In our Summer double issue we hand centre stage to 100 hidden heroes of cinema who have shaped film history. Plus Ben Wheatley on In the Earth, Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby, Victor Kossakovsky’s pig portrait Gunda, Jane Fonda interviewed, Limbo and refugees on film, and a look back at My Own Private Idaho.
Our contributors wander down the untrodden pathways of cinema history, celebrating 100 figures behind the scenes of film’s finest hours.
Our 100-strong crew spans the full width of cinema history, from the costumes and stunts of silent cinema to the cutting edge of modern special effects. You may not know their names, but you are sure to recognise their often iconic work. And, of course, putting the films themselves together is only one part of the business; we tip our hats too to poster designers, film programmers, archivists, restorationists and even an infamous censor.
Elsewhere, Anton Bitel stumbles into the sinister world of Ben Wheatley’s In the Earth and speaks to the ever-industrious director about creating and shooting his film under Covid conditions and the freedom that a low budget can bring.
Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby mixes claustrophobic, thriller-style tension with a scalpel-sharp script to create a new brand of New York comedy. The director speaks to Sophie Monks Kaufman about sound design, sugar daddies and taking pride in her millennial audience.
Pigs, cows and a one-legged chicken abound in Victor Kossakovsky’s Gunda, a human-free slice of farmyard life. Nick Bradshaw probes the Russian docu-maestro on stripping back to a smaller scale, relinquishing control to his animal stars and why telling stories isn’t enough.
As Ben Sharrock’s humanising comedy Limbo heads from its Hebridian asylum-processing purgatory into cinemas, Agnes Woolley examines 20 years of refugees in film, from the stylised London of Dirty Pretty Things to Aki Kaurismäki’s ongoing refugee trilogy.
50 years ago Jane Fonda starred in the suppressed documentary F.T.A., about the eponymous theatre troupe of anti-war activists. Upon its rerelease the legendary actress speaks to Phuong Le about the joy of activism, her memories of Hanoi and why the Vietnam War’s after-effects are still felt in the US today.
And from our archive, a 1992 feature on Gus Van Sant’sMy Own Private Idaho by Amy Taubin, who presciently heralded the arrival of a New Queer Cinema classic now approaching its 30th birthday.
Plus regular features:
Editorial The auteur limits
Rushes Super Cannes After Covid shuttered the festival last year, the Croisette is back in action this summer and a tantalising roster of films awaits. By Pamela Hutchinson.
Rising star: Akinola Davies Jr The director of award-winning short Lizard in profile. By Katie McCabe.
The long goodbye New films such as The Father and Supernova reveal both the sorrow and the disorienting strangeness of life with dementia. By Guy Lodge.
Telling stories for survival Ivorian filmmaker Philippe Lacôte on how he turned the true history of an outlaw into a fantasy fable, performed in a notorious prison. By Jonathan Romney.
Knight moves Filmmaker Nick Broomfield discusses new evidence of police corruption and murder, in his follow-up to Biggie and Tupac. By James Mottram.
Dream palaces: the Romanian Cinematheque Malmkrog director Cristi Puiu recalls having his eyes opened to the transformative potential of film in communist Bucharest.
“We expected the coup every day” A decade after Raúl Ruiz’s death, his widow is fighting to finish his film that predicted the terrible events that halted its production. By Neil Young.
In production New projects by Léonor Serraille, Yorgos Lanthimos, Alice Rohrwacher and Anna Rose Holmer and Saela Davis.
Cool intentions From fashion designer to photographer to pop video director – where will Tanu Muino’s explosive talent take her next? By Sydney Urbanek.
+ Women in music videos: more names worth knowing
“I don’t believe in art for art’s sake” Meet Pietro Marcello, one of the most singular filmmakers in contemporary Italian cinema, and his audacious epic Martin Eden. By Jonathan Romney.
Dream Palace diaries Two cinema workers reflect on a momentous week for movie theatres in the UK – when the doors finally reopened. By Jason Wood, creative director, film and culture at HOME, and Tamsin Cleary, usher at the Prince Charles Cinema, London.
