Tag / 1966

by Jaime Rebanal

Ingmar Bergman’s Persona is One of the Most Vital Pieces of Cinema Ever Created: Review

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A film of splits, a film about unity – and what happens the moment when it breaks. A film about projection, what happens when the image does not match what one expects. A film about truth, and how it infuses with fiction to create its own realities. A film about performance, and the act of breaking character. Ingmar Bergman’s Persona is a film all about these narrative rules and what happens as soon as they break, but it is also a film that challenges the very restrictions that these rules can place upon character. Yet ultimately, Persona continues to remind you that everything you are seeing is a matter of projection. From the very opening frame to the closing shot of a film reel, but also the transferral of the thought from one vessel to the other. But if anything can better sum up an experience of this very sort, it is a film all about the restrictions of narrative expectation. For it is a film about the making of character, the making of a story, the making of its very own realities. This is a film about the crafting of a personality, and the dedication to the part – and how we all play a part into something bigger.

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by Jaime Rebanal

Daisies, a Celebration of Freedom, the Female Gender, and Pure Anarchy: A Review

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A film that moves freely without any direction, almost like the way it sees our world is developing day by day. This is a film that deliberately angers your senses, because it represents anarchy in our world as we know it to be. This is a maddening film, but it also makes a clear case as to why film is one of the most meaningful forms of activism that we have on the planet. Vera Chytilová’s Daisies is one of the peaks of the Czech New Wave, because it just shows everything that the movement represents in the most freeform manner possible. But even as Daisies was the subject of controversy, the film itself already seemed to come up with the perfect rebuttal to that very notion and that there only makes a case for why it remains one of the most fascinating pieces of 1960’s cinema ever to have been made.

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by Jaime Rebanal

The Battle of Algiers – Review

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Once The Battle of Algiers pulls you in with its relentless atmosphere, it is never to let go. Where most political thrillers have a tendency to carry only one leaning, Gillo Pontecorvo decides to play differently by showing both sides of the battle and thus what he leaves us with is one of the harshest and most daring of all cinematic achievements. One could never expect that such a film like this could be so heavily grounded with reality, it’s almost like watching a documentary filmed amidst such events in history. The harsh truths that are exposed about humanity by Pontecorvo’s brave piece of filmmaking only make for a more haunting experience too difficult for words. Continue reading →