Articles
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Comrades, it’s a love story
I feel old and boring whenever I talk or write about Hong Kong cinema, which is weird because I wasn’t there at the beginning. I was too young back when Italian film nerds were exchanging obscure VHS tapes feeling like underground warriors. My eyes were still set on Hollywood and little else from Europe, so it wasn’t until a decent internet connection arrived that the gates finally opened.
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Burn, baby, burn
I am always conflicted when it comes to Japanese animation. Talents such as Hideaki Anno and Satoshi Kon are absolute masters to me, but I’ve never really gone beyond the most popular names. My knowledge is limited because I want it to be limited. It sounds like a silly paradox, but it’s true. As much as I love works like Neon Genesis Evangelion and Paprika, I stop at the entrance and somehow refuse to understand the immense universe that Japanese animation is.
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Words are never enough
No matter how many films I’ve seen since the first time I watched Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden, I’ve never really been able to stop thinking about it and the impact it had on me, its images lingering in my mind day after day. Considering how low my expectations for contemporary Italian cinema usually are, this is all the more surprising.
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An open connection
Listing my favourite films of this closing decade would be a daunting task, because I have only recently started to log my viewings. What I can do, though, is picking one of them, the one which stands out not as the most revolutionary of the lot, but as the best example of what film-making is all about for me. And that would be Todd Haynes’ Carol.
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Once Upon a Time
I remember the first time I saw Pulp Fiction quite well. I was a sixteen-year old already settled on my path to becoming a proper nerd, which means I was your regular outsider in a valley of farmers and carpenters, far from any big city, and without a reliable internet connection. I relied on magazines to inform my cinephilia, and at that time some of those came with a VHS attached. That is how Pulp Fiction entered my life.