“To me he’s a figure at Algiers airport: a man who was thin then, wearing a Che Guevara beret.” Thus the controversial lawyer Jacques Vergès reminisces in Barbet Schroeder’s fine documentary, Terror’s Advocate (2007), speaking of Ilich Ramírez Sánchez — known as Carlos—the Venezuelan terrorist and revolutionary presently imprisoned in Poissy, France, for the 1975 rue Toullier murder of two French intelligence agents in Paris.
FEATURES: A survey of Kathryn Bigelow’s cinema; an interview with Patrick Keiller; a reflection on the links between documentary and avant-garde; and the visionary television shows World on a Wire and Artemis 81
READ: Cristi Puiu Discusses Aurora, At the Edge of History, London Notebook, and Interview with Olivier Assayas
Aurora, the outstanding new film by the director of The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, begins as the lead character, Viorel, wakes up before dawn in an apartment in Bucharest, Romania. Played brilliantly by Cristi Puiu himself, Viorel has a quiet intensity that is immediately troubling.
Imamura, Chinese Independent Documentaries, The Films of Peter Thompson, and L.A.’s Hipster Cinema
READ: Against Nature, The Avant Garde Archive Online, The Future in Labor, Le Plaisir
Dramatic fragmentation, John Gianvito, Lebanese Cinema, The Wire, and an interview with David Simon
READ: Make-Believe, Memory Failure, Post Festum, Vertigo, The Wire for Tourists?
Movie Violence in The Passion of the Christ, an interview with Aki Kaurismaki, and the New Verticality of Special Effects. Plus reviews of Cache, Wedding in Galilee, and The Cyclist
READ: a review of Cache