https://theorollason.com Theo Rollason Fri, 10 Jan 2025 12:19:57 +0000 https://theorollason.com en https://theorollason.com/about Mon, 17 Oct 2022 15:28:21 +0000 Theo Rollason https://theorollason.com/about I’m a freelance writer and filmmaker living in London. I’m particularly interested in exploring ideas around capitalism, gender + queerness, and archives.I recently co-directed the BFI-backed short film Out of the Peat with Tabitha Carless-Frost. The film premiered in competition at the London Short Film Festival 2025. I’m curently working on a documentary about Derek Jarman. I’ve participated in critics workshops at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (2017) and Cinema Rediscovered (2023). My work has appeared in print and online for publications including ALT/KINO, In Review Online, In The Mood and Little White Lies.&nbsp; I completed a BA in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh in 2020, and an MA in Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths in 2022. Details on academic projects can be found here. When I’m not writing or editing, I work as an archivist for the estate of the artist Paula Rego, where I manage the film, photo and press collections.&nbsp;I also programme for Fringe! Queer Film &amp; Arts Fest.&nbsp; You can email me at theorollason@gmail.com. <img width="770" height="660" width_o="770" height_o="660" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/77bfec1d7eceb57633b97cf30a75a8ed77cb3598b1b03eea0b969514b77279c5/profile.jpg" data-mid="194911252" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/770/i/77bfec1d7eceb57633b97cf30a75a8ed77cb3598b1b03eea0b969514b77279c5/profile.jpg" /> Image: El Hogg https://theorollason.com/film Thu, 19 Oct 2023 14:36:38 +0000 Theo Rollason https://theorollason.com/film Film OUT OF THE PEAT 1.66:1&nbsp;• black &amp; white&nbsp;• 12’30”&nbsp;• 2025 An amateur archaeologist arrives on a desolate peatland in Lancashire, their mind filled with the strange power that peat-bog waters hold to preserve organic matter. They have come to excavate the peatland. They have come to exhume a body. But, in digging into the peat — and into the past — they unearth much more than mere relics. The peat holds forgotten histories, uneasy truths, and vast stores of climate-change-accelerating carbon. Reflecting the attempt to document and preserve this landscape via the moving image, the film becomes both a lament and a call to action for local peat-bog restoration and protection. Directors: Tabitha Carless-Frost, Theo Rollason&nbsp;Writer: Tabitha Carless-Frost Producer: Tate Turnbull&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;Cast: Roo Gehring&nbsp;DOP: Morgan K. Spencer&nbsp;Composer: Richard Skelton Editor: Anthony Ing Sound Design: Harry Charlton Prop Design: Elizabeth Alster Titles: Cameron Harris&nbsp; Acetate Pictures / BFI NETWORKSuper 16 mm film converted to digitalShot on on location at Chat Moss, Lancashire &nbsp; Select Past Screenings:&nbsp; 08/11/25 • Molins de Rei Horror Film Festival • Teatre de La Peni25/10/25 • Altered Images, London • with live accompaniment • Club Cheek 19/09/25 • Exposures Montreal Trans Film Festival • Union Française de Montréal 23/05/25 • Sunrise Film Festival, Lowestoft • Marina Theater 13/05/25 • OffBeat Folk Film Festival, London • The Garden Cinema 19/04/25 • AFSAD International Short Film Festival, Ankara • Büyülü Fener 04/04/25 • Resistance, Margate • Turner Contemporary 02/04/25 • Sound of Silent Film Festival, Chicago • with live accompaniment • Music Box Theater 21/01/25 • London Short Film Festival • UK Competition: Panoramics&nbsp;• BFI Southbank NFT1 <img width="1808" height="1221" width_o="1808" height_o="1221" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/285858deaa571769dbf31c0a1e7edefacc64a09813539ee9a5fdb5bc85129a2c/Out-of-the-Peat-005.jpg" data-mid="225339768" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/285858deaa571769dbf31c0a1e7edefacc64a09813539ee9a5fdb5bc85129a2c/Out-of-the-Peat-005.jpg" /><img width="1800" height="1080" width_o="1800" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/15d3625f82fa679b979a40e47e2b7b72c92ccc44b7a96f4df263ac35740ce2fb/Out-of-the-Peat-003.jpg" data-mid="225339738" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/15d3625f82fa679b979a40e47e2b7b72c92ccc44b7a96f4df263ac35740ce2fb/Out-of-the-Peat-003.jpg" /> <img width="1800" height="1080" width_o="1800" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2be3d6a8301022cff86a800696b7836b49af488c8835ebe4d2f5fd4130041ec9/Rooz.jpg" data-mid="226150008" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2be3d6a8301022cff86a800696b7836b49af488c8835ebe4d2f5fd4130041ec9/Rooz.jpg" /> https://theorollason.com/writing Wed, 13 Mar 2024 10:54:48 +0000 Theo Rollason https://theorollason.com/writing Select Features Minority ReportCinema Year Zero • June 13, 2024 Docklands Diary In The Mood&nbsp;• March 12, 2024 Poor Things, from Novel to ScreenIn Review Online • January 2, 2024 Sadness with Pizzazz: The Saddest Music in the World at 20Little White Lies • October 25, 2023 A Haunted Medium: On Charlie Shackleton’s The AfterlightALT/KINO • June 7, 2023 Back to the Movies: Goodbye, Dragon Inn Cinema As We Know It • August 6, 2021 (more here) <img width="1202" height="801" width_o="1202" height_o="801" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/dcd9a2c35e2bc3034ba2c69741a99a6289357cb73a0f545827d1a686b3b85e7e/00_19_0800066-Cropped.jpg" data-mid="235212604" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/dcd9a2c35e2bc3034ba2c69741a99a6289357cb73a0f545827d1a686b3b85e7e/00_19_0800066-Cropped.jpg" /><img width="1027" height="678" width_o="1027" height_o="678" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6efb90a4893a29a9674b5976c72e9e9f22adc195549e004fca2684d615613505/65e3e0b1d7c64851ec87b23e_28-days-later.png" data-mid="235212615" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6efb90a4893a29a9674b5976c72e9e9f22adc195549e004fca2684d615613505/65e3e0b1d7c64851ec87b23e_28-days-later.png" /> <img width="975" height="650" width_o="975" height_o="650" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/012e7c01abc8ac4c1bd3825ed65f751d969665ea678c7e52d3d43624820b715d/Poor-Things.jpg" data-mid="235212618" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/975/i/012e7c01abc8ac4c1bd3825ed65f751d969665ea678c7e52d3d43624820b715d/Poor-Things.jpg" /><img width="1108" height="739" width_o="1108" height_o="739" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4b1ce26fe5efa05f41c44741a85251fad399b84e698ffc14f57db2ec40474580/saddest-music-thumb.jpg" data-mid="235212616" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4b1ce26fe5efa05f41c44741a85251fad399b84e698ffc14f57db2ec40474580/saddest-music-thumb.jpg" /> Select ReviewsNouvelle VagueIn Review Online • October 24, 2025 Sanatorium Under the Sign of the HourglassIn Review Online • August 29, 2025 QueerIn Review Online • November 26, 2024 The BeastFilmhounds • May 24, 2024 AftersunFilmhounds • November 17, 2022Vive L’AmourCinema As We Know It • March 22, 2022(more here) <img