Category Archives: Directors

Georgina Hale in Ken Russell’s poetic “Mahler” [1974 UK]

Ken Russell had never been stranger to controversy, he revelled in catching critics and audience off guard. He confounded critics yet again during the peak of his notoriety by making one of his most restrained and poetic of films. Whether … Continue reading

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The film that announced the arrival of Chantal Akerman into the world of auteur cinema.

The 1975 Franco-Belgian film “Jeanne Dielman”, or “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” to be precise, saw a young lady of twenty five with little formal qualification in film introduce a totally new vocabulary into cinema. Chantal Anne … Continue reading

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Béatrice Dalle bewitches in Bellocchio’s “La Visione del Sabba” [1988 Italy]

The nineteen eighties saw several important film makers experimenting with narrative styles – mostly by infusing poetic license into them – and Marco Bellocchio was part of the bandwagon. Because of his propensity to mix reality with fantasy, some of … Continue reading

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Nihilism and anarchy in Nikos Nikolaidis’ “Glykia Symmoria” [1983 Greece]

Exploring Nikos Nikolaidis can be a bit of a challenge, because not only are his films not widely available – even the ones that are turn up without English subtitles, they’re also not properly remastered. One will have to use … Continue reading

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Bigas Luna critiques Spanish machismo in “Huevos de Oro” [1993 Spain]

Whether or not we like the early works of Catalan director Bigas Luna, one thing we have to give him credit for is his determination to never pussy-foot around what he’s trying to say. There is no polite-talk, no ‘birds … Continue reading

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