The Czech surrealist filmmaker, Jan Švankmajer, has a preoccupation with morphing, distorted, incoherent bodies. In his stop motion films, he frequently works with everyday things like toys and clothes, imbuing them with lives that defy how we normally make sense of the world. This video essay looks at the dolls in his 1971 film, Jabberwocky (Žvahlav aneb… Read more »
I love cats! I especially love cats in movies, and I’m super excited to see the documentary Kedi (Ceyda Torun, 2016) at the IU Cinema this week. Kedi focuses on the free-roaming cats of Istanbul and how their lives intersect with human co-habitants (but not owners!). In anticipation of Kedi, I made a little video with some… Read more »
Born in Austria but raised in New York, director Josef von Sternberg is best known for a series of movies he made with Marlene Dietrich in the 1930s. Through films like Blonde Venus (1932) and Shanghai Express (1932), Sternberg established a reputation for glamour, but also for pretension. He added the “von” to his name for… Read more »
Since the earliest days of avant-garde cinema, experimental filmmakers have interrogated vision. They have defied or ignored norms of cinematography to create images that appear distorted, abstract, fantastical, or visually confusing. Historically, the reasons why individual filmmakers distort the image have been diverse. Some seek a “pure” cinema akin to classical music. Others feel… Read more »
Daisies (Sedmikrásky; Věra Chytilová, 1966) celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, somewhat older and wiser now than its unruly protagonists. And although the sociopolitical context of Daisies‘ audience has changed over the years, its themes continually resonate, and the film’s inventive style retains its vigor. In this video essay, I examine collage as an organizing… Read more »