Forrest Cardamenis

Okay Leon Moussinac is crazy for this one.

Jean Epstein on Abel Gance.

I need to watch Oyster Princess (it’s been on my list alongside a few other Lubitsch silents).

Have you seen J’Accuse?

Two Days (Georgi Stabovoi, 1927) As seen through Philip Cavendish's "The Men with the Movie Camera"

Just published: some thoughts on Philip Cavendish's book on 1920s Soviet cinema and a little-known film that he discusses in passing. fcardamenis.substack.com/p/two-days-g...

Cavendish contends that the directors were a bit insecure and didn't credit their DPs enough, although this is more a criticism of Eisenstein than the others. But I'd be interested to hear your thoughts after you read it!

Cavendish concedes that censorship makes the sound-era films by these directors worse; his claim is that the DPs are still the primary authors of the silent era stuff. I think that's an overstatement, but these were some of the best DPs of the silent era all the same.

Two Days (Georgi Stabovoi, 1927) As seen through Philip Cavendish's "The Men with the Movie Camera"

Just published: some thoughts on Philip Cavendish's book on 1920s Soviet cinema and a little-known film that he discusses in passing. fcardamenis.substack.com/p/two-days-g...

The Big Parade is so good.

First time I played, but I had no errors and solved in “less than 10 minutes” (I don’t see an exact time). Fun game!

Have watched both the Brownlow/BFI disc of Napoleon and the new restoration this week and the info out there on the differences is terrible. On KG and Reddit both you have people saying 5.5 vs. 7 hours is almost entirely attributable to the change from 20fps to 18. There’s a math problem there!

For what it’s worth, I also hate what he did with Seven and I consider every film he made from Zodiac on to be better than all the movies before it (Mank is fake; do not ask me about Mank), and I really dig The Killer. But I still hate the after-the-fact fuckery!

What I Watched in Rotterdam A brief overview of highlights in the week's expanded cinema.

I'll have a longer report on the festival as a whole in Documentary Magazine soon, but here's a brief recap of my impressions of the expanded cinema I watched in Rotterdam. fcardamenis.substack.com/p/what-i-wat...

What I Watched in Rotterdam A brief overview of highlights in the week's expanded cinema.

I'll have a longer report on the festival as a whole in Documentary Magazine soon, but here's a brief recap of my impressions of the expanded cinema I watched in Rotterdam. fcardamenis.substack.com/p/what-i-wat...

Beau Travail.

Top 2 for me.

This is probably a “me” problem but as I watch all these silent films my esteem for every single director has gone up, with the sole exception of…Murnau. I’m not really buying what this guy is selling! I’m sorry if this offends!

“You know what these tight ends are so relaxed about? Prostate cancer screenings.”

Honeygiver Among the Dogs

MOIRÉE Podcast | IFFR 2026 Round Table Critics Blake Williams, Vadim Rizov, Beatrice Loayza, Forrest Cardamenis, and Jordan Cronk discuss highlights from the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam, including:- Charlotte Zhang’s Tyco...

My festival pals and I discussed most of these works (and a couple more) on the Moiree podcast here: moiree.transistor.fm/episodes/iff...

The Tiger winner, Variations on a Theme, was my final screening. It’s okay. Special Jury Award winner La Belle Année is also fine.

Back home after a week at IFFR. The film of the festival is Chronovisor, but I had a good time with the Tetsuya Maruyama retrospective, the experimental shorts programs, James N. Kienitz Wilkins The Misconceived, Xacio Baño’s After the Cities, and Roy Cohen’s Far From Maine.

It was constant rotation when I was a kid (we all like Bruce so the CD was in the car) but I’ve probably not listened all the way through in 15-20 years.

Thoughts on The Rising?

Watched The Materialists on the plane and can’t see what had people so incensed about this one, except perhaps the fact that it begins with Dakota Johnson walking south along Cooper Union but then cuts to her at Waverly and Greene, which is the other direction.

The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915) Or, form vs. content on the occasion of America's semiquincentennial.

I wrote entirely too many words about Birth of a Nation. It's not quite in time for MLK day, but if you feel like reading entirely too many words about Birth of a Nation, I've got you. (Please read this I worked really hard on it.) fcardamenis.substack.com/p/the-birth-...

And Black Reconstruction was mostly kind of ignored for about 30 years!

The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915) Or, form vs. content on the occasion of America's semiquincentennial.

I wrote entirely too many words about Birth of a Nation. It's not quite in time for MLK day, but if you feel like reading entirely too many words about Birth of a Nation, I've got you. (Please read this I worked really hard on it.) fcardamenis.substack.com/p/the-birth-...

Queen Kelly & The Wedding March On the occasion of the new restoration of Queen Kelly, a meditation on Stroheim and his relationship to Griffith.

Some thoughts on two Erich von Stroheim films and D.W. Griffith. open.substack.com/pub/fcardame...

Sounds like a winner. I’d make that mayo chipotle mayo or sriracha mayo if you like a bit of spice.