The eyes of Mayakovsky’s lover and muse, Lily Brik, bore out at you from the cover of this important new edition of Mayakovsky’s long poem, Pro Eto. Lily Brik occurs elsewhere in the book; in the text, which she haunts, but also in the astonishing photomontages for the poem by Alexander Rodchenko, which are published […]
Archive | June, 2009
Jerichow, (2008) dir. Christian Petzold
(Edinburgh International Film Festival) German feature Jerichow made its UK debut at 2009’s Edinburgh International Film Festival on 19 June, and is arguably more appealing and straightforwardly enjoyable than many of the more high-profile premieres screened there so far. Benno Furmann plays brooding ex-soldier Thomas, deep in debt and with few prospects, who moves into […]
Away We Go, (2009) dir. Sam Mendes
(International premiere, Edinburgh International Film Festival) Coming just four months after the UK release of his last film, Revolutionary Road, Away We Go is something of a departure for respected film and theatre director Sam Mendes. The compositional beauty and sinister, or, at least, restless, undertone for which he is renowned have been replaced with […]
Katyn (2007), dir. Andrzej Wajda
The iconic beginning to this film – Polish refugees run from both sides onto a bridge, one side running from the Russians, the others running from the Germans, and the equally iconic, relentless slaughter which end the film, will be well known to anyone who has looked at the reviews of this remarkable document. Equally […]
Basil Bunting, Briggflatts (Bloodaxe Books) £12.00
In 1979, Donald Davie wrote that ‘Briggflatts is where English poetry has got to, it is what English poets must assimilate and go on from.’ Why hasn’t that happened? One reason for the critical occlusion of Bunting is that late-modernism itself can be a bit of a cul-de-sac. On the DVD that accompanies the text, […]