Film
In Conversation
MATIAS PIÑEIRO with Jessica Dunn Rovinelli
After a detour to his adopted New York City in Piñeiro’s previous film, 2016’s Hermia and Helena, Isabella returns to Buenos Aires and strips its narrative down to a time-shuffled tale of two actresses auditioning for the same role.
In Conversation
PIETRO MARCELLO
with Dan Sullivan
Class struggle has always been present in Marcello’s work, and it becomes clear rather quickly that Martin Eden (2019) marks his most headlong investigation into the politics of the 20th century and how they relate to our convulsive, confounding present. Marcello transposes London’s story to a Campania that never was, the setting (captured vividly on Marcello’s usual 16mm) a timeless composite of anachronistic motifs and the odd snatch of archival footage that cohere to give us the sense not so much of taking in a period piece as beholding history itself.
Before the Circus Left Town:
Rachel Mason’s Circus of Books
By Daniel Gerwin
I arrived at Circus of Books without the slightest clue I was walking into LA queer history. The store has since closed, but a new documentary, Circus of Books, explores its 33-year life and the story of its unlikely proprietors, Karen and Barry Mason, a straight and straight-laced Jewish couple. The movie’s director is their daughter Rachel, a multi-disciplinary artist who made a previous film in 2013, The Lives of Hamilton Fish.