width="1013" height="675" width_o="1013" height_o="675" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9480015421bfd88942760a472474103245fd273834cda29c2b9ff2afc4d755d5/Nouvelle-Vague.jpeg" data-mid="239880566" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9480015421bfd88942760a472474103245fd273834cda29c2b9ff2afc4d755d5/Nouvelle-Vague.jpeg" /><img width="1500" height="1000" width_o="1500" height_o="1000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6d0b419e108e7f6ee83accffde4b3a690c7dd5fd7c6e065149af0645a2824bc9/daniel-craig-drew-starkey-queer-112524-d52307c08aa4492b937d54e0dbf30b00.jpg" data-mid="235212599" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6d0b419e108e7f6ee83accffde4b3a690c7dd5fd7c6e065149af0645a2824bc9/daniel-craig-drew-starkey-queer-112524-d52307c08aa4492b937d54e0dbf30b00.jpg" /> <img width="1000" height="667" width_o="1000" height_o="667" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cce2f0d787c2ea1b0c2d2e4cb894a8cb531dc71f2b8d63afe0444ef070fbb490/san.jpeg" data-mid="235212600" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cce2f0d787c2ea1b0c2d2e4cb894a8cb531dc71f2b8d63afe0444ef070fbb490/san.jpeg" /><img width="1557" height="1038" width_o="1557" height_o="1038" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/286080d140e4d70ff3561e895bba3a1405a3ae1bad95b9892bdce94568731c57/the-beast.jpg" data-mid="235212632" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/286080d140e4d70ff3561e895bba3a1405a3ae1bad95b9892bdce94568731c57/the-beast.jpg" /> Select InterviewsRiar Rizaldi • Mirage (Gasworks)In Review Online • September 30, 2024 Charlie Shackleton • The AfterlightBlog Post • May 22, 2023 Barbara Sukowa • Two Of Us Outtake • July 15, 2021(more here) <img width="1080" height="720" width_o="1080" height_o="720" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/815856fd03eb18114af89b7cd0206903f990720b0d4eb5111437812c2eb70091/notes-from-gog.jpg" data-mid="235212680" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/815856fd03eb18114af89b7cd0206903f990720b0d4eb5111437812c2eb70091/notes-from-gog.jpg" /> <img width="4110" height="2740" width_o="4110" height_o="2740" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/da761ee3d820713554783545c9c09eadaab1e90c41cb79ab5876bb62a8f9ce87/The-Afterlight-still-5-Cropped.jpg" data-mid="235212683" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/da761ee3d820713554783545c9c09eadaab1e90c41cb79ab5876bb62a8f9ce87/The-Afterlight-still-5-Cropped.jpg" /> Video Essays Listening to VarietyCinema Rediscovered commission • October 2023 "My initial interest in Bette Gordon’s Variety (1983) was the involvement of the experimental writer Kathy Acker. Watching the film at Cinema Rediscovered, I was fascinated by the ways in which Gordon, rather than merely drawing on her talents as a writer, imports Acker’s confrontational performance style into Variety’s narrative itself, through the three erotic monologues that punctuate the film. My video essay examines the role spoken language plays in Variety’s subversion of traditionally male spaces, looking to the origins of these monologues in Acker’s writing broadly and Gordon’s 1981 short Anybody’s Woman specifically." <img width="1920" height="1080" width_o="1920" height_o="1080" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1b122d67828a3fb403610545ed9f362c2bfbce069a149af9f38d1d8a568da231/variety.jpg" data-mid="235212466" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1b122d67828a3fb403610545ed9f362c2bfbce069a149af9f38d1d8a568da231/variety.jpg" /> Inland Empire: Horror and the Poor ImageJune 2023An essay on the terrors lurking in low definition, focusing on David Lynch’s MiniDV nightmare Inland Empire. Adapted from an academic essay available here: “As a teenager, I inherited a collection of VHS tapes of horror movies my school were getting rid of as they made the switch from video to DVD. Watched in my room on my family’s tiny old TV, these films thrilled and terrified me. Revisiting them in the years since, either in cinemas or at home on Blu-ray disks, I’ve now seen these films as they are “supposed” to be seen by the standards of any cinephile — in high resolution versions, without the “imperfections” of the lower-quality video format. The latter viewings afforded a newfound clarity: I could better appreciate the films’ craft, I could make out every detail in a scene. I could, in short, see more — so why did it feel like something was missing?“ <img width="1430" height="1075" width_o="1430" height_o="1075" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d486fba470e547b609a46d757b230c42441a6bee7769d5917f83d43c37abfcb6/ie.jpg" data-mid="235212465" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d486fba470e547b609a46d757b230c42441a6bee7769d5917f83d43c37abfcb6/ie.jpg" /> Select Academic Essays “It’s an imperfect world, but it’s the only one we’ve got”: The Neoliberal Marvel Cinematic UniverseMasters Dissertation, Goldsmiths • August 2022“What will happen to me if I fail your test?”: Policing the Borders of the Human in Science FictionUndergraduate Dissertation, University of Edinburgh • April 2020(more here) <img width="1799" height="1199" width_o="1799" height_o="1199" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/705b230442a4a1e49dd64bfe8319440be2b30d7ff20cf5b173c2e05bf19c5b04/Screenshot-2022-08-21-at-19.02.28-Cropped.png" data-mid="235212689" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/705b230442a4a1e49dd64bfe8319440be2b30d7ff20cf5b173c2e05bf19c5b04/Screenshot-2022-08-21-at-19.02.28-Cropped.png" /> <img width="396" height="264" width_o="396" height_o="264" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/91caf0cefa10a37dd45b88ffbae594f02705a56f6d036c4d07c9c21a24ffcbed/ex-machina.jpg" data-mid="235212718" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/396/i/91caf0cefa10a37dd45b88ffbae594f02705a56f6d036c4d07c9c21a24ffcbed/ex-machina.jpg" /> https://theorollason.com/features Mon, 17 Oct 2022 18:22:46 +0000 Theo Rollason https://theorollason.com/features Select Features On Trains, Treasures, &amp; Terrytoons: Il Cinema Ritrovato 2025 Cinema Year Zero • July 10, 2025 Minority ReportCinema Year Zero • June 13, 2024 Unplugging the Empathy MachineIn Review Online • April 30, 2024 Docklands Diary In The Mood&nbsp;• March 12, 2024 Poor Things, from Novel to ScreenIn Review Online • January 2, 2024 Sadness with Pizzazz: The Saddest Music in the World at 20Little White Lies • October 25, 2023 A Haunted Medium: On Charlie Shackleton’s The AfterlightALT/KINO • June 7, 2023 Back to the Movies: Goodbye, Dragon Inn Cinema As We Know It • August 6, 2021 Sonic Dreams: Call Me By Your NameCinema As We Know It&nbsp;• February 8, 2021Growing Up With Ghibli Film Daze • June 1, 2020 Year-End Lists Films of the Year 2024Blog Post • January 10, 2024 Films of the Year 2023Blog Post • January 12, 2024 Top Ten Films of 2022Cinema As We Know It • January 11, 2023 Filmhounds Top Ten Films of 2022Filmhounds Magazine • December 31, 2022 Top Ten Films of 2021Cinema As We Know It • January 11, 2022 Top Ten Films of 2020Cinema As We Know It • January 8, 2021 https://theorollason.com/Reviews Mon, 17 Oct 2022 18:21:18 +0000 Theo Rollason https://theorollason.com/Reviews Select ReviewsNouvelle VagueIn Review Online • October 24, 2025 Alpha In Review Online • October 22, 2025 Sanatorium Under the Sign of the HourglassIn Review Online • August 25, 2025 Bad TimingIn Review Online • April 8, 2025 QueerIn Review Online • November 26, 2024 Blitz In Review Online • November 1, 2024 One from the Heart In Review Online&nbsp;• October 1, 2024 The BeastFilmhounds • May 24, 2024 Suzhou RiverFilmhounds • May 2, 2024 AftersunFilmhounds • November 17, 2022 The Eternal Daughter Filmhounds • October 13, 2022Vive L’Amour Cinema As We Know It • March 22, 2022 Titane Outtake • November 10, 2021 Respect Outtake • September 9, 2021 Annette Outtake • August 26, 2021L’intrus Outtake • March 10, 2021 A Glitch in the Matrix Outtake • February 22, 2021 Hillbilly Elegy&nbsp; Outtake • November 27, 2020.