


Neorealism’s Closed Gates: The Women of Rome, Open City
It was shortly after the Toronto International Film Festival this year when Kiva Reardon asked me if I had anything to contribute to this issue of cléo. I had just screened Sicario by Denis Villeneuve, a director with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working. There has...
“The prettiest prettiest girl”: Complex Beauty in Gia
Michael Cristofer’s Gia (1998) opens with a tight shot of makeup brushes accentuating an impossibly beautiful face. The features are those of Angelina Jolie in the role of 1980s supermodel Gia Carangi. The face is unnaturally still, perhaps foreshadowing the well...
“It can be like grace”: Enlightened Political Possibility
Amy: I don’t want the same old sad story. I want a new story. Levi: It will be new. It’ll be brand new. You know? That’s the beauty of it. It can be like grace. Amy: Grace? Levi: Yeah, life is beautiful. In her essay “In Praise of Vulgar Feminism,” Agata Pyzik...
Women to Watch: Cecile Emeke
Cecile Emeke could be nothing other than a creator. The British-Jamaican poet and multimedia artist has been working with film for little more than two years, but she has expertly constructed whole worlds of possibility within her small but stirring body of moving...