Browse films by title with CW new film archive.

Exploring the Concrete Jungle

Interview with film-maker Katerina Cizek

While Out My Window seems to affirm the postmodern rhetoric of alienation and isolation we are all familiar with, it is worth asking if Cizek’s account of postmodern life actually fits this description. By visually uniting these social realms in the webdoc’s physical presentation she has cleverly interrogated the reality of the perceived split. For the most part, she reminds us that we do participate in the two worlds simultaneously most of the time.

Barking mad in Paddington

The Battle for Barking, Frontline Club, London, 13 January 2011

In their minds, what did the demonstrators achieve by blocking his entry, thereby preventing him from questioned by us? Did it in fact stop the chance at devastating the BNP as an idea, through interrogation and by publicising the absurd, childish, thick, nonsense of its message?

Skimming the buildings

Antonio Gaudi, directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara (1984)

The best part of the package, though, is Visions Of Space: God’s Architect, an hour-long BBC documentary on Gaudi, hosted by art critic Robert Hughes. As with many of the writings and documentaries of his, Hughes adds little to our knowledge of Gaudi, but this film does a great deal more of explaining and showing Gaudi’s work to its best advantage.

From under Tuscan skies

Certified Copy, directed by Abbas Kiarostami (2010)

From a conversation on the theme of his book - whether an artistic copy can be as worthy of praise as its original - a most intriguing and evocative tale of intertwining falsehoods and realities unfolds. The narrative, a fable and a comedy, has Shimell and Binoche playing a child-like game of Mr and Mrs.

An intense cloud of emotion

Undertow, directed by Javier Fuentes-León (2010)

Cardona and Mercado must be credited in particular with conveying, with immense believability, the simple joys of lovers, such as the experience of a warm embrace, a stolen kiss or a touch of the hand, which continues on when Miguel’s Earthly body is no more. Also

‘A mook. What’s a mook?’

Mean Streets, directed by Martin Scorsese (1973)

Scorsese, as an artist, NEEDS to go back to working with low budgets, so that his creativity is hungry, not sated. Mean Streets is an example of an artist with a growling belly. His last decade of DiCaprio-starred films, by contrast, is a surfeited maw.

A Phoenix from the Ashes

Beauty on the big screen

With a shift towards aesthetic quality in the art world, is the world of cinema now rekindling its love affair with aesthetics too?

Eye-level realism

The Red And The White [Csillagosok, Katonák], directed by Miklos Jancso (1967)

Jancso’s camera is a husking cleanser of all poesy and symbolism- even the acts of courage and kindness toward captured prisoners or civilians are seen as utterly random, and not ennobled in the least by Jancso’s camera’s eye.

‘Commie kitsch’

I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba), directed by Mikhail Kalatozov (1964)

The film was a joint Soviet-Cuban production, meant as blatant propaganda for the Communist cause, but Kalatozov’s film so rhapsodised Cuban sexuality and reveled so in its visuals, that even its backers as Mosfilms, the Soviet State film company, pulled it after a short distribution period. It was critically denounced both in Cuba and the Soviet Union.

A face like clay

I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang, directed by Mervyn Leroy (1932)

The film has many good moments, such as when Allen tries to pawn his Medal Of Honor, only to have the shop owner show him many other such medals that no one wants. Another is in a barbershop, after his first escape, when Allen narrowly escapes recognition by a dimwit cop who describes him to the barber, as neither recognise he fits the description.

Transformative dance

Destino – A Contemporary Dance Story. Film screening and panel debate at the Royal Society of Arts, Monday 12 July 2010

The cities of London and Addis Ababa were shown to be so similar yet contrasting.  Interviews revealed similar levels of background traffic, low-rent rehearsal spaces and prestigious performance venues.  Yet, children face death everyday on the streets of Addis.

Stasi surveillance

The Lives of Others, dir. Von Donnersmarck (2006)

He is amazed to see not only that information was omitted, but that this operative fabricated the details of a whole play Dreyman and his cohorts were supposed to have written for the 40th anniversary of East Germany’s founding.

The omission of Amis

Money, BBC television, May 2010

This adaptation fails to engage with the nature of the novel; where insight and dramatic irony are necessary, jokes and feelings are watered down by what must be a thorough misunderstanding of the entire project.

You can’t topple Kopple

Harlan County, USA - Criterion Collection, by Barbara Kopple (1976)

The film melds history and drama with pathos and even humour. The scene where strikers go to New York City, and one gets schooled in how poorly they have it by a New York flatfoot, is priceless.

Exploring the multi-racial laboratory

Katrina, by Jans Rautenbach (1969)

The film poses two views on prejudice and identity: the liberal but ultimately unconvincing view of the priest who protests it should make no difference; and the conservative view of Katrina’s brother, who like the producer Emil Nofal, believes one should be proud of one’s identity and not betray it. ‘You are born what you are, and for your lifespan that is what you are going to be.’