On the cover: Payal Kapadia on identity and her brilliant film All We Imagine as Light
Inside: David Lynch’s musings, Andrea Arnold on Bird, Ralph Fiennes and Edward Berger on Conclave, archive Isabelle Huppert and the latest edition of Black Film Bulletin
“Like the neorealists before her, Payal Kapadia is an urban film poet. In Sight and Sound in 1950, chafing against the neorealist tag, Vittorio De Sica argued that his real goal in films such as Bicycle Thieves (1948) was not simply to capture reality but to “transpose [it] into the poetical plane”. He did not see any future in neorealism unless it “surmounted the barrier separating the documentary from drama and poetry”. What swept away the audiences who saw All We Imagine as Light in Cannes was precisely this lack of separation. The meditative and lyrical manner in which Kapadia films Prabha’s story during Mumbai’s monsoon season uncovers poetry in banal, everyday spaces and objects, from congested train carriages to hospitals to clothes on a rooftop washing line. The number of ways Kapadia finds to capture the colour blue alone demonstrates her remarkable talent, not to mention the way her film encompasses a plea for tolerance, a critique of rampant urban development and an ode to underappreciated labour while also savouring the delights of romance and friendship.”
Isabel Stevens in her cover feature, an exclusive interview with Payal Kapadia for All We Imagine as Light
