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An Outpost of Progress“Shadow,” said he,“Where can it be –This land of Eldorado?” —Edgar Allan Poe, “Eldorado”, 1849While critics mine film festivals for hidden or sometimes unattainable gems, a parallel quest for an El Dorado can be seen as a thematic undercurrent within the larger focus of the Berlin International Film Festival’s Forum section on migration. This quest is especially apparent in the gold mines of the Peruvian Andes in Salomé Lamas’ Eldorado Xxi and the jade mines of northern Myanmar in Midi Z’s City of Jade. Set in the same war-torn region as the latter film, Wang Bing’s Ta'ang follows people from the eponymous minority group seeking safer shelter across the Chinese border. In An Outpost of Progress and competition film Letters from War, the Portuguese filmmakers Hugo Vieira da Silva and Ivo M. Ferreira deal explicitly with the colonial connotations of the notion of El Dorado.

We're very excited that Lola, one of our favorite film journals, has started to roll out its 5th issue entitled "Shows." The pieces published so far include Joe McElhaney on German filmmakers in Hollywood, Lesley Stern on the "Ghostliness of Gesture", and Dorian Stuber & Marianne Tettlebaum on To Be or Not to Be. Still to come: "essays on Claire Denis, Eduardo