Issue 77 - Winter 2018

Cinema Scope

Expanding the Frame on International Cinema

Cinema Scope3 min read
Editor’s Note
And now, a few thoughts on the occasion of attending the revitalized Marrakesh International Film Festival and the industry Atlas Workshops on African and Middle Eastern cinema that, you might be surprised to learn, was sponsored by none other than N
Cinema Scope17 min readEthnic Studies
The Land Of The Unknown
Writing for Cinema Scope in the winter of 2017, director Roberto Minervini reflected on a new wave of philistine cinema in America. For Minervini, this “covert-yet-not-so-subtle nationalistic, reactionary” brand of filmmaking—exemplified by the likes
Cinema Scope11 min read
“Poetry Floats Up In My Memory Like Sailboats In The Fog”
On first viewing, Alexei German’s Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998) gives an impression of almost overwhelming density. This is due in part, of course, to its exquisitely cluttered arrangements of objects and people, from the babushki sniping at each other
Cinema Scope9 min read
With Forever Presence
In September, when he knew his time was not long, Jonathan Schwartz wrote to explain that he would try to retrieve previews of his films for me but that he was dealing with many logistical concerns in order “to be in emotional spaces with utmost pres
Cinema Scope12 min read
Soft and Hard
There is a shot of an infant being carried by its father in Claire Denis’ L’intrus (2004) that may be the most rapt and tender image of its kind I’ve ever seen in a film. The first ten minutes of the director’s new High Life offer an extension and an
Cinema Scope10 min read
Encore
1. This is the story of a repetition. General Juan Perón was elected President of Argentina for the first time in 1946, and served two terms of office, from June 4 of that year through September 21, 1955. From 1946 through 1952, his first term, he ru
Cinema Scope16 min read
Learning to Live Together
“Nevertheless, what are truly characteristic of dreams are only those elements of their content which behave like images, which are more like perceptions, that is, than they are like mnemic presentations.” Written, as it was, in historical parallel w
Cinema Scope11 min read
Woman With A Whip
It shouldn’t be contentious to state that the lasting image of Barbara Stanwyck is an urban one: a street-smart city girl with pin-straight back-seamed stockings, slit skirt, and perfectly coiffed bangs, whether sleeping her way up the corporate ladd
Cinema Scope7 min read
Ghost Operas
“I think that to write the music for that scene was also his way to tell it…You almost have the impression that his script for the scene is the colour and the sound, that’s it.” Bertrand Bonello is here referring to a scene from David Lynch’s Twin Pe
Cinema Scope14 min read
The Man from Left Field
The passing of Burt Reynolds this September at age 82 from cardiac arrest drew a lot of attention, but once again relegated to a footnote what I consider his most remarkable achievement: his small but fascinating body of work as a director, which is
Cinema Scope5 min read
Belmonte
“What else dost thou want, Belmonte?” When the question at the heart of Uruguayan director Federico Veiroj’s fourth feature, Belmonte, is finally spoken aloud, it comes in a whisper. Javier Belmonte (Gonzalo Delgado) has just woken with a start from
Cinema Scope4 min read
Edge Of The Knife
Edge of the Knife (Sgaaway K’uuna) begins and ends with a hand-carved mask—a representation of Gaagiixiid, a monstrous, forest-dwelling wild man enshrined in the mythology of the Haida people of British Columbia—placed over an open fire. Smoke stream
Cinema Scope5 min read
I Remember the Crows
The virtues of economy, empathy, and negotiation find ample cinematic expression in Gustavo Vinagre’s I Remember the Crows, a deceptively straightforward portrait of a lady that extracts multitudes from little more than a camera, an apartment, and a
Cinema Scope5 min read
A Land Imagined
About 20 minutes into A Land Imagined, the nominal protagonist, Detective Lok (Peter Yu), tells his partner of how, on his travels to various locales, he realized that he’d been to all of them before—in his dreams. “The strange thing is, I never saw
Cinema Scope5 min read
Manta Ray
Manta Ray is a film about the Other and all that this philosophical, social, and ethical concept implies. The debut feature film from Thai director Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, Manta Ray strikes a graceful balance between the details of lived experience a
Cinema Scope5 min read
Nervous Translation
Why is it that, when destined for adult audiences, narrative films about children so rarely accord their diminutive protagonists the privilege of inhabiting a world of their own? Place a child at the centre of a film, and type will frequently take ho
Cinema Scope6 min readPsychology
Our Time
For whatever thematic heavy-handedness or structural deficiencies Carlos Reygadas’ films may consistently and inevitably fall victim to, the man sure knows how to open a movie. Information, images, forms arrive from somewhere as something undefined—s
Cinema Scope5 min read
Rojo
From pitch black to pampas beige by way of blood red, Benjamín Naishtat’s trajectory of mining the corrosive political ills of his native Argentina is filtered through the optics of genre that, while playfully plastic, resonate with caustic effect. T
Cinema Scope10 min read
Against Oblivion
How often has a film or artwork been praised for capturing or visually demonstrating the ineffable? But what about the indelible, that which lays claws on us, refuses to let go, and continues to alternately haunt and inspire? To restate the oft-said:
Cinema Scope5 min read
Shorter Letters
Among the 800 or so Canadian shorts submitted to the Vancouver International Film Festival, Nathan Douglas’ 33-minute La Cartographe (which premiered at Locarno in August) is both emblematic and anomalous. Emblematic because its production model—no i
Cinema Scope12 min read
Some Blessings and Curses of Cinephilia
Since I don’t have much investment in parsing Arnaud Desplechin’s arsenal of “personal” references, I had to look elsewhere for the intermittent pleasures of Ismaël’s Ghosts (2017), available on a two-disc Blu-ray from Arrow Films. I often find mysel
Cinema Scope5 min read
Roma
The strangest aspect of the resurgence of Mexican cinema over the past decade-plus is that three of the country’s four filmmakers with the most international impact left Mexico behind. While Carlos Reygadas stayed home to create a body of work on fac
Cinema Scope9 min read
A Tale of Two Handmaids
I really hated Mad Men. I concede that the show looked terrific (its regular cinematographer Chris Manley, an old friend of mine from Philadelphia days, was deservedly nominated for an Emmy four times), but I found its politics totally oppressive. Fo
Cinema Scope6 min read
The Favourite
Yorgos Lanthimos begins and ends his scurrilous The Favourite with the susurrus of rabbits. Tricky to place, almost subliminal over the opening parade of myriad multinational financiers, the strange sounds scratch at the ear. Soon we understand: the
Cinema Scope5 min read
A Star Is Born
If nothing else, A Star Is Born has given us the best meme of the year. The four-image sequence depicting Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga (in character as Jackson Maine and Ally, respectively) exchanging meaningful glances and coy smiles, was ripped fro
Cinema Scope3 min read
Ken Jacobs’ Nervous Magic Lantern
Ken Jacobs moves secretively in the halfdark that surrounds his apparatus. (“I’m terrible at keeping secrets,” he later admits to the assembled crowd.) Every ten minutes or so, Flo Jacobs exchanges one of what might be a dozen or so miniature flying

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