If you have never seen any of Marie Menken’s films, watch the three shorts included on the Icarus DVD release of Martina Kudlácek’s recent documentary about her kindly influence on the American avant-garde. These films will probably first strike you as overwrought, minor, or the practice footage of some film student with a Bolex. Glimpses […]
Dan Rhodes talks to Chris Rice about the catastrophic failures, flashes of redemption, and possibilities for hope in a world of pain and conflict.
But the initial dread I felt was that of the tourist, discomforted by an unexpected climate, a different way of negotiating crowds, or making it across town. The squat architecture of Moscow lends itself to a certain mythic eeriness in the winter months. As the film slowly moves towards Moscow, these milling groups of people Akerman are filming start to become denser and less interested in her tracking camera. The lines become longer even if the railway stations look grander.
The NFB has just released Animated Express, a wonderful set of animated shorts on DVD and Blu-ray that includes Chris Landreth’s recent The Spine. The production is similar to that of his innovative multi-media CGI classic Ryan, though now technology has advanced enough to render his harrowing psychological vision of our roiling mental innards in […]
A review of J. Kameron Carter’s recently published book, RACE: A THEOLOGICAL ACCOUNT.
On the strange tradition of Christmas movies.
In this interview, the poet Marilyn Nelson discusses the role of community in a writer’s life, especially the kind of community she aims to foster at Soul Mountain Retreat, a writers’ colony she founded.
The “District 9” that names this film is a township developed for space alien refugees: creatures nicknamed “prawns” because they look like huge sea shrimp with arms and legs. But in the word “prawns” we also hear “pawns”; the creatures are pawns to a system that fears that which is “alien”: that which looks, talks, and acts differently than majority culture. . . .
In this interview, the poet Marilyn Nelson discusses the role of community in a writer’s life, especially the kind of community she aims to foster at Soul Mountain Retreat, a writers’ colony she founded.