“It was weird to me how, then, Teddy could care so much about his father, who practically tried to kill him. And I couldn’t give a shit about my old man, and he hadn’t laid a hand on me since I was three! And that was for eating the bleach under the sink.” Two films,…
Month: November 2018
Land Without Bread (1933) and The House is Black (1963)
“I said, if I had wings of a dove I would fly away and be at rest. I would go far away and take refuge in the desert. I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest. For I have seen misery and wickedness on Earth.” Two short documentaries from different countries and…
Witchhammer (1970)
There was something in the air in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Witchfinder General (1968) had smuggled elements of realism and noir into the Hammer-esque Gothic horror cycle, and in doing so had spearheaded a run of films preoccupied with the persecution of women in the 17th century, some more salacious than others. Witchhammer, a Czech film…
Heaven and Earth Magic (1956)
There is something viscerally nightmarish about Harry Everett Smith’s animated Heaven and Earth Magic. Watching it now, it’s difficult not to think of Terry Gilliam’s animations for Monty Python, but as Smith’s movie unfolds you slowly get lost in his strange and occult world of cut-out forms, shape-shifting, death imagery and an atmospheric soundtrack made up of…
Hold Me While I’m Naked (1966)
“Hold Me While I’m Naked was a picture I made. It was supposed to be about a mother and a daughter vying for the affections of the same man. Then the star got sick, so I decided to make a picture about a filmmaker who couldn’t make a movie, and that would be me: I couldn’t…
Film Ark 