To have a strong or wild imagination has been a quality both admired and ridiculed within society. Amelie (2001, dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet) tells a story of an emotionally intelligent and eccentric protagonist through such an intense visual and audible imaginative experience, that one simply cannot ignore. Sep 5, 2022
Every society tells stories; this is the way people make sense of the world around them. Cinema has the ability to animate these stories on screen, using a multiplicity of tools, stitching together and presenting these tales visually, resulting in a richly layered, multi-sensory experience. Whose stories are deemed valuable …
With the Edinburgh International Film Festival opening tonight, we spoke to director Marie Lidén about her documentary feature – Electric Malady (2022) – which is screening at the festival.
“The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu once said: What the caterpillar calls ‘the end’ the rest of the world calls a butterfly” (After Yang, 2022). Sep 5, 2022
Return to Dust (Yin Ru Chen Yan, 2022) is a film written and directed by Ruijun Li and selected for the main competition of the 72nd Berlin Film Festival. The film tells the story of two lonely individuals, Youtie Ma (Renlin Wu) and Guiying Cao (Hai-Qing), who are abandoned by …
Screened at EIFF, Winners is a film about a very specific kind of winner that every film buff is acutely aware of – the award winner. Sep 5, 2022
What better time to look at one of the finest Edinburgh-set films than at the start of a new academic year. As new students arrive in the city, they bring with them dreams of the stories they hope to weave here. Edinburgh has been the setting for many great stories …
Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad, Alain Resnais, 1961) is the type of film that requires savouring after watching. Sep 5, 2022
While there were many intriguing films shown at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, here are five that stood out to me. Sep 5, 2022
Drag. What started as an acronym for “dressed as a girl” in recent history has grown to be one of the most powerful tools for queer expression, queer joy, and motivating political change.
On the closing day of the Cannes Film Festival, a friend was beside me and said, “It’s like I’m just getting used to and familiar with it all, and it’s coming to an end”. During our three brief days at the festival, in addition to watching the films themselves, we …
It was surprising to watch The Last Picture Show (1971) as the last picture show on the beach at Cannes. It was a fantastic experience to simultaneously enjoy the seascape and an excellent film. Jun 17, 2022
Broker (2022) is another example of director Koreeda’s personal style. Controversial characters – such as baby traders and mothers who abandon their children – are sympathetically portrayed in his film, with warm humanity. Jun 17, 2022
When The Revenge of the Shiny Shrimps (2022, dir. Cedric Le Gallo and Maxime Govare) opens with a chorus of men in drag lip-syncing to Hit Me Baby One More Time, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were about to watch a light-hearted, camp comedy. Which you are but, the …
“It’s Like Riding a Psychotic Horse towards a Burning Stable.” Mike Nichols’ 1996 film The Birdcage is extremely ahead of its time as a queer film. Jun 17, 2022
Love, food and music have always been intertwined and Modern Love Mumbai’s “Baai” episode perfectly encapsulates this. It reminds me of a quote from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, that says “If music be the food of love, play on; / Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may …
In classical Hollywood films, “A woman’s attempt to be both subject and object of the gaze has backfired” (Balsom, 2020). In patriarchal culture, female characters can only be gazed at, they don’t have the same right to gaze as the male ones do. Jun 17, 2022
Our previous issue – The Gaze – was about the act of looking and many of our contributors turned to Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. While reading their pieces, I was reminded of another successful queer film: Call Me By Your Name (2017, dir. Luca Guadagnino). The …
With the modernization of society and the surge in feminist and LGBTQ+ movement, we’ve seen more and more lesbian stories moved to big screens, either represented correctly or falsely. Jun 17, 2022
The new smash hit Netflix production Heartstopper was released on the 22nd of April, 2022. In the short time span since its release however, it has won the affections of not only the queer community, but the world. Jun 17, 2022
Growing up as a creative teenager in Dundee in the early 1970s wasn’t exactly a walk in the park, and I’m fond of saying that my life didn’t begin until I went to university in Glasgow in 1975 and landed feet-first in the explosion of culture that was the city …
Halfway through Todd Haynes’ glam-rock biopic Velvet Goldmine (1998), teenage Arthur (Christian Bale) sits with his parents in their suburban living room, watching a televised press interview with glam rock icon, Brian Slade (Jonathan Meyers). As Slade languidly expounds his views on marriage and sexual orientation – “Most people are …
If we are used to Ang Lee’s straightforward portrayal of bodily exposure in Lust, Caution, then the gay-focused Brokeback Mountain could be described as an atypical Ang Lee-style queer film. The sexual images that receive the gaze in Lust, Caution are that refuse the gaze in Brokeback Mountain, which uses …
Our Chief Editor, Niamh Carey-Furness (she/her) sat down with Andrew Campbell (he/them), Youth and Events Manager at Edinburgh International Film Festival, to talk about New Visions Short Film Competition. New Visions is a youth-focussed short film competition created by the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF). Running since 2018, the competition …
Our Chief Editor, Niamh Carey-Furness (she/her) sat down with Andrew Campbell (he/them), Youth and Events Manager at Edinburgh International Film Festival, to talk about New Visions Short Film Competition. New Visions is a youth-focussed short film competition created by the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF). Running since 2018, the competition …
