A few weeks back, I got into an argument about Marxism. Sitting on a park bench and enjoying the first warm evening of summer, the conversation with my friend turned to the state of capitalism. “Do you really think all this is going to disappear?” he asked, gesturing...
In 2010, Clio Barnard made her presence in the film world known with her bold and experimental debut film, The Arbor. A documentary tracing the life of playwright Andrea Dunbar, The Arbor rejected conventional form, using actors to lip-synch interviews Barnard had...
To listen can be a powerful political act. Few filmmakers demonstrate this more than Alanis Obomsawin. Steeped in oral storytelling traditions, her world-renowned documentaries are not so much about giving voice to an issue, but allowing for the often muted voices of...
The observational documentary Hair India (2008), which tracks the multibillion-dollar global industry in Indian hair, by Italian filmmakers Raffaele Brunetti and Marco Leopardi, moves dizzyingly between the subjects who sacrifice their hair in religious devotion and...
Some time in your life you will have occasion to say “What is this thing called time? What is that?” There’s the clock: you go to work by the clock, you get your martini in the afternoon by the clock, you get your coffee by the clock, you have to get...
Eulogizing Michael Glawogger in Cinema Scope 59, Christoph Huber revealed that the late Austrian director—who died on April 23 in Liberia at the age of 55 after contracting malaria during a film shoot—was not a fan of the word “globalization.” This despite...
