I am Redfern, alack, alas!
born in Paris (south of Arras)
and from the six-foot rope at last
my neck will learn the weight of my ass.
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The Sea of Ravens 1930
‘Story’ had always been one of those unfortunate obstacles for Epstein on his journey towards the ‘cinematic’, towards “photogénie”. Known as a promising artist from before his first film, yet forced to work with Pathé’s treatments—material which he didn’t always consider ‘the best’, shall we say—tempering some degree of his radical aspirations, Epstein nonetheless sought out and developed new techniques, new methods of expression, taking delight in the intervals of the stories he was given (whenever they presented themselves) in…
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Gammelion 1968
In traditional Japanese aesthetics the notion of the “cut” [kire, 切れ] is actualised in a variety of their arts as the expression of the Zen principle that seeing into one’s nature, their fundamental being, can only be realised after having “cut off the root of life”, that is severed it from the place and temporality it’s “at home” in. Within the art of ikebana (flower arrangement), the Kyoto school philosopher Keiji Nishitani discusses this as such:
The essential difference [between…
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The Dream 1987
It’s never surprising to see western media outlets obfuscating and spreading disinformation in regards to Syria and the mid-east, but it has now reached the point where it should be obvious that, even when reality is slapping us in the mouth, they will lie and lie and smile in our faces while doing it; the truth is only what serves western imperial ends. With this massacre of Alawites by crypto-Al-Qaeda and Erdoğan’s central asian looters, Syria’s heritage at the crossroads…
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My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure 2005
The dialogue seems to be a rarely seen format nowadays so paul a. and I decided to have a talk about the recent retrospective of Robert Beavers' work here in NYC. Visit Chute film cooperative for the full thing.
... What this leads us to, I believe, is something close to a recapture of that ‘aura’ Walter Benjamin said had been lost with the age of mechanical reproduction. Because, although My Hand Outstretched may be broken down into the original…
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Cloud 2024
What I love most about Kurosawa’s recent work, what makes him so modern, is his mutability — how his shifts in perspective can reveal worlds unseen as much as they can restructure narratives and recast characters. In Cloud, the victims of business and the digital space become vengeful ghosts, and the violence of commerce is traded for bullets and blades. Identity is something amorphous here, betraying the immediacy of in-person interaction as opposed to the internet’s anonymity, Kurosawa’s characters exist…
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Olympia: Part One – Festival of the Nations 1938
Armond White recently wrote a short essay objecting to the omission of Riefenstahl's Olympic documentaries from TCM's curation of Olympic-themed movies. I doubt many of us, especially here on letterboxd, would agree to this avoidance of these infamous yet significant works of art. But, White, as per usual, cloaks his praise of politically suspect movies in the guise of "universal themes" and "pure aestheticism"—the language of the critic unwilling or unable to deal with the fact that the work of…
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