Features
No movie gives an aura of eighties nostalgia better than St.Elmo’s Fire. The Joel Schumacher directed film is somewhat of an underappreciated ‘masterpiece’.
The Look of Silence, the harrowing companion piece to The Act of Killing, was released earlier this year to universal acclaim. With the film about to be released on streaming platforms in the US, with a ton of awards nominations heading its way (including a place in the shortlist for Best Documentary at the Oscars this year), Film Inquiry spoke to director Joshua Oppenheimer about the past decade in his life making these films, as well as the new form of documentary storytelling he has pioneered. Alistair Ryder for Film Inquiry:
They were at the top of their game. They had it all: the fame, the positive critics, a status amongst the greatest filmmakers of all time, and the power to make any film they wished.
November truly is the herald of winter (or summer, depending on where you are), and many of us are starting to get that serious holiday vibe, even if it’s just because you are constantly, and frankly, incessantly assaulted by Christmas music, movies and commercials. Yeah – vibes don’t always need to be positive, ha! Nonetheless, it’s a season of beautiful merriment, togetherness and familiality, and since the North Americas just celebrated Thanksgiving, I’d like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank everyone who supports Film Inquiry.
Violence in cinema isn’t a new concept. In fact, some of the earliest films ever made were surprisingly violent, even by todays standards. But how can we determine a desensitisation to violence in modern audiences?
Cady McClain is an award-winning daytime TV actress, but she has another side: as a director. She has completed two short award-winning films, Flip Fantasia and World of Albert Fuh, and the comedy web series Suzy F*cking Homemaker, and is currently in production on a new documentary about women directors called Seeing Is Believing:
By its nature, sci-fi is a genre of revolution. The fantastical elements (time travel, dystopian future setting or parallel worlds) allow the genre a certain amount of artistic license. This generally results in society being represented as fairer, less discriminatory or strong themes of trying to make the world a better place.
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations, with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is great biographical films on a variety of different important figures.
It’s been a week now since the world was shocked by a string of attacks throughout the city known world over as the civic symbol of love. Paris is many different things to many different people, and whether or not one has had the occasion to even visit, it is likely that they at least hold some associations with it, something representative of its ranking it among the world’s top tier metropolises. With Paris, as with most things, there is no better window into the place it holds in the hearts of those looking both from the outside as well as within as the frame of the movie screen.
Hanna Polak is a documentarian whose films have been screened the world over. It only took her two directorial efforts for her to be recognized by the Academy, as her memorable film Children of Leningradsky was nominated for Best Documentary Short in 2005. After spending some time as a director for hire, Polak is returning to the international documentary scene with an absolutely remarkable film over 14 years in the making, Something Better To Come (you can read my review here).
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations, with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is great war films from all over the world.
One of the internet’s favorite pastimes is letting people know why the things they love are actually terrible. It can be frustrating sometimes, being the only one in the world to know the true value of a film when it seems like the whole world has had the wool pulled over their eyes. In this edition of Staff Inquiry, the FI team joins in on the fun as we get our full troll on.
The old Hollywood Studio System produced many great works of art from the eternal fable of The Wizard of Oz to the harsh poetry of director John Ford’s westerns. Out of this creative environment came film noir, a style of movie-making that became very popular in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Noir filmmakers used shadowy black and white cinematography and inventive camera angles to make movies filled with crime, lust, betrayal, and the darkness in the human heart.
Over at our official Facebook page, we are currently posting daily film recommendations, with each week being a different theme. This is a collection of those recommendations! This week’s theme is great revenge films from all over the world.
My home city of Nottingham recently hosted its first International Microfilm Festival, and through my day job, I was involved with one of the winning shorts from the documentary category. To be honest, before the festival, I hadn’t really heard of microfilm, so I was definitely curious to find out more. In this article, I’ll explore what microfilm is, and what makes them different to short films.