The Lives of Others (Germany: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)

Director’s Statement

German movies produced after the reunification generally, and strangely, depict the GDR (the German Democratic Republic or former East Germany) as funny or moving. Both my parents come from the East, so as a child, I was often in East Germany to visit friends and relatives. A cousin of my father’s had been named chief of protocol of Erich Honecker, the East German head of state and boss of the ruling S.E.D party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany). Other people we knew had very normal jobs, yet one could see the fear in all of them, right up to the end of the regime. Fear of the Stasi (The State Security), fear of the 100,000 highly trained employees whose sights were trained on one thing: “The Lives Of Others”: the lives of those who thought differently, who were too free spirited and above all, the artists and people working in the arts. Every aspect of life was recorded. There was no private sphere and nothing was sacred, not even one’s closest family members. I met Stasi victims who had been jailed and harassed in Hohenschonhausen (where the central detention center of the Stasi was located). I asked “unofficial agents” about their activities and I talked to documentary filmmakers who had worked on these topics.

In the film, each character asks questions that we confront every day: how do we deal with power and ideology? Do we follow our principles or our feelings? More than anything else, THE LIVES OF OTHERS is a human drama about the ability of human beings to do the right thing, no matter how far they have gone down the wrong path.

--- Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck





The Lives of Others (Germany: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006: 137 mins)

Ash, Timothy Garton. "The Stasi On Our Minds." The New York Review of Books (May 31, 2007)

Bamford, James. "They Know Much More Than You Think." The New York Review of Books (August 15, 2013)

Barker, Jennifer Lynne. The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film: Radical Projection. Routledge, 2013. [Get through interlibrary loan]

Brockmann, Stephen. "Das Leben der anderen (2006) or the Power of Art." A Critical History of German Film Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010: 488-500. [Professor has copy of the book]

Bromwich, David. "Diary: The Snowden Case." The London Review of Books 35.13 (July 4, 2013)

Coulter, Jerry. "Visual Story Telling and History as a Great Toy -- The Lives of Others." Wide Screen 1.2 (June 2010)

Cox, Harvey and Jonathan Steele, reply by Timothy Garton Ash. "‘The Stasi on Our Minds’: An Exchange." The New York Review of Books (May 31, 2007)

Dawson, Mike. "Top Ten Films of 2007." Left Field Cinema (2007)

Garcia-Mainar, Luis M. "The Return of the Realist Spy Film." Cineaction #88 (2012)

Hansen, Per Krogh. "Unreliable Narration in Cinema: Facing the Cognitive Challenge Arising from Literary Studies." Amsterdam International Electronic Journal of Narratology #5 (Autumn 2009)

Hoffgen, Maggie. "The Other Germany: Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006). Studying German Cinema. London: Auteur, 2009: 201-213. [Available in BCTC library]

Horn, Eva. "Media of Conspiracy: Love and Surveillance in Fritz Lang and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck." New German Critique 35.1 (Spring 2008)

Jennings, Tom. "Rehabilitating Big Brother." Libcom (August 12, 2007)

"The Lives of Others: East Germany Revisited." GHI Bulletin 41 (Fall 2007)

Nordlinger, Jay. "Florian's World." National Review (April 7, 2008)

Ring, Annie. The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen). BFI Film Classics, 2022. ["This study offers a fresh approach to the remarkable German film The Lives of Others (2006), known for its compelling representation of a Stasi surveillance officer and the moral and ethical turmoil that results when he begins spying on a playwright and his actress lover. Annie Ring analyses the film's cinematography, mise-en-scène and editing, tracing connections with Hollywood movies such as Casablanca and Hitchcock's Torn Curtain in the film's portrayal of an individual rebelling against a brutal dehumanising regime. Drawing on archival sources, including primary research from the Stasi files themselves, as well as Enlightenment philosophies of art and Brecht's theories on theatre dating from his GDR years, she explores the film's strong but much-disputed claims to historical authenticity. She examines the way the film tracks the world-changing political shift that took place at the end of the Cold War – away from the collective dreams of socialism and towards the dreams of the private individual, arguing that this is what makes it at once widely appealing and fascinatingly problematic. In doing so, she highlights why The Lives of Others is a crucial film for thinking at the horizon between film and recent world history."]

Steyning, Anthony. "The Lives of Others." (Personal Website: No Date)

"Security/Security Agencies/Surveillance: Peace and Conflict Studies Archive." Dialogic (Ongoing Archive)

Films We Want to See #26: Now You See Me (France/USA: Louis Leterrier, 2013)

Black Book (Netherlands/Germany/Belgium: Paul Verhoeven, 2006)

Black Book (Netherlands/Germany/Belgium: Paul Verhoeven, 2006: 145 mins)

Barton-Fumo, Margaret. "Paul Verhoeven." The Film Comment (November 15, 2016) ["What are the uncanny forces at work behind Paul Verhoeven’s visceral and transgressive cinema? In anticipation of the Film Society’s complete retrospective of the Dutch master’s films and the U.S. release of Elle, this episode offers a comprehensive discussion of the director’s audacious and eclectic career encompassing art-house Dutch films (Turkish Delight [1971], Spetters [1980]) and big-budget Hollywood productions such as Basic Instinct (1992), Total Recall (1990) and Starship Troopers (1997). In the first part of the podcast, Film Comment Digital Editor Violet Lucca sits down with a panel of Verhoeven connoisseurs, including Cinema Scope critic Adam Nayman, Film Comment Deep Cuts columnist Margaret Barton-Fumo (also the editor of a forthcoming book of interviews with Verhoeven), and Fort Buchanan director Benjamin Crotty, to tackle the controversy that lies at the core of Verhoeven’s work. In the final part of the episode, Margaret Barton-Fumo speaks to Verhoeven about the uncomfortable eroticism that pervades Elle and his Brechtian influences."]

Carlin, Dan. "Logical Insanity." Hardcore History #42 (March 31. 2012)

Cribbs, John, James Hancock and Leanne Kubicz. "The Cinema of Paul Verhoeven." Wrong Reel #200 (November 2016)

Howard, Ed. "TOERIFIC: Black Book." Only the Cinema (July 20, 2009)

Judt, Tony. "The Legacy of War" and "Retribution" from Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. NY: Penguin, 2006: 13-63. [Your professor has a copy].

Children of Men (Japan/UK/USA: Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)

Children of Men (Japan/UK/USA: Alfonso Cuarón, 2006: 109 mins)

Baishya, Anirban Kapil. "Trauma, Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction & the Post-Human." Wide Screen 3.1 (June 2011)

Boyle, Kirk. "Children of Men and I Am Legend: the disaster-capitalism complex hits Hollywood." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Chaudhary, Zahid R. "Humanity Adrift: Race, Materiality, and Allegory in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men." Camera Obscura 24.3 (2009)

Chaudhuri, Shohini. "Unpeople: Postcolonial Reflections on Terror, Torture and Detention in Children of Men." Postcolonial Cinema Studies. ed. Sandra Ponzanesi & Marguerite Waller. NY: Routledge, 2012: 191-204. [Available in BCTC Library PN1995.9 P6 P68 2012]

"Children of Men: Alfonso Cuarón’s Bleak but Genius Vision of the Past, Present and the Future." Cinephilia & Beyond (ND)

"Children of Men: The Repetition of the Ringing." Film International (2007)

Gessen, Keith. "Dystopia." Bookforum (June - August, 2010)