&nbsp; Cats Outtake • December 21, 2019 High Life&nbsp; Outtake • May 10, 2019&nbsp; Climax&nbsp; The National Student • September 16, 2018&nbsp; Peter Rabbit&nbsp; The National Student • March 22, 2018 https://theorollason.com/Interviews Mon, 17 Oct 2022 18:22:56 +0000 Theo Rollason https://theorollason.com/Interviews Select InterviewsRiar Rizaldi • Mirage (Gasworks)In Review Online • September 30, 2024 Charlie Shackleton • The AfterlightBlog Post • May 22 2023 Barbara Sukowa&nbsp;• Two Of Us&nbsp;Outtake • July 15, 2021 Michael Lehmann • Heathers (30th Anniversary)The National Student • August 14, 2018 Marc Meyers&nbsp;• My Friend DahmerThe Student • June 1, 2018Michel Hazanavcus • Le Redoutable The Student • May 16, 2018Michael Pearce&nbsp;• Beast&nbsp;The Student • April 26, 2018Will Anderson • Have Heart&nbsp;The Student • March 25, 2018 https://theorollason.com/Academic-Essays Wed, 13 Mar 2024 11:14:04 +0000 Theo Rollason https://theorollason.com/Academic-Essays Select Academic Essays “It’s an imperfect world, but it’s the only one we’ve got”: The Neoliberal Marvel Cinematic UniverseMasters Dissertation, Goldsmiths • August 2022 Re/Animating the Dead: Zombie Capitalism, Digital Afterlives “Cultural Studies and Capitalism,” Goldsmiths • May 2022Inland Empire: Pleasures and Horrors of the Poor Image“Experimental Media,” Goldsmiths • May 2022 Computer-Generated Animation and the Digital Plasmatic“Experimental Media,” Goldsmiths • March 2022 Subcultural Queer Cyberspace During the COVID-19 Pandemic “Doing Cultural Studies,” Goldsmiths • January 2022 Mannequins and Meat Puppets: Reification and Gender in Blade Runner and&nbsp;Neuromancer “Poor Things,” University of Edinburgh • May 2020“What will happen to me if I fail your test?”: Policing the Borders of the Human in Science FictionUndergraduate Dissertation, University of Edinburgh • April 2020“The most terrifying casualty of the century”: The Death of Affect in Thomas Pynchon’s V. and J.G. Ballard’s Crash“Poor Things,” University of Edinburgh • March 2020A Perfect Scream: Blow Out and the Slasher Film &nbsp;“Men, Women and Chain Saws,” Freie Universität Berlin • September 2019 https://theorollason.com/Films-of-the-Year-2024 Fri, 10 Jan 2025 12:19:57 +0000 Theo Rollason https://theorollason.com/Films-of-the-Year-2024 Films of the Year 2024 Blog PostJanuary 10, 2025 <img width="1228" height="546" width_o="1228" height_o="546" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fecd32333f239a1eb8d3602020892131bb95a99cce58e933b9dc83a96a05e1f2/verticals.jpg" data-mid="224504191" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fecd32333f239a1eb8d3602020892131bb95a99cce58e933b9dc83a96a05e1f2/verticals.jpg" />I didn’t find the time to write a proper end-of-year piece this Christmas, but I did find time to watch Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s “little Christmas movie” (made for $250 million) Red One, which is ostensibly about The Rock rescuing Santa but really just an advertisment for Amazon Prime’s speedy shipping. A strategic win, to be sure, but not a patch on Francis Ford Coppola’s startlingly bonkers, sometimes genius Megalopolis, a film that will go insanely hard at future midnight screenings at the Prince Charles. Not the best film of the year — that would be Alice Rohrwacher’s gorgeous La Chimera — but the most fun I’ve had at a cinema in years.&nbsp; Anyway, here’s a list of the new films I liked or loved this past year— all of which have, you’ll be reassured to hear, a long shelf life with multiple verticals.&nbsp; All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia, 2024)Anora (Sean Baker, 2024)The Beast (Bertrand Bonello, 2023)&nbsp;Black Box Diaries (Shiori Itō, 2024)&nbsp;Challengers (Luca Guadagnino, 2024)La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2023)&nbsp;Coma (Bertrand Bonello, 2022)&nbsp;Conclave (Edward Berger, 2024)Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024)Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude, 2023)Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve, 2024)&nbsp;Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario” / Scénarios (Jean-Luc Godard, 2024) Fossilis (Riar Rizaldi, 2023)Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes, 2024)Hard Truths (Mike Leigh, 2024)&nbsp;Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik, 2022)&nbsp;I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun, 2024)Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 (Göran Hugo Olsson, 2024)Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, 2024)Monster (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2023)Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, 2024)No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, 2024)Queer (Luca Guadagnino, 2024)Red Rooms (Pascal Plante, 2023)Samsara (Lois Patiño, 2023)Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Brothers Quay, 2024)Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (Johan Grimonprez, 2024)Universal Language (Matthew Rankin, 2024)Việt and Nam (Minh Quý Trương, 2024)xena’s body (a menstrual auto-investigation using an iphone) (Occitane Lacurie, 2023)&nbsp;And here’s twenty new-to-me films I loved this year:Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993)Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1940)&nbsp;Girlfriends (Claudia Weill, 1978)Hellzapoppin’ (H. C. Potter, 1941)He Who Gets Slapped (Victor Sjöström, 1924)&nbsp;The Hourglass Sanatorium (Wojciech Jerzy Has, 1973)House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello, 2011) Illegal Tender (Paul Bettell, 1988)Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Paul Schrader, 1985)&nbsp;Orpheus (Jean Cocteau, 1950)&nbsp;Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)Penda’s Fen (Alan Clarke, 1974)&nbsp;Le Remords (René Vautier, 1974)The River (Tsai Ming-liang, 1997)Sisters, Saints and Sibyls (Nan Goldin, 2004)Street of Crocodiles (Brothers Quay, 1986)&nbsp;Threads (Mick Jackson, 1984)Tre ipotesi sulla morte di Giuseppe Pinelli (Elio Petri, 1970)&nbsp;Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964) https://theorollason.com/Charlie-Shackleton-Interview Fri, 02 Feb 2024 18:16:04 +0000 Theo Rollason https://theorollason.com/Charlie-Shackleton-Interview Interview: Charlie Shackleton Blog PostMay 22, 2023 <img width="4110" height="1827" width_o="4110" height_o="1827" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/32124a64f4ca594718a9bb78950fd83ce9e2dc4ff6684ed36f2d20d2a764c6d6/afterlight-Cropped.jpg" data-mid="203739261" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/32124a64f4ca594718a9bb78950fd83ce9e2dc4ff6684ed36f2d20d2a764c6d6/afterlight-Cropped.jpg" /> I interviewed the filmmaker Charlie Shackleton about his found footage film The Afterlight twice: first for an academic essay on the film, and then for this article written to coincide with its fiftieth screening at the BFI’s inaugural Film On Film festival. Both proved to be facinating chats, and while never intended for publication in full, I am sharing them here for anyone interested.