+ The films we’ve been waiting for
Come dine with me Five years after the 2016 Brexit referendum, Marc Isaacs’s latest documentary turns his house into a microcosm of the country. By Isabel Stevens.
Kevin Jackson, 1955-2021 No subject was too large or too trivial for the polymathic critic and long-time Sight & Sound contributor. By Matthew Sweet.
+ Kevin Jackson in the S&S archive
A new dimension After years of neglect and infantilisation, are cinema and TV finally giving actors with Down syndrome roles of substance? By Caspar Salmon.
A Hollywood wedding A writer recalls making his nuptial vows in front of a movie legend: actor-producer-director Norman Lloyd, who has died aged 106. By David Cairns.
Wide Angle Retrospective: People watching A season celebrating her 90th birthday brings into focus the long and distinguished career of the Hungarian director Márta Mészáros. By Michael Brooke.
Film clubs: A void of discovery For a brief while, a film club in London took all the predictability out of cinema-going. Will we ever see its like again? By Matilda Munro.
Women in film: The woman who did Jill Craigie’s long marriage to Michael Foot has overshadowed her courageous, pioneering career in documentary film. By Lillian Crawford.
Books and film: Poetry in motion (pictures) Some filmmakers have brought poetry to the screen, but have poets really done enough to bring movies to the page? By David Spittle.
Primal screen: Rules of attraction Weimar Germany was far from the sexually liberated place sometimes depicted – but its restrictive laws inspired one of the first gay movies. By Tamsin Cleary.
Reviews
Films of the month
Deerskin Reviewed by Jonathan Romney.
In the Earth Reviewed by Hannah McGill
plus reviews of: Censor Choked: Paisa Bolta Hai Dinner in America Ellie and Abbie (and Ellie’s Dead Aunt) The Father Fatima Frankie Gunda Here We Are I Am Samuel Jumbo The Killing of Two Lovers Last Man Standing: Suge Knight and the Murders of Biggie & Tupac Limbo The Most Beautiful Boy in the World Night of the Kings Nowhere Special A Quiet Place Part II The Reason I Jump Riders of Justice Shiva Baby Sweat
Television of the month Mare of Easttown
Kate Winslet excels as grieving mother and weary police officer Mare in Brad Ingelsby’s examination of the oppressively tight binds within a close-knit community. Reviewed by Kate Stables.
plus reviews of
Halston Lisey’s Story The Mosquito Coast The Pursuit of Love
Home cinema features
September affair: Friendship’s Death Middle Eastern politics and film theory meet the screen goddesses of the golden age in Peter Wollen’s visionary science-fiction film. Reviewed by Henry K. Miller.
Rediscovery: Maeve At a time when films set in Northern Ireland invariably offered grim realism, Maeve was a startlingly radical experiment. Reviewed by Trevor Johnston.
Archive television: Play for Today Volume 2 Robert Hanks welcomes the second volume of the BFI’s Play for Today series.
Lost and Found: Still Life Patient and humane, this moving portrait of an elderly couple cast adrift is the forerunner of the films of Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf. By Chris Shields.
plus reviews of:
Blood Ceremony Columbia Noir #3 Doctor X Ghost Hunting The Hands of Orlac Lake Mungo Over the Edge Films by Mario Ruspoli Someone to Watch over Me The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
Books
Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic by Glenn Frankel (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux) reviewed by Hannah McGill.
Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper by Scout Tafoya (Miniver Press) reviewed by Martyn Conterio.
Celeste Holm Syndrome: On Character Actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age by David Lazar (University of Nebraska Press) reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson.
Billy Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna edited by Noah Isenberg (Princeton University Press) reviewed by Tom Charity.
Letters
Endings Two-Lane Blacktop The incendiary finale of Monte Hellman’s 1971 existential odyssey elevates this classic about searching for intimacy on the open road. By Adam Solomons.
