Feb22
By Andrew Horn Artistic block is a terrible thing. I’ve experienced it and I know others who have, though maybe a lot of people don’t like to admit to it. I know I don’t. Heinz Emigholz in his film “Streetscapes [Dialogue]” (Germany 2015-2017) not only admits it but offers a look at the process of
Feb21
By Andrew Horn Sabu’s “Mr. Long” (Japan 2017) begins somewhere behind the neon lights of a modern Taiwan city, where some members of a criminal gang are surprised by the sudden appearance of a stone faced stealth assassin, who swiftly and methodically takes them out one by one armed only with a knife. Reporting to
Feb20
By Andrew Horn When I first looked at the program for this year’s Retro, entitled “Future Imperfect”, it looked to me like it had a real dystopian bent. Movies about alien invasion, nuclear war, mind control, and totalitarianism. Programming of course gets decided way in advance, but today the list of themes sound eerily like
Feb17
By Andrew Horn For some years now, filmmaker Heinz Emigholz has been making a series of films on various architects by visiting and documenting their works, whether houses, commercial buildings or public spaces. He presents the buildings in chronological order and shoots them from multiple interior and exterior views. The sequences are silent, except for
Feb16
By Andrew Horn What caught my attention about Dechen Roder’s detective film, “Honeygiver Among The Dogs” (Bhutan 2017) was that it was described as “Buddhist noir”. But is this some real thing, or just some pressbook buzzword? Thinking about it, the phrase made me think of some kind of trippy concept out of early Firesign