&nbsp; Theo Rollason: Where did the idea for the film come from? Charlie Shackleton: I've made a lot of work that’s archival, in one way or another. And one thing that's always fascinated me about it, especially fiction archive, is the way it forms this accidental record of the circumstances of its own production. So that alongside the story it's telling, to watch an old film is also to watch a record of the action and expression and movements that went into making it, as well as the cultural context of the time and place where it was made. There’s that famous Godard quote about every film being a documentary of its own making, and I don't know if he meant it in quite that sense, but that was always what resonated with me. Especially if it's an older film, it's a record of something that few living people are now in the possession of a memory about. And so, the film archive started to feel to me like a repository of memory — that these past events and performances were being stored in the abstract of cultural memory. The Afterlight was really born of that, of trying to imagine a film that would serve as an emblem of cultural memory. How it would feel, look and sound to have a film in which everyone on screen was dead, how that would inform your viewing experience. And then the secondary element of the film was it existing as a single print and therefore also having a lifespan. TR: How did you go about gathering your archival footage? Were you working with celluloid film or was it all digitised material? CS: It was all digitally constructed. The material is from a bunch of different places, but primarily only what's been made available commercially in some form or other. So I was dealing with several layers of selection that had happened prior to me. Obviously, it's not just what people have chosen to keep and preserve, but also what they've chosen within that pool to put out into the world, because they perceive there to be a demand. That changes what the film ends up being, in that even before I started making my own creative decisions, I could never really be tempted into that illusion of seeing cinema history as this level playing field. It can be tempting when you start cross cutting between films from different places or different times to see the medium as this great unifying force. But I was always reminded, because of the nature of the process, quite how much bias was built into what I had to work with. TR: It’s interesting that the damage to the footage exists on two levels: on the film print we’re watching, but also on the digitised prints you’ve appropriated. CS: There's a whole story just in that. Sometimes it's hard to believe how different two films can look even if made in the same era based on their perceived cultural or commercial value across the decades. Some of those Hitchcock films that are in there look like they were shot yesterday, whereas a lot of the films from outside of the United States and Western Europe have been much worse preserved just because much less has been invested in exploiting them over the years. TR: Were you looking for the best possible quality that you could find for each clip? CS: Yeah, totally. I never wanted to overstate the case, so I really was looking for the best thing I could get my hands on in order to fairly reflect those differences. And, obviously, also to make it as legible a viewing experience as possible. TR: Did you go into the project looking for specific images? Or did you let what you found guide how the film ended up? CS: I only had the very broad criteria — well, a single criterion, in fact — of wanting everyone who appeared on screen to no longer be alive. Though it seems like a very straightforward limitation, it does immediately narrow the field quite considerably. I realised how much more difficult it was going to be to include anything made after about 1960. You let a single shot hold for a second too long, and suddenly someone walks in the background, and you don't know whether they're alive or not! And then, once you start working on the material made prior to 1960, you find that 90% of what you're looking at is black and white, and 90% of it is in Academy ratio. Each limitation had knock-on effects that formed their own structuring themes. Beyond that, it was a bit of a random selection. Just trying to, as much as possible, work impartially with what was out there, being distributed. The big question early on became, how much do I want to fully passively reflect what's been preserved and what's been made available? How much do I want to push against that? I realised if I just reflected truly the state of affairs the film would’ve been 90% English-language, probably 80% American, and I think it would’ve been so overwhelming that it would have read like an intentional choice. That was my intervention as the filmmaker. I ended up moderating that dominance in order to express it. In the final film, maybe a third of the films are English-language, which is enough that you can feel how much that overshadows the rest, but also gives you a chance to get a sense of that patchwork, and how uneven it is. TR: How much of the of the film is original material? I noticed that Robbie Ryan is credited as the cinematographer... CS: There's one original shot and it’s the establishing shot of the Afterlight sign. It was a very, very quick job for everyone involved. TR: You’ve made a film that only exists as one print, and therefore won’t be around forever. Would you be comfortable with readings of the film that frame it as a protest against the current state of film preservation? Or is there a sense of acceptance in there too? CS: I see film loss as something ambivalent. For one thing, it's just inevitable, because we can keep every film ever made. Even if we decide to invest huge amounts of the world's resources towards that, we can't make anyone ever be interested in 99% of them, because there's too many and people tend to want to hold on to the stuff that's meaningful to them and not all the rest. So film loss is both inevitable and kind of has to be unless we force people to watch stuff they hate. Even archivists will tell you that most of what sits in their archives will never be seen, because there's no audience for it, and it's very unlikely that an audience will ever be created for