Issue 15 | February 2008
ESSAY
Pixels & Grain
Though still at a relatively marginal rate of increase, the introduction of digital technology is now at least present at every level of filmmaking – from concept to exhibition. It comes as no surprise then that this latest implementation of digital projection has brought with it a division of romantic and modernist artistic ideals. In fact, the reality is nothing like the purist’s nightmare of total saturation. Of the several thousand screens in the UK, Arts Council funding has provided only a fraction with the means for digital projection and furthermore, only a fraction of the films being distributed on digital formats are shot entirely using digital technology.
Content
ARTICLE
Bodies of Silence
Tsai Ming Liang’s films are near wordless meditations on the propositions of survival in the modern metropolis. Tsai shoots bodies as others would conversations. When characters occasionally speak they reveal little or nothing.
ARTICLE
Where the Past Meets the Future
By Lee Hill
Academic and film historian, Ian Christie, told an audience at the beginning of screenings for Academia Rossica’s Early Russian cinema series, that there was more to the country’s silent cinema than Sergei Eisenstein.
REVIEW
To a Dog you're the World, to your Girlfriend you're never Sure
By John Gorick
The Trieste Film Festival is one of the premier events for Central, Eastern and Balkan cinema and offers a rare insight into the developments within the film industry from those regions.
ARTICLE
Wanted & Desired – Eventually
By Lucinda Henderson | Brian Robinson
8,731 films were submitted for Sundance 08. 210 were screened. Despite every intensifying competition for entries, the Festival experienced a slow start, with quality films selling later than usual...
ESSAY
Legalised Piracy
In 2003, Vertigo joined a whole series of NGOs in blowing the gaff on the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), a scheme hatched secretively within the World Trade Organisation to ‘liberalise’ the global trade in services.
ARTICLE
Radio On to Bristol
"A city is different for everybody…it’s an extension of yourself and your hopes and dreams and, particularly when you’re making a film, you’re externalising a character in terms of his environment."
REVIEW
The Exiles
Of all the cinematic treats that I consumed at the Berlin International Film Festival in early February, none have stayed with me as much as The Exiles. It lingers in my imagination for its bold visuals, its story of people on the margins, its infectious rock soundtrack, and its production process...
