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EDITOR’S LETTER
Film Comment
Personal Hell • In Janicza Bravo’s hyper-vivid Zola, a woman joins an unpredictable new friend on a road trip into chaos and violence
Next Door • A cruise ship worker enters a portal to another world in the gently surreal Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine
Infinite Spirit • One of cinema’s primary colors, filmmaker Michael Snow remembers a rambunctious screening of a foundational work in New York
No Words • A pioneering Polish filmmaker brought Auschwitz to the screen within years of experiencing its horrors firsthand
Future Shock • In She Dies Tomorrow, writer-director Amy Seimetz orchestrates a small symphony of anxiety through uncanny contagion horror
Observe and Report • Ra’anan Alexandrowicz’s The Viewing Booth holds up a mirror to the insidious spiral of bad faith in a media-saturated age
Mother Tongue • In English Vinglish, Sridevi brought a career’s worth of razor-sharp instinct to one of her final roles, as a resurgent housewife
An Innocent Abroad • Pierre Léon’s 2008 adaptation of The Idiot captures its journey through societal hypocrisy in shrewd, efficient miniature
See What I Mean? • The subtitler for Bong Joon Ho and Hong Sangsoo talks about the nuances of on-screen translation and working with filmmakers
CURRENTS • New and important work plucked from festivals and elsewhere
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? • WITH THE MIRACULOUS ABOUT ENDLESSNESS, THE LIVING PICTURES OF ROY ANDERSSON HEAVE A MELANCHOLY SIGH OVER THE HUMAN CONDITION
A LIVING NIGHTMARE • THE HORRORS OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA RETURN IN ANTEBELLUM, AN AUDACIOUS THRILLER THAT REVIVES THORNY QUESTIONS OF HOW TO PORTRAY THE PAST
INSIDE MAN • THE PANDEMIC SECLUSION CHANGES HOW EACH OF US IS TOUCHED BY MOVIES. NICK PINKERTON REACHES OUT
I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW • WITH NO THEATER TO STEP INTO, DEVIKA GIRISH REFLECTS ON THE OPTIONS FOR CONNECTING WITH OTHERS AND WITH CINEMA
ENTER THE VOID • CHRISTOPHER HARRIS’S URBAN LANDMARK STILL/HERE EXPRESSES THE FEELINGS OF ABSENCE IN RAVAGED ST. LOUIS NEIGHBORHOODS TO CREATE AN AFTERIMAGE OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY • A DAZZLING VOICE FOR AFRICA AND THE DIASPORA, FILMMAKER MED HONDO THREW DOWN FEARLESS, PRICKLY EXPERIMENTS THAT BANISH COLONIAL ROT
CAN DIALECTICS BREAK BRICKS? • COLOMBIAN FILMMAKER CAMILO RESTREPO’S DEBUT FEATURE LOS CONDUCTOS BURNS WHITE-HOT WITH THE MISTERIOSO STORY OF AN OUTLAW AT LARGE
THE ECSTATIC ART • Philip Shelton Sears (1867-1953), Stepping Stones, 1923. Bronze with green patina, 44 in. Estimate: $10/15,000
BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS • COLOMBIAN CLASS WARRIOR LUIS OSPINA BLAZED A REVOLUTIONARY TRAIL THROUGH LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA WITH SUBVERSIVE GENRE AND DOCUMENTARY WORKS
Crimes Against Humanity • The naturalism of the staging, the lived-in ache of the performances, and the surprising visual compositions and grace notes of Dodsworth mark an embarkation point for William Wyler that for anyone else would be a career summation.
Declaration of Independence • The “woman adrift” paradigm seems best expressed in Clayburgh’s graceful, almost balletic performance, a whirling dervish who looks lavishly beautiful one moment, and vomits in the street the next.
A New Old Master • New discs devoted to Alice Guy-Blaché’s work under the Gaumont and Solax banners establish her not simply as a pioneer, but as a first-rate filmmaker who put women at the center of her work and treated gender as a...