most of it. The BFI archive here have god knows how many prints, and duplicates, and duplicates of duplicates of films that have probably never been screened once since they entered the archive. So film loss is just practical reality on one hand. I think the much more important question is what gets lost and why. Because more often than not, it isn't an equitable scenario, where the best stuff or the stuff that means the most to people is kept and everything else gets forgotten. It's much more dependent on commercial factors, geographic factors, all kinds of other biases. But also, I think that one value in embracing the reality of losing films and accepting that is that it also forces the issue of what we want viewership to be. It’s two separate things, making a film available and having a film be watched. Often, nowadays, those things are treated as synonymous, when quite obviously they're not. I see it as my duty, having made a film whose availability is more limited than most, to ensure that it actually gets watched out by a wide number of people, by a diverse group of people outside of the standard self-selecting audiences for these sorts of films. That's important to me. I think the risk is that for a lot of films that are theoretically available to anyone — because they're on some streaming platform or other — often, people take that as an excuse to completely disregard the question of who's actually watching, and what work might need to be done to change that. The goal of access is meant to be diversifying audiences. And yet I think often when people talk about access without proactive effort to reach people, you just create another echo chamber, just one that happens to be less geographically focused. But yeah, as to the original question, about losing films. What’s become the more important question is, forget what it means to lose a film. What is it to keep one? TR: What do you anticipate the future of the film being? CS: There's been a brief hiatus as the world reels from COVID. This film does not lend itself so kindly to online festivals, obviously. But in the spring, it'll start playing festivals again. And it's going to be touring for several months, around those. Then, in the summer, I'm going to bring it back to the UK and tour around cinemas here. Hopefully, one way or the other, I'm going to tour around parts of the UK that don't already have a 35mm screen. That's another inbuilt limitation of this film is, it tends to only be the areas that are already best served by arthouse and experimental film, that have the facilities to play 35mm. We're hopefully going to take a portable projector to the venues that don't. But that is all still very much a work in progress. TR: When we last spoke, we touched on this idea of the film as this ephemeral object designed to be lost, all this gloomy stuff about loss and decay. But when I saw the film — I think it was the fourth public screening — any actual damage to the print was basically unnoticeable. Has that changed? What's the condition of it now? CS: It's funny. The screening at Film On Film will be the 50th — at least, 50th public — screening; obviously, venues do test screenings to make sure the print is ready to be projected. But 50 screenings nowadays in the digital era means something very different than it would have meant 30 years ago. Mainly because the venues and the projectionists that are still screening celluloid are kind of the experts; everyone else left it for digital. And so these days, if anywhere is projecting 35mm, they really know what they're doing. As a result, the damage incurred in any given screening is much less than it used to be. The weird irony of the death of 35mm is that there's been this commensurate rise in the standard of projection. I never turn up at a cinema to meet the projectionist and meet a 17-year-old who was taught how to use the projector yesterday. It's almost always a veteran who's been doing it for decades. That said, the print is absolutely different than it would have been when you saw it in its earliest screenings. For the most part, that's the gradual wear and tear that builds up over time. It's most evident around the beginnings and ends of the reels, which tend to get the most handling and therefore the most damage. When you when you get to the end of each 20 minutes, and you can see a gradual flurry of scratches rising up to the point of the reel change and then filtering away on the other side. One of the interesting things is that the print, even though it's a black and white film, is printed on colour film stock. Because of the way that the — I'm going to bastardize this now slightly — because of the way the dyes work in colour film stock, when you get scratches, the deeper scratches eat into the top layer of emulsion, and that reveals the green dye. And so a lot of the deeper scratches that have appeared on the print since it started screening now appear green. Gradually, this black and white film is sort of becoming, oddly, a colour film. TR: Why was it printed on colour film stock? CS: Purely practical necessity. The lab that printed the film didn't have a black and white film bath. And so the only option was to print to colour in less I went with a much more expensive lab in the US. Real purists will absolutely tell you that it’s sacrilege to print a black and white film on colour stock, because of the subtle differences between the two. But I'm not enough of a purist to care to be honest. TR: It sounds like you're going to get something more interesting anyway. CS: Yeah, quite possibly. Beyond that, there's been a few more noticeable changes. I mean, one of the weirder ones was that about 20 screenings in — and I'm not entirely sure where this happened because they never owned up to it — some of the countdown frames on the first reel burned, presumably because the projectionist uncovered the dowser too quickly before the print was up to speed and so the heat of the lamp burned through the countdown frames. Incredibly, three frames were burned through and these were then clipped out by another projection and been given to me. It was only then that I realized that the three frames were 6-6-6, which looks extraordinarily ominous with these orange-red burns through them. There’s some changes to the sound due to damage that crosses over into the area of the analogue soundtrack. There's this one particular bump that has emerged just before the beginning of the end credits. The film ends and then there's this big skip noise, almost like a jolt. I have no idea what that is. I keep meaning to get a projectionist have a look for me, and tell me why it's doing that. To be honest, I'm probably not even aware of most of the changes, because I haven't watched it in a year at least. I don't really know what state it's in right now, even though I can literally see it with my own eyes right now, because it's in a case in my living room waiting to go off to the BFI.TR: Is touring still the future for the print? CS: Definitely. At this point, it's just dependent on how many people want to screen it. I'm more than happy