Rory O'Connor

2 months ago | interviewmagazine.com | Rory O'Connor |Jake Nevins

It’s hard to think of Rainer Werner Fassbinder without the actress Hanna Schygulla, the longtime muse he met at a Munich school in the mid-60s and went on to collaborate with on over 20 films and TV shows, right up until his death in 1982. At just 37 years old, the iconic filmmaker’s career was only getting started, but so was her’s.

2 months ago | hammertonail.com | Rory O'Connor

“You know, you’re Irish, so when I’m saying Dédalus you’re probably thinking Joyce.” It’s early December in Avelino and Arnaud Desplechin isn’t really talking  A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The French director’s latest, Spectateurs!, reintroduces the his own Dédalus: an intrepid cinephile who already appeared at various ages, occasionally in the form of Mathieu Amalric, in My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument (1998), A Christmas Tale (2008) and My Golden Days (2015).

2 months ago | thefilmstage.com | Rory O'Connor

It’s mid-July and I’m sitting in my living room, wondering what Ben Burtt, a man responsible for some of the most beloved cultural artifacts of the 20th century, will think of the decor. He appears on my screen calling from Locarno, where he’s just received a lifetime achievement award. I start by thanking him genuinely for his contributions to cinema, and something in that choice of words makes him blush. Burtt was born in Jamestown, New York, in 1948.

2 months ago | thefilmstage.com | Rory O'Connor

The last time Hong Sangsoo failed to feature in a Berlinale program, Childish Gambino’s “This is America” was in the charts and Green Book was on its way to beating Roma at the Oscars. (2019 notwithstanding, you have to go back to the Obama years to find a selection without the South Korean’s name.) In just those six years, the festival has witnessed three different creative directors, weathered a global pandemic, and buckled under the weight of its own political fealty.

2 months ago | thefilmstage.com | Rory O'Connor

The Blue Trail, the lively new film fromGabriel Mascaro, takes its name from the secretions of a mythical snail. Azure and oozing, the substance, when dropped on the iris, is rumored to grant a vision of things to come. This news is welcomed with admirable disinterest by Tereza (Denise Weinberg), a woman of a certain age who has, due to recent state insistences, decided there’s no longer much use in looking ahead.