Kamran's areas of interest include formalism, realism & reality, affect, and notions of the aesthetic. With experiences as a TA, an event panelist, a presenter at conferences from UofT to Harvard, and a writer of a self-authored film blog, Kamran would like to share with others his profound interest in the profilmic in the hopes of inspiring, in them, a similar love for film.
65 years after helping pioneer the French New Wave, Agnes Varda perpetuates the movement with yet another film which harks back to its origins—elements of intellectual self-reflection and realization. She brings to the fore the art of filming the process of filming which Godard in particular enmeshed in his otherwise fictitious films. With Faces Places, Varda and J.R.—a remarkable photographer and…
Three stories intertwine when distinct characters of the underworld become involved in a lowlife’s criminal act of organ harvesting and human trafficking. Structured in four chapters, with the first three depicting the same time frame, Lowlife feels like an episodic narrative or vignette of short stories. These stories come together for the final act—a gruesome yet captivating end…
Loving Vincent, an animated film produced entirely of painted frames, is a testament to the vast possibilities of the cinematic arts and at once a complete denial of this potential. A brilliant innovation and a marvel to behold—painting, portraiture, and the fluidity of image strike awe in its viewer, recognizing at once that history has been made.
Peterson’s coming-of-age documentary chronicles six years in the life of Zachariah Doomadgee, an aboriginal growing up in Sydney, far away from his peoples land claim and culture. His father teaches him about his people, in an effort to maintain the culture, but Zach feels always split between the…
Goetschel’s fascinating documentary takes viewers behind closed doors and into the past of a secret Soviet city, known as City 40, which was built for the purposes of off-the-grid nuclear testing and armament. Central to City 40 is a Nuclear Plant named Mayak, built in the mid-1940s soon after the…
The critically acclaimed House of Flying Daggers, masterfully directed by Fifth Generation Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou, combines romance and drama with action and adventure. A wuxia (martial arts) film in the vein of King Hu’s A Touch of Zen (1971) or Yimou’s previous film Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers uses dazzling …
As a documentary, This Changes Everything (Avi Lewis) is first and foremost intended to spread awareness. This is integral to the film’s content, which deals with environmental changes and man’s relation with nature. In its measure to spread awareness, it aims to engender in the viewer a shift in their way of thinking, which…
Though Tom Hiddleston is superb in the role of Hank Williams, Marc Abraham’s fictional biopic I Saw the Light follows a sluggish script replete with banal romantic ventures and non-intimate portraiture. It does a rather poor job at conveying Hank Williams’ complex personality, instead dramatizing his vices for shock value. Instead of giving the man the respect…
Vancouver made Charlotte’s Song is an exceedingly provocative film that titillates the viewer with a haunting atmosphere, lavish dress, and beautiful music while completely nullifying all this through its convoluted script, crime TV-like special effects, and lack of direction. Set in the 30s Oklahoma Dust Bowl, Charlotte’s Song tells the story of a mermaid coming of age. Her mother, a mermaid singer with the power to control audiences with her voice, dies…
Kaufman’s first stop-motion film, a high concept animation about the mundanity of existence and the homogeneity of experience, joins his catalogue of thought-provoking psychological dramas. The film focuses on the life of Michael Stone (voice of David Thewlis), a motivation speaker whose life has lost energy as he has succumbed to a placid role as…