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Marlen KhutsievI discovered the name Marlen Khutsiev two summers ago at the Locarno Film Festival, where Russian critic and programmer Boris Nelepo introduced an increasingly awestruck audience to the small but overwhelming filmography of this Russian filmmaker. Thankfully for American audiences, the Museum of Modern Art has picked up and continued this essential retrospective, which starts October 5 in New York, expanding it in the process, and so here I will gather my thoughts upon encountering this truly stunning work for the first time.My experience began incongruously with Khutsiev’s last completed feature, 1992's Infinitas, an unexpected choice considering that the film's 206 minute wanderings of a middle-aged man through his life and memories was even to this uninformed viewer clearly autobiographical. After next viewing Khutsiev's 1965 masterpiece variably known as Fortress Il'ichi, Ilych's Gate and I Am Twenty, it was clear that Infinitas is also a continuation or sequel to that semi-autobiographical film,...

My second day in Locarno I've shamefacedly dedicated to what some of the critics here call "the old movies." To be honest, while I am very much thrilled to be one of the first people to see new films by my favorite filmmakers as well as be surprised ones by those I don't know, almost every one of these films, most shot digitally and certainly projected digitally here in Locarno, I will be able to catch again somehow, whether in the "digital library" at the festival itself, through a link from a filmmaker/producer/publicist/friend, or at the next festival stop they make. The 35mm films in Locarno are obviously therefore a much more rarified commodity and experience, something David Bordwell testified to in his report from the nearly all film (and certainly all "old movies") festival in Bologna in June: namely, the increasing popularity of festivals which cater to these now-unique celluloid experiences,...

★★★☆☆ "It was a low, late afternoon light ... that only spoke of distant things." And so it is that a film seems to perfectly encapsulate itself in the delivery of a single line of dialogue. Those words are spoken by the protagonist of Vítor Gonçalves' The Invisible Life (2013) in a typical moment of reflective voiceover as he traverses a dimly lit hallway. This is a film that clearly has ambition to expound poetically about existential malaise and deep-seated loneliness; but it's all fustian, amounting to little more than its muted brown hues, some strikingly elegant compositions and vague discussions of things too remote for them to ever drift into clear focus. Drifting is the apposite word.

This is not a film that is driven by any narrative or thematic concerns, but which instead moves at a gloomy glissade. The Invisible Life is Portuguese director Gonçalves' first work in over 25 years...

There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't even wait, be completely quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you to be unmasked; it can't do otherwise; in raptures it will writhe before you."

—Franz Kafka, "Reflections on Sin, Suffering, Hope, and the True Way."

Above: Director Vítor Gonçalves

Behold the Palace Square in Lisbon—or rather, Praça do Comércio, where the Royal Ribeira Palace stood for nearly two hundred years. In the 18th century, the palace was destroyed by the Great Lisbon Earthquake, never to be restored (instead was built a new one, though, not for the King to live) hence the new name—The Square of Commerce. Here, in the seat of Fascist power, tens of thousands people would gather to listen to Salazar's orations (see Brandos Costumes by Alberto Seixas Santos); then came the Carnation Revolution.

Above: Nils Malmros

I find myself feeling with great and greater certainty that being a cinephile, or living a cinephiliac life, necessitates a far greater life lesson than one restricted to the movies: Your journey will never be complete. A step taken towards more knowledge, more experience, only and always leads to the awareness of further, farther steps that multiply exponentially from those ones you choose. If on the most simple level, I attend an event like the International Film Festival Rotterdam in order to discover more, to encompass and comprehend a greater amount of cinema, what such a trip does instead of “closing the books”—this film seen, that filmography completed, this trend identified, that era or genre or whathaveyou familiarized—in fact is to open up the vast world even more. What one thought of as a narrowing tunnel turns out to be a fractal-branching tree, or, even worse,...

Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2013—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2013 to create a unique double feature.

All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2013 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.

How...