville
A wonderful essay on Chantal Ackerman’s first film Saute ma ville by film critic Adrian Martin.
L’opéra-Mouffe by Agnes Varda
The film is like a poem of a dream, composed in movements, and alternating between scenes of blissful young lovers naked in bed, surreal and frightening images that serve as worrying metaphors for pregnancy, and documentary footage of people on the Rue Mouffetard. In 17 minutes the film covers the cycle of life — childhood, youth, old age, infirmity, death — but in not in any logical order, rather in the bewildering way that life moves or that we move through life.
Portrait of a Woman Lost: Barbara Loden’s Wanda
Penny Folger examines Barbara Loden’s sad and beautiful film Wanda, an often-overlooked landmark in American cinema.
Spirit of the Beehive: Surviving Tyrannies
“The night is the time when the order of the day loses its grip, the time when spirits come out. Ana calls the Spirit again, repeating her name: ‘Soy Ana’, and we hear the sound of the train as if the Spirit has responded.” A beautiful essay by Magda Mariamidze
Teeming Life: Killer of Sheep
“Burnett’s cinematic poetry arises from the hundred small “sensory-motor disconnections” of every damn day, gaps and dislocations from which a sad but resilient emotion flows.”
Female
Some thoughts on Female, a pre-code film starring Ruth Chatterton.
magpiesmagazine.com 