In Hlynur Pálmason’s Godland (2022), photography is not merely a narrative tool: it lies at the heart of the film, connecting Danish priest Lucas to an unforgiving Icelandic landscape. Shot on 35mm, this third collaboration between the Icelandic director and Swedish cinematographer Maria von Hausswolff is a visual masterpiece, with its static portraits and vast […]
Movie Stills
The use of colour or black and white as an aesthetic choice in three Wim Wender’s films
Wim Wenders was born in August 14, 1945 in Dusseldorf, Germany. He studied in the Film School of Munich after he had abandoned his studies in Medicine and Philosophy. Between 1968 and 1971 he wrote film reviews and in 1970 he made his first full length feature film, called Summer in the City. In Wenders’ […]
From Moving Shots to Stills in ‘Ida’
I’ve been thinking about this one for a while, you might believe that is a photo series here, but those shots are indeed stills from the movie Ida! Director Pawel Pawlikowski gives us a portrait of post-war Poland through the story of Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), a young Polish girl who lives in a convent. An […]
A Dive into the Enigmatic Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky
Released in 1979, Stalker is at the end of the career of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. It is a poetic and atypical story of a guide, a stalker, taking an artist and a scientist, to a forbidden area called the “Zone” to find the “Room”, which is said to grant the wishes of anyone who enters. […]
The Role of Wide-Angle Shooting in The Killing of a Sacred Deer
The Κilling of a Sacred Deer is the fifth full-length film of Yorgos Lanthimos (after The Lobster) and was released in in 2017. It received the Best Screenplay Award at the 70th Cannes Film Festival for its creative writing. The cinematography was conducted by Thimios Bakatakis, with whom the director maintains a long-lasting collaboration. The […]
The Strength of Nature in Mud
Mud is Jeff Nichols’ third feature, released in 2012 after the resounding success of Take Shelter. The cinematography was driven by Adam Stone with whom the director maintains a lasting relationship. The action takes place in Arkansas on the muddy coasts of the Mississippi. It is a story of impossible love, a story of discovery of […]
The Timeless Imagery of Blade Runner
This is a cult movie that has become a major influence in pop culture over time. Before the upcoming release of Blade Runner 2049, we deliver an aesthetic analysis of Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott in 1982. The story takes place in a dystopian Los Angeles in 2019, it is a striking poetic reverie on […]
A revisited film-noir in color with Chinatown
A classic of the neo-noir genre directed by Roman Polanski in 1974, Chinatown is a film set in Los Angeles in the 1930’s. Starring Jack Nicholson who plays the role of Jake Gittes, a private detective haunted by the time where he was making his round in Chinatown, he got hired to expose a tawdry affair […]