Rest in peace to the filmmaker who taught us how to see (and how to hear), who opened our eyes with his ferocious reconstruction of film form and with the emotional intensity of his images. Jean-Luc Godard’s cinema remains, above all, an attempt to restructure perception. His deeply sensual films seek to retrain our eyes… Read more »
Every month, Establishing Shot brings you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series reflects the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema and demonstrates the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked one film that they… Read more »
Guest post by Jon Vickers, IU Cinema Founding Director Emeritus. It is hard not to conjure thoughts of Francois Truffaut’s 1973 film Day for Night when first thinking about Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep from 1996. On the most obvious level, Assayas’ “circus-of-a-film-production” is led by aging director René Vidal, played expertly by Truffaut’s longtime alter-ego,… Read more »
Guest post by Caleb Allison. Even as Louis Malle’s taut crime thriller, Elevator to the Gallows (1958), descends to dark, fatalistic depths it simmers with a kinetic futurism that portends the mischievous talents of the French New Wave. Blending equal parts Hitchcockian thriller and methodical Bressonian precision, the 24-year-old Malle concocts a noirish thriller that… Read more »
For full transparency: I was sent this box set by Criterion for review. I’d like to think this hasn’t impacted my thoughts on this set, but I thought people should know before they read more. There are figures in art whose image, mannerisms, and reputation are as recognizable and notable as the art they create…. Read more »
In most discernible ways, the respective bodies of work of the long-married French Left Bank filmmakers Agnès Varda (1928-2019) and Jacques Demy (1931-1990) have remained quite distinct from one another. Unlike some other notable filmmaking couples (like Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, for instance), Varda and Demy rarely worked on each other’s films in any… Read more »