In April 1746 Scotland’s Jacobite army – exhausted, starving, and on the run – was intercepted by the British royal army on a sodden field near Inverness known as Culloden. Over the subsequent hour, the rebel forces were savaged by … Continue reading REVIEW: Culloden (1964)
Ushio Shinohara is an 80 year-old Japanese artist living in New York. He has made his reputation on the back of a prolonged series of abstract paintings that he creates by dipping a pair of boxing gloves into paint and … Continue reading REVIEW: Cutie and the Boxer (2013)
A job advertisement is posted with a difference: the only requirement is that the applicant must not have been to the theatre before. The job? To spend an entire year watching theatre, dance, and other live performance, and to review … Continue reading REVIEW: A Year Full of Drama (2019)
Hatidže Muratova lives with her elderly mother in an abandoned mountainside village in North Macedonia. Her house has no electricity or running water. Nobody lives for miles around. Hatidže makes a living keeping bees – she is one of the … Continue reading REVIEW: Honeyland (2019)
Documentary filmmaker Waad al-Kateab is in the Syrian city of Aleppo when its citizens begin a civil uprising that leads to a five-year siege on the city by Russian and Syrian military forces. Through helping to establish a makeshift hospital, … Continue reading REVIEW: For Sama (2019)
Matthew Barney is one of the USA’s highest profile contemporary artists, primarily due to his internationally successful Cremaster Cycle of art films that were produced between 1994 and 2002. Over the course of his career he has worked with physical performance, sculpture, … Continue reading REVIEW: Matthew Barney: No Restraint (2006)
Dr Ruth Westheimer is a popular German-American sex therapist, whose radio and television programs caused a seismic shift in how 1980s America discussed sex, relationships, and sexual health. A talk show stalwart and lecturer, she is now 91 years old … Continue reading REVIEW: Ask Dr. Ruth (2019)
In 1937 an occupying Japanese regime, in an effort to solidify its control over Korea, banned the teaching of Korean language in all schools. For children going through school at that time, it meant a lifetime of illiteracy. In the … Continue reading REVIEW: Granny Poetry Club (2019)
There seems to be a specific sub-genre of documentary film dedicated to rolling aerial vistas of landscapes. Slow drifting shots of mountains and fields, crashing oceans, lush forests, and so on. They are usually edited together with rich musical scores, … Continue reading REVIEW: Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above (2013)
Alice Guy-Blaché, the French filmmaker widely credited as the world’s first female director, falls under the spotlight in Pamela B. Green’s widely celebrated new documentary. She is a creditable choice for a documentary subject: not just historically significant but immensely … Continue reading REVIEW: Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (2018)
