When Steve Cossman founded Mono No Aware 10 years ago, he was literally the entire organization. Operating out of his apartment, Cossman — who’d attended Albright College and had just returned from a two-year program at Prague’s FAMU film school — wanted to engage with and assist the expanded cinema community. “Expanded cinema” goes far beyond traditional notions of the avant-garde: Cossman cites a recent piece by Julie Dumas as a good example of the kind of work his organization supports, in which RGB lasers pointed at a single surface created a piercing white light. “There were two buckets with […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jan 18, 2017A mainstream production with a mainstream star, Sinister employs such horror movie tropes as a nice family moving into a new house with a past, the supernatural traveling through photographs and movies, and suspiciously troubled children. Yet despite its potentially cliché setup, the film feels unexpectedly fresh; a mash-up of ghost story, serial killer thriller, and Ringu-style photo-phobia that is more than the sum of its parts. The film is anchored by a story of believable domestic strain, and probes slightly deeper than many films in its exploration of the primal idea that images, like the film itself, represent a […]
by Farihah Zaman on Oct 12, 2012With the passing yesterday of legendary horror auteur George Romero, we’re reposting Nick Dawson’s 2008 interview with the director on the release of the penultimate chapter of his zombie series, Diary of the Dead. R.I.P. George Romero. No matter how you look at it, George A. Romero will always be remembered as the godfather of the zombie movie. Born in 1940 in New York City, Romero graduated from Carnegie Mellon in the early 60s and stayed in Pittsburgh to set up a commercial production company. In 1968, he segued into features with his seminal debut, Night of the Living Dead, […]
by Nick Dawson on Feb 15, 2008