Writing
Writing
A selection of favourite pieces for a variety of publications from across the past decade. Work is grouped by format.
Feature articles
The Film Verdict — Most famous for his role in the Critters franchise, Oldenburg celebrates Opper’s contributions as a screenwriter.
Apollo Magazine — Making a living in the capital has always been a challenge for creative types, but British television was once very interested in how they managed.
Sight and Sound — The tantalising final shot of Bette Gordon’s enigmatic neo-noir offers more questions than it does answers, befitting a film that revels in the thrill of mystery.
Open City Documentary Festival — Reflecting on Diego Acosta’s pastoral travelogue Under the Sky Shelter, Ben Nicholson responds with a series of vignettes as part of a series of texts commissioned around new films in this year’s festival programme.
Hyperallergic — For years, Eye Filmmuseum’s Jan Bot has turned film fragments into digital experimental shorts. Now, with the project ending, those shorts will be archived via NFT.
Square Eyes — The juxtaposition and interplay between human and differing non-human perspectives form an interesting vein running through four short films in the Square Eyes catalogue.
Little White Lies — The pioneering First Nations filmmaker’s debut feature screens as part of a new season at the Barbican this February.
MAP Magazine — Ben Nicholson looks into Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival 2021, Thu 29 Apr-Mon 3 May.
MUBI Notebook — One of the most eye-catching events at Open City Documentary Festival was a lecture and film performance about speculative future cities.
British Film Institute — The landmark 1961 blackmail thriller Victim traces a secretive gay London while also filming in some of the capital’s most exclusive areas. More than 50 years later, how have its locations fared?
Institute of Contemporary Arts — An exploration of the themes within the cinema of Gianfranco Rosi ahead of his solo retrospective at the ICA.
Interviews
The Film Verdict — The writer-director of 'Beyond Silence,’ which scooped the narrative short prize at Tribeca, discusses giving voice to victims of abuse and the overwhelming reaction of audiences.
The Skinny — Charlie Shackleton was about to make a film about the Zodiac Killer when the rights to the source material fell through, leaving him to make Zodiac Killer Project, a meta documentary about the film he wasn't permitted to make.
CineVue — Albert Serra is a filmmaker with uncompromising vision. He returned to Cannes last year with the languorous but strangely unnerving Pacifiction.
ALT/KINO — Artist Katharine Fry discusses casting her doll performers, constructions of the self, and finishing the script a few days before her film, When I’m with you, premiered.
Little White Lies — The Italian filmmaker on his slow-cooked wonder, Il Buco, and the artistic joys of discovering something new.
The Guardian — The schoolyard is a psychological minefield in Playground, Wandel’s stomach-churning debut. As the film is released in the UK, she reveals the secret to immersing the viewer in a child’s world.
Sight and Sound — Wildlife management, cultural politics and Greek gods collide in the latest instalment of Matthew Barney’s personal mythology.
MUBI Notebook — The godfather of the American avant-garde discusses his writing, the Inquisition, the New York art scene, and digital technology.
Reviews
Sight and Sound — The French director centres the plight of Souleymane (Abou Sangaré), an asylum seeking bicycle courier fighting to survive in contemporary Paris.
The Film Verdict — Yoo Jaein’s graduation film is both a clear-eyed drama about teenage pregnancy and a humorous, touching tale of female friendship.
Sight and Sound — Spanish director Lois Patiño probes spiritual and cinematic boundaries with a symphonic, shapeshifting voyage through a Buddhist temple in Laos and a seaweed farm in Zanzibar.
Hyperallergic — Director Graeme Arnfield describes the notion of “a horror film waiting on your doorstep,” but his film seems to suggest it’s already in the house.
Hyperallergic — A meticulous blend of fact and fiction, this film surveys the overlooked fringe of Brazilian society under President Bolsonaro.
Sight and Sound — When director Eugenio Polgovsky passed away in 2017, his sister Mara stepped in to assemble his surviving film footage into Malintzin 17, an absorbing documentary about nature, observation and the wonder of childhood.
Little White Lies — Aubrey Plaza plays an indie filmmaker who seeks inspiration at a lake house retreat in this ambiguous slow-burner.
MUBI Notebook — Chinese documentarian Zhao Liang takes Dante's 'Divine Comedy' as inspiration for a cinematic descent into a hellish industrialization.
Fiction
Cold Open Stories — 'The worthy will come to know the word of the Father, and the blessed will see His holy light.'