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Continue reading →: YearningOstensibly a two-hander, but the movie feels like Naruse’s largest film in terms of scope (not just because it’s shot on TohoScope). The opening scene, following an advertising truck of the new supermarket in town, proposes an external force that complicates Naruse’s usual examination of society through an individual’s navigation…
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Continue reading →: Die My LoveImage: Courtesy of MUBI Usually, in a movie with a subject matter similar to this, the husband’s role is played with naturalism that serves as a hypocritical “voice of reason,” juxtaposed with the outward psychological torment of the leading female, thus making her the outsider to the film’s realism. But…
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Continue reading →: The BirdsThe connection with Psycho lies beyond the stuffed birds inside the Bates Motel. It’s also how the mommy issue becomes externalized not only with an actively tormented mother-figure in full flesh with strange psychological attachment with her son, but also through the malevolent attack of the birds that exacerbated the strange…
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Continue reading →: TIFF 50: LeversIn 2021, Rhayme Vermette’s debut feature Ste. Anne, a film about a woman’s (played by Vermette herself) return to her hometown in Manitoba, surprisingly won the Best Canadian Film Award at TIFF. I would call that a surprise, not because of its quality (which, let’s be honest, doesn’t usually have…
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Continue reading →: TIFF 50: The SeasonClose to the beginning of Maureen Fazendeiro’s solo debut feature (given that a feature is >45 minutes long), The Seasons, a wide shot tracks a man pushing a wheeled land surveying device. As one would expect the camera to continue following the man and his equipment, it instead continues panning…
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Continue reading →: TIFF 50: Miroirs No.3Christian Petzold is simply incapable of orchestrating an uninteresting shot/countershot, a cinematic tradition that relies on finding the balance between two opposing frames and somehow relating them to one another. Complementarily, he has also been one of the finest directors working today at capturing the act of seeing, which, in…
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Continue reading →: TIFF 50: MeadowlarksImage: Courtesy of TIFF Meadowlarks follows a group of long-separated siblings who, in attempting to reconnect and rediscover their familial roots, go on a trip to spend time with each other. The group consists of 3 sisters and 1 brother, with an additional brother refusing to join the retreat. The…
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Continue reading →: TIFF 50: Powwow PeopleImage: Courtesy of TIFF The visual plan of the long take can often be associated with a showcase of technical bravura, the imprimatur of a director’s “genius” that is inextricately linked to a “look at me” quality that points the frame back to the director themselves. What does a long…
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Continue reading →: TIFF 50 Review: With Hasan in GazaWhen the end credits begin rolling for With Hasan in Gaza, a film entirely made of footage taken during Kamal Aljafari’s visit to Gaza back in 2001 – a tour he carries no memory of until rediscovering the footage over two decades later – we see him giving himself the…
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Continue reading →: TIFF 50: Dry LeafImage: Courtesy of TIFF Chasing evanescence, on the search for someone, on the search for images, and a reunion through the realization that everything that you’re seeing has already been seen before, so basically, the realization of cinema itself. Dry Leaf, Alexandre Koberidze’s newest feature centring around a father’s effort…
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If we consider the overview of the world of cinema as a map, then the voyage to connect the scattered dots in between is what we’re invested in. Serge Daney once described voyage as ‘without luggage, totally self-sufficient in his dispossession’. Being a citizen of world cinema is to abandon the luggage of predefined cultural expectations and meet each film and each filmmaker on their own cinematographic terms. If you are down for this journey, please consider subscribing to this travelogue.
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