As the hype-train for ‘Black Panther’ continues its world-tour, breaking box-office records in the process, Jack Brindelli examines whether the film is as radical as its billing suggests. Reviews of Black Panther have mostly fallen into one of two categories. Either those who hate it because they are, ultimately, racists trying to dress themselves as comic-book fans; or … [Read more...]
Fascism and Faeces, or how Salò foreshadowed the Trump era
In May 2018, the former Norwich Radical Film Festival, which becomes Manifesto Film Festival in Amsterdam, will show Hisham Bizri’s experimental documentary ‘Beneath the wide wide Heaven’. The film explores the life of murdered Italian Marxist director Pier Paolo Pasolini. In order to get a better understanding of the importance of Pasolini ahead of the screening, Festival … [Read more...]
Next stop Amsterdam
I’m not entirely sure how best to frame this news; whether it’s an exciting new chapter for our film festival, a sad moment where I admit my hometown doesn’t want the same things as me, or a middle finger to the plentiful number of people who have done their best to wedge a stick in my spokes ever since I launched the NRFF project. Maybe it’s all three of those … [Read more...]
Night of the Living Wage: Why you should back the Picturehouse boycott
Last year the NRFF hosted its main event in Cinema City, a member of the ‘independent’ Picturehouse franchise. After much debate, the venue was finally selected as the lesser of evils among Norwich’s shoddy closed-shop of a cinema scene, after a boycott on the chain had come to an end a year prior to that. A year later however, the chain has come under fire once more for its … [Read more...]
Hurt: Logan, Class and the Future
Following its premiere at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival, Logan received the best reviews of any X-Men film, and was proclaimed by some critics to be the finest superhero film ever made. To celebrate the release of the movie to DVD this month, Jack Brindelli considers just what it is that made the Wolverine persona click with audiences for the past 17 years, and … [Read more...]