BFI | Sight & Sound | October 2008

October 2008

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Features

Who needs critics?

Critics need to show more passion and conviction if they're still to matter in the internet age, argues Nick James PLUS our panel of leading critics select examples of the great writing that inspires them; Mark Fisher on the vital role of the blogger; Mark Cousins on the necessity of critical advocacy; and Amy Taubin celebrates the life of the great critic and artist Manny Farber

Critics On Critics

Sight & Sound asked leading critics to choose the works of criticism which have had the greatest impact on them, inspiring them to become critics themselves, and which make a case for criticism as a minor art form in itself.

Late liberty

Eric Rohmer's The Romance of Astrea and Celadon may be the last film in a remarkable career that stretches back to the origins of the French New Wave. He's been very lucky, he tells Geoff Andrew

Brideshead reloaded

Evelyn Waugh and his peers at Oxford in the 1920s were among the first British intellectuals to take cinema seriously as an artform, writes Henry K. Miller PLUS Philip Kemp talks to director Julian Jarrold about his new film adaptation of Waugh's great novel Brideshead Revisited

Grandmother's russia

Alexander Sokurov's latest film Alexandra tells of a grandmother's journey into war-torn Chechnya, but is it politically sensitive, Ian Christie asks its director?

Diamonds are forever

As the British Film Institute celebrates its 75th birthday, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith looks back at its history, and what it reveals about the challenges of public arts funding in Britain PLUS Charles Whitehouse selects ten classic films from the now defunct BFI Production Board

Europa europa

Ulrich Seidl has been accused of exploiting the amateur actors in Import Export, his brilliant and unsettling vision of a troubled contemporary Europe. Not true, he tells Catherine Wheatley