The Village Voice, “The Restoration Revolution”
Another mighty brick of excavated cine-miracles: Arrow Films’ pink house of Japanese avant-gardism, Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism. Yoshida was one of the major Sixties New Wave bomb throwers, though his movies for some reason never exported like Oshima’s or Imamura’s. His keynote epic Eros + Massacre (1969) would’ve certainly posed a challenge — at […]
Variety, “Korea Box Office: ‘Dunkirk’ Beats ‘Spider-Man’”
“Anarchist from Colony,” the only homegrown Korean movie in the Top 10 chart, took eighth place. The Lee Joon-ik drama earned $272,100 between Friday and Sunday and extended its total to $16.1 million after four weekends. Continue Reading
Los Angeles Times, “‘Dawson City: Frozen Time’ details the astonishing discovery of a treasure-trove of forgotten film”
Though it’s so subtly interwoven you might not immediately notice it, one of “Dawson City’s” narrative threads is a gloss on the nature of capitalism, grounded in gold mining information and including fascinating newsreel footage of a 1917 New York march protesting anti-black violence and a 1929 anarchist bombing of the J.P. Morgan bank that […]
Slate, “How Paranoia Infiltrated the Movies”
Though the political casts of the designated villains fluctuate wildly according to the ideology of the country and period—ranging from the anarchist “vampire” gang to the red spies of Cold War thrillers, to the nearly invisible capitalist tycoons of Cutter’s Way (1981), to the smug government bureaucrats in The Ghost Writer (2010)—the evil designs remain […]
The Huffington Post, “I tapped Mel Brook’s phone. Please, Mel, accept my belated apologies.”
It was 1970 – I was studying film with Marty Scorsese at New York University – and in my spare time shooting film with a bunch of Anarchist troublemakers known as Transcendental Student. Having shot a load of 16mm film for a film we called Inciting to Riot we needed a secure facility to cut […]
Broadly, “The Pioneering Filmmaker Known for Her Wild, Antifascist Sex Comedies”
In Love & Anarchy (1973), perhaps the greatest of Wertmüller’s films, Giannini plays Tunin, a young anarchist farmer who comes to Rome in the 1930s with a plan to assassinate Mussolini. His contacts set him up with Salomè (Melato), a radical prostitute whose work gives her access to plenty of high-level fascists. But he soon […]
All Things Considered (NPR), “Documentarian Says ‘Anarchist Cookbook’ Author Was Filled With Remorse”
Now, a new documentary has increased curiosity around Powell’s life. It’s called American Anarchist and it’s the work of filmmaker Charlie Siskel. Siskel says he knew about the book when he was growing up. “It was notorious. It was the kind of thing that kids in the suburbs had to get their parents angry.” He […]
Variety, “SXSW Film Review: ‘The Most Hated Woman in America’”
Granted, Madalyn loved each of those roles — she was every bit as pioneering as a 1960s single mother as she was an atheist — but that wasn’t how she imagined her epitaph at all. The three words she really wanted: Woman, Atheist, Anarchist. But if one thing is certain, she ain’t looking down from […]
Observer, “The Last Temptation of Marty: Scorsese’s ‘Silence’ Doesn’t Absolve Director’s Sins”
NYU during those days was a hotbed of turbulence and turmoil that grew out of the anti-war and anti-authoritarian movements. Marty’s relationship was marginal, but he did provide guidance to us radical student anarchists working on documentaries with titles like Inciting to Riot and Red Squad. Continue Reading
The New Yorker, “Isabelle Huppert’s Intellectual Sustenance in Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Things to Come””
En route to the classroom, she’s momentarily blocked by students protesting changes in the government’s retirement policy; inside, she gives a lesson that involves a quotation from Rousseau about democracy; and on the way out she’s visited by a former student, Fabien (Roman Kolinka), a talented young philosopher who writes for her monograph series but […]