Bright Lights Film Journal

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Actors & Personalities · Exploitation & Erotica · Interviews

1

Happy Birthday, Pam Grier: Interview with the Accidental Action Heroine

  • May 26, 2016

It’s time again to tip our hat to Pam Grier, who’s 67 today (born May 26, 1949), by reposting Steve Ryfle’s interview. Here the incomparable star of Foxy Brown and[…]

Irene Dunne and John Boles in Back Street (1932)

Directors · Drama · Pre-Code

1

Women in Love: Three Early ’30s Melodramas by John M. Stahl (Seed, Back Street, Only Yesterday)

  • May 24, 2016

The subtle beauty of John M. Stahl’s early ’30s work is revealed by the exquisite 35mm prints screening at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the series Universal Pictures: Restorations and[…]

Laughter in Hell

Directors · Pre-Code

4

The Road to Hell: Three Early Films of Edward L. Cahn (Law and Order, Afraid to Talk, Laughter in Hell)

  • May 20, 2016

Among Cahn’s champions is Dave Kehr, a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, who has programmed a four-week series (running through Wednesday, June 15) devoted to his tenure at[…]

Directors · Interviews · SF & Fantasy

1

Futureworlds: Talking with Yorgos Lanthimos about The Lobster (2015)

  • May 19, 2016

The Lobster tries to look at how we are as people – what it means to be single, alone, or involved with someone and all of the constraints that society[…]

Directors · Drama · Interviews

0

Articulating Desire: Talking with José Luis Guerín about The Academy of the Muses (2015)

  • May 12, 2016

For me, the idea of having an academy of muses is an impossible, if not ridiculous, idea; but, the discussions and debates that occurred among them struck me as fascinating,[…]

Bruno Ganz in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (1987)

Directors · Essays

0

“I Used My Imagination”: Old Genres, New Jerusalems

  • May 8, 2016

What I find in Wim Wenders I find in William Blake (and all interesting artists): a desire for a better world that does not underestimate the difficulties of achieving it[…]

Wong Ka-jeng, the eponymous subject of KJ: Music and Life (2009). Photo courtesy of Beautiful Productions Limited.

Asian · Directors · Documentaries · Interviews

0

Being Human: An Interview with Hong Kong Filmmaker Cheung King-wai

  • May 4, 2016

Note: This interview was conducted in English during the Hong Kong International Film Festival in Sha Tin, Hong Kong, on 3 April 2016. The author wishes to thank Esther Yau,[…]

Drama · Memoir · Philosophy

3

After Love: Alan J. Pakula’s The Sterile Cuckoo

  • April 26, 2016

FROM CABIN C AT OUDIN’S COURT COTTAGES I just awoke, and wondered where you were. It was the strangest feeling, like I really expected you to be there. Eventually my[…]

Books · Genres

1

Book Review: Cycles, Sequels, Spin-offs, Remakes, and Reboots, edited by Amanda Ann Klein and R. Barton Palmer

  • April 21, 2016

Cycles, Sequels, Spin-offs, Remakes, and Reboots: Multiplicities in Film and Television, Edited by Amanda Ann Klein and R. Barton Palmer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016, 367pp, $29.95 from the[…]

Philosophy · SF & Fantasy

0

“When Does a Difference-Engine Become a Search for Truth?” Cybernetic Platonism in Alex Proyas’ I, Robot (2004)

  • April 16, 2016

Sonny says that now that he has completed the mission for which he was created – to kill Dr. Lanning – he does not know what to do with himself,[…]

Comedy · Essays · Silents

0

Why Didn’t You Tell Me That I Love You? Asexuality, Polymorphous Perversity, and the Liberation of the Cinematic Clown

  • April 5, 2016

The happy ending that sees the clown coupled with the girl never satisfies precisely because we know the clown’s appropriate place is one of “in-between-ness,” a position that stands in[…]

Activist & Political · Directors · Documentaries · Interviews

0

Berlinale Dispatch #1: Gianfranco Rosi Talks About Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare) (2016)

  • March 28, 2016

Editor’s note: This is the first of two interviews (next up: Nanni Moretti) our correspondent Amir Ganjavie conducted with directors at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival (Feb. 11-21). Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire[…]

Drama

0

A Mindscape of Mirrors: Persona and the Cinema of Self-Perception

  • March 22, 2016

Like Sylvia Plath’s mirror, which promises then imperils her ideal self, the gaze of the other in Persona is a double-edged sword: a threat to pure subjectivity but also the[…]

"Our office? That's where we killed people."

Activist & Political · Crime · Historical & Epic · War

0

Rethinking Historical Responsibility Through Art: The Role of Film in Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (2012)

  • March 18, 2016

The killers were more than willing to help and, when we filmed them boastfully describing their crimes against humanity, we met no resistance whatsoever. All doors were open. Local police[…]

Activist & Political · African American · Animation

2

“Yeah, but look how far we’ve come”: Disney and the Depiction of Blackness in The Princess and the Frog

  • March 11, 2016

Is it inconceivable that instead of taking on the forces of the underworld, the title character, Princess Tiana, do battle with the very real racist prejudice and legal injustice that[…]

Comedy · Directors · Historical & Epic · LGBT & Queer

4

Camping Out in Hollywood: The Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar!

  • March 5, 2016

Hail, Caesar! is not one of the Coens’ better films, but, because of its grab-bag of Hollywood silliness, it is perhaps the best at illuminating one of the main reasons[…]

Horror · Philosophy

2

The Last Man on Earth: Drama of a Lifeless Ordinary

  • February 23, 2016

“… the living being is only a species of the dead.” – Nietzsche  * * * Dead Man. Dead Man’s Curve. Dead Man on Campus. Dead Man Walking (1988). Dead[…]

Activist & Political · War

1

Death and Rebirth: Revisiting Ryszard Bugajski’s Masterpiece Interrogation (Poland, 1982)

  • February 19, 2016

One member of the meeting, Bohdan Poremba, called Interrogation a “premeditated lie” and, in perhaps the strangest criticism of the film, expressed his disappointment that it only showed a few[…]

Directors · SF & Fantasy

3

Jurassic Parks: Stevie and the Dinosaurs

  • February 13, 2016

Spielberg, like many film directors, appears to be far more interested in film than life – interested in film, and interested in audiences, and how to move them through film.[…]

Directors · Documentaries · Silents

1

Nanook and Robert Flaherty: Father of Documentary Film – and More

  • February 8, 2016

Robert Flaherty and Alice Nevalinga (aka Nyla, the smiling one) were romantically involved  –  or as McLane modestly puts it, “he had an Eskimo female companion.” * * * In[…]

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