for literally anyone who wants to screen it to do so. And I suppose what will inevitably happen is, as I move on to working on other things, I'll be less actively pursuing screenings, although I'd like to still try to do that. If and when I travel anywhere, I'll always look if there's a cinema locally that screens 35mm, to see if I could suggest to them the possibility of me bringing the print with me and screening it. But I think realistically, it will become more a case of whoever wants to screen it, reaching out to me and me doing whatever I can to make that possible. TR: Have your own thoughts or feelings about the film changed over the course of touring with it? CS: I think when I started, there was still some part of me that felt quite precious about it, because it hadn't been seen by very many people yet. The thought of the damage I'm describing, let alone the prospect of it somehow getting lost or destroyed, was still very anxiety inducing. Even though that was obviously the point, I hadn't quite made my peace with it, because the thought of it somehow disappearing, and having only ever been seen by a few hundred people, was still a fairly terrifying one. The more people have seen it, the more that feeling has faded away. It really, sincerely doesn't feel like my film anymore. I feel very much at ease with the idea of it going off to whatever venue or temporary caretaker that it goes to, because it just feels like that's when it's living its strange life that I've created for it. Over fifty screenings, it's not the biggest audience in the world, but that's thousands and thousands of people who have now seen the film and I think if the worst happened, I could certainly live with that. https://theorollason.com/Films-of-the-Year-2023 Thu, 11 Jan 2024 12:14:44 +0000 Theo Rollason https://theorollason.com/Films-of-the-Year-2023 Films of the Year 2023 Blog PostJanuary 11, 2024 <img width="2000" height="800" width_o="2000" height_o="800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/32ed4af1c4771954aa5e8ace7129b730f47ede00d3950ccd4f7e14960c6056cb/oh-god.jpg" data-mid="203057116" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/32ed4af1c4771954aa5e8ace7129b730f47ede00d3950ccd4f7e14960c6056cb/oh-god.jpg" />Before getting into my picks for the best films of the past year, it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate the oft-forgotten middlebrow movies — or outright stinkers — that tell us more about the state of the art (or at least the industry) than any of their more reputable cousins. Take the ending of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which captures so much of the past fifteen years or so of American blockbuster filmmaking in a single punch. In the film’s final act (massive spoilers, by the way), archaeologist/Nazi-magnet Indiana Jones (played by Harrison Ford for the fifth time since 1981) is transported to the year 212 BC through a fissure in time that is, now the baddies have been defeated, threatening to close. But Indy doesn’t want to go back to his own time. In fact, he practically begs his companion to let him stay; the past, he thinks, is where he belongs.What an ending! Indiana Jones — emblem of nostalgia not only for the ’80s, but also for the ’40s adventure serials creators Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were pastiching in the first place — can be left in the past, can finally become one of the very relics he’s spent his career searching for. Except that’s not the film’s ending, because Indy’s younger companion abruptly punches him in the face and forcibly drags him back to the future. He wakes to a very different kind of happy ending, one in which he’s reunited with his ex-wife Marion, a character we haven’t even yet seen in this film, played by fan-favourite Karen Allen. Nostalgia wins out after all. Honestly, there’s something quite funny about the bluntness with which the film admits that the Walt Disney Company will simply not let this man die while there’s money to be made.Sticking with cash-grabbing ploys involving digging up old dudes, I enjoyed the chaos around the DC superhero movie The Flash, whose entire marketing centred on the return of Michael Keaton as Batman (because its actual star had been on a crime spree). Of course, the thing we see on screen often isn’t Keaton at all; like the youthful Harrison Ford in the opening of the new Indiana Jones, who croaks with the voice of a man three times the age of his uncanny GCI clone, Keaton flings himself around The Flash’s various non-spaces courtesy of a weightless CGI puppet. It’s at least a fate slightly more dignified than the actually-dead actors from other DC universes (properties)— George Reeves, Adam West, Christopher Reeve — digitally reanimated for cameos in the film’s finale. It’s all rather fitting: upon release The Flash was itself a zombie movie, one of the final instalments of a franchise that had already committed to wiping the slate clean and starting over.The Flash was not the worst superhero movie of the year — that would be the abysmal Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania — but it was representative of the worst impulses of a genre that has dominated this millennium’s global box office, especially as confirmation that the multiverse trend of recent years has been just another avenue for exploiting a culture hooked on nostalgia. Admittedly The Flash was a flop, and even DC’s rivals Marvel are stumbling at the box office — though Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 demonstrated that if these things are competently made, they’ll still do well and be adored by most critics. Personally, I wasn’t convinced by the Guardians’ pivot to hardcore sentiment; I found myself intermittently taken out of the film by thoughts about how strange it was to be watching a cutesy anthropomorphic Racoon voiced by Bradley Cooper being tortured for my enjoyment. (I had similar feelings about the treatment of Carey Mulligan’s character in Cooper’s own directorial effort, Maestro.) <img width="850" height="500" width_o="850" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cd5d62d258ddacd7abf6daf94650538aad9022a15fce1c8ace260f651f8a6830/oppy.jpg" data-mid="203057125" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/850/i/cd5d62d258ddacd7abf6daf94650538aad9022a15fce1c8ace260f651f8a6830/oppy.jpg" /> <img width="850" height="500" width_o="850" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3d2c795e54be6bbb21cc012caccd4e3f6337a18b5a83811dd62b20a61e2ad1f3/paci.jpg" data-mid="203057139" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/850/i/3d2c795e54be6bbb21cc012caccd4e3f6337a18b5a83811dd62b20a61e2ad1f3/paci.jpg" /> <img width="850" height="500" width_o="850" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1070637295dc67b504d8860b24e89e94a866758df8e2911dec17525cb50e5fb6/Untitled-1.jpg" data-mid="203057142" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/850/i/1070637295dc67b504d8860b24e89e94a866758df8e2911dec17525cb50e5fb6/Untitled-1.jpg" /> <img