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Articles by Jonathan Mackris
3 x 1 Bologna, Jonathan Mackris, Bram Van Beek, Gerard-Jan Claes, 2025
In Passage, Sabzian invites film critics, authors, filmmakers and spectators to send a text or fragment on cinema that left a lasting impression. Pour Passage, Sabzian demande à des critiques de cinéma, auteurs, cinéastes et spectateurs un texte ou un fragment qui les a marqués. In Passage vraagt Sabzian filmcritici, auteurs, filmmakers en toeschouwers naar een tekst of een fragment dat ooit een blijvende indruk op hen achterliet. The Prisma section is a series of short reflections on cinema.
Víctor Erice-Abbas Kiarostami: Correspondences
The release of Víctor Erice-Abbas Kiarostami Correspondences (2007) arrived at a key juncture in the lives of both filmmakers. It represents the exact mid-point in the more than 30-year gap between Víctor Erice’s last two features – 15 years after El sol del membrillo (The Quince Tree Sun, 1992) and 16 years before Cerrar los ojos (Close Your Eyes, 2023).
“The Point is to Make the Contemporary Visual Order Tremble”: An Exchange with Sylvain George
What follows is an interview with Sylvain George, one of the most important documentary filmmakers working in France today. The occasion is the start of “No Border,” the first multi-day retrospective of his films in the United States. For two decades, George has directed and self-produced numerous films about the status of undocumented immigrants who navigate a Europe riven by social conflicts resulting from racist border policies, police militarization, and economic austerity.
Il Generale Della Rovere
It’s worth mentioning, as a place to begin, that Il Generale Della Rovere (Roberto Rossellini, 1959) is based a true story. There was indeed a jailed man purported to be resistance leader General Della Rovere, only for it to be discovered after the war that he was an imposter. The story was turned into a novel of the same name by journalist Indro Montanelli; and, unlike the majority of his other films, the idea to adapt it was proposed to Rossellini by a producer.
Vittorio De Sica’s Collective Actions
For the great Italian neorealist, no story is ever truly individual, and his crowds are neither mobs nor movements. The inner life of man is constituted by the fact that man relates himself to his species, to his mode of being. […] He can put himself in the place of another precisely because his species, his essential mode of being—not only his individuality—is an object of thought to him. —Ludwig Feuerbach There are only individuals.
Shoulder Arms
The opening gag is quintessential Chaplin. The camera pans across a row of soldiers standing ready to march, landing on the Tramp at the outer edge. The drill sergeant barks at the men to fall into formation, but the Tramp confuses each instruction. They turn to march, but the Tramp’s waddle keeps him at odds with the rest of the group—his large flat feet are not suited for goose-stepping.
Clínica Popular Comunal da Cova da Piedade + What Shall I Do with this Sword?
Early next year, just over two decades since his death in 2003, new restorations of the films of João César Monteiro are set to tour Europe and the United States. These include his celebrated trilogy of comedies—Reminisces of the Yellow House (1989), God’s Comedy (1995), and God’s Marriage (1998)—for which he’s best known, alongside more off-beat pictures like The Hips of John Wayne (1997) and Come and Go (2003), in which he also stars.
On New Shores: The 27th San Francisco Silent Film Festival
First, a bit of news from the front. Those who have been following some of the local drama outlined in my last dispatch from the San Francisco Silent Film Festival know that this year’s edition is the first in the three decades since the festival’s founding not held at the legendary Castro Theatre, concluding a multi-year battle between city activists, media conglomerate Another Planet Entertainment, and the local government to preserve the historic picture palace.
Lifting the Veil: Palestine in Jocelyne Saab’s Cinema
“A child’s face elicits from us conflicting responses,” writes André Bazin in the opening to an essay on Roberto Rossellini’s Germany Year Zero (1947).
3 x 3 Bologna, Gerard-Jan Claes, Steven Jacobs, Jonathan Mackris, 2023
Il Cinema Ritrovato 2023 Three Il Cinema Ritrovato visitors discuss three films that they saw at this year’s festival and which stayed in their memories. 1.
The Man Who Knew Everybody
By Jonathan Mackris on This article appeared in the June 22, 2023 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Sign up for the Letter here. Tom Luddy (second from right) with Jean-Pierre Gorin and Jean-Luc Godard during their visit to the PFA in the 1970s.
Viewpoints: How Academic Workers’ Leverage Can Grow in a Long-Haul Strike
Forty-eight thousand academic workers have been on strike across the 10 campuses of the University of California since November 14. It’s the biggest strike in the country this year. The strikers are in four bargaining units—teaching assistants, student researchers, postdoctoral scholars, and academic researchers—all affiliated with the United Auto Workers. The following speeches were written for and read out at the Strike to Win Assembly on December 6 at UC Berkeley.
Readings: After Afterimage
By Jonathan Mackris on This article appeared in the August 4, 2022 edition of The Film Comment Letter, our free weekly newsletter featuring original film criticism and writing. Sign up for the Letter here. Courtesy of The Visible Press The Afterimage Reader. Edited by Mark Webber, The Visible Press, 2022 If the 1960s ushered in new approaches to cinema, the decade was no less impactful for film criticism.
The Last Things Before the Last
In Passage, Sabzian invites film critics, authors, filmmakers and spectators to send a text or fragment on cinema that left a lasting impression. Pour Passage, Sabzian demande à des critiques de cinéma, auteurs, cinéastes et spectateurs un texte ou un fragment qui les a marqués. In Passage vraagt Sabzian filmcritici, auteurs, filmmakers en toeschouwers naar een tekst of een fragment dat ooit een blijvende indruk op hen achterliet. The Prisma section is a series of short reflections on cinema.
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