John Smith is a London-based experimental filmmaker whose works include Hackney Marshes, Blight, Citadel, and The Girl Chewing Gum.
Keep ReadingPainting with John, How To with John Wilson, and All Gas No Brakes reinvent (documentary?) comedy.
Keep ReadingJessica Beshir’s lyrical Faya Dayi and Daniel Kötter’s formalist Rift Finfinnee, two oddly similar films set in an Ethiopia struggling with the upheavals of urbanization and industrialization, are almost excellent movies. Both
Keep ReadingFilm is always late. The sheer cost, technical expertise and logistical coordination needed to make a film, at least along the lines of the North American industrial model, are prohibitive to the
Keep ReadingWhen absence becomes presence, documentaries turn into art. How films like The Act of Killing and Bisbee '17 capture the void.
Keep ReadingState Funeral (Netherlands/Lithuania, 135 min.) Programme: Wavelengths According to a survey done earlier this year by the Russian polling firm Levada, 70% of Russians are of the opinion that Josef Stalin’s rule
Keep ReadingCunningham (US/France/Germany, 93 min) Dir. Alla Kovgan Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere) Two-thirds of Cunningham consists of exquisite dancing choreographed by the iconic American choreographer Merce Cunningham, taking place on sets by the likes of Robert
Keep ReadingCitizen K (USA, 125 min) Dir. Alex Gibney Programme: TIFF Docs (World Premiere) Alex Gibney is a master of the well-made doc. It’s hard to find fault in his films. Everything is in its
Keep ReadingIncitement (Israel, 123 min) Dir. Yaron Zilberman Programme: Contemporary World Cinema (World Premiere) The 1995 assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by far-right Jewish law student Yigal Amir derailed the Israel–Palestine
Keep Reading“Given my job,” writes MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in a review of Michiko Kakutani’s new book about the Trump era, The Death of Truth, “I am forced to ask myself every day: Is it possible to
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