Cinema – The Drouth

14th June 2023

Published by TheDrouth

MAKING HOME : The Fight to Save the Wyndford (ArchiFringe 23)
Kelly Rappleye

What is going on in Wyndford ? Barnabas Calder (in his book reviewed by Florian Urban in The Drouth August 21) tells us that Architecture, and especially the production of its materials, steel and cement, is the worst of climate change culprits, yet in Glasgow a whole estate is about to be pulled down and rebuilt. We are supposed to be on the brink of some massive changes in our way of living -but not just yet! Kelly Rappleye has organised an event which might enshrine Wyndford not so much as a cause célèbre as a cause désastre.

11th May 2021

Published by TheDrouth

The Greenock Industrial and the Greenock Pastoral in ‘Just A Boys’ Game’ and ‘The Elephants’ Graveyard’
by David Archibald

On 17th May the British Film Institute (BFI) released a 3 Disc Blu-ray box set to celebrate fifty years since the first transmission of the BBC's 'Play for Today'. David Archibald has written an accompanying essay for the two Peter McDougall plays which appear in volume 2 of the set. Archibald's piece is a retrospective on a way of life and the art it produced -in special arrangement with the BFI we bring the essay to The Drouth readers' attention.

2nd January 2021

Published by TheDrouth

Feminism and Film: A Dialogue
by Núria Araüna Baro and David Archibald

An epistolary transliteration of a performative dialogue on the possibility of building a non-fiction cinema for the memory of women (as political subjects) – and the role of male academics in that process. Originally presented at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Catalunya by Núria Araüna Baro and David Archibald.

12th August 2020

Published by TheDrouth

The Filmmaker and the Fervent
by David L.Robertson

There's been no shortage of big screen entertainment based on the Christian story - especially in the years immediately after 9/11 and the Anglo-American adventure in Iraq. What exactly is/was their appeal and what is the measure of their success? Are they just for the faithful and the fervent? David Robertson surveys the field.

5th March 2020

Published by TheDrouth

Falling asleep at the Movies: Long Day’s Journey Into Night
by Jamie Limond

Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, a massive 2018 box office success in China which confused the hell out of the date-night audience it was marketed towards, has finally limped its way over to a UK distracted by Parasite. Long Day’s mixes art house boredom with trashy noir tropes and 3D, single-take gimmickry, un-bottling a whole jumble of questions about how and why we watch long, ponderous movies when we could be watching something else.

20th February 2020

Published by TheDrouth

Aesthetics, Technological Politics and the Video Age
by Ravi Sundaram

In an age of surveillance capitalism is it no longer viable to put hope in the creative possibilities Walter Benjamin believed were opened to humanity through technological advances in media? –Or can a new poetics of infrastructure disrupt the sinister operations of corporate power? Ravi Sundaram surveys the will in the media.

14th February 2020

Published by TheDrouth

1917 AND ALL THAT
by Owen Dudley Edwards

Hailed as a significant technical achievement, Owen Dudley Edwards sees the film 1917 as a great humanising agent.

19th December 2019

Published by Mitch Miller

As Radical as Reality?: Werner Herzog’s ‘Meeting Gorbachev’

Based on three in-depth conversations with the former President of the Soviet Union, Meeting Gorbachev (2019) is the latest documentary from Werner Herzog. How does ‘ecstatic truth’ fare when contending […]

4th September 2019

Published by Johnny Rodger

For Sama – Film Review and Q & A at the GFT

FOR SAMA is simply a film that everyone must see. You will weep over the bloody betrayal of the Syrian people’s hopes for freedom. It might sound like some cheap […]