These indie thrillers revive classic noir tropes with fresh, distinct approaches.
Author Archives: Ela Bittencourt
Ela Bittencourt is a critic and cultural journalist, currently based in São Paulo. She writes on art, film and literature, often in the context of social issues and politics.
Posted inFilm
The Post-Communist Cinematic Landscape of Eastern Europe
Sergei Loznitsa’s expansive filmography is a great entryway to films from Ukraine, Poland, Russia, and more which grapple with the legacy of the Warsaw Pact.
Posted inArt
Hannah Wilke’s and Eva Hesse’s Irreverent Experiments in Abstraction
Erotic Abstraction revels in the subversive absurdity shared by both artists.
Posted inFilm
The Cinematic Gems of the Czechoslovak New Wave
These classics were produced during Czechoslovakia’s brief political thaw in the 1960s.
Posted inBooks
The Salacious and Scholarly Poems of Yusef Komunyakaa
The poet suggests his art’s highest calling isn’t truth-telling but stirring our empathic imagination.
Posted inFilm
A Mesmerizing Yet Frustrating Portrayal of Film Industry Exploitation
In its desire to avoid cliches, Nina Wu skips over some of the more complex fallout of sexual trauma.
Posted inArt
Lush Yet Crisp: Beatriz Milhazes’s Lively Abstractions
Avenida Paulista, Milhazes’s largest survey to date, offers an engrossing overview of how the artist cross-pollinates painting and printmaking.
Posted inFilm
A Virtual Sundance Brings Movies About Isolation and Mediated Realities
The 2021 edition of the important film festival is open to viewers around the country.
Posted inFilm
The Nostalgia of a Movie Theater’s Final Days
Tsai Ming-liang’s newly restored film Goodbye, Dragon Inn flips the notion of moviegoing as a sanctified experience.
Posted inArt
Winds of Change at the São Paulo Biennial’s Introductory Show
Emphasizing obscured histories, Vento inspires hope that the biennial programs to come will be potent enough to raise some dust in Niemeyer’s drafty halls.
Posted inFilm
At New Directors/New Films, Stories About People Struggling to Heal
This year’s online edition of the venerable festival features movies about mourning rituals, reenactments of family history, cult survivors, and more.
Posted inFilm
A Film Unravels a Cover-up in the Aftermath of a Bucharest Nightclub Fire
Director Alexander Nanau tells Hyperallergic how he got such incredible access to journalists and government officials for Collective.