The Decade in Moving Images

This is mostly meant for personal use as a reminder of what I've seen and what I still value. Don't be alarmed if it doesn't seem to make sense as a whole. If you feel this way, you're probably right as this inventory hasn't been edited to highlight any filmmaking trends whatsoever.

2019

Films

Heimat Is a Space in Time / Heimat ist ein Raum aus Zeit (Thomas Heise)
Jallikattu (Lijo Jose Pellissery)

Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)

Pure Art / Чыстае мастацтва (Maksim Shved)

The Cordillera of Dreams / La cordillere des songes (Patricio Guzmán)

The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg)

The Traitor / Il traditore (Marco Bellocchio)

Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)

TV shows

Atlanta (2nd season, Donald Glover, Hiro Murai, 2016-)

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (Rachel Bloom, Aline Brosh McKenna, 2015-2019)

The Show About the Show (Caveh Zahedi, 2015-)

Archives

Ears. Eyes. Throats. Restored Classic and Lost Punk Films (1976-1981))

The 30 greatest + 15 most musical movies of the '60s

Best Films of 2016 at Cineticle - the Day Before Post-Cinema (My Take on the Year's Pictures)

So, Cineticle made a choice of the best films this year, the first of the really worthwile year-end-lists.
My own top is there. And here's a concise version, so to say; without any reflections and ruminations:

1. Histoire de Judas (Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche, 2015)
2. As Mil e Uma Noites (Miguel Gomes, 2015)
3. Homeland (Iraq Year Zero) (Abbas Fahdel, 2015)
4. Horace and Pete (Louis CK, 2016)
5. 88:88 (Isiah Medina,2015)
6. Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater, 2016)
7. Somethin Between Us (Jodie Mack, 2015)
8. The Pearl Button (Patricio Guzman, 2015)
9. The Day Before the End (Lav Diaz, 2016)
10. The Plague at the Karatas Village (Adilkhan Yerzhanov, 2016)

+ 15 more excellent films, in alphabetical order:

Bahubali: The Beginning (S. S. Rajamouli, 2015)
Bella e perduta (Pietro Marcello, 2015)
Fuocoammare (Gianfranco Rosi, 2016)
Gravity Falls (2012-2016)
In Jackson Heights (Frederick Wiseman, 2015)
L'avenir (Mia Hansen-Love, 2016)
L'oiseau de la nuit (Marie Losier, 2015)
La academia de las musas (Jose Luis Guerin, 2015)
La Deuxieme Nuit (Eric Pauwels, 2016)
Love (Judd Apatow, 2016)
Love & Partnership (Nikita Lavretski, 2016)
Palms (Mary Helena Clark, 2015)
The Exquisite Corpus (Peter Tscherkassky, 2015)
The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (Ben Rivers, 2015)
Wake (Subic) (John Gianvito, 2015)

+ my post-cinematic 13 of music videos

ANOHNI - Drone Bomb Me (Nabil)
Arca - Sin Rumbo (Jesse Kanda)
clipping - wriggle (Rodney Ascher)
Ital Tek - Beyond Sight (Clayton Welham and Joseph Lion)
James Blake - I Need A Forest Fire (ft. Bon Iver) (United Visual Artists: Matt Clark, Chris Davenport)
Julianna Barwick - Nebula (Derrick Belcham)
Kari Faux - Fantasy (Carlos Lopez Estrada)
Oneohtrix Point Never - Animals (Rick Alverson)
Soda_Jerk & The Avalanches - The Was (Soda_Jerk)
Massive Attack - The Spoils ft. Hope Sandoval (John Hillcoat)
Mark Pritchard - Sad Alron (Jonathan Zawada)
The Avalanches - Frankie Sinatra (Fleur, Manu)
Vince Staples - Prima Donna (Nabil)

I only regret forgetting to include Tyrone Lebon's video for Nikes by Frank Ocean.
Overall, it was a troubled and rushed but nevertheless very enjoyable year. Cheers!

