The Indecision of Authorship: Mexican Cinema 2024–2025 by Jorge Negrete There are many dilemmas currently facing contemporary Mexican cinema, several of them shared by other national cinemas, but in the Mexican context, where the act of going to the movies still enjoys robust health, this doesn’t necessarily reflect a healthy overall landscape. A considerable number…… Continue reading Translation Corner: Mexican Cinema 2024-2025
Latest
Encounters – Carmen Leroi
Here at Lucky Star, we are always on the lookout for points of contact with other cinephile cultures. We are hoping with this column, Encounters, to establish a dialogue, a line of communication. We get to know interesting cinephiles, critics, directors, etc., all as a way to interrogate our own positions, our own cinephilia. In…… Continue reading Encounters – Carmen Leroi
What is the Modern Cinema? – Carmen Leroi
Carmen Leroi’s first two short films feature two characters named Elsa. In one film she is a young woman in her late 20s, and in another she is a woman in her 40s. In the first film, Les belles portes, her brother appears and disappears over the course of 15 minutes, and in the second,…… Continue reading What is the Modern Cinema? – Carmen Leroi
Festival Watch: BAFICI Shorts
Just about two years ago I engaged in a long masochistic exercise where I wrote about every single short film that played at the Dallas International Film Festival. This was a defeated gesture – I knew that most of the films would be bad – and was mostly done in the spirit of bomb-throwing. In…… Continue reading Festival Watch: BAFICI Shorts
Translation Corner – Vittorio Cottafavi, flame that never dies
Vittorio Cottafavi, flame that never dies By José Miccio It did not go well for Vittorio Cottafavi at the 1949 Venice Film Festival. Four years after the end of the war, with fascism near at hand and neorealism at its most influential moment, a story like The Flame that Never Dies, the film he presented…… Continue reading Translation Corner – Vittorio Cottafavi, flame that never dies
Lucky Star Editorial Grid – 03/03/2025 – 03/14/2025
I first encountered Vittorio Cottafavi back in 2011 or so – the golden age of film forums and Tumblr, where screenshots played an important role in garnering enthusiasm for a lot of underseen or somewhat misunderstood/mis-categorized filmmakers. His spectacular pepla and historical epics scratched an itch for me then for films made with actual, mechanically…… Continue reading Lucky Star Editorial Grid – 03/03/2025 – 03/14/2025
Translation Corner: Vittorio Cottafavi in Présence Du Cinéma
How did you get into film directing? I started out mainly interested in music, but as I had no aptitude for it, I switched to literature. I wrote two or three stories when I was young, but I had no aptitude for literature. It tired me a lot, the blank page gave me nightmares. Like…… Continue reading Translation Corner: Vittorio Cottafavi in Présence Du Cinéma
Love Sensation: Una donna libera
What Price Freedom? There are certain films where what fascinates us is the relationship between shots, between a camera movement, a pause, a cut, a new angle… It can be overwhelming and confusing. But also each movement in the sequence is a step taken towards an emotion, an idea, a psychological state – in short,…… Continue reading Love Sensation: Una donna libera
Lucky Star Editorial Grid – 02/15/2025 – 02/28/2025
I am writing this from the Latin American Film Festival of Dallas offices. The festival lineup has been announced. Now there are a lot of emails, threads regarding social media strategy, files to be delivered, payments to be coordinated – very far away from the act of watching films! The films I’ve been watching lately…… Continue reading Lucky Star Editorial Grid – 02/15/2025 – 02/28/2025
Lucky Star Editorial Grid – 02/01/2025 – 02/14/2025
There is a rare pleasure to be found when encountering work that, after an unassuming first impression, reveals a center of gravity strong enough to draw other work into its orbit, even more the case when that influence is subtle, at the edge of description. I’ve been spending the weeks represented by this grid in…… Continue reading Lucky Star Editorial Grid – 02/01/2025 – 02/14/2025
Lucky Star 