Issue 80 - Fall 2019

Cinema Scope

Expanding the Frame on International Cinema

Cinema Scope3 min read
Editor’s Note
On a certain fine day in August, the unthinkable happened — actually, two unthinkables: 1) a jury awarded Pedro Costa the main prize at a major festival, and 2) all the reviews of a Pedro Costa film were raves. This utopian state lasted until around
Cinema Scope17 min readPerforming Arts
No God But the Unknown
Pietro Marcello’s decade-long evolution from idiosyncratic film essayist to grand narrative storyteller represents one of the most significant artistic flowerings in contemporary cinema. Recently unveiled in competition at Venice, the Italian filmmak
Cinema Scope8 min read
Natural Wonders
In Jessica Sarah Rinland’s 2016 short The Flight of an Ostrich (Schools Interior), a shy, studious eight-year-old becomes transfixed by a nature documentary while her more rambunctious classmates whisper and pass notes around her. “The ostrich is inc
Cinema Scope27 min read
I See a Darkness
A moving study of mourning and memory, Pedro Costa’s revelatory new film offers an indelible portrait of Vitalina Taveres Varela, a fragile yet indomitable woman who makes the long voyage from Cape Verde to Lisbon to attend her estranged husband’s fu
Cinema Scope6 min readPsychology
Woman On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown
With his first two features, Tower (2012) and How Heavy This Hammer (2015), Toronto-based director and MDFF co-founder Kazik Radwanski established something of a recurring archetype: sad, lonely, and horny men whose unpleasant or uninteresting qualit
Cinema Scope9 min read
The Taste of Summer
In 2014, Phil Hoffman published a piece in Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures entitled “Your Film Farm Manifesto of Process Cinema.” The text was a call to action born out of years of teaching and facilitating opportunities for artists hungry
Cinema Scope12 min read
For A Cinema Of Bombardment
I. Although there have always been intrepid critics and cinephiles who have engaged with films belonging to the non-narrative avant-garde, there has existed a perception that such films, operating as they do on somewhat different aesthetic precepts,
Cinema Scope16 min readWorld
Naked in Paris
Like an alien dropping out of the sky, Yoav, the hero of Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms, is introduced as a being without a home, a purpose, or even clothes. As he scrambles naked around a vacant Parisian apartment, his strong, lean, athletic body mitigates
Cinema Scope8 min readWorld
Together We’re Willing to Take Any Risk
In 1974, a group of students from the prestigious Ewha Womans University in Seoul formed South Korea’s first feminist film collective, Kaidu Club. Shepherded by the group’s de-facto president Han Ok-hee, the other members—who participated with varyin
Cinema Scope9 min read
Land and Sea
It is no coincidence that Japan’s two greatest documentarians, Tsuchimoto Noriaki (1928-2008) and Ogawa Shinsuke (1935-1992), have long been paired together. There is, most obviously, their shared biography. In the early ’60s, Ogawa and Tsuchimoto cu
Cinema Scope10 min read
Occupational Hazard
Scaled for maximum effect, and weighted with tableaux designed to inspire horrible awe, the latest documentary from Austrian director Nikolaus Geyrhalter may prove damningly prophetic yet ultimately diminished by the very industrial and environmental
Cinema Scope7 min read
And That’s Exactly How it Was
The 72nd edition of the Locarno Film Festival—the first under the artistic direction of Lili Hinstin—was notable for the strength of its documentary offerings, albeit hardly in the conventional sense. Within a solid line-up whose names and general to
Cinema Scope8 min read
Golden Eighties
The news cycle waits for no one, not even J. Hoberman. Opening up the former Village Voice critic’s new book Make My Day—the conclusion, following The Dream Life and An Army of Phantoms, of his “Found Illusions” trilogy, which traces the intersection
Cinema Scope8 min read
Silence and Presence
For certain filmmakers—attractive women—there is a popular kind of on-set photo that telegraphs authority: one eye pressed to the viewfinder of some behemoth camera, she is caught in a contra-glamour shot that codes the pragmatic as cool. Naturally,
Cinema Scope7 min read
There’s No Business Like Slow Business
Although it’s been served up since June on Amazon Prime in ten installments, Nicolas Winding Refn emphatically declared his—let’s call it “project” rather than “series” for the moment—Too Old to Die Young “not TV,” but rather a “13-hour movie” at thi
Cinema Scope14 min read
Compulsively Yours
Although I’m no longer a member of Il Cinema Ritrovato’s DVD jury, two other visitors to Bologna in June who are familiar with this column presented me with new DVDs: 1. A year ago in this column, while celebrating Edition Filmmuseum’s PAL DVD releas
Cinema Scope5 min read
Fire Will Come
After two films set in Morocco—You Are All Captains (2010) and the Cannes Critics Week winner Mimosas (2016)—French-born Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe returns to his parents’ homeland of Galicia for his third feature, Fire Will Come, which the direct
Cinema Scope5 min read
No Data Plan
In The United States of America (1975), James Benning and Bette Gordon take a trip across the country, from east to west. Structural film meets the road movie, as a 16mm camera is mounted in the backseat of their car, facing forward, taking in the pa
Cinema Scope6 min readCrime & Violence
The Traitor
“The most beautiful film is our own history,” confessed Marco Bellocchio to a journalist following the release of The Traitor, after it surpassed Godzilla: King of the Monsters at the Italian box office, proving yet again that the Mafia movie is stil
Cinema Scope5 min read
Light From Light
On the occasion of last year’s Big Ears Festival, an annual showcase of film and music in Knoxville, Tennessee, writer-director Paul Harrill curated “A Sense of Place,” a program of American independent films grounded in regional idiosyncrasies and o
Cinema Scope4 min read
Midsommar
In an interview with Film Comment’s Michael Koresky after the release of Hereditary (2018), Ari Aster spoke of the logic behind his taboo-busting 2011 thesis film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons. Gesturing to his desire to rock the apple cart at
Cinema Scope3 min read
Peter Fonda’s Idaho Transfer
The late Peter Fonda—actor, celebrity, experimental filmmaker, activist, head—never actually did enjoy an easy ride, career-wise. Onscreen and behind the camera, he had brilliant flashes and boyish enthusiasms, often in the same sweet breath. His wor

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