film festival review
Like the best house gathering, Once Upon a Time in Harlem evolves and shifts throughout the affair. Guests effortlessly veer from one subject to another—before you even realise you’re no longer listening to a conversation about one thing, you’re engrossed in another one altogether. Some of the
film festival review
There is a certain bit of magic that occurs with a film like Brydie O’Connor’s Barbara Forever. This is a biography, fairly standard in its conception, I suppose, that nonetheless takes on the form of an essential queer text much like the very works of its subject, Barbara
film festival review
Trading fire for ice, director Sara Dosa returns with a documentary that once again merges the personal with the natural. Here, she lays one family’s experiences of life across generations in Iceland with that of the melting glaciers that have come to define that country in these times of
film festival review
The plight of First Nations people across the globe is a sadly all too familiar. Colonialism is hardly original, and the way indigenous populations have suffered at the hand of those who sought to use them as human guinea pigs even after death has been seen in just about every
film festival review
I cannot say I was familiar with the work of Julius Eastman before I watched Joy Boy, a 60-minute art piece created by (who else?!?) a Belgian-Congolese troupe. Despite the number of involved people, the collective made up of Mawena Yehouessi, Fallon Mayanja, Rob Jacobs, Victoire Karera Kampire,
documentary review
Yes, that Thierry Frémaux. The Cannes Film Festival director’s second feature, Lumière, Le Cinéma! is a follow-up of sorts to his first, Lumière!, from 2016. Like that film, Frémaux, with his editor Jonathan Cayssials and Simon Gemelli, has assembled a collection of short films by Auguste and Louis
documentary review
The poster for Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) tell us “Billie Eilish and James Cameron reinvent the concert experience.” Look, I know Jim is not exactly wanting for ego, but I can’t help but feel like that’s a slight exaggeration. Although
film festival review
You know what? It’s great that there is a documentary for stoners and acid trippers. Non-fiction for all, I say! Depending on your wavelength, Josef Gatti’s Phenomena could play like going to science class after smoking a joint behind the gymnasium and being mesmerised by the swirling
Long-Form Retrospective Review
By the time that Alek Keshishian's Madonna: Truth or Dare was released in the United States on the 10th of May 1991, Madonna was approaching the end of what is considered her first near decades-long imperial phase. A period of all-consuming success, fame and artistic achievement.
documentary review
When I planned to sit down and write about Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s (fabulously titled by the way) Steal This Story, Please!, I didn’t expect to be thinking so heavily about The Devil Wears Prada 2. The comparison of Anne Hathaway’s fictional Andy Sachs to the
documentary review
To me, there are very few things that can be as evocative of an era as a documentary about the theatre from the 1970s or 1980s. Maybe starting with Original Cast Album: Company as the grand daddy of them all, the combination of those chilly Manhattan rehearsal spaces looking out
documentary review
We are told at the start of Juanjo Pereira's Under the Flags, the Sun (Bajo las banderas, el sol) that little footage remains of Alfredo Stroessner's near-35-year reign of autocratic rule over Paraguay. Choosing to primarily rely on that which hasn’t been destroyed