An Interview with Black Gold Programmer Sarah-Tai Black

Sarah-Tai Black is a programmer and arts writer based in Toronto. Since 2017, she has curated Black Gold — a monthly screening series at The Royal Cinema dedicated to celebrating black screen icons and filmmakers. On March 7th, to celebrate its second anniversary, Black Gold will be screening a rare 35mm print of Claire Denis’ little-seen […]

Discourses of Desire in Claire Denis’ Vendredi soir

Claire Denis’ latest film Let the Sunshine In, which follows the failed attempts at finding love by a middle-aged woman (tour de force Juliette Binoche), has been dubbed the “most empathic, heartfelt film of [Denis’] illustrious career.”[i] On account of its more tender subject matter, it’s also being hailed by some as a departure for […]

“Anger is part of my relation to the world”: An Interview with Claire Denis

Claire Denis has never shied away from monsters. While her work is described as sensual and erotic (both true), her films are never sentimental. They are complex, engaging with the fact that life, while often beautiful, is also harsh, cruel, and painful. This pain has been explored in relation to colonial history (Chocolat, 1988), the […]

This Is the Rhythm of My Life: Failure in Claire Denis’ Beau Travail

“To fail in everything, it is true, will always remain possible.” –Derrida, Specters of Marx In Claire Denis’ Beau Travail (1999), the eminence of doom is almost palpable; from the foregrounded terrain of war, to the protagonist Galoup’s (Denis Lavant) exclusion from the taut brotherhood of legionnaires and his reflections on mortality, it is a […]