In It Must Be Heaven (2019), Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman writes, directs, and stars as a version of himself, a character identified only by his initials, E.S., a reoccurring persona in all of his feature films. The film is structured as a circular journey from E.S.’s hometown of Nazareth to Paris and New York, and back again, […]| Senses of Cinema
Following a three-minute opening sequence that is completely devoid of dialogue, the first words uttered in Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman’s Yadon ilaheyya (Divine Intervention, 2002) are “What a fucked-up morning.” Instantly setting the tone for the series of loosely connected vignettes that comprise the first third of the film, this statement encapsulates the comic absurdity […]| Senses of Cinema
“A neutralised angel, in my case, wingless,” Elia Suleiman says of the fictionalised self who appears throughout his oeuvre, likening his double to the dispirited angels observing post-war Berlin in Wim Wenders’ Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire, 1987).1 In his first feature, Segell ikhtifa (Chronicle of a Disappearance, 1996), the then 37-year-old expat returns from New York to Nazareth, where he witnesses the clumsy mechanics of Israel’s occupational regime close-up: hungry c...| Senses of Cinema
Some decades before Frantisek Vláčil released his first film Holubice (The White Dove, 1960), Pablo Picasso painted L’enfant au pigeon (Child with Dove, 1901). The painting depicts a child standing in a room of soft natural hues, her hands holding onto a white dove. There is caring (the child cradling the bird), unity (the child […]| Senses of Cinema
Above all, František Vláčil’s Adelheid (1969) is a film about the place and (dis)placement of home. How to define home? The warmest corner of the world, or a space which “holds childhood motionless in its arms.”1 The point between one’s comings and goings; an orientation of shelter and being. Adelheid opens in any such direction […]| Senses of Cinema
Long his most widely disseminated work, František Vláčil’s baroque Middle Ages masterpiece Marketa Lazarová (1967) often serves as a discombobulating introduction to his oeuvre. For a long time, it was the only film of his much shown abroad – notwithstanding that it was scarcely known in the West until as recently as 2007, when British label Second Run released it on DVD, or that it was but one of three tremendous black-and-white features set in bygone eras that comprise a loose trilogy.| Senses of Cinema
For a long time, Dos monjes (Two Monks, Juan Bustillo Oro, 1934) has been categorised as one of Mexico’s first two horror movies, along with Fernando de Fuentes’ El fantasma del convento (Phantom of the Monastery, 1934). Two Monks, however, is far closer to being a melodrama – it’s a tragic story that pioneers the […]| Senses of Cinema
In the spring of 1959, the Oscar-winning American special-effects maestro John Fulton visited Mexico at the invitation of the Production Council of Clasa Films Mundiales. The purpose of his trip was to advise on effects work for the studio’s upcoming film, Macario (Roberto Gavaldón, 1960): a folkloric parable about a penniless Mexican woodcutter and his […]| Senses of Cinema
Some films are better served if we assess them in terms of their historical context, considering whatever the director’s intent might have been in making them, while others gain from taking them at face value, focusing on what the images themselves are saying regardless of little else than inherent film grammar. This is the sort […]| Senses of Cinema
“There are things that bleed if you only touch them.” – Alberto Galán, María Candelaria María Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, 1943) opens with a montage of Aztec sculptures, Indigenous Mexican faces carved in stone – with high, sharp-angled cheekbones and full, brooding lips. We cut abruptly from the face of a statue to the face of […]| Senses of Cinema
In Enamorada (Emilio Fernández, 1946) María Félix is Beatriz, daughter of a wealthy landowner in Cholula, central Mexico. Pedro Armendáriz is General José Juan Reyes, leader of a battalion in the Revolution (1910-20), who comes to town to seize property, money, and any goods of value from the wealthy to pay for the Revolutionary aims. At first sight José Juan falls in love with Beatriz, who is engaged to marry a businessman from the US, Eduardo Roberts (Eugenio Rossi). Initially, she is...| Senses of Cinema
At the release of Justine Triet’s acclaimed film Anatomy of a Fall (2023), child actor Milo Machado-Graner was praised for an exceptionally emotive performance as Daniel, the adolescent son of an accused murderer. His magnetism is largely credited to his ability to convincingly, movingly cry onscreen. But what makes the crying child onscreen so moving? […]| Senses of Cinema
When the urge to play overcomes an adult, this is not simply a regression to childhood. To be sure, play is always liberating. – Walter Benjamin1 When my ten-year-old son and I visited Francis Alÿs: Ricochets one early afternoon last Summer, we thought we had plenty of time. The show, at the Barbican Art Gallery […]| Senses of Cinema
I met Neo Sora on a sunny morning in March in Amsterdam. His first fiction feature film, Happyend, was the opening film of the 17th CinemAsia Film Festival, the event dedicated to introducing Asian films to local audiences, building community, and celebrating queer and hybrid identities. Although it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in […]| Senses of Cinema
Set in the sun-scorched interiors of rural Tamil Nadu, Pebbles (P.S. Vinothraj, 2021) explores the emotional and psychological toll of surviving in an environment that is both intimately known and becoming increasingly unliveable. It is a quiet but searing portrayal of solastalgia – the deep psychological distress caused by climate change, where one suffers not […]| Senses of Cinema
Film is a sequence of photographs. Any two individual cells in a reel may resemble each other. But when shown in rapid sequence, they reveal movement. This past Christmas, director Robert Eggers released a new telling of the now familiar vampire myth, Nosferatu (2024). It is an adaptation of an adaptation: a retelling of Fritz […]| Senses of Cinema
Directed by photographer Robert Frank – author of the book The Americans (1958) – and painter Alfred Leslie, Pull My Daisy (1959) gathers some of the most important artists of the Beat Generation and their companions: poets Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso, painters Larry Rivers and Alice Neel, musician David Amram, art dealer […]| Senses of Cinema
A combustible medium is perfect for a combustible world. Nitrate celluloid was discontinued as the de facto base for film stock in the early 1950s because of its notoriously flammable quality. Massive splotches of film history are completely lost to ashes because of vault fires such as the one that ravaged Twentieth Century Fox in […]| Senses of Cinema
On the back wall of the Māoriland Hub, in the Toi Matarau Gallery on the main street of Ōtaki on the Kāpiti Coast of Te Ika-a-Māui (the North Island of New Zealand), hangs a map of the world. Hand painted on a large sheet of canvas, the black outlines of islands and continents lack national […]| Senses of Cinema
“Hi there, this is the open address of our venue for today’s screenings.” I scroll through the email. There’s a Google Maps link followed by more instructions: “The building entrance is right between the market and the furniture shop; just push the outer door and you’ll be in.” The invite comes with a plea not […]| Senses of Cinema
