Film
In Conversation
L’ART LE PLUS POLITIQUE
NICOLE BRENEZ with Donal Foreman
In an essay on Adorno’s relationship with cinema, Nicole Brenez proposes that “the fact that one can think with certain films, and not simply about them, is the irrefutable sign of their value.”
CARMELO BENE
By Troy SwainBene was a famous theater director and actor who made five films from 1968-73. In 1968, after widespread inaction and corruption, the Italian educated youth, jobless, exploded in uprisings.
WHIT STILLMAN’s Deranged Damsels
By Paul FeltenI often find myself defending my affection for Whit Stillman’s films to a certain kind of youngish film cognoscente who argues that: a) Stillman’s work is unable to transcend the limitations of the chattering preppy class it both celebrates and anatomizes; b) this chosen milieu is in the first place politically irresponsible, especially since he doesn’t subject his characters to some kind of Buñuelian smackdown; and c) his conservative sensibility is reflected in a “flat” visual style that prizes talk over, well, visuals.
In Conversation
ALONE IN THE ZONE
GEOFF DYER with Monica Westin
Geoff Dyer describes himself as a “gate crasher” writer: his choice of subjects—the Venice Biennale, jazz, Burning Man, D.H. Lawrence—varies as widely as his choice of prose styles—memoir, essay, travelogue.
