Really interesting how the digital filmmaking here sits in contrast to its use of classical techniques (i.e. blocking, backlights, very set bound). It's a tension wherein the digital textures re-inforce and -double the whole theme of the constructed nature of images and identity. Everybody's caught up in and pushing against another's story (e.g. the nation's, the military's, a spy's, a wife's). Of course, the real centre of this is Satoko and Yusaka's mutual efforts to insert or remove her from…

on its initial surface, Slalom seems to take the main route of a typical sports drama. rigorous training, negative encouragement, and jealous schoolmates thicken the pressure to win ski races and the distantly simmering, uneasy maternal relationship. but it glides and slips to other territories, wrapped up in its wintry weather and saddled by the continuous snowfall, where abuse materialises at the hands of the trainer. for some of us craving for appreciation and attention we endlessly look for, it's…

The coldest and most unforgiving movie about skiing this side of “Downhill Racer” — and just as fascinated by the loneliness of bombing down the slopes with the world at your back — Charlène Favier’s “Slalom” is a familiar story of sexual abuse, but one told with such bracing intensity that it snaps across your face like a blast of cold mountain air. From the opening moments of her debut feature, Favier pivots between powerlessness and control with the same…

Bill Traylor was born a slave in 1853 on a cotton gin plantation outside Montgomery Alabama with seventeen other slaves. During the final days of the civil war, Traylor saw the Union army destroying local infrastructure and crops which was effective but to a fault since Southerners further detested the Union. The Northern troops weren’t there to liberate the slaves, they just wanted to restore the Union. Finally, after the War, Traylor’s family was freed from bondage but thrust into…