Authors — Vadim Rizov
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“Unfortunately, I’ve Always Been Seen as Very Earnest”: Hayley Garrigus on You Can’t Kill Meme
I first saw Hayley Garrigus’s feature nonfiction debut, You Can’t Kill Meme, in 2019 as a work-in-progress cut. As I wrote last year, Meme is bookended by the unnerving image of an CG-animated Pepe the Frog cradled like a baby in a man’s arms before slowly turning his head. Meme branches out from 4Chan’s infamous r/pol board to interview subjects who include online meme warriors on the left and right, a self-described “lightworker” who hosts workshops at her home and R. Kirk Packwood, whose 2004 book, Memetic Magic: Manipulation of the Root Social Matrix and the Fabric of Reality, codified how memes might […]
by Vadim Rizov on Aug 12, 2021 -
Parody Pilgrimmage: Five Notes on Ernie Gehr’s Serene Velocity Hallway
1. After 15 months in pandemic NYC, with no trip out of town longer than six hours during that time, it was imperative to leave and go elsewhere—anywhere—as soon as possible. The easiest way to do this was to pay a visit to James Hansen, a friend who teaches experimental film at Alfred University, logically located in the previously-unknown-to-me town of Alfred, NY. Getting to Alfred, however, is not super simple, so I needed a ride to get from the halfway point of Binghamton to my final destination. Because I try to maximize the value of every visit I take, it […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 19, 2021 -
Pregnant Pauses: Matías Piñeiro on Isabella
Matías Piñeiro’s sixth feature and seventh Shakespeare-related film, Isabella, begins with purely abstract images whose use here is new in his work: four different shades on the blue spectrum, alternately lighter and darker in smaller and smaller concentric rectangles. The smallest, central rectangle fades to purple before three different shades of that color pulsate outward to the largest rectangle. The rectangles then dissolve into one unified purple that fills the rectangular frame containing the film itself, which starts gently pulsating in different shades under silent opening titles. These abstract color studies (whose resemblance to the work of James Turrell was […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 12, 2021 -
Cannes Film Festival 2021 Critic’s Notebook: Annette
Leos Carax’s Annette begins with a variant on Holy Motors’s “Entrac’te,” now split from one mid-film break into opening and (mid-end-credits) closing musical numbers that set a similarly grimly determined/celebratory tone. The director and his real-life daughter are among the first people seen, leading Sparks and the film’s main cast out of the recording studio and into the world. Adam Driver gets on a motorcycle and zooms into the night to begin his diagetic story proper as confrontational stand-up comic and antihero Henry McHenry, his castmates calling “good luck” after him. A slow-motion love triangle revolves McHenry and the Conductor (Simon Helberg) […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 7, 2021 -
“I’ve Never Made Storyboards Before”: Christian Petzold on Undine, CGI Catfish and Swimming Pools
When I got on Zoom with Christian Petzold, the writer-director had already been doing press off and on for Undine for 16 months. The film premiered at last year’s Berlinale to mixed-muted response and only now, via IFC Films, is seeing US release (both in theaters and on PVOD). In the interim, Petzold got and recovered from COVID-19 while doing interviews as the film continued its (virtual) festival run. There may not seem to be much left to talk about at this point, but Petzold is a famously inexhaustible and self-analyzing interview. In the middle of our talk, his internet cut […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jun 7, 2021 -
True/False Film Fest 2021: Unboxing
The box arrived in mid-April while I wasn’t home, so my confused roommates kindly brought it in. “What is this?” one asked when we regrouped; their initial assumption, based on The Box’s shiny black and vaguely sinister appearance, was that our other roommate had ordered bulky apparel from a goth website. Friends described it, variously, as resembling a monolith and/or child’s coffin. This was the first offering from True/False Film Fest 2021’s “Teleported” incarnation, intended as not just another at-home streaming festival but an entire experience—birthed out of pandemic necessity, but hopefully joyous on its own terms. Instead of unlocking the entire […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jun 4, 2021 -
“Those Years of Ecological Collapse and Pandemics”: Visions du Réel 2021
Last April, the opportunity to scope out Visions du Réel—a festival I’d never had the budget to attend in-person—came as a novel, welcome distraction. A year later, NYC’s weather is increasingly tolerable and the CDC says I’m ready to roam, but I enjoyed having the hybrid festival option once again on my way out the door; two years of browsing VdR have definitely expanded my understanding of global nonfiction norms, and I’d cheerfully make time at home for the rest in a re-opened world. Amid the films in this year’s lineup, one title, Kind Regards From the Anthropocene, pops out as […]
by Vadim Rizov on May 10, 2021 -
New Directors/New Films 2021: Short Vacation, Wood and Water, Azor, Moon, 66 Questions and Madalena
Kwol Min-pyo and Seo Han-sol’s Short Vacation is a graduate thesis film, a side benefit of which is not needing two opening minutes for production company logos but instead being able to jump right into a trim, conflict-free 79 minutes. Four South Korean middle school girls—three long-time friends, the fourth a new-in-town addition to their group—take a long train trip to photograph the rural end of the railroad line. Their photography club teacher has handed out disposable 35mm cameras with the summer vacation assignment to photograph “the end of the world,” however they’d like to interpret that. Taking the train a few […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 29, 2021 -
The 25 or So 2020 Features Shot on 35mm
Since 2015, I’ve annually rounded up interviews and features covering the previous year’s U.S. theatrical releases shot on 35mm, an inherently melancholy collation of (increasingly dead) links. (“This is your most quixotic project,” a friend messaged recently.) The 25-ish 35mm releases of 2020 I’ve tallied this time are in line with each previous year’s 30-or-bubbling-under features, a boutique fraction of the larger landscape. Each list builds toward a larger index of minor deaths. My first edition, covering 2014, noted the close of Australia’s last commercial film lab and Bong Joon-ho’s return home to South Korea after Snowpiercer, only to discover […]
by Vadim Rizov on Apr 8, 2021 -
Pre- and Post-Pandemic Rohmer: Ryūsuke Hamaguchi on Berlinale 2021 Premiere Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Even after two of his features were derailed by the pandemic, Japanese director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi had a busy 2020. After breaking out with his 2016 film Happy Hour, Hamaguchi returned in 2018 with what he described as his first “commercial film,” Asako I and II, as opposed to a smaller, independent production. Adapted from a Haruki Murakami short story, Drive My Car is Hamaguchi’s current “commercial” project, while the smaller-scale Berlinale 2021 premiere Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is his smaller, independent film. (When not in production on these films, Hamaguchi, along with director Kōji Fukada and two of his Happy Hour producers, helped spearhead a […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 4, 2021