Van Gogh Alive – the touring exhibition of Vincent Van Gogh’s famous paintings – has recently arrived in Edinburgh. What sets the exhibition apart from others is that, instead of displaying the artist’s work framed and on a wall, Van Gogh Alive projects them onto huge screens. Apr 15, 2022
Last weekend, the fourth edition of the Youth Film Access Festival took place in Glasgow. The festival focuses on young people aged 14-25 by not only providing a platform for aspiring filmmakers to showcase their films but also, to network with industry professionals and be exposed to a variety of …
As an audience member at the 2022 Glasgow Film Festival, one of the most pleasurable parts of the festival was to feel its atmosphere. Being present means that you are wrapped up in a series of rituals, events, screenings, and atmospheres. Apr 15, 2022
Glasgow Film Festival’s motto is ‘cinema for all’. What I enjoyed about the festival was that this ‘all’ included volunteers. This year, the festival ran from the 2nd-12th of March and I volunteered during four of the days. Apr 15, 2022
格拉斯哥电影节的经历对我来说是很多个第一次组成的：第一次在一天内参加一共五个放映和讲座；第一次参加电影行业的networking；第一次带着行李箱看电影。这些经历如此的新奇和兴奋，以至于肉体上的疲惫都被大脑自动忽略。 This year, my experience at Glasgow Film Festival was made up of many personal firsts: the first time I attended a total of five screenings and lectures in one day; the first time I attended a film industry networking event; the first time I took my suitcase to a …
The opening scene of The Batman (2022) shares a point of view with the villain spying on his victim. Paul Dano’s Riddler announces his presence behind the binocular lens aurally; his heavy breathing is accompanied by the soundtrack of Ave Maria and the background noise of Gotham City. After observing …
‘There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. ‘ – Albert Camus Death is a subject that human beings steer clear of in the majority of societies. In English culture, people refer to a dead person as a departed person, while in Chinese tradition the word …
Stage Door （1937）In 1936, RKO Pictures acquired the film rights to Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman’s play Stage Door. They, quite rightly, believed that this story of life in an all-female theatrical boarding-house would be a good vehicle to show off the talents of some of the young actresses …
Like many movie-goers, a good trailer can inspire me to part with my hard-earned money. The trailer for The Worst Person in the World (2021, dir. Joachim Trier) doesn’t quite do justice to how serious and emotive the film can get. Apr 15, 2022
“When you are observing me, who do you think I am observing?” Directed by Céline Sciamma, Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) is a careful and elaborate portrait of the “female gaze” and femininity from a perspective of a female director. The film begins with a young French painter …
To analyse anything, especially as academics or critics, we invent labels and categories, we build vocabularies about our topic and around it. Often, this is useful, since it offers us tools for examination, and naming and defining something can make it easier to notice and hold up to the light. It …
由精神分析学中的偷窥理论看希区柯克电影中的偷窥文化 Hitchcock and his unique style have occupied an important place in the history of Hollywood films and even the history of the world cinema at large Apr 15, 2022
Upon her death in March 2019, Agnes Varda was lauded not only for her importance as a filmmaker but also for her feminism, cinematically investigating any situation in which she found gender injustice. Her authorial voice highlighted the unique inner lives of women, with her varied protagonists worrying about impending …
Tokyo Story (dir. Yasujirō Ozu, 1953), a phenomenal film with a simple story framed by Japanese minimalism, tells the story of Shūkichi and Tomi Hirayama, a retired couple from Onomichi, south-west Japan, who decide to travel to visit their children in Tokyo. Apr 15, 2022
This issue’s theme, The Gaze, can lead to a strong binary association in our minds – the gaze, as a concept, is in large majority discussed as either male or female. Another universally available connotation with the term is its dependence on the visual. The Gaze, naturally, has to do …
1978’s Halloween is one of the most influential horror films of all time. Where once horror’s danger was avoidable – don’t go into shark-infested waters, don’t stay at a creepy motel with a man and his stuffed birds – Halloween showed viewers that horror could come for them. Mar 8, …
GIRL DIRECTOR: A How-To Guide for the First-Time, Flat-Broke Film and Video Maker by Andrea Richards, published by Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, California, 2005 Mar 8, 2022
The 2012 film Frances Ha written by partners Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach is great to watch if you are not broke, single and searching for a job or a purpose. If you are any of those things (or perhaps just a Master’s student who is trying not to stress …
Like a well-tailored suit, The Outfit (2022, dir. Graham Moore) is streamlined and unpretentious. The film follows a former Savile Row ‘cutter’ Leonard Burling (Mark Rylance) plying his trade out of a shop in Chicago. Mar 8, 2022
Kenneth Branagh’s second Agathie Christie adaptation with the famous French detective, Hercule Poirot (of course, played by Branagh himself) brings another well-known story of murder and intrigue in an opulent, faraway setting to the big screen with an undeniably star-studded cast. Mar 8, 2022
In 2013, Phoebe Waller-Bridge introduced the world to Fleabag as a one-woman show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In 2016, the show was adapted for the screen for – tragically – only two seasons. Mar 8, 2022
“Just about a year ago I was on my way to Havana; the birds were singing, the sky was blue, and I said to the big mug in the next pew, ‘I need a couple of hundred dollars big boy’, and he said, in my pants pocket.” Mar 8, 2022
You’d think with a decades-long career under her belt, Emma Thompson would be out of ways to surprise us, but she proves us wrong with Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022, dir. Sophie Hyde). Mar 8, 2022
All About Eve (1950, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz) has one of the most memorable film lines. Bette Davis in full anger mode, eyes flashing, says ominously: “Fasten your seatbelts – it’s going to be a bumpy night.” Mar 8, 2022
