Reclaiming Small Spaces: Chantal Akerman’s ‘Saute ma ville’ and the Art of Social Distancing
Chantal Akerman’s 1968 short film Saute ma ville directly reflects our current state, serving as a meditative text on the art of staying home.
Matt McKinzie
Matt McKinzie is a writer and filmmaker, first published in PopMatters in 2018. He graduated from Emerson College in 2021 with a B.A. in Visual and Media Arts and a Minor in Gender Studies. His work has been featured at WickedQueer: Boston’s LGBTQ+ Film Festival, the Film-Makers' Cooperative, Millennium Film Workshop, and in the pages of EM Magazine, where he worked as Editorial Director from 2019 to 2021. In 2022, Matt was named a WeScreenplay Diverse Voices Lab and ScreenCraft Finalist.
Parallelism and Deliverance in Feminist Films: Barbara Loden’s ‘Wanda’ and Natalia Leite’s ‘Bare’
Natalia Leite’s 2015 film Bare picks up where Barbara Loden’s 1970 film Wanda left off, each acting, indirectly, as the proto- and fourth wave- feminist renderings of the other.
In Appreciation of Camille Billops and Her Films
Camille Billops moved beyond predictable and well-tread ground to open up space for new narratives in her films—about Black families, Black women, and Black middle-class life—that pulled on her distinctive and unapologetic worldview.
Joni Mitchell’s Fearless Jazz Debut, ‘Ladies of the Canyon’ at 50
Joni Mitchell's foray into jazz was not an impulsive change. Rather, jazz has been the constant, undulating beneath industry demands and topical concerns that called for the acoustic guitar or the Appalachian dulcimer.
Critical Discussion Transforms Art: Haile Gerima, the L.A. Rebellion, and Cinema as Life
Haile Gerima's Bush Mama remains a critically transformative film, particularly in its most subliminal, yet important, proclamation: the days of separating "art" and "artist" are over. For in Black cinema, those days never existed to begin with.
Patti Smith’s ‘Wave’ Turns 40: Why the Punk Poet’s Pop Album Is Also Her Greatest
Wave's status as Patti Smith's most unapologetically pop album reveals the most authentically "punk" gesture of her career: rejecting the idea that her genre capabilities begin and end with that four-letter word.
‘Morning Glory on the Vine’ and Joni Mitchell’s Amalgam of Craft
Joni Mitchell's latest book denotes the next step in the Joni evolution, and indicates that perhaps those different languages for her—of visual art, poetry, and music—will finally be held in equal regard.
The Velvet Underground’s ‘Grey Album’ and the Delineation of a Decade
Blending garage rock convention and avant-garde abstraction, the Velvet Underground’s “Grey Album” denotes a transitional moment in the band’s brief but influential discography.
How Is It That Agnès Varda Is So Well Known Yet So Unknown?
Agnès Varda was a maverick artist whose pop cultural legacy is hampered with a confounding dichotomy: great reverence yet simultaneous obscurity.
How Kenneth Anger Created Camp Cinema with His Short Film, ‘Puce Moment’
In his 1949 short film Puce Moment, Kenneth Anger created a new kind of cinema — one that was glitzy, gaudy, queer-coded, and proto-feminist.
Absurdism and Power: Robert Altman’s ‘Brewster McCloud’ in Today’s America
Robert Altman’s comedy Brewster McCloud is as relevant to our absurd society today as it was to our absurd society half a century ago.
Outsmarting the Auteur: Reassigning Power in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Marnie’
A contemporary viewing of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1964 film, Marnie, makes it clear: we must understand the inner workings of the male gaze and annihilate it.