Whatever else one can say about the merits of experimental film, “it looks expensive” is typically not one of the usual citations. Malena Szlam’s Archipelago…
When Armand Yervant Tufenkian worked as a fire lookout in the forests of Central California, his protracted, expectant gazing into the distance made him wonder…
In Lee Anne Schmitt’s latest feature, Evidence, which premiered at the Berlinale earlier this year, the conspiracy theory adopts a progressive slant. With Schmitt’s characteristic…
Though plenty of movies have been made either focusing on the Covid-19 pandemic in a literal way, and even more movies had been converted into…
Matías Piñeiro is best known for loosely adapting Shakespearean texts via small-scaled, interpersonal dramas: Twelfth Night in Viola; Measure for Measure in Isabella; Love’s Labour’s…
Republics, as it were, are spaces of contradiction — the citizens’ collective supreme authority refracted through the figures of their representatives — whose political legitimacy…
You Burn Me Matías Piñeiro is best known for loosely adapting Shakespearean texts via small-scaled, interpersonal dramas: Twelfth Night in Viola; Measure for Measure in…
James Benning’s 2021 film The United States of America works through 50 landscapes, one from each state in alphabetical order, only to end its credits…
Dane Komljen’s previous film, Afterwater (2022), is a triptych exploring the boundaries of humanity’s relationship with gender and the environment. It begins with an observational…
Mixed media artist Zhou Tao’s new film, The Periphery of the Base, playing now at Cinéma du Réel and totalling just 53 minutes across a…
Kevin Jerome Everson sprays out films like a machine gunner, but he’s got a sniper’s aim. Marbled Golden Eyes, his latest documentary portrait about an…
Master French experimental filmmaker Jean-Claude Rousseau plays with pop music in Où sont tous mes amants?, a title borrowed from a 1935 tune that translates…
“The word ‘Gaza’ means ‘pride’” is a statement softly uttered by Piero Usberti, whose gaze will define our capacity to witness in his feature travelogue-cum-poetic…
Kimi Takesue’s third feature film is a fraught, respectably reflexive process in objectification. Utilizing the much ado of the tourism industry as our subject (through…
Jean-Claude Rousseau may be one of the best-kept secrets in world cinema. But fortunately, in recent years, the word seems to be getting out. Although…
Abbas Kiarostami’s 2008 film Shirin is constructed entirely of closeups of faces as spectators react to a film playing in front of them. But the…
Luke Fowler’s latest feature film reflects a slight shift in his creative project, something that might not be immediately apparent even to longtime admirers of…
Most of La Bonga takes place in darkness; just flashlights serve as key lights while voices (voiceovers? diegetic?) guide the shaky frame to an invisible…
While global headlines are presently dominated by Russia’s ongoing onslaught of imperialist atrocity, Alexander Abaturov’s Paradise turns its eye to the country’s east, where casual…
At times, Laberint Sequences, the new short film by Blake Williams, feels a bit like an experimental feature, despite being only 20 minutes long. That’s…
In her remarkable 2021 book on James Benning’s Ten Skies, critic and scholar Erika Balsom remarks that the film “at once rewards a close attention…