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Film

Hidden (2005) And The Mysteries of VHS Aesthetics – Michael Haneke

It hasn’t taken long for the medium of VHS to enter the realm of retrograde chic.  During the 2010 Liverpool Biennal Contemporary Arts festival, one of the main pieces that stood out was actually an independent sculpture made entirely for VHS cassettes; spools of tape spilling out onto the floor while Videodrome-like screens played fuzzy images of recorded images.  The medium now occupies that same … Continue reading Hidden (2005) And The Mysteries of VHS Aesthetics – Michael Haneke

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Film

John Ford And The Visual Representation Of Emotion And Belief – (The Searchers, Stagecoach and Fort Apache)

John Ford is such an obvious enigma; it’s not surprising that the new wave of American film makers became obsessed with his methods and persona.  The awkwardness that exudes from the famously sparse interview with Peter Bogdanovich highlights well the portrayal of relationships in Ford’s films; namely that behind a blunt, entertaining simplicity, there’s an array of intelligence and complexity just waiting to be found.  … Continue reading John Ford And The Visual Representation Of Emotion And Belief – (The Searchers, Stagecoach and Fort Apache)

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Film

Derek Jarman And The Music Video.

The constructs that delineate a difference between short films and music videos has been fuelled by debate and value judgements by those after a perfect set of rules.  Acclaimed director Derek Jarman didn’t seem too fussed about these connotations when creating his short films and music videos often blurring the line between the two and questioning whether the line even existed through explicit highlighting of … Continue reading Derek Jarman And The Music Video.

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Musical Emphasis on Visual Words (François Truffaut and Pier Paolo Pasolini)

The relationship between sound and vision in film is one that is complex and almost indefinable in a broad sense due to each director and composer treating such relationship in different ways.  The two examples about to be discussed are almost reverse images of each other’s effects; the same method has been applied but for different reasons and different results.  Much examination has taken place … Continue reading Musical Emphasis on Visual Words (François Truffaut and Pier Paolo Pasolini)

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Film, Film Music and Sound

Maya Deren And The Scores Of Teiji Ito (Meshes Of The Afternoon + Others)

Time past and time future, What might have been and what has been, Point to one end, which is always present. – T.S Eliot (Four Quartets) There’s a clash often present in the films of Maya Deren but especially in the ones that incorporate music into their styling.  From her most famous short Meshes Of The Afternoon (1943 or 1952 with music) to other titles such as … Continue reading Maya Deren And The Scores Of Teiji Ito (Meshes Of The Afternoon + Others)

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Film, Folk Horror

Cry Of The Banshee – Gordon Hessler (1970)

Cry of the Banshee (1970) makes no qualms as to what its aims are.  Looking at its promotional poster, it would be natural to associate it with Roger Corman’s Poe films; it’s emblazoned with Edgar Allen Poe references, its main star is Vincent Price and its design is a technocolour nightmare.  The film itself is about as far from Corman’s dreamlike fantasies as possible in … Continue reading Cry Of The Banshee – Gordon Hessler (1970)

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Film, Interview, Landscape

Interview with Ben Rivers

Originally published in ACE Magazine. Ben Rivers is one of Britain’s leading experimental filmmakers, broaching the ground between narrative and documentary film. He has been making short films since 2003 but has recently risen in popularity due to the release of his first feature length film Two Years At Sea in 2011. Rivers is famed not just for creating haunting visuals but also for using … Continue reading Interview with Ben Rivers

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Film, Folk Horror, Landscape, Television

A Brief History of Occult and Folk Horror

Article originally published in New Empress Magazine. Being old and feeling almost excavated from some grainy piece of earth, silent horror has the unnerving sense of being a genuine piece of documentation. No doubt unaware of it at the time, Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (1922) is a film that so embodies this accidental aspect that viewing it recalls the feeling of Ash’s … Continue reading A Brief History of Occult and Folk Horror

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