Hardy, Robert. "Renowned Gaffer John Higgins Reveals Secrets Behind Lighting Some of Hollywood's Biggest Films." No Film School (November 12, 2013)

Kunkel, Benjamin. "Dystopia and the End of Politics." Dissent (Fall 2008)

Nixon, Bryan. "The Long Take: Finding Hope Amongst the Chaos." Film International (2007)

Price, David H. "Governing Fear in the Iron Cage of Rationalism: Terry Gilliam's Brazil Through the 9/11 Looking Glass." Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the "War on Terror." ed. Jeff Birkenstein, et al. NY: Continuum, 2010: 167-182. [Copy in BCTC Library]

Puschak, Evan. "Children of Men: Don't Ignore the Background." (Posted on Youtube: September 9, 2015) [MB: This was a powerful film that looked to the future to examine the global politics of 2006 when it was released (highlighted even more by the collection of philosophers/theorists that provided commentaries on the imagery/narrative in the original DVD edition), and, as Evan Puschak demonstrates in this video essay, its relevance has only increased over the next decade. This analysis includes references to our current social/political issues to demonstrate its continuing relevance.  Don't ignore the background (context) - could be applicable in our own attempts to understand the issues of the world.]

Riesman, Abraham. "The Vulture Transcript: Alfonso Cuarón on Children of Men." Vulture (January 6, 2017)

Rodriquez-Cuervo, Ana Yamel. "Are We Living in the Dawning of Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men." Tribeca (November 30, 2015)

Schwartzman, Sarah. "Children of Men and a Plural Messianism." Journal of Religion & Film 13.1 (April 2009)

Udden, James. "Child of the Long Take: Alfonso Cuaron’s Film Aesthetics in the Shadow of Globalization." Style 43.1 (Spring 2009)

Zizek, Slavoj. "On Children of Men." (Extra from DVD posted on YouTube September 9, 2007)

Taxi to the Dark Side (USA: Alex Gibney, 2007)

Taxi to the Dark Side (USA: Alex Gibney, 2007: 106 mins)

Aradillas, Aaron and Matt Zoller Seitz. "5 on 24: A Five Part Video Essay on the Real Time Action Series. Moving Image Source (May 18, 2010)

Chaudhuri, Shohini. "Documenting The Dark Side: Torture and The “War On Terror” in Zero Dark Thirty, Taxi To The Dark Side, and Standard Operating Procedure." Screening the Past (October 2013)

Dunn, Timothy. "Torture, Terrorism, and 24: What Would Jack Bauer Do?." Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics Through Popular Culture." ed. Joseph Foy. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 2008: 171-184. [Available in BCTC Library JK 31 H85 2008]

Fletcher, Phoebe. “Fucking Americans”: Postmodern Nationalisms in the Contemporary Splatter Film #18 (December 2009)

Gosztola, Kevin. "Obama Employs Bush Administration Tactic, Blocks Photos." Open Salon (May 14, 2009)

Hilden, Julie. "Free Speech and the Concept of "Torture Porn": Why are Critics So Hostile to Hostel II?" Find Law (July 16, 2007)

Kleinhans, Chuck. "Imagining Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Kleinhans, Chuck, John Hess and Julia Lesage. "The Last Word: Torture and the National Imagination." #50 (Summer 2008)

Lesage, Julie. "Torture Documentaries." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Murray, Gabrielle. "Images of Torture, Images of Terror: Post 9/11 and the Escalation of Screen Violence." Monash University Film and TV Studies (Podcast of a Lecture: March 20, 2008)

Rosler, Martha. "A Simple Case for Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Rubenstein, Richard L. The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future. NY: Harper Colophon, 1978. [excerpts from pages 15-33]

Torture Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Funny Games (Austria: Michael Haneke, 1997);Funny Games (USA/France/UK/Austria/Germany/Italy: Michael Haneke, 2007)

Funny Games (Austria: Michael Haneke, 1997: 108 mins)

Funny Games (USA/France/UK/Austria/Germany/Italy: Michael Haneke, 2007: 111 mins)

Bradley, S.A. "Killed by Death." Hellbent for Horror #33 (February 27, 2017)

Brunette, Peter. Michael Haneke. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2010.

Dawson, Mike. "Comparative Examination: Funny Games and Funny Games U.S." Left Field Cinema (February 27, 2009)

Frey, Mattias. "Great Directors: Michael Haneke." Senses of Cinema #57 (2010)

Grundman, Roy. A Companion to Michael Haneke. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.

Hui, Daniel. "Fun and Games: On Michael Haneke's 2007 Remake of His 1997 Funny Games." Bright Lights Film Journal #61 (August 2008)

"Michael Haneke Studies: Videos, Podcasts and Article Links." Film Studies for Free (June 26, 2010)

North, Dan. "Funny Games Funny Games." Spectacular Attractions (October 15, 2009)

Price, Brian and John David Rhodes, ed. On Michael Haneke. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2010.

Rapp, David. "Seeing Double: Funny Games." Keyframe (Posted on Vimeo: 2016)

Sorfa, David. "Uneasy domesticity in the films of Michael Haneke." Studies in European Cinema 3.2 (2006)

Wheatley, Catherine. Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image. NY: Bergahn Books, 2009. [BCTC Library PN 1998.3 H36 W44 2009]

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Romania: Cristian Mungiu, 2007)

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Romania: Cristian Mungiu, 2007: 113 mins)

Mungiu, Cristian. "Oppression and Abortion in Mungiu's '4 Months'." Fresh Air (February 7, 2008)

Parvulescu, Consantin. "The cold world behind the window: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Romanian cinema’s return to real-existing communism." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Ratner, Megan. "Stunted Lives: Unsettling and Unmissable. Bright Lights Film Journal #59 (February 2008)

Roddick, Nick. "Eastern Promise." Sight and Sound (October 2007)

Roman, Denise. "Film Notes: Three Romanian Movies (On Belonging and Corporeality in the New Wave of Romanian Cinema)." UC Los Angeles: UCLA Center for the Study of Women. (April 1, 2008)

Waltz With Bashir (Israel/France/Germany/USA/Finland/Switzerland/Belgium/Australia: Ari Folman, 2008)

Waltz With Bashir (Israel/France/Germany/USA/Finland/Switzerland/Belgium/Australia: Ari Folman, 2008: 90 Mins)

Baker, Nicholson, et al. "Autobiography/Biography: Narrating the Self." Philoctetes (December 13, 2008)

Barker, Jennifer Lynne. The Aesthetics of Antifascist Film: Radical Projection. Routledge, 2013. [Get through interlibrary loan]

Fainaru, Dan. "A Changing Landscape." International Film Guide: 2009. London: Wallflower Press, 2009: 53-63. [Available in BCTC Library PN1993.3 I544 2009]

Folman, Ari. "Waltz with Bashir." Worldview (January 23, 2009)

Hallinan, Chris. "The Lebanon Border: "Uniquely" Dangerous." Foreign Policy in Focus (September 1, 2010)

Kamiya, Gary. "What Waltz With Bashir can teach us about Gaza: The stunning new Israeli film reveals painful parallels between one of Israel's darkest moments and the current conflict." Salon (January 13, 2009)

Kinder, Bill. "When Soldiers Come Home in the Movies: The post-war experience as told in tropes." Keyframe (November 11, 2015)

Polonsky, David, et al. Waltz with Bashir: The Art Director’s Cut at War. Open Source (April 17, 2009)

Rozenkrantz, Jonathan. "Colourful Claims: towards a theory of animated documentary." Film International (May 6, 2011)

Standard Operating Procedure (USA: Errol Morris, 2008)

Standard Operating Procedure (USA: Errol Morris, 2008: 116 mins)

Andrews, David. "Reframing Standard Operating Procedure: Errol Morris and the creative treatment of Abu Ghraib." Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)

Aradillas, Aaron and Matt Zoller Seitz. "5 on 24: A Five Part Video Essay on the Real Time Action Series. Moving Image Source (May 18, 2010)

Boxer, Sarah. "Al and Abu Ghraib." Los Angeles Review of Books (March 21, 2018)

Burris, Gregory A. "Shocked and Awed?: Hostel and the Spectacle of Self-Mutilation." Cine-Action #80 (2010)

Butler, Judith. "Torture and the Ethics of Photography." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space #25 (2007): 951 - 966.

