• A green field with a hedge in the left background. The field is covered with thin, eerie mist.
Class and Feeling in the Films of Jia Zhangke

Class and Feeling in the Films of Jia Zhangke

In 2008, I saw Jia Zhangke’s film Still Life, and it changed my life. I had never seen a film that had affected me so intensely and knew that, after that moment, I needed to research this director and his films further. What impacted me the most about Jia’s films were their emotional and affective qualities, and how they evoked feelings that lingered long after the films had ended.

Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers

Women’s Cinema as Genre Cinema

An extract from the introduction of Genre, Authorship and Contemporary Women Filmmakers By Katarzyna Paszkiewicz   I don’t think I’ve read the words women and film and feminism in the same sentence as much in the last few months since…

James Benning's Environments

James Benning: A Cinema of Our Times

In James Benning’s film Concord Woods (2014), we watch a replica of Henry David Thoreau’s famous cabin at Walden Pond. The cabin is first shown during the summer solstice, graced by the golden sunlight. The shot lingers for sixty minutes…

Improving Passions

Sentimentalism and the Musical at Eurovision 2017

The 2017 Eurovision Song Contest was won this year by Portugal’s entry, with a singer called Salvador Sobral, who sang a simple, heartfelt song of love and loss. Over and against the elaborate stage mechanics and outlandish attempts at eclecticism…

Shining the spotlight on British cinema’s female stars

Britain has long had a contradictory relationship to movie stardom, as two articles from the fan magazine Picturegoer, both by the same writer, both from 1943, eloquently demonstrate. In October, Lionel Collier had asked hopefully ‘are we making our own…