Editor’s Note: Sick
From the very beginning, we at cléo have tried our best to be as transparent as possible about the financial realities of running an independent publication. We started with nothing but a scrappy attitude and a desire to change our industry for the better. In our first year, we were unable to pay writers (or […]
Roundtable: Reflections on the Canadian Film Industry with Shasha Nakhai, Molly McGlynn and Ella Cooper
Canadian filmmakers Shasha Nakhai, Ella Cooper and Molly McGlynn reflect on their career paths and discuss what it would take for the Canadian film industry to become a truly equitable and inclusive space. Shasha: I started working in the industry after I graduated from journalism school nine years ago; I interned as a researcher at a […]
2018: A Year in CanCon
We’re back with our second annual holiday haiku roundup. This time, in anticipation of our upcoming issue on the topic of CANCON, we’re focusing on our favourite Canadian films of the year — seventeen syllables at a time. AVA (dir. Sadaf Foroughi) Not to be tested A teenager in Tehran Defies her constraints FAUSTO (dir. Andrea Bussmann) […]
2017: A Year in Review (Or Haiku)
It’s customary, come December, that we engage in a certain amount of introspection. This past year — being what it was — conducts little clarity. For us, as we’d expect for many of you, many (really, most) high points of 2017 happened in the theatre. Here, we’ve shared a list of those films from the year that […]
Editors’ Note: Varda
With five years of cléo under our belts, it seemed only right to take this issue back to our roots, our namesake, and the reason we started this journey at all: Agnès Varda. Our founding editor, Kiva Reardon, discovered Varda in a third-year film class, and the rest is herstory; as the most prominent woman […]
The Gift of Collaboration: A Roundtable on Agnès Varda
Filmmakers Alexandra Hidalgo, Sofia Bohdanowicz and Caroline Leone and actress Indra De Bruyn discuss their shared love of the works of Agnès Varda—including La Pointe Courte, Le Bonheur, Cléo de 5 à 7, Vagabond, The Gleaners and I and The Beaches of Agnès—and the lessons they have learned from her craft. Alexandra: The first Agnès […]
Editors’ Note: Hot
From sweaty summer flicks and steamy sex scenes to fictional characters boiling with rage and real footage of our melting world (there’s a reason we’re releasing the HOT issue in December), filmmakers love to get audiences hot and bothered. But we also can’t ignore the fact that we’re living in a moment of hot, […]
Editors’ Note: Shorts
With this issue of cléo, we wanted to keep it brief. We’re not going to lie: it was partly in hopes of getting a bit more rest and relaxation during the summer months, but we soon found that brevity doesn’t necessarily equate to a lack of profundity. (Twitter fans, rejoice!) Editing this issue opened us […]
Editors’ Note: Soft
With this issue of cléo, we wanted to try a little tenderness, as the song goes. It might not seem like the time for a soft approach to, well, anything, but in order to commit to showing up for each other and the earth for the long haul–and we’ll need to–we’re thinking about all the […]
Roundtable: First Place! Women in Sports Movies
Earlier this year, a presidential candidate (and now president-elect) attempted to explain away certain sexist remarks as “locker room talk.” As our own Kathleen Kampeas-Rittenhouse noted, this kind of euphemism is nothing but a way to mask a “gender-segregated rape endorsement.” On top of this already-deplorable truth, what this comment also endorsed is the idea […]
Roundtable: Queering Comedy
What does “queer” comedy look like? More importantly, what do we want it to look like? From 90s sitcoms to indie comedies to romcoms, comedians Brittani Nichols and Jess Beaulieu join submissions editor Mallory Andrews to discuss one-dimensional queer characters, elusive bisexuals, heteronormative tropes and moving beyond queer stories that focus on sexual identity. – […]
Roundtable: Women Risking Revenge
What happens in cinema when you dare cross a woman in the sexual, emotional, or professional realms? And for “vengeful” women, what are the risks inherent in getting theirs: Exposure, humiliation, alienation, death? In some cases, is the biggest risk these women face actually getting what they want? Writers Chantal Braganza and Angelica Jade Bastién join founding editor Kiva Reardon to […]
Roundtable: Dance Movies!
Dance might be where grace gets some of its most limiting connotations. You know, that floating-two-inches-above-the-ground, not-a-hair-out-of-place conception of “poise.” Fortunately, these clichés don’t jive with a lot of the dancing we see on screen. From Josephine Baker to Magic Mike XXL, both actors and the characters they represent have often directed their (usually very […]
Roundtable: Sex at Summer Camp!
Are you ready for the summer? Are you ready for the sunshine? Are you ready for the birds and bees, The apple trees, And a whole lot of fooling around? Sung by a chorus of young children, the theme song from juvenile comedy classic Meatballs promises summer camp as a hot and steamy (parent-free!) paradise […]
Roundtable: TV on the Interwebz!
It doesn’t matter who you ask these days—there seems to be almost unanimous agreement that television has never been better. Thanks to a higher quality of production, stories and acting, TV has been heralded as “cinematic,” especially on premium cable networks like HBO and Showtime. But alongside these smaller-screen wonders, even smaller screens are making […]
’90s Teen Party Movies and the Golden Age™ of Feminist Film?
There ain’t no party like a parents-out-of-town, geek-gets-drunk, Seth-Green-gets-laid nineties teen movie party. Even if you weren’t old enough—or cool enough—to attend any such rager yourself, you could still party vicariously through revelrous classics like Clueless, Can’t Hardly Wait, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Craft, Empire Records, and oh-so-many more. Far from fluff, […]
Outside of the Box: A Roundtable on Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child
Earlier this year, Gillian Robespierre’s rom-com Obvious Child garnered much attention because, quite simply, it addressed abortion. In the film, Donna (Jenny Slate, of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On and swearing on SNL fame) gets pregnant after a one-night stand and decides to terminate the pregnancy. While the conversations around Obvious Child ranged from […]