Erika Balsom is a reader in film studies at King’s College London. Most recently, she is the coeditor of Artists’ Moving Image in Britain Since 1989 (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art/Yale University Press, 2019).
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“DEFIANT MUSES: DELPHINE SEYRIG AND THE FEMINIST VIDEO COLLECTIVES IN FRANCE IN THE 1970S AND 1980S” (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; curated by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and Giovanna Zapperi) and “OUT OF THE SHADOWS: THE PIONEERING WORK OF ATTEYAT AL-ABNOUDY, ASSIA DJEBAR, JOCELYNE SAAB, HEINY SROUR” (Courtisane Festival, Ghent, Belgium)
In this strange year, I need to pay tribute to missed and canceled encounters. My much-anticipated visit to “Defiant Muses,” an exhibition friends had raved about, was the first thing I had to call off in March. Courtisane, which consistently does some of the best programming around, did not take place as scheduled in April. Its retrospective of four outstanding Arab women filmmakers, active in the 1970s and ’80s, would have marked the first time they were shown together.
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THE YEAR OF THE DISCOVERY (Luis López Carrasco)
Every approving murmur at the International Film Festival Rotterdam seemed to return to this film, and with good reason. Using the outmoded format of Hi8 video and a split screen, blurring distinctions past and present, López Carrasco captures discussions about life and labor in a bar in Cartagena, Spain. At the root of it all is the day in 1992 when the city’s inhabitants took to the streets of Murcia and set its regional parliament building aflame.
3
DAYS (Tsai Ming-liang)
This dual portrait of loneliness and aging, bodies and time, marks a major return to form for Tsai. Best watched as a double bill with Charlie Chaplin’s late-career confrontation with mortality, Limelight (1952).
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ROUTE ONE/USA (Robert Kramer)
For all the talk of docufiction today, few can hold a candle to Kramer. Circulating again in a gorgeous new restoration, his 1990 road-trip masterpiece maps the disappointments, exclusions, and idiosyncrasies of the country he had left for Europe years before.
5
FIRST COW (Kelly Reichardt)
It’s an anti-Western and a revisionist history of settlement, but above all, it’s a tale of friendship. First Cow confronts generic conventions and social forces while never losing sight of the humble beauty of the everyday.
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APIYEMIYEKÎ? (Ana Vaz)
In this poetic account of resource exploitation and Indigenous genocide in the Amazon, Vaz uses superimposition to forge a dialogue between landscapes shot in the present and an archive of drawings produced by the Waimiri-Atroari as part of a literacy initiative in the mid-1980s.
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FORUM 50 ANNIVERSARY PROGRAM (Berlinale International Filmfestspiele Berlin)
Curators have been restaging historical art exhibitions for some time now; the resuscitation of this formidable slate of films from the 1971 Berlinale Forum—including crucial works by Med Hondo, William Klein, and Sarah Maldoror—was proof of the immense potential of doing the same in cinema.
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THE WORKS AND DAYS (OF TAYOKO SHIOJIRI IN THE SHIOTANI BASIN) (Anders Edström and C. W. Winter)
A day spent in darkness, a 480-minute wager that the long take is not the only path to duration. A sustained look at a family and the land it works, at once intimate and expansive. More than a film to watch, The Works and Days is an experience that engulfs.
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MAŁNI—TOWARDS THE OCEAN, TOWARDS THE SHORE (Sky Hopinka)
Hopinka’s debut feature confronts cycles of death and rebirth, mixing friends’ conversations, spoken mostly in Chinuk Wawa, with lyrical renderings of the land and water of the Columbia River Basin. An exploration of the bonds among language, memory, and resurgence, małni carries forward the achievement of Hopinka’s deservedly celebrated short films while also marking a significant shift in scale and approach.
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LA LOUPE
When France went into lockdown, a group of cinephiles started a Facebook group devoted to sharing rare films. These days it’s relatively quiet, but at its peak les loupiotes dumped hard drives full of treasures, posting download links often accompanied by passionate remarks. Because of them, I got to see something of “Defiant Muses” and “Out of the Shadows” after all.