_Jean-Luc Godard Interviews_ David Sterritt, Editor Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998 ISBN 1-57806-080-X Hb ISBN 1-57806-081-8 Pb 203 pp.

The New York Film Festival 2001 took place against a background of the horror and beauty, fear and hope, anger and love released into the air along with noxious columns of smoking dust and ash by the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11 by a group of terrorists. It was an inauspicious time to ask people to travel anywhere by air, and certainly to New York City. But, oddly, the festival was not marked by a sense of (...) absence, but rather a consolidated presence. Many who were stranded at the Toronto Film Festival, in progress while the attack took place, did not let that experience stop them from attending the screenings in New York. The same was true of a large number of the directors represented. The organizers of the festival told us that, contrary to expectations, the directors asserted their absolute determination to attend *because* of the attack. They were moreover unusually eloquent and forthcoming in their responses to questions about their films at their Press Conferences. Sentimental it is not to assert that the onslaught of the preceding weeks brought out a counter response, a need to assert in the face of a horrible chasm of human remains, wrecked steel, and sharded glass the integrity of the human bond. In the words addressed to the terrorists by of one of the survivors of the agonizing flight down tens of flights of stairs in the World Trade Center: if you want to kill us, leave us alone; we will do that for ourselves. But if you want to make us stronger, attack us and we will band together. (shrink)

Five International Cinematic Perspectives on the 'Nature' of Love and Childhood: New York Film Festival 2005 Report (Part Two).

In this year’s offerings, anxiety runs high and affirmation is a wan beam of sunlight in a stormylandscape. At times, indeed, affirmation is more chilling than reassuring. In a range running fromgrey to still more grey, the New York Film Festival 2007 collection of films portrays dysfunctionalsocieties and profoundly confused and confusing protagonists. At the same time, the films reveala strong trend away from conventional cinematic narrative and aesthetics. Opinions were radicallydivided at the press screenings about the success of the (...) risk taking on display. Boldly speaking outon topics such as Iraq and consumerism; shining their beams into the secret places of the humanheart, this years films did not yield anything like a critical consensus, and I shall report below,where appropriate, responses that differed radically from mine. The 2007 offerings suggest thatinternational cinema may be on the cusp of an energizing breakout, or it may be imploding underthe pressure an increasing dehumanization of the political and social climate. In this part of myreport from the festival, “Anxiety,” I will comment on the outright expressions of morbiddisquietude in six of the festival films. In the second part, I will address, under the title“Affirmation?”, the generally questionable optimism of seven additional films, a few of whichsported “cheerful” messages that made my blood run cold. (shrink)

The most “cheer” spread by this year’s offerings, if we stretch the point, was to be found in anumber of uncertain nods to the persistence and endurance of the human capacity for–beinghuman. Considering No Country For Old Men, Redacted and their anxious ilk, this might havebeen of some consolation if it were not for the way even the more affirmative entriessimultaneously evoked crushing environmental and personal obstacles between us and our finerideals and impulses. The films discussed below whistle in the (...) dark of war, murder, fanaticism,adultery, and/or abandonment. Though they generally made their way with the aid of gorgeouscinematography, editing, sound design, and frame compositions, to achieve their modicum of reassurance, they each get stuck in or play with the implications of painful or questionable philosophical perspectives. (shrink)

John Bleasdale 'Letting Go of David Lynch' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 3 no. 42, October 1999.

Mike Chopra-Gant 'Theorizing the Couple: On Nochimson's _Screen Couple Chemistry_' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 8 no. 44, December 200.