Film entries for 'Laura Mulvey's AMY!, Crystal Gazing, Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti and Disgraced Monuments.

This publication also contains an excerpt from an introduction to the book Do utraty wzroku (co-edited with Lara Thompson), the first in Polish anthology of Laura Mulvey's writings.

Published in the 10th ERA New Horizons Film Festival Catalogue (Wroclaw: ERA, July 2010)

See also ‘Laura Mulvey’s Curious Gaze’ and ‘Laura Mulvey Retrospective’, co-written with Lara Thompson

'Filmy Laury Mulvey' ('The films of Laura Mulvey') is an introductory text to support The Laura Mulvey Retrospective at the 10th ERA New Horizons Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, July 2010. The piece summarises Laura Mulvey's career as both an experimental filmmaker and a feminist film theorist.

Published in Polityka, July 2010

Review of 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, 2008, Romania)

Excerpt: ‘You might not have thought that a film about an illegal abortion in Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania could rival a thriller for suspense, but Cristian Mungiu’s surprise Palme d’Or winner does exactly that. Set two years before the 1989 revolution, it is not so much about abortion itself as it is about the near-impossible choices that people have to make when living under any oppressive political system.’

Published in ArtsEditor, January 2008

Review of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007, France / USA)
Excerpt: ‘The film is also a remarkable sensory adventure for the viewer. Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (Schindler’s List, Munich) makes masterful use of the camera to depict Bauby’s mental and physical state in a highly accurate manner. As in Michael Powell’s 1960 film Peeping Tom, the viewer experiences the world exactly as the protagonist does. Repetitive sequences of speech therapists reciting the alphabet to Bauby, for example, really bring home the frustration, if not boredom, that Bauby feels at being locked into a useless body that will soon die.’

Published in ArtsEditor, February 2008

Review of Dostoevsky's Travels (Pawel Pawlikowski, 1991, UK)

Excerpt: ‘When Pawel Pawlikowski (credited here as Paul) visited the Dostoevsky Museum in St Petersburg, he learned that Dostoevsky's only descendant, Dimitri, was still alive. The director found Dimitri in Germany and, after agreeing to pay him a thousand pounds, began filming. After their first meeting, Pawlikowski thought that Dimitri "had grown a beard to look more like a Dostoevsky and I thought, a great face, great character, he could be a good key to the East/West situation today." Dostoevsky's Travels reflects one of the pivotal moments in modern history: the fall of the Berlin Wall. The film ruminates on the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia's transition to capitalism: Dimitri's yearning for material goods symbolises Russia's desire for contact with the West and all it can offer.’

Published in Screenonline, 2008

Review of From Moscow to Pietushki (Pawel Pawlikowski, 1990, UK)

Excerpt: ‘Pawlikowski creates his portrait of this unique writer by reconstructing moments from his book. At the start, 'Benny' Yerofeyev is a cable fitter in Sheremetievo. One day he sends out graphs measuring his colleagues' work rate against the amount of alcohol they have consumed. He loses his job, but an inner voice tells him that in Pietushki he will find 'salvation and joy'. He spends his days travelling from Moscow to Pietushki and back: 240 kilometres in total. He lives on trains and writes. Yerofeyev's book is a poetic monologue of a perceptive alcoholic, extolling on philosophy, politics, love and angels. The author criticises his beloved Russia in the style of Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, and both writers laugh at the absurdity of everyday life.’

Published in Screenonline, 2008

Review of Zygosis (Gavin Hodge, 1991, UK)

Excerpt: ‘Zygosis notes that Dada emerged in a quantum leap period of the modern era, shadowed by the consequences of World War I. The development of photomontage coincided with the advent of new media technologies, including photo-illustrated press, radio and broadcasting. Heartfield opposed use of the machinery of media culture for propaganda reasons. The Nazis were the first political party to make active use of the mass media for political ends, and Heartfield's reaction was immediate: every public appearance of Hitler was followed by Heartfield's own version of the event. The best way to alter reality, he felt, is to create an alternative world in which oppression is fought with satire. Hodge presents animated versions of Heartfield's photomontages to underline the power of ridicule. But this animating of the inanimate reminds us that the moving image has today all but consigned the art of photomontage to history.’

Published in Screenonline, 2008

Review of The Last of England (Derek Jarman, 1987, UK)

Excerpt: ‘The breathtaking final sequence shows a bride mourning her executed husband. She dances on a beach, tearing her wedding dress apart, embodying the creative and destructive forces, the water and fire, that pervade the film. In the final shot, she departs the diseased land by boat - a scene reminiscent of Ford Madox Brown's pre-Raphaelite painting which provided the film's title. Profoundly influenced by Goya's paintings and by Pier Paolo Pasolini's grotesque allegory of Mussolini's Italy, Salò (Italy/France, 1975), The Last of England mourns the loss of youth and hope and rails at a society grown sick and cruel. Despite continuing rejection by the mainstream, Jarman was here at the peak of his creative powers.’

Published in Screenonline, 2007

Review of War Requiem (Derek Jarman, 1989, UK)

Excerpt: ‘Its ornate Christian iconography, absence of dialogue and oratorios sung in Latin make War Requiem one of Jarman's most challenging films. The director likens the fates of Owen and his fellow soldiers (their lives sacrificed for the satisfaction of wealthy bankers, represented here as heavily made-up men) to Christ's martyrdom. The final scene depicts the Unknown Soldier as Christ himself, in echo of Piero della Francesca's Renaissance painting, 'Resurrection'. Jarman's use of religious symbols brings to mind Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St Matthew (Italy/France, 1964), a major influence.’

Published in Screenonline, 2007

Review of Angelic Conversation (Derek Jarman, 1985, UK)

Excerpt: ‘In common with other Jarman works, there is much reference to religion and ritual: a scene in which a prince's feet are washed recalls Christ and the cleansing of sins; Paul's carrying of a post evokes the stations of the cross. The film's idealisation of love is contrasted with a depressing reality: a burning car, a rotating radar and a fence suggesting surveillance and control. The presence of nature (the Dorset seascape, the cliffs of Dancing Ledge, the caves at Winspit and the garden of the Montacute mansion in Somerset) corresponds with images from the work of Humphrey Jennings and Powell and Pressburger, where the alliance of man and nature represents an idyllic escape from the industrial world.’

Published in Screenonline, 2007

Review of '"Factory of New Film Expressions": Alternative Film/Video Festival, Belgrade’

Excerpt: ‘The sheer range of films presented in the structuralist program at this year’s Alternative Film/Video Festival, as well as the complexity of the debates surrounding structural film, call for a revision of what we include in this important international avant-garde trend. This reassessment is also required where the contribution of female filmmakers to the avant-garde film tradition is concerned: the (non)incorporation of women throughout the Alternative Film/Video Festival requires further attention. The role women have played within the avant-garde film scene in Yugoslavia remains under-acknowledged, and this program featured only one female filmmaker: Bojana Vujanovic, with her 16mm short film, The Journey (Putovanje, 1972). A member of the Belgrade cine-club since 1968, Vujanovic encountered some of her influences there.’

Published in Jump Cut, no.56, January 2015