It was the great photographer Diane Arbus who said “a photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know”, which she used to describe her approach to photographing the various people who agreed to be her models as she traversed the streets of her native New York, taking…
A Room in Town (1982)
There are many elements that persist throughout the incredible career of Jacques Demy, which make them easily recognizable – amongst them are often vivid colours, familiar actors and stories that pay tribute to a particular time in the history of his native France. A few of his best-known works are musicals, with The Umbrellas of…
It Doesn’t Hurt Me (2006)
While his career was cut tragically short as a result of his untimely death, Aleksei Balabanov was a relatively prolific director, having made nearly two dozen films over the course of his career. The ones he is most fondly remembered for are his more abstract works, like Happy Days and Of Freaks and Men, both…
Chi-Raq (2015)
There are very few filmmakers bold enough to make a film like Chi-Raq as Spike Lee, a director whose entire career has been defined by his willingness to push the envelope in ways that we had never seen before. Never afraid of controversy, since he knew what he was doing was for the greater good,…
Max, My Love (1986)
As a theme, desire has been explored in a multitude of ways throughout the history of art – it is perhaps even more distinct than representations of romance, with many artists across every conceivable medium viewing the concept of love as entailing a combination of emotional connection and carnal cravings. It has become an incredibly…
The Pleasure of Being Robbed (2008)
While their status as wildly inventive auteurs of the American independent arthouse may be almost entirely consolidated now as a result of their last few films, there was a time when Josh and Benny Safdie were two amateur filmmakers that weren’t particularly well-regarded, working in the deepest recesses of the mumblecore sub-genre. Their steady rise…
Rope (1948)
For all the talk about Alfred Hitchcock being the definition of conventional, not in the sense of it being derogatory but rather as a way of explaining how he defined cinema in a considerable way, he certainly did not find it difficult to experiment with form and content from time to time, as made abundantly…
The Late Shift (1996)
There’s nothing quite like the world of television – those omnipresent boxes that have become the source of both comfort and frustrations in the homes of viewers across the globe, serving the function of providing both entertainment and an insight into the real world. There are sometimes instances where there is an intersection of the…
Saloum (2022)
Something that you learn when expanding your horizons is that you can often open doors to some of the most extraordinary art. The global interest in films from beyond Europe and North America has gradually improved, and we’ve seen some truly exceptional works from around the world being widely celebrated, many of them formative texts…
In & Out (1997)
While we may have a long way to go, when it comes to the subject of inclusion and diversity, it is wonderful to look back and see how far we’ve come as a collective culture. There is still a lot of work to be done, but a lot of the world is starting to become…
The Postmodern Pelican 