On Andrzej Żuławski's Boris Godunov

When Ringan Ledwidge built his recent video for Massive Attack on a fragment of Żuławski's Possesion, cinephiles' most frequent reaction was eager recognition even though the muted emotions of Rosamund Pike, her posing to pleasant music with an all-too-clean underpass for the the background, sanitized practically everything that made the original scene so remarkable. Undertaking film adaptation of Musorgsky's opera Andrzej Żuławski realized that music can easily supress Pushkin's lyrics, and operatic conventions with numerous domes and golden attire can undermine the drama of the plot. Tarkovsky understood this, too. In an attempt to save his own 1983 rendering of the opera from becoming tales of yesteryear and a grand trifle he introduced it with a well-known anecdote about Stalin and Yudina in the programmes. Żuławski never put political agenda first. Probably that is why in his film Soviet-like soldiers march by the fence that calls to mind the iconic photos of Nazi concentration camps, Polish nobility is somewhat cleaner but perhaps even more repulsive that Russian boyars. And all of them fevereshly rush into the abyss. Just about to join them is the film crew which is quite often seen on the screen. Żuławski doesn't shy away from theater (“Art is related to the artificial,” he says.), he seems to rather enjoy revealing conventions while erasing not only the border between cinematic and theatrical, but also between art and life. No wonder travelling shot along the crowd of actors-townsmen rhymes with a similar shot of the “audience”. The real audience isn't safe either since the camera strives to involve them into what's going on on the screen and on the set, his part becomes unclear. The faces are shot with rapidly moving camera and become blurred as well. The film is particularly rough on conservative opera lovers. At the heart of almost any opera (and various “operatic” films like The Godfather or Visconti's films) is disposition to nostalgia and idealisation of the past that are entirely alien to Żuławski. Hence the mud that actors have to wade through, the infamous Fool's bucket and that is why the messy orchestration by Musorgsky suits the film much better than the common smooth and sleek Rimsky-Korsakov's version. Discomforting like all Żuławski's films, Boris Godunov sometimes resembles Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible (especially in the fantastic decorations of the sets) or Powell-Pressburger's Les Contes d'Hoffmann (the rebellious colors and conscious play with theatricality), but is in fact apart from all director's oeuvre and other musical cinema.

The Destructive Absence of History in Almodóvar's Julieta

It's high time we stopped talking about Almodóvar making the same cinema over and over. Even his previous film, Los amantes pasajeros is rather an attempt to step in the same river twice or to play with old toys. At press-conference in Cannes Almodóvar confessed to watching Bergman's films in the course of preparation for the shooting of Juileta. Judging by his interviews Bergman is hardly Spanish director's all-time favorite but curiously enough the powerful Bergmanian prelude of red color might be the only duly reappropriated borrowing in all of the movie. The relentless assault on directors of the past seems to be over, inventive kitschy opening titles are out of favor. Almodóvar could resisit using some flamboyant wallpaper, a lovely teapot and similar familiar trifles but they are a unobliging part of interior design on par with non-Almodóvary dark painting by Lucian Freud which sometimes comes into view without really adding any dimensions. You'll find some Hitchcock here if you want to but it's routine and decoration more than anything else as well.

Мае 80-я

Да дня народзінаў Cineticle склалі крыху спісаў, я таксама вырашыў узгадаць, як выглядаюць мае 80-я.

Cineticle №21 (Кінематограф Усходняй Еўропы і маё «не» ідэі Партызанфільму)

Выйшаў новы доўгачаканы нумар Cineticle, прысвечаны кінематографу Усходняй Еўропы: «На рубеже 80-х и 90-х годов жизнь во многих странах Восточной Европы застыла в растерянности перед внезапно свершившимся, словно на моментальном полароидном снимке, где сквозь белую пелену еще только проступает своими цветами картинка – такая знакомая и вместе с тем невиданная».
Галоўнай тэмай Беларусьфільму традыцыйна лічыцца партызанская, але калі хаця б прагартаць першы ці другі том даведніка «Все белорусские фильмы», лёгка ўбачыць, што фільмаў на сялянскую/вясковую тэматыку там істотна больш. Яно і не дзіўна: асаблівасці паўставання беларускай нацыі, траўмы калектывізацыі ды імклівай урбанізацыі спрычыніліся да таго, што тэма была цікавай і пераважна гарадской глядацкай аўдыторыі. Распаўсюджана бурчэць пра правінцыйнасць і вясковасць як нешта адмоўнае, але можна ўзгадаць, што пераможнае шэсце амерыканскіх стужак якраз і пачалося з самага правінцыйнага жанру ў свеце, – вестэрну. Такім чынам, мой кароткі нарыс непартызаскай гісторыі Беларусьфільму – «Сельская история урбанизированного кинематографа».

Артур Клінаў

Новый выпуск Cineticle (№19: К ОБНОВЛЕНИЮ ФОРМ)

Вышел новый замечательный номер, где среди очень хороших текстов есть и русскоязычная версия моего перевода статьи Майкла Гварнери о Райя Мартине: "Независимость – только начало. Борьба продолжается."