After Charlie Chaplin, who wrote, directed, edited, composed for and starred in his own pictures, Stan Brakhage was the only true auteur of the American cinema; a painter with light whose most innovative works were produced without the need of a camera. Brakhage’s oeuvre is best viewed chronologically, not only for the interest of seeing […]
Author: Michael Ewins
LU.MIERE. read the emblazoned jackets of two moviemakers, cranking their Cinematograph outside the Giza pyramids, circa 1895. Suddenly a Mummy rushes over the dunes, grabs the tripod-mounted camera and smashes it into the sands. An intertitle reads, “Censorship Already!!” The year is actually 1995, and the Lumières are played by two actors under the direction […]
Akira Kurosawa’s penultimate film, Rhapsody In August (1991), was the director’s first Japanese production since 1965’s Red Beard, an occasion he marked by reflecting upon the tragedy which had closed the first chapter of his career – the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. Framed around a frail matriarch (Kane, embodied by Sachiko Murase) and […]