April - 2021

REVIEWS

Apr 24, 2021

Isolation [Grant Anthony Barker, USA, 2020]

Isolation is a highly expressionistic look at the surreal boredom of long-term isolation, made during the first COVID-19 lockdown in 2020.

The Self-Seers [Matthew David Ridley, South Korea, 2020]

Nia Jordan

Apr 24, 2021

The Self-Seers [Matthew David Ridley, South Korea, 2020]

A giant cross glows eerily atop a darkened metropolis, while a lone girl journeys home, floating in a daze – or is it a nightmare?

Wendy Brooking

Apr 18, 2021

Venus [Andrew McGee, UK, 2021]

Saturated with stylistic similarities to science fiction cinema new and old – from Blade Runner [Ridley Scott, USA, 1982] to Ghost in the Sh

Paromita Sengupta

Apr 18, 2021

Luna [Philippe Berthelet, Canada, 2021]

Experimental cinema is as old as cinema itself and, indeed, cinema began as an experiment. It is the generally expected of the genre that it should challenge narrative structure, defy attempts at causality, and abstract the narrative form. Philippe Berthelet’s first film, Luna – a minimalist, poetic exploration of the fluid relationship between art and life – deals with abstract art, but in a not so abstract way. The story is about the titular Luna, whose ritual it is to pain

Poolside [Alex Kinter & Erik Schuessler, USA, 2020]

Paromita Sengupta

Apr 11, 2021

Poolside [Alex Kinter & Erik Schuessler, USA, 2020]

‘How long do you have to be alone before you go crazy?’ Set in the 1950s America, Poolside is a suspense thriller with questions that run deep. Meg (Anne Beyer) is a lonely woman – cooped up in the vast spaces of her house with a huge swimming pool. But what are those voices she hears? Are they real? Or is it all in her mind? As Meg repeatedly questions her own strength to keep herself from going crazy, the audience perhaps realises the answer to her questions – it is a matte

Covid Tales: House Party [Mike Spence, United Kingdom, 2021]

Marcus Hansen

Apr 11, 2021

Covid Tales: House Party [Mike Spence, United Kingdom, 2021]

In the age or ageing of COVID-19, former barriers—between work and play, community and solidarity, movement and stasis—have melted away.

Manasanamaha [Deepak Reddy, India, 2020]

Fung Ying Cheng

Apr 5, 2021

Manasanamaha [Deepak Reddy, India, 2020]

The film follows Surya (Viraj Ashwin) who recounts three relationships from his past...

Rio [Zhenia Kazankina, Russia/Finland, 2019]

Sally Roberts

Apr 4, 2021

Rio [Zhenia Kazankina, Russia/Finland, 2019]

From Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho [USA, 1960] to The Florida Project [Sean Baker, USA, 2017], motels have long dominated American cinema. Forever sites of the seedy and the sordid, they serve as the bed-bugged backdrops for the characters’ misdeeds and misfortunes. But what about those who never get to leave? In Rio, writer and director Zhenia Kazankina flips the trope on its head: the hotel and its staff are the consistent characters while the crimes and criminals make up their

Reclaiming the Negative [Mike Beech, UK/South Korea, 2020]

Sam Briggs

Apr 4, 2021

Reclaiming the Negative [Mike Beech, UK/South Korea, 2020]

Since the Korean war ended in 1953, approximately 31,000 North Koreans have defected, taking the perilous journey across the southern border. Such numbers are a stark indictment of citizens’ desperation to flee one of the world’s most barbaric and oppressive political regimes. In Reclaiming the Negative, we hear from one such defector, Eun-Ju Kim, and from the photographer, Tim Franco, whose portraits have helped to capture incredible stories of courage like hers. Together th

Sally Roberts

Apr 4, 2021

Bulldog [Kieran Stringfellow, UK, 2020]

What comes to mind when you think of bulldogs? Faded tattoos stretched across grizzled biceps, multiple-ringed hands wrapped around half-drunk pints of ale, and the murmur of collective grumbling in a pub replete with sports television and squalid toilets. The image is so hyper-masculine that it was even used to front a brand of skincare for men, balancing the presumed femininity of a good moisturiser. What an alpha dog. In Bulldog, award-winning writer and director Kieran St