FREE CINEMA NOW

#InformedImages is a Free Cinema Now series that studies and brings to light influential films and other examples of moving images that informed and inspired specific visuals in later works. Roger Deakins may very well win his first Oscar this Sunday March 4th at the 90th Academy Awards ceremony for Best Cinematography for his work in Blade Runner 2049 . Deakins has never won an Academy Award before -- even though he's been nominated fourteen times -- and industry insiders are predicting that he'll finally get his due this year. (Not that he needs a statuette anyways, since his body of work is staggering and exceptional.) So, for this installment of #InformedImages , I took Deakins' photographic work in Blade Runner 2049 and studied its images closely, to see where its DNA came from. The early scenes definitely evoke Tarkovsky and in specific, his final film The Sacrifice  -- which is interesting when you consider how much that film's protagonist Alexander ( Erl...

Alfred Hitchcock s' 1954 classic Rear Window has been dissected and rigorously studied in just about every way. There was even a video essay on how Hitchcock employed symmetry in select instances. While certain video essays spell their ideas out, not to mention written essays that like to argue through primary sources (a la footnotes), sometimes the best way to have a fresh approach to the material, is to literally cut it up and see its fragmentation coalesce into something enlightening. That's precisely the approach Sarah Etkin went with in her video essay on Rear Window . As you watch it, you'll see how its effective clashing of intercuts versus repetition begins to form a new narrative language. It's like an anvil fell on the film's reel and condensed it to fragmentary clues that only add to its aura of mystery and trancelike obsession.

Video Essayist Philip Brubaker has released his latest moving image work It's A Wonderful Hitchcock , a tantalizing reimagining of Frank Capra 's It's a Wonderful Life . Brubaker expounds on his piece at Vimeo : " Alfred Hitchcock 's unmistakable cinematic stamp is the inspiration for this re-imagining of It's A Wonderful Life . Bernard Hermann 's score for Vertigo serves as the key ingredient to bring out the tension, anxiety and anguish of Frank Capra's film. Allusions to other Hitchcock films arise when this Christmas classic starring Jimmy Stewart is recut to feel like an offering from the Master of Suspense." The result is a fascinating rendering that challenges our predetermined image association with Capra's film. The key crossover element here is Stewart, who stars in both Vertigo and It's A Wonderful Life . Brubaker here speaks to the larger dialogue of Video Essayists challenging the vault of moving images, meaning tha...