Chaudhuri, Shohini. "Documenting The Dark Side: Torture and The “War On Terror” in Zero Dark Thirty, Taxi To The Dark Side, and Standard Operating Procedure." Screening the Past (October 2013)

Cockrell, Eddie. "Directors of the Year: Errol Morris." International Film Guide: 2005. ed. Daniel Rosenthal. Los Angeles: Silman James Press, 2005: 24-31.

Dunn, Timothy. "Torture, Terrorism, and 24: What Would Jack Bauer Do?." Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics Through Popular Culture." ed. Joseph Foy. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky, 2008: 171-184. [Available in BCTC Library JK 31 H85 2008]

Feld, Rob. "Errol Morris: Truth be Told." Directors Guild of America (Winter 2011)

Fletcher, Phoebe. “Fucking Americans”: Postmodern Nationalisms in the Contemporary Splatter Film #18 (December 2009)

Hilden, Julie. "Free Speech and the Concept of "Torture Porn": Why are Critics So Hostile to Hostel II?" Find Law (July 16, 2007)

Kleinhans, Chuck. "Imagining Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Kleinhans, Chuck, John Hess and Julia Lesage. "The Last Word: Torture and the National Imagination." #50 (Summer 2008)

Lesage, Julie. "Torture Documentaries." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Murray, Gabrielle. "Images of Torture, Images of Terror: Post 9/11 and the Escalation of Screen Violence." Monash University Film and TV Studies (Podcast of a Lecture: March 20, 2008)

Nichols, Bill. "Feelings of revulsion and the limits of academic discourse." Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)

Palmer, Landon. "6 Filmmaking Tips From Errol Morris." Film School Rejects (September 25, 2013)

"Private Corporation May be Sued for Role in Abu Ghraib Torture, Judge Rules." Center for Constitutional Rights (February 21, 2018)

Rosenbaum, Ron. "Errol Morris: The Thinking Man's Detective." The Smithsonian (March 2012) ["The documentary filmmaker has become America's most surprising and provocative public intellectual."]

Rosenbaum, Ron. "Errol Morris: The Thinking Man's Detective." The Smithsonian (March 2012) ["The documentary filmmaker has become America's most surprising and provocative public intellectual."]

Rosler, Martha. "A Simple Case for Torture." Jump Cut #51 (Spring 2009)

Rubenstein, Richard L. The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future. NY: Harper Colophon, 1978. [excerpts from pages 15-33]

Torture Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)

Warren, Vincent. "Abu Ghraib 10 Years Later: Challenging Corporate Impunity for Torture." Truthout (April 28, 2014)

Williams, Linda. "“Cluster Fuck”: The Forcible Frame in Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure." Jump Cut #52 (Summer 2010)

Slumdog Millionaire (UK: Danny Boyle, 2008)

Slumdog Millionaire (UK: Danny Boyle, 2008: 120 mins)

Anselmi, William and Sheena Wilson. "Slumdogging It: Rebranding the American Dream, New World Orders, and Neo-Colonialism." Film International (2008)

Banaji, Shakuntala. "Seduced ‘Outsiders’ versus Sceptical ‘Insiders’?: Slumdog Millionaire through its Re/Viewers." Participations 7.1 (May 2010)

James, Andrew, et al. "Danny Boyle." The Director's Club #123 (January 2017)

Ferguson, Susan. "Capitalist Childhood in Film: Modes of Critique." Jump Cut #55 (Fall 2013)

"In Bombay [Mumbai] with Slumdog Millionaire." The Business (November 17, 2008)

Khair, Tabish. "The Ironies of Bollywood." 16:9 (April 2009)

Llosa, Alvaro Vargas. "A Bollywood Ending: What the overly PC critics of 'Slumdog Millionare' still don't understand." The New Republic (March 3, 2009)

Narain, Atticus. "Rethinking post-colonial representation after Slumdog Millionaire." Dark Matter (March 9, 2009)

Oh Danny Boyle Film Studies for Free (March 2, 2009)

Pandey, Anjali. "The Million Dollar Question: How Do You Sell English on the Silver Screen? - A Socio-Linguistic Analysis of Slumdog Millionaire." American (Fall 2010)

Revanche (Austria: Götz Spielmann, 2008)

Revanche (Austria: Götz Spielmann, 2008: 121 mins)

Ashbury, Roy. "Prostitution." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 115-142. [Available in BCTC Library PN 1995 U4977 2005]

Spielman, Götz. "DVD OF THE WEEK & PODCAST: Revanche (Gotz Spielmann)." Green Cine Daily (February 18, 2009)

Totaro, Donato. "Revanche (2008, Götz Spielman)-- A Matter of Stillness." Offscreen (February 28, 2010)

White, Armond. "Revanche:
Revival of the Fittest." The Criterion Collection (February 11, 2010)

