In English

IN ENGLISH. Even before its release Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius (2016) became the centre of heated and public debate in Brazil, not least due to a protest at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival condemning the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. In this feature, Steffen Hven explores how the film’s own conveyance of (political) resistance is far more subtle, mature, and nuanced than the turmoil surrounding its release would suggest.

IN ENGLISH. This article is for anyone who would like to have a better grasp of the five types of voice-over found in such classics as Wings of Desire, Rashomon, and The Third Man. Richard Raskin presents an original model in plain, jargon-free language with plenty of stills, full transcription of thoughts and spoken lines, and no filler or mystification.

IN ENGLISH. What makes some bad films “so-bad-they’re-good”? In our latest article, Marc Hye-Knudsen and Mathias Clasen shed light on the paradoxical appeal of bad films by bringing contemporary humor research and cognitive film theory to bear on Tommy Wiseau’s cult classic The Room, often heralded as “the best worst movie ever made.”

FEATURE. The showrunner David Simon was a central flagship for HBO, when they revolutionized the TV-landscape in the beginning of the 2000s, and even in the highly competitive streaming landscape of today he continues to create relevant drama series that often utilize the past to comment on the present. In this interview, Simon talkes about his approach to realism and long-form storytelling and his views on the changes in American society and the American TV landscape.

VIDEO-ESSAY. Deformative criticism is a playful approach to film analysis that creates a new aesthetic object from the film being analysed. In 'No Voiding Time’, Alan O’Leary divides Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice into its individual component shots on four screens and treats the sound for musicality rather than sense. The result is an absurdist artefact that celebrates an already perplexing film.

IN ENGLISH. Kenji Mizoguchi remains as one of Japan’s most accomplished filmmakers. His work called upon a number of influences, not just from his cinematic peers, but also from his own culture. One such influence which was prevalent throughout his life as a director was the Japanese theatre, particularly traditional noh theatre which was used as both a stylistic and narrative device. In our latest article, Paul Spicer explores this relationship by examining two of his most important works of the 1950s.

IN ENGLISH. For more than 40 years, John Williams's Star Wars main title music has remained one of our most popular pieces of symphonic film music. This is the story of its very first recording, used in the film and on the soundtrack album. Subjected to reconception, deconstruction, suppression and restoration, this the most celebrated recording has led a surprisingly eventful commercial career.

INTERVIEW. Tim Hunter is an esteemed film and TV director who began his career as a writer of independent movies, before going on to become one of the most famous episode directors in American television. 16:9 met him in Los Angeles for a talk about his career, about the film and television industries, about his predilection for stories and film history and about the changes in the mediascape. Fittingly, the interview is lengthy, inclusive and anecdotal, forming a sort of double feature that tells the small story of one director and writer in Hollywood and a larger story of Hollywood itself and the changes in the industry.

IN ENGLISH. Preparing a book on sound design in films and television, Andreas Halskov has talked with Walter Murch about film sound, listening and technology, focusing on Murch’s sonic inventiveness and his long-standing collaborations with George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola.

IN ENGLISH. Chris Marker’s La jetée (1962) has intrigued many critics, who have for the most part focused on the narrative and the form of the film. Instead of pursuing this angle, Sébastien Doubinsky explores how La jetéequestions the notions of memory, history and power through an artificial construction that goes against the conventional definition of a moving picture.