Nicholas Rombes
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“Constraint as Liberation”: Nicholas Rombes Publishes 10/40/70
Nicholas Rombes’s “10/40/70” series is one of the freshest, most boundary-pushing bouts of film criticism in years, a collection of essays on films analyzing only the content of single frames occurring at the ten, 40 and 70-minute marks. Originally published, at The Rumpus, they are now published in 10/40/70: Constraint as Liberation in the Era of Digital Film Theory, an essential collection from Zero Books. The book is prefaced with an apt quote from Jean Baudrillard: “As for ideas, everyone has them. What counts is the poetic singularity of the analysis.” That singularity is here in ample supply, as Rombes’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 13, 2014 -
The Blue Velvet Project Goes to Mar Del Plata
Some of the best writing we’ve ever published has been Nicholas Rombes’ Blue Velvet Project, a year-long survey of David Lynch’s classic, done solely through the examination of single frames spaced at 47 second intervals. The series wrapped up a couple of months ago, and I’ve been missing it. The Project carries on, however, landing this week at the 27th Mar Del Plata Festival in Argentina. Each year, the festival publishes one book about cinema, and this year’s is, you guessed it, El Proyecto Terciopelo Azul. In the photo above, Rombes signs copies for festival attendees. I’m excited for him […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 20, 2012 -
“Blue Velvet Project” Creator Nicholas Rombes
One year ago, Nicholas Rombes proposed “The Blue Velvet Project” to me at Filmmaker. For 12 months, three times a week, he would scrutinize a single frame from David Lynch’s modern classic, looking both inside and outside of its aspect ratio for correspondences, allusions and meanings. For Rombes, it would be another in his “time-based” critical film essays — appropriately so, for it was because of another of these columns, 10/40/70 at The Rumpus, that I discovered his writing in the first place. (In fact, I interviewed him previously about this other fascinating project.) Nick had contributed to Filmmaker before […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 17, 2012 -
FROM AN ABANDONED FARM TO THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL
Critic and cultural forager Nick Rombes is making an artistic practice of unexpected connections, chance encounters and disrupting the temporal logics of cinematic narrative. Filmmaker readers know him well for his on-going The Blue Velvet Project, but he has other ventures, including recently, the “Do Not Screen/Ceremony” series. “Do Not Screen/Ceremony” was birthed when, while on a long, late-night drive, Rombes pulled over to the side of the road and decided to explore an abandoned barn nearby. There, he found a box containing film strips cut in 12-frame segments with the written directive, “Do Not Screen.” And then… (from Peggy […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 24, 2012 -
A SHORT FILM FOR “REQUIEM FOR A DREAM”
The Requiem 102 project, in which various critics, writers, and filmmakers (mine is here) dissect individual frames of Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, is now in its third week, and the quality of submissions is both amazing and diverse. The latest is photographer Bruce Livingstone, who has made a short narrative commenting on the film’s early love scene. Reading the Love Scene in “Requiem for a Dream” from Bruce Livingston on Vimeo. Another good one: novelist and short-story writer Elizabeth Hand’s “potent blast to the nervous system.”
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 26, 2010 -
REMEMBERING THE PASTS AND FUTURES OF “REQUIEM FOR A DREAM”
This blog post is part of the Requiem 102 experiment: on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, different writers are each looking at the film through the prism of specific frames, one from each minute of the film. I’ve been assigned minute four. Follow all the responses here. For me, the most memorable scene in Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream is not in the movie but in the script. I had read it before the film’s pre-production, and the scene in which dealers line up for a new shipment of drugs after […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 4, 2010 -
102 CELEBRATIONS OF REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
Nicholas Rombes, of The Rumpus’s 10/40/70 column and Filmmaker‘s Into the Splice, has launched an experimental project in film criticism — a Tumblr blog collecting 102 takes on Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. Tied to the film’s tenth anniversary (hey, where’s the features-packed new DVD?), the project consists of 102 contributors writing about 102 frames of the film — one for each minute of its running time. Writes Rombes: October 27 2010 marks the 10th anniversary of the release of Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, a movie that shook some foundations. To mark that and to extend the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 2, 2010