Bluegrass Film Society: Ongoing Pool of Films

Summer 2014 Series: Celine and Julie Go Boating; Platform; Andrei Rublev; Colossal Youth; The Thin Blue Line
Army of Crime (France: Robert Guédiguian, 2009: 139 mins)
Andrei Rublev (Soviet Union: Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966: 205 mins)
Mesrine: Killer Instinct (France/Canada/Italy: Jean-François Richet, 2008: 113 mins)
Mesrine: Public Enemy #1 (France/Canada: Jean-François Richet, 2008: 133 mins)
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (West Germany: Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, 1975: 106 mins)
The Music Room (India: Satyajit Ray, 1958: 95 mins)
How To Survive a Plague (USA: David France, 2012: 110 mins)
The Warped Ones (Japan: Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1960: 75 mins) [Suggested by Mitch Snider]
The Forsaken Land (Sri Lanka/France: Vimukthi Jayasundara, 2005: 108 mins)
White Material (France/Cameroon: Claire Denis, 2009: 106 mins)
Millennium Mambo (Taiwan/France: Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001: 119 mins)
Celine and Julie Go Boating (France: Jacques Rivette, 1974: 193 mins)
Heartbeat Detector (France: Nicolas Klotz, 2007: 143 mins)
Read My Lips (France: Jacques Audiard, 2001: 115 mins)
The Ballad of Narayama (Japan: Keisuke Kinoshita, 1958: 98 mins)
The Weeping Meadow ( Greece | France | Italy | Germany: Theodorous Angelopoulos, 2005: 170 mins)
Maîtresse (France: Barbet Schroeder, 1975: 112 mins)
Heading South (France/Canada: Laurent Cantent, 2005: 108 mins)
Gospel According to St. Matthew (Italy/France: Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964: 137 mins)
Sugar (USA/Dominican Republic: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck, 2008: 114 mins)
The Decameron (Italy/France/West Germany: Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971: 112 mins)
Platform (Hong Kong/China/Japan/France: Jia Zhangke, 2000: 154 mins)
Love Affair, Or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Yugoslavia: Dusan Makavejev, 1967: 70 mins)
The Freethinker (Sweden: Peter Watkins, 1994: 276 mins)
Letter Never Sent (Soviet Union: Mikhail Kalatozov, 1959: 80 mins)
Suspiria (Italy: Dario Argento, 1977: 92 mins)
Departures (Japan: Yôjirô Takita, 2008: 130 mins)
Squatted Freedom (Netherlands: Joao Romao, 2012: 56 mins) (Suggested by Michael Marchman)
The Passion of Anna (Sweden, Ingmar Bergman, 1969: 101 mins)
Lord of the Flies (UK: Peter Brooks, 1963: 92 mins)
The Canterbury Tales (Italy/France: Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1972: 140 mins)
After Life (Japan: Hirokazu Koreeda, 1998: 118 mins)
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (UK: D.A. Pennebaker, 1973: 90 mins)
Arabian Nights (Italy/France: Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1974: 130 mins)
Germany Year Zero (Italy/France/Germany: Roberto Rossellini, 1948: 78 mins)
The Conformist (Italy/France/West Germany: Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970: 111 mins)
Gigante (Uruguay/Argentina/Germany/Spain/Netherlands: Adrián Biniez, 2009: 84 mins)
3-Iron (South Korea/Japan: Kim Ki-Duk, 2004: 88 mins)
Entranced Earth (Brazil: Glauber Rocha, 1967: 111 mins)
Naked Lunch (Canada/UK/Japan: David Cronenberg, 1991: 115 mins)
The Seventh Seal (Sweden: Ingmar Bergman, 1957: 96 mins)
Habermann (Germany/Czech Republic/Austria: Juraj Herz, 2010: 104 mins)
Marketa Lazarova (Czechoslovakia: Frantisek Vlácil, 1967: 180 mins)
3 Idiots (India: Rajkumar Hirani, 2009: 170 mins)
The State I Am In (Germany: Christian Petzold, 2000: 106 mins)
Sans Soleil (France: Chris Marker, 1983: 100 mins)
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (Germany: Marc Rothemund, 2005: 120 mins)
Waking Life (USA: Richard Linklater, 2001: 99 mins)
The Elementary Particles (Germany: Oskar Roehler, 2006: 113 mins)
Katalin Varga (Romania/UK: Peter Strickland, 2009: 82 mins)
The Forgiveness of Blood (USA/Albania/Denmark/Italy: Joshua Marston, 2011: 109 mins)
Savages (USA: James Ivory, 1972: 106 mins)
Stalker (Soviet Union: Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979: 163 mins)
Zelary (Czech Republic/Slovakia/Austria: Ondrej Trojan, 2003: 150 mins)
The Secret of the Grain (France: Abdellatif Kechiche, 2007: 151 mins)
The Last Temptation of Christ (USA/Canada: Martin Scorsese, 1988: 164 mins)
Like Water for Chocolate (Mexico: Alfonso Arau, 1992: 105 mins)
World on a Wire (West Germany: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973: 212 mins)
The Wages of Fear (France: Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953: 147 mins)
A Hard Day's Night (UK: Richard Lester, 1964: 87 mins)
Her Name is Sabine (France: Sandrine Bonnaire, 2007: 85 mins)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Soviet Union: Sergei Paradjanov, 1965: 97 mins)
The Holy Girl (Argentina/Italy/Netherlands/Spain: Lucrecia Martel, 2004: 106 mins)
The Makioka Sisters (Japan: Kon Ichikawa, 1983: 140 mins)
Tokyo Drifter (Japan: Seijun Suzuki, 1966: 82 mins)
Synecdoche, New York (USA: Charlie Kaufman, 2008: 124 mins) [Suggested by English Roberts]
The Way I Spent the End of the World (Romania/France: Catalin Mitulescu, 2006: 106 mins)
Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (UK/Japan: Nagisa Ôshima, 1983: 123 mins)
The Double Life of Veronique (France/Poland/Norway: Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1991: 98 mins)
Lust, Caution (Taiwan/USA/Hong Kong/China: Ang Lee, 2007: 157 mins)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Italy/USA: Sergio Leone, 1968: 165 mins)
The Ascent (Soviet Union: Larisa Shepitko, 1977: 109 mins)

Let the Right One In (Sweden: Tomas Alfredson, 2008)

Let the Right One In (Sweden: Tomas Alfredson, 2008: 115 mins)

In early 1980s Stockholm, as a Soviet sub runs aground in violation of Sweden’s borders, meek 12-year-old Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), engaged in his own Cold War with vicious bullies, practically conjures his new neighbour Eli (Lina Leandersson), who helps him realise his closeted fantasies of revenge. Adapting the 2004 novel of John Ajvide Lindqvist, Tomas Alfredson merges pre-adolescent angst and timeless vampiric longing. In its cool distance, this is almost the anti-Twilight, perfectly nailing the pain of growing up, the beauty of melancholy and the irresistibility of violence. Miraculously, the results manage to be utterly unsentimental yet still deeply moving. – Anton Bitel

Benton, Michael Dean. ""Be Me, for Awhile" -- Ideological Becoming and Future Objectivity in Let the Right One In." (2009) Dialogic Cinephilia (September 12, 2014)

Bilson, Anne. "The Vampire as Metaphor." Screen Studies (Excerpted from Bilson's book Let the Right One In: "Audiences can't get enough of fang fiction. Twilight, True Blood, Being Human, The Vampire Diaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Blade, Underworld, and the novels of Anne Rice and Darren Shan—against this glut of bloodsuckers, it takes an incredible film to make a name for itself. Directed by Tomas Alfredson and adapted for the screen by John Ajvide Lindqvist, The Swedish film Làt den rätte komma in (2008), known to American audiences as Let the Right One In, is the most exciting, subversive, and original horror production since the genre's best-known works of the 1970s. Like Twilight, Let the Right One In is a love story between a human and a vampire—but that is where the resemblance ends. Set in a snowy, surburban housing estate in 1980s Stockholm, the film combines supernatural elements with social realism. It features Oskar, a lonely, bullied child, and Eli, the girl next door. "Oskar, I'm not a girl," she tells him, and she's not kidding—she's a vampire. The two forge an intense relationship that is at once innocent and disturbing. Two outsiders against the world, one of these outsiders is, essentially, a serial killer. What does Eli want from Oskar? Simple companionship, or something else? While startlingly original, Let the Right One In could not have existed without the near century of vampire cinema that preceded it. Anne Billson reviews this history and the film's inheritence of (and new twists on) such classics as Nosferatu (1979) and Dracula (1931). She discusses the genre's early fliration with social realism in films such as Martin (1977) and Near Dark (1987), along with its adaptation of mythology to the modern world, and she examines the changing relationship between vampires and humans, the role of the vampire's assistant, and the enduring figure of vampires in popular culture."]