width="850" height="500" width_o="850" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/671b8325034f2c4a68b5da35c24008bc6bfbdbd7e09306eaf656d154a7bca244/zone.jpg" data-mid="203057138" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/850/i/671b8325034f2c4a68b5da35c24008bc6bfbdbd7e09306eaf656d154a7bca244/zone.jpg" /> Oppenheimer - Pacifiction - Asteroid City - The Zone of InterestI’m admittedly picking on easy targets, and don’t want to paint a picture of a totally dire mainstream – so, on to the good stuff. I thoroughly enjoyed watching a flesh-and-bones Tom Cruise continue to hurl himself around in Mission Imposible: Dead Reckoning; these guys have landed on a formula, and it’s not a bad one. Emma Seligman’s Bottoms, a refreshingly stupid spin on the high school comedy, was a great vehicle for the immense comic talents of Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri. And there was one superhero movie that I loved this year, the animated sequel Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse — a film somehow even more wildly creative than its predecessor. I also had a great time catching a sold-out, pinked-out screening of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie on opening weekend, even if the film’s corporate-approved autocritique does very little that wasn’t done better and more succinctly in the 1994 Simpsons episode “Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy.” (For a very different take on many of the same themes, I would recommend Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, a film I loved and then went to war with.)Much to my surprise, my preferred Barbenheimer flick was feel-bad hit of the summer Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s despairing portrait of the so-called father of the atomic bomb. Apart from anything else, the film is an astonishing feat of editing — a single, tumbling montage that never loses momentum over its three hours. The bar is obviously quite low, but I was also just quite amazed to see a historical blockbuster of this scale unequivocally state that the dropping of the atom bomb was both evil and wholly unjustified, that the McCarthyist hounding of Oppenheimer was also wrong, and that no amount of guilt and half-hearted martyrdom could ever redeem a man — and a country — who lacked real moral conviction about anything. For a more muted but no less unnerving film that also touches on nuclear anxiety, I’d also recommend Pacifiction, a gorgeously shot film that’s also director Albert Serra’s best yet.Come to think of it, distant atomic testing also existentially punctuates Asteroid City, a playfully metacinematic movie that doubles the mysteries of extraterrestrial life with the those of art itself. It’s filmmaker Wes Anderson’s finest since 2014’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. More impressively, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days — about a Tokyo toilet cleaner who manages to find the simple pleasures of routine — is probably his best fiction film in over thirty years. I can see how these films could be accused of being too clean to really challenge, but I do appreciate that both works, in their different ways, are grappling honestly with how we might glean meaning from a chaotic and depressing world.By contrast, The Zone of Interest was one of the most viscerally unpleasant experiences I had all year. Director Jonathan Glazer has gutted Martin Amis’ novel — about the family of a Nazi commandant living next-door to Auschwitz — of almost all of its plot, retaining only the setting and wonderfully euphemistic title. The constant juxtaposition between the domestic bliss on one side of the camp’s wall and the horrific sounds that seep over from the other is profoundly disturbing, though thankfully Glazer plays very little on the kind of smirking ironies could easily have built a film around. Rather, this is a deliberately paced film that provocatively challenges us to recognise in the mundanities of Nazi Germany something of our own lives. <img width="850" height="500" width_o="850" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/87ee7f451167a0fd547bdfd1102bcc6fb46c0e32b496819f1059798d1c2e7abf/evil-does.jpg" data-mid="203057150" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/850/i/87ee7f451167a0fd547bdfd1102bcc6fb46c0e32b496819f1059798d1c2e7abf/evil-does.jpg" /> <img width="850" height="500" width_o="850" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/836bf7c184fb2c648290d6d2be3adc5f9cfd127951ec73d96b7175087b7c75ed/how.jpg" data-mid="203057162" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/850/i/836bf7c184fb2c648290d6d2be3adc5f9cfd127951ec73d96b7175087b7c75ed/how.jpg" /> <img width="850" height="500" width_o="850" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4a9c0a7e4319b0a93297c6d2ee5c04f24e092f950cd2f2c110f2888ffe9175e7/foorsteps.jpg" data-mid="203057176" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/850/i/4a9c0a7e4319b0a93297c6d2ee5c04f24e092f950cd2f2c110f2888ffe9175e7/foorsteps.jpg" /> <img width="850" height="500" width_o="850" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/642d60b30497d8d1aecd8c439033e619612debc44972a863de4bdd094a0bc8cd/incident.jpg" data-mid="203057170" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/850/i/642d60b30497d8d1aecd8c439033e619612debc44972a863de4bdd094a0bc8cd/incident.jpg" /> Evil Does Not Exist - How To Have Sex - Footsteps - IncidentA very different kind of patient, political filmmaking can be found in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist, which sees a rural community threatened by the imminent construction of an intrusive “glamping” site. The shocking and enigmatic ending is one I’m still turning over. Unexpectedly, I was similarly unnerved by the final scenes of Richard Linklater’s otherwise uproariously funny (and genuinely sexy) Hit Man, a rom-com about a dorky psychology professor who moonlights for the police as a fake hitman, and in doing so exposes something of the malleability of self. It’s typical of Linklater to sneak in some compelling philosophy and moral quandaries into the most crowd-pleasing film of the year.A pair of debut features have inspired some of the best conversations I’ve had with friends this year. Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex is an alarmingly well-observed portrait of the gendered horrors of teendom via an extremely British rites-of-passage holiday. I sincerely hope it’s screened in schools across the country. Similarly honest is Past Lives, Celine Song’s tale of childhood sweethearts reunited. It’s a film that smartly trips up expectations — though for such a seemingly straightforward narrative, my friends’ interpretations and emotional responses have differed vastly.Some of the most personal films I saw this past year weren’t screened in a cinema, and one wasn’t really a film at all. In As Mine Exactly, a single viewer sits opposite filmmaker Charlie Shackleton and listens as he shares his childhood recollections of the onset of his mother’s epilepsy, accompanied by desktop-doc footage watched on a VR headset. It’s unsettling and moving in equal measure — and a work I haven’t stopped thinking about. More oblique but similarly poignant was Fiona Tan’s gallery piece Footsteps, which juxtaposes letters sent to the artist by her father in the 1980s with found footage of Dutch life and industry nearly a hundred years earlier, exploring histories personal and political. The conceit is reversed in Steve McQueen’s Occupied City, which combines footage shot in modern-day Amsterdam with narration detailing the atrocities and acts of resistance that occurred in those same places during the Second World War. It makes for an interesting meditation on the relationship between the past and the present, though I was more affected by McQueen’s much shorter film Grenfell, which comprises of a single shot of the then-recently burned tower taken from a helicopter.Somewhat unexpectedly, Bill Morrison’s latest documentary Incident— about a black man killed by the police on the streets of Chicago in 2018 — was another of the most urgently political films I saw this year. Morrison recreates the event using surveillance and bodycam footage, allowing us see institutional fictions (“he pulled a gun on us!”) and justifications take shape in practically real time; it’s essential viewing. I was also impressed by the immediacy of Anders Hammer’s The Takeover, documenting the protests and counter-protests that occurred as the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan, and Mstyslav Chernov’s harrowing 20 Days in Mariupol, shot by journalists documenting civilians caught in Russia’s siege of the city. <img width="850" height="500" width_o="850" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b387546532757605b731eca9d315e6a5534da432153ce2b8709ec7de73987395/notes.jpg" data-mid="203057184" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/850/i/b387546532757605b731eca9d315e6a5534da432153ce2b8709ec7de73987395/notes.jpg" /> <img width="850" height="500" width_o="850" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7983d1286691dad3ffbe6f197402e3696bd04bf5a95e6e78a4dfcbe2f68f1794/boy.jpg" data-mid="203057196" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/850/i/7983d1286691dad3ffbe6f197402e3696bd04bf5a95e6e78a4dfcbe2f68f1794/boy.jpg" /> <img width="850" height="500" width_o="850" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/32f5f57bb04cde48239cebeda2f039949257999cfe6d9099762cf53b0ae2039b/showing.jpg" data-mid="203057203" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/850/i/32f5f57bb04cde48239cebeda2f039949257999cfe6d9099762cf53b0ae2039b/showing.jpg" /> <img width="850" height="500" width_o="850" height_o="500" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3b11a0fcf721ada497cab94893f2538e682ba7ea18c9a5c38fa4cef6bf329699/anatomy.jpg" data-mid="203057190" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/850/i/3b11a0fcf721ada497cab94893f2538e682ba7ea18c9a5c38fa4cef6bf329699/anatomy.jpg" /> Notes from Gog Magog - The Boy and the Heron - Showing Up - Anatomy of a FallIn the year that AI image-making was properly democratised, I unsurprisingly managed to see a lot of terrible AI art. (In tribute, may I present the header image at the top of this piece.) One exception was Riar Rizaldi’s short Notes from Gog Magog, an experimental ghost story exploring contemporary tech capitalism which exploits the Cronenbergian potential of AI fantastically. On a more tangible level, Aaron James Robertson’s Rea’s Men creatively evokes a kind of purgatory in which it explores masculine cycles of violence and the legacies of Windrush. I also caught up with a lot of innovative short video essays this year: Maryam Tafakory’s chaste/unchaste, Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s GeoMarkr, and the final entries in Johannes Binotto’s series Practices of Viewing. My favourite was probably Richard Misek’s A History of the World According to Getty Images, an investigation into the privatisation of the so-called public domain that slyly works against what it’s describing.Of the feature documentaries I saw this year, one stood out in particular. Filmmaker Kit Vincent found out he had terminal cancer aged 24, and in his debut Red Herring he trains his camera on the most important people in his life in an attempt to explore how they're dealing (or not dealing) with the diagnosis. Inevitably, the process also results in a self-portrait of its director as he tries to figure out what sort of legacy he wants to leave behind. The film’s biggest surprise is that it’s as funny as it is devastating. The Boy and the Heron, from master animator Hayao Miyazaki, also finds its maker grappling with legacy — and predictably ends on a spectacular note that manages to feel both pessimistic and optimistic. If this is indeed Miyazaki’s last film, it’s a poignant note to wrap up a remarkable career on.Todd Field’s Tár would’ve topped my list for last year’s best films, but I didn’t manage to see it in time due to its later UK release; it’s the same reason I haven’t seen new films from Hirokazu Kore-eda, Andrew Haigh, Alice Rohrwacher, and Radu Jude yet. Amazingly, Kelly Reichardt’s 2022 film Showing Up still hasn’t received a cinema release here, and probably never will. It’s a real shame, because it’s one of the better films I’ve seen about being an artist. A few films I saw at the end of last year are now becoming widely available; I’d still recommend Ann Oren’s delightfully strange Piaffe, as well as Jumana Manna’s skilful blend of documentary and fiction Foragers — a film about the systematic erasure of Palestinian culture that has only become more essential as Israel’s barbaric treatment of the Palestinian people has sharply escalated.My favourites of the year were two fascinating films about the essentially fictive nature of the truth and the extent to which you can really ever know someone: Todd Haynes’ slippery swipe at the true crime genre May December and Justine Triet’s did-she-do-it courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall. Aside from being astonishing feats of direction, acting, and especially writing — films unafraid to introduce complication upon complication — they’re also both just supremely entertaining movies that I know I’ll be watching again and again. Finally, twenty new-to-me films I loved this year:Ace in the Hole (1951, dir. Billy Wilder)Ball of Fire (1941, dir. Howard Hawks)Blight (1996, dir. John Smith)Bound (1996, dir. Lana and Lilly Wachowski)Chan Is Missing (1982, dir. Wayne Wang)The Exquisite Corpus (2015, dir. Peter Tscherkassky)The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962, dir. Karel Zeman)Frank’s Cock (1994, dir. Mike Hoolboom)Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990, dir. Joe Dante)Irma Vep (1996, dir. Olivier Assayas)Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, dir. Chantal Akerman)The Lady Eve (1941, dir. Preston Sturges)La Ronde (1950, dir. Max Ophüls)Looking for Langston (1989, dir. Isaac Julien)Make Way for Tomorrow (1937, dir. Leo McCarey)Millennium Mambo (2001, dir. Hou Hsiao-hsien)Ordet (1955, dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer)Variety (1983, dir. Bette Gordon)Yi Yi (2000, dir. Edward Yang)You, the Living (2007, dir. Roy Andersson)