Features
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.
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 Spaghetti Westerns that weren’t directed by the legendary Sergio Leone.
The revolution is here— We are in the midst of a global revolution for female empowerment and equality. This movement has been building for some years, and the new efforts for women directors have added great momentum to the cause. The campaign and ongoing support for women directors starting 2013 by the ACLU has now led to an industry-wide investigation.
Amicus Studios had the reputation for being the rival studio to England’s famed horror factory Hammer studios throughout the 1960’s and 70’s. While that may be true in some respects, Amicus also had the goods to make some truly enjoyable horror anthologies that managed to be both entertaining and scary. As a devout fan of Hammer studios, it feels nearly traitorous to be praising their rival Amicus, but to ignore their body of work would just be flat out ignorant, as Amicus proved to be a formidable rivalry to the house of horrors that Hammer was known for.
I can’t think of any other couple that exemplified the pure nature of an old Hollywood romance other than Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. If you take a quick glimpse at their history together, the love they shared was palpable. Bacall was only nineteen when they met (twenty when they married), and Bogart was old enough to be her father.
November has reared its head, and that means it’s starting to get seriously cold (or seriously hot, depending on where you are) outside. We hope everyone enjoyed Halloween – did you watch anything good to celebrate it, and who did you dress up as, if you did? October was a great month for Film Inquiry, we published nearly 70 great articles, and we announced that Maria Giese is joining us to keep the world up to date on the unfolding EEOC investigation, and report on Hollywood’s response to the action.
Dalton Trumbo is not a household name today, but he was one of the most influential screenwriters in the old Hollywood studio system. Many of his films like Roman Holiday and Spartacus are beloved classics, but Trumbo is also a significant figure for his part in the Hollywood blacklist, a period of anti-Communist hysteria that swept through the United States in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Trumbo, like many Hollywood intellectuals, was targeted for his progressive politics in an unprecedented purge that saw many actors, directors and writers, lose their livelihoods, their freedom and even their lives.
It may be fair to say that in the film industry, any motion picture that is not spoken in the English language is tagged under ‘foreign’. As we all know, Hollywood cinema is dominant among the world of film due to technological advancements, box office strategies for blockbusters, and stardom. For this reason, audiences are usually very selective when it comes to watching ‘foreign’ films.
Over the course of history, Hollywood has given female filmmakers few chances to work on film projects. Fewer chances than their male cohorts, to be sure – no matter their experience or education. Male directors are hired invariably and without doubt, and they are featured and lauded in media frequently.
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 focused on the year 1973.