Bricklemeyer, Kris, Kyler Fey, and Mike White. "Let the Right One In (2008)." The Projection Booth #592 (October 19, 2022) ["Shocktober 2022 continues with a look at Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In (2008). Based on the book and adapted by John Ajvide Lindqvist, it’s the story of Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant), a young boy who’s being picked on at school. When a vampire, Eli (Lina Leandersson), and her helper move into the apartment next door, things change for young Oskar. Kyler Fey and Chris Bricklemyer join Mike to discuss this unusual vampire film as well as its American remake."]

Låt den rätte komma in (Let The Right One In, Sweden 2008) The Case for Global Film (April 30, 2009)

Kuerstein, Erich. "Swedish Death, American Style." Acidemic #7 (2012)

The Let the Right One In Issue Little White Lies #22 (2009)

Prewitt, Zach. "The Best Horror Cinema of the 21st Cinema." (Posted on Vimeo: October 2016)

Rapold, Nicholas and Matt Zoller Seitz. "A History of Creepy Kids on Film." The L Magazine (August 3, 2009)

Rehlin, Gunnar. "Directors of the Year: Tomas Alfredson." International Film Guide: 2012. 48th Edition. [BCTC Library: PN 1993.3 I544 2012]

Subissati, Andrea and Alexandra West. "Come As You Are: Let the Right One In (2008)." Faculty of Horror #56 (December 20, 2017)

Wright, Rochelle. "Vampire in the Stockholm suburbs: Let the Right One In and genre hybridity." Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 1.1 (2010)

The Hurt Locker (USA: Kathryn Bigelow, 2008)

The Hurt Locker (USA: Kathryn Bigelow, 2008: 131 mins)

Alpert, Robert. "The Hurt Locker litigation: An adult’s story—part 2." Jump Cut #57 (Fall 2016)

Benton, Michael Dean. "Kathryn Bigelow's Wild Men: Gender in The Hurt Locker." North of Center (2008: Reposted on The Smirking Chimp, March 4, 2010)

Kemp, Philip. "Directors of the Year: Kathryn Bigelow." International Film Guide:2010 ed. Ian Hadyn Smith. NY: Wallflower Press, 2010: 17-24. [Professor has copy]

Kinder, Bill. "When Soldiers Come Home in the Movies: The post-war experience as told in tropes." Keyframe (November 11, 2015)

Peebles, Stacey. "Stories from the Suck: The First Wave of Iraq War Narratives." Berfois (April 15, 2011)

Stork, Mattias. "Chaos Cinema: The Decline and Fall of Action Filmmaking." Press Play (August 22, 2011)

Hunger (UK/Ireland: Steve McQueen, 2008)

Hunger (UK/Ireland: Steve McQueen, 2008: 96 mins)

Addley, Esther. "A great right hook of a role: Michael Fassbender tells [on] how he braved controversy and lost 16kg to play hunger striker Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen's new film." The Guardian (October 31, 2008)

Bacal, Edward. "Sharon Lockhart and Steve McQueen: Inside the Frame of Structural Film." Cineaction #91 (2013)

Bennett, Ronan. "Life and death in Long Kesh: Held in the notorious Northern Irish jail in the 70s, Ronan Bennett recalls the gas attacks, the beatings, the smell - and the jokes - and applauds Steve McQueen's haunting new film about its best-known inmate, IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands." The Guardian (October 22, 2008)

Benton, Michael Dean. "Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008): A Powerful Exploration of Political Resistance and Retributive Justice." Uprooting Criminology (December 2, 2013)

Bradshaw, Peter. "Hunger." The Guardian (October 30, 2008)

Conrath, Ryan. "Interview: Editor Joe Walker on 12 Years a Slave, Hunger, Shame, and More." Bright Lights Film Journal (April 30, 2014)

Cox, David. "Hunger Strikes a Very Sour Note." The Guardian (November 3, 2008)

Darke, Chris. "Hunger: On the Threshold." The Current (February 17, 2010)

French, Philip. "Hunger." The Guardian (Nivember 1, 2008)

Gregory, Derek. "Legendary Comedian Dick Gregory on Hunger Strike to Protest Capital Punishment, Death of Troy Davis." Democracy Now (October 3, 2011) [Cites Bobby Sands and IRA prison hunger strikes as inspiration]

Hoberman, J. "The Excruciating Details of Death-by-Starvation in Hunger." The Village Voice (March 18, 2009)

"Hunger: Life Inside the Maze." Channel 4 (2012)

"Hunger Q & A: Steve McQueen at New York Film Festival." (Posted on YouTube: October 6, 2008)

"Hunger: The Morning Routine." Channel 4 (2012)

Lennon, Joseph. "'Dreams that hunger makes’: Memory and the origins of the hunger strike." UCD Humanities Institute (2016)

Lim, Dennis. "History Through an Unblinking Lens." The New York Times (March 8, 2009)

"The Making of Hunger with Steve McQueen, Michael Fassbender, & more." A Bittersweet Life (2013)

"McQueen, Beyond Hunger." The Current (March 2, 2010)

McQueen, Steve. "On Hunger." Channel 4 (2012)

---. "The Power of Cinema." (Posted on Vimeo: 2014)

Morgan, Jason. "'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland." History for the Future (March 2, 2010)

O'Hagan, Sean. "Hunger: The Real Maze Men Speak." The Guardian (October 19, 2008)

---. "McQueen and country: He has won the Turner Prize, been a war artist in Iraq, and is campaigning to put the heads of dead British soldiers on stamps. Now Steve McQueen has made a stunning film about the harrowing lead-up to the starving to death of IRA prisoner Bobby Sands, including a scene that moved him to tears on the set." The Guardian (October 12, 2008)

Onesto, Li. "California's Pelican Bay Prison Hunger Strike: "We Are Human Beings!" Global Research (July 18, 2011)

Shelton, Lynn. "The Film That Changed My Life: Hunger by Steve McQueen (2008)." The Guardian (April 3, 2010)

Sobchack, Vivian. "What My Fingers Knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh." Senses of Cinema (April 2000)

"Steve McQueen: 5 Minute Guide." Channel 4 (2012)





MICHAEL FASSBENDER - First Years in Movies from Brutzelpretzel on Vimeo.

Gomorrah (Italy: Matteo Garrone, 2008)

Gomorrah (Italy: Matteo Garrone, 2008: 137 mins)

Ahmed, Omar. "GOMORRAH (Dir. Matteo Garrone, 2008, Italy) - The Italian Renaissance." Ellipsis (October 23, 2008)

Bochenski, Matt. "Gomorrah." Little White Lies (October 10, 2008)

Bradshaw, Peter. "Gomorrah." The Guardian (October 9, 2008)

Cilento, Fabrizio. "Saviano, Garrone, Gomorrah: Neorealism and Noir in the Land of the Camorra." Fast Capitalism 8.1 (2011)

Curti, Roberto. "File Under Fire: A brief history of Italian crime films." Offscreen (November 30, 2007)

Gamman, Lorraine. "If Looks Could Kill: On gangster suits and silhouettes." Moving Image Source (May 8, 2012)

Greenburg, Kathryn Elizabeth. "Rewriting Historical Neorealism in Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah." (A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Romance Languages, 2010.)

Ivey, Prudence. "Gomorrah Actors Arrested." Little White Lies (October 13, 2008)

Jenkins, Steven. "Grande Fratello Is Watching You: Matteo Garrone’s tough guys, little men and scheming dreamers face up to reality." Keyframe (February 14, 2014)

Larrea, Carlotta. "Nightmare in the Sun: Mateo Garrone’s Gomorrah." Senses of Cinema (November 2012)

Ming, Wu. "The New Italian Epic." Opening talk @ the conference "The Italian Perspective on Metahistorical Fiction: The New Italian Epic." Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of London, UK. (October 2, 2008)

Saviano, Roberto. Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System. NY: Picador, 2007. [Your professor has a copy you can check out.]

Sragow, Michael. "The Shape of Corruption." Current (September 18, 2017)

Stephens, Chuck. "Gomorrah: Terminal Beach." Criterion (November 23, 2009)

The Class (France: Laurent Cantent, 2008)

The Class (France: Laurent Cantent, 2008: 128 mins)

Ashbury, Roy. "Schools and Teachers." Understanding Representation. ed. Wendy Helsby. London: BFI, 2005: 51-74. [Available in BCTC library PN1995 U4977 2005]

Chen, Lu. "I Hate Mathematics and Racists." The Brooklyn Rail (March 2009)

Livingston, Jessica. "Global capital’s false choices in the films of Laurent Cantet." Jump Cut #53 (Summer 2012)

Che Part 1 and 2 (France/Spain/USA: Steven Soderbergh, 2008: 134/135 mins)

Che: Part One and/or Che: Part Two (France/Spain/USA: Steven Soderbergh, 2008: 134/135 mins)

The Che Issue Little White Lies #21 (2008)

Clover, Joshua. "CINEMA FOR A NEW GRAND GAME." Film Quarterly 62.4 (Summer 2009)

Dargis, Manohla. "Beyond Bullets and Berets, Life in Wartime." The New York Times (October 22, 2010)

Flores, Steven. "The Auteurs: Steven Soderbergh (Part 1)." Cinema Axis (December 6, 2014)

---. "The Auteurs: Steven Soderbergh (Part 2)." Cinema Axis (December 7, 2014)

Heath, Roderick. "Che: Part One/Part Two." Ferdy on Film (May 25, 2010)

Hoberman, J. "Behold the Man: Steven Soderbergh's Epic Film Biography of Che." VQR (Winter 2009)

McDougall, Dave. History Lessons (Pt. 1): Notes on Steven Soderbergh's "Che" MUBI (November 24, 2010)

The Baader-Meinhoff Complex (Germany: Uli Edel, 2008)

The Baader-Meinhoff Complex (Germany: Uli Edel, 2008: 150 mins)

Baader-Meinhoff Podcast Archives (Ongoing archive of podcast from Richard Huffman who has been researching the history of the group)

Dargis, Manohla. "Beyond Bullets and Berets, Life in Wartime." The New York Times (October 22, 2010)

Hichens, Christopher. "Once Upon a Time in Germany." Vanity Fair (August 2009) ["Movies have often romanticized Communist revolutionaries—think Benicio Del Toro as Che. But a new action thriller, The Baader Meinhof Complex, counterpunches, exposing the violent psychosis that gripped the young militants of the Red Army Faction in 1970s West Germany."]

Hope-Jones, Mark. "Anarchy in the BRD." American Cinematographer (September 2009)

Katsiaficas, George. "Sources of Autonomous Politics in Germany"/"European Autonomous Movements in Europe" (Ch. 3/4) The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. AK Press, 2009.

The Living Dead (BBC: Adam Curtis, 1995: three 60 minute episodes) ["The Living Dead: Three Films About the Power of the Past is a series of films that investigate the way that history and memory (both national and individual) have been manipulated and distorted by politicians and others for various means of control."]

Benjamin Kunkel: Dystopia and the End of Politics

Dystopia and the End of Politics
by Benjamin Kunkel
Dissent Magazine



IN retrospect, the nineties can seem an anomalous decade, the only one since the Second World War when technological civilization did not appear particularly bent on self-destruction. Of course, not everyone greeted the end of the cold war as the dawning of a millennium of capitalist democracy, but even dismayed leftists tended to forecast the coming century by extrapolating from current trends. These included increased liberalization of trade, increased commodification of natural resources (such as water) and human roles (such as fertilization, courtship, and the care of the elderly), the internationalization of culture, continual advances in digital technology and genetic science, the rolling back of governmental authority to its police powers, and regular elections to ratify it all. This vision, whether taken for a nightmare or a dream, was of a world integrated under a total market and consecrated to private as opposed to public life: the “private sector” of corporations, and the “private life” of households. You called this tendency globalization if you liked it, neoliberalism if you didn’t. Either way, the sense was that capitalism would, for the foreseeable future, consolidate its achievements rather than undermine them.

This notion of the future neglected certain facts. For one thing, it’s not as if no one knew about global warming during the nineties. Indeed, the end of the cold war and the first public awareness of climate change arrived almost simultaneously. In 1988, the Soviet Union declared it would no longer intervene in the affairs of allied countries, and in the same year the scientist James Hansen testified before the U.S. Congress that he possessed a “99 per cent” certainty that “global warming is affecting our planet now.” In December of 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved; the following summer, the so-called Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro produced the UN’s first climate change treaty, with its aim of “preventing dangerous anthropogenic interference with Earth’s climate system.” And, though the connection was rarely noted, these developments were not quite unrelated: petroleum exports made up some 60 percent of the USSR’s foreign currency earnings, and the same high oil prices that buoyed the Soviet rivalry with the United States encouraged conservation in the West. When, in the mid-eighties, oil prices collapsed, it not only helped finish off the USSR but increased fuel consumption outside of the Soviet bloc, which in turn accelerated global warming, along with—something else to worry about—the depletion of the earth’s oil reserves. Many of our newer anxieties turn, in fact, on the idea that the oil-intensive planetary transportation system so vital to the functioning of contemporary capitalism ultimately abets climate change, the arrival of peak oil, and the circulation of viruses, while globalized financial markets are capable of spreading contagions (as in the “Asian flu” of 1998) of a different kind.

None of this was impossible to imagine during the nineties. But it may have been simply too much to take that the cold war should immediately be succeeded by awareness of a dangerously overheating planet. Part of this is simply that it’s not the same thing to know something yourself (you and your favorite periodicals), and to know something you know your neighbor also knows. As Susan Sontag noticed in an essay called “The Imagination of Disaster,” about the typical science fiction movie of the early cold war, the arrival of the new menace (monsters, aliens) was “usually witnessed or suspected by just one person, a scientist on a field trip.” That was phase one of the plot. Phase two involved the “confirmation of the hero’s report by a host of witnesses to a great act of destruction.”

As viewers of the old and many of the new disaster movies know, it’s in phase two, with its crowd of witnesses, that the feeling This is really happening dawns, and true panic begins. In the real world of history, things happen more slowly, and even a televised real-life version of that fundamental disaster movie set piece, the destruction of a great city—New Orleans, by Hurricane Katrina—hardly signifies the imminent end of life as we know it. Still, it changes one’s private mood to know the public mood has changed.

A VISIT to a bookstore or multiplex confirms the new strain of morbidity in the air. Every other month seems to bring the publication of at least one new so-called literary novel on dystopian or apocalyptic themes and the release of at least one similarly themed movie displaying some artistic trappings. (Artsy, but not quite aspiring to be art, films like 28 Days Later and Children of Men might be called, without scorn, “B+ movies,” to distinguish them from ordinary apocalyptic crowd-pleasers.) What is striking is not so much the proliferation of these futuristic works—something that has been going on for generations—but the wholesale rehabilitation of such “genre” material for serious or serious-seeming novels and movies. If ordinary citizens are taking their direst imaginings more to heart than before, so, it would appear, are novelists and filmmakers. The new cultural prestige of disaster will be worth returning to later on.

First, however, a distinction needs to be made between the dystopian and the apocalyptic, because these categories refer to different and even opposed futuristic scenarios. The end of the world or apocalypse typically brings about the collapse of order; dystopia, on the other hand, envisions a sinister perfection of order. In the most basic political terms, dystopia is a nightmare of authoritarian or totalitarian rule, while the end of the world is a nightmare of anarchy. (There is also the currently less fashionable kind of political dream known as utopia.) What the dystopian and the apocalyptic modes have in common is simply that they imagine our world changed, for the worse, almost beyond recognition.

Both versions of the future are plentifully on offer in recent literary fiction and B+ movies. In 28 Days Later (released 2002), an accidentally released supervirus transforms virtually all of Britain into a population of cannibalistic zombies. Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake (published 2003) is a post-apocalyptic bestiary of genetically engineered species; among them, in a world half-drowned by rising seas, lives apparently the last surviving human. Michel Houellebecq’s Possibility of an Island (published 2004) is narrated by a misanthropic contemporary of ours named Daniel, as well as numbers 24 and 25 of the successive clones made from this not-quite individual. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (published 2005) is another clone novel; it concerns genetic supernumeraries raised for purposes of organ harvesting. And cloning likewise furnishes subject matter for David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (also published 2005), where one of five braided narrative strands takes the form of a Q & A between a normally human historian and an imprisoned rebel “fabricant,” who—unlike Ishiguro’s clones, with their lamblike passivity—has escaped an underground world of slavery into horrified awareness of the genocidal nature of a “corpocracy” raised on the blood of clones. Mitchell has imagined the smoothest-running and most cynically organized of possible dystopias, in which business and government have melded with one another—perhaps for this reason the narrative is set in South Korea, notorious in the late nineties for its state-supported chaebols, or conglomerates, and “crony capitalism”—and the sole revolutionary movement abroad in the land is in fact sponsored by the corporate state to supply it with the fictitious enemy it requires.

To Read the Rest of the Essay

The White Ribbon (Austria/Germany/France/Italy: Michael Haneke, 2009)

The White Ribbon (Austria/Germany/France/Italy: Michael Haneke, 2009: 144 mins)

Brunette, Peter. Michael Haneke. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2010.

Frey, Mattias. "Great Directors: Michael Haneke." Senses of Cinema #57 (2010)

Grant, Catherine. "Michael Haneke: A Ribbon of Links." Film Studies for Free (October 6, 2009)

Grundman, Roy. A Companion to Michael Haneke. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2010.

Horner, Kierran. The White Ribbon Film International (May 10, 2011)

Horwath, Alexander. "Michael Haneke Uncut: Talking shop, theory, and practice with the director of The White Ribbon." Film Comment (November/December 2009)

Lim, Sandra E. "Cinema of Reflexivity: Hegemonic Masculinity and the Logic of Terror in Haneke’s The White Ribbon." Senses of Cinema #113 (March 2025) ["Haneke asserts that the film is not solely about the origins of German Fascism, but rather an exploration of “…the roots of all kinds of terrorism – whether politically right, politically left or religious.”1 His framing of violence as universal and recurring opens the door for readings of the film beyond historical accounts. Magdalena Zolkos builds on Haneke’s assertion, offering that The White Ribbon also moves beyond the usual psycho-historical reading of authoritarianism as generational and transmitted through repressive child-rearing. Instead, she suggests that the children internalise the rigid morality and logic of the dominant male figures in the village. If the children are at the root of the terror, as the school teacher suggests, their violent acts do not resist patriarchal rule but instead mutate and turn back on themselves, becoming something more terrifying."]

"Michael Haneke Studies: Videos, Podcasts and Article Links." Film Studies for Free (June 26, 2010)

Ogrodnik, Benjamin. "Deep Cuts." Film International 7.1 (Feb 2009)

Price, Brian and John David Rhodes, ed. On Michael Haneke. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2010.

Wheatley, Catherine. Michael Haneke's Cinema: The Ethic of the Image. NY: Bergahn Books, 2009. [BCTC Library PN 1998.3 H36 W44 2009]

White Material (France/Cameroon: Claire Denis, 2009)

“You can trust that Claire [Denis] will never place the camera haphazardly, that it’s really conveying something…the most beautiful moments are when nothing’s going on, just the turn of a head, a certain mounting anxiety…I think Claire has a way of filming the silence, of making something palpable that is by definition impalpable, indefinable, an atmosphere…it’s really Claire’s greatest strength.“ – Isabelle Huppert on working with Claire Denis in White Material


White Material (France/Cameroon: Claire Denis, 2009: 106 mins)

"Claire Denis: Special Themed Issue." Reverse Shot #25 (2009)

Dinning, Samantha. "Great Directors: Claire Denis." Senses of Cinema (2009)

Dooley, Kath. "Foreign Bodies, Community and Trauma in the Films of Claire Denis: Beau Travail (1999), 35 Rhums (2008) and White Material (2009)." Screening the Past #37 (September 2013)

Funderburg, Christopher, et al. "Claire Denis." Wrong Reel #122 (April 3, 2016)

Goldsmith, Leo. "Good Work: Claire Denis’s Early Career as Assistant Director." Reverse Shot #29 (2009)

Hughes, Darren and Michael Leary. "Claire Denis." Movie Mezzanine (2015)

Reardon, Kiva. "Claire Denis and Objects of Desire." Keyframe (March 3, 2016)

Sarmiento, José. "The Strangers of Claire Denis: Her cinema speaks of the borders that divide humanity, and the people who cross them." Keyframe (March 24, 2017)

Taubin, Amy. "White Material: Out of Africa." Current (April 12, 2011)

Thomson, David. "White Material: Claire Denis’s new movie is puzzling, nasty, and deeply disturbing." The New Republic (January 7, 2011)

Walton, Saige. "Cinema and Sensation: French Film and the Art of Transgression by Martine Beugnet." Senses of Cinema #50 (April 2009) ["Those familiar with French director Claire Denis will be aware of the exquisite sensuality of her cinema. Whether coming together with another body in the world through the shared space and flesh of desire, or being driven apart from others by personal and sociopolitical circumstance, bodies – their gestures, bites and kisses, alternately languid or energetic movements, postures, habits and rituals – are the very “stuff” and substance of the film experience here. Given her privileging of the senses and her amenability to, as well as considered dialogue with, philosophers of the body, Denis is at the forefront of a number of contemporary directors (by no means exclusive to France, if we consider the work of figures such as Hou Hsiao-hsien, David Lynch or Wong Kar-Wai) who are generating much interest from sensually alert film scholars. Adrian Martin, for instance, identifies “the bedrock of Denis’ cinema [as] the flesh”, while Elena del Río comments that the “film body” of the cinema itself becomes a “sensation producing machine” in Denis, as if each film were “sending ripples of affect and thought across a diversity of its movements”, independent of the body of the viewer. The arresting materiality that infuses Denis forces us to look anew at sensory encounters with the cinema."]

Wisniewski, Marcin. "White Material." Senses of Cinema #63 (June 2012)

Where the Wild Things Are (USA/Germany: Spike Jonze, 2009)

"I remember my own childhood vividly ... I knew terrible things. But I knew I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them." -- Maurice Sendak in conversation with Art Spiegelman, The New Yorker (September 27, 1993)



Where the Wild Things Are (USA/Germany: Spike Jonze, 2009: 101 mins)

Accord, Lance. "Where The Wild Things Are, Part 1." American Cinematographer (February 2010) ["Lance Acord, ASC, cinematographer of Spike Jonze’ adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, discusses the creative underpinnings of this film and the techniques he used to tackle its artistic challenges with fellow ASC member Rodney Taylor."]

---. "Where The Wild Things Are, Part 2." American Cinematographer (February 2010)
["Lance Acord ... continues his conversation with fellow ASC member Rodney Taylor, focusing on his career and the art scene in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the 80s."]
Sicinski, Michael. "25 Songs of Innocence & Experience: Spike Jonze, Wes Anderson and the Post-Boomer." Cinema Scope #41 (2009)

The Where the Wild Things Are Issue Little White Lies #26 (2009)

Dogtooth (Greece: Giorgos Lanthimos, 2009)

District 9 (USA/New Zealand: Neill Blomkamp, 2009)

City of Life and Death (China/Hong Kong: Lu Chuan, 2009)

City of Life and Death (China/Hong Kong: Chuan Lu, 2009: 132 mins)

Carlin, Dan. "Logical Insanity." Hardcore History #42 (March 31. 2012)

McCahill, Mike. "21st Century Directors You Need to Know About: Lu Chuan." Movie Mail (February 21, 2014)

Merrit, Katherine. "The Other Holocaust." Dialogic Cinephilia (October 27, 2014)

Ng, Brady. "Drowning out the peacemakers in Nanjing." Waging Nonviolence (March 11, 2013)

Yoshioka, Maximilian. "History or Humanity? On Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death - A Nietzschean Perspective on Nanjing." Bright Lights Film Journal #76 (May 2012)

Antichrist (Denmark/Germany/France/Sweden/Italy/Poland: Lars von Triers, 2009)

Antichrist (Denmark/Germany/France/Sweden/Italy/Poland: Lars von Triers, 2009: 108 mins)

Bond, Lewis. "Lars von Trier: Deconstructing Cinema." (Posted on Youtube: July 23, 2016)

Geller, Dorothy. "•Lars Von Trier's Antichrist: Executioner at the Alter of the Other, Part 1."/"•Lars Von Trier's Antichrist: Executioner at the Alter of the Other, Part 2." Offscreen 14.11 (November 2010)

Meis, Morgan and J.M. Tyree. Wonder, Horror, Mystery: Letters on Cinema and Religion in Malick, Von Trier, and Kieślowski. Punctum Books, 2021. ["Wonder, Horror, Mystery is a dialogue between two friends, both notable arts critics, that takes the form of a series of letters about movies and religion. One of the friends, J.M. Tyree, is a film critic, creative writer, and agnostic, while the other, Morgan Meis, is a philosophy PhD, art critic, and practicing Catholic. The question of cinema is raised here in a spirit of friendly friction that binds the personal with the critical and the spiritual. What is film? What’s it for? What does it do? Why do we so intensely love or hate films that dare to broach the subjects of the divine and the diabolical? These questions stimulate further thoughts about life, meaning, philosophy, absurdity, friendship, tragedy, humor, death, and God. The letters focus on three filmmakers who challenged secular assumptions in the late 20th century and early 21st century through various modes of cinematic re-enchantment: Terrence Malick, Lars von Trier, and Krzysztof Kieślowski. The book works backwards in time, giving intensive analysis to Malick’s To The Wonder (2012), Von Trier’s Antichrist (2009), and Kieślowski’s Dekalog (1988), respectively, in each of the book’s three sections. Meis and Tyree discuss the filmmakers and films as well as related ideas about philosophy, theology, and film theory in an accessible but illuminating way. The discussion ranges from the shamelessly intellectual to the embarrassingly personal. Spoiler alert: No conclusions are reached either about God or the movies. Nonetheless, it is a fun ride."]

Power, Nina and Rob White. "Antichrist: A Discussion." Film Quarterly (December 2009)

Smalley, G. "Antichrist 2009." 366 Weird Movies (December 15, 2010)

Wilkins, Budd. "Birthing Bad: Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist Through the Lens of “Nordic Horror." Acidemic #7 (2012)

Adam O'Brien: Regional Horizons in The Last Detail

Adam O'Brien on "Regional Horizons in The Last Detail" (Movie: The Journal of Film Criticism)

Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal (USA: Stephen Vittoria, 2013)

Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal (USA: Stephen Vittoria, 2013: 120 mins)

Abu-Jamal, Mumia. "The United States Is Fast Becoming One of the Biggest Open-Air Prisons on Earth." Democracy Now (February 1, 2013)

Hanarahan, Noelle and Stephen Vittoria. "'Long Distance Revolutionary': Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Journey from Black Panthers to Prison Journalist." Democracy Now (February 1, 2013)

Hedges, Chris. The Unsilenced Voice of a 'Long-Distance Revolutionary.'" TruthDig (December 9, 2012)

Moonrise Kingdom (USA: Wes Anderson, 2012)

The Dark Knight Rises (USA: Christopher Nolan, 2012)

The Dark Knight Rises (USA/UK: Christopher Nolan, 2012: 164 mins)

Beyl, Cameron. "Christopher Nolan [5.1] – The Non-Linear Neo-Noirs." The Director Series (February 13, 2017)

Bleasdale, John. "Avengers Dissemble: A Polemic." Alternate Takes (June 10, 2012)

Brooker, Will. "Dark Knight Revealed." Alternate Takes (July 25, 2012)

Buckler, Dana. "The Dark Knight Trilogy." H.I.T.M. (March 28, 2017)

"The Dark Knight Rises and Heroism." Pop Culture Case Study (May 11, 2014)

Goh, Robbie B.H. Christopher Nolan: Filmmaker and Philosopher. Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. ["Christopher Nolan is the writer and director of Hollywood blockbusters like The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, and also of arthouse films like Memento and Inception. Underlying his staggering commercial success however, is a darker sensibility that questions the veracity of human knowledge, the allure of appearance over reality and the latent disorder in contemporary society. This appreciation of the sinister owes a huge debt to philosophy and especially modern thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Jacques Derrida. Taking a thematic approach to Nolan's oeuvre, Robbie Goh examines how the director's postmodern inclinations manifest themselves in non-linearity, causal agnosticism, the threat of social anarchy and the frequent use of the mise en abyme, while running counter to these are narratives of heroism, moral responsibility and the dignity of human choice. For Goh, Nolan is a 'reluctant postmodernist'. His films reflect the cynicism of the modern world, but with their representation of heroic moral triumphs, they also resist it."]

Hancock, James and Chuck R. Mystery. "I'm Batman." Wrong Reel #280 (June 8, 2017)

Milico, Elliot. ""Metaphysics at the Movies: Hollywood's Philosophical Turn." Fare Forward (September 12, 2012)

Stasukevich, Iain. "Batman to the Max: Christopher Nolan and Wally Pfister, ASC expand their use of 15-perf 65mm cinematography for The Dark Knight Rises. American Cinematographer (August 2012)

Vishnevetsky, Ignatiy. "The Big Murk: A Conversation About Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises." Notebook (July 27, 2012)

Zborowski, James. "The Dark Knight Rises." Alternate Takes (July 22, 2012)





The Directors Series - Christopher Nolan [5.4] from Cameron Beyl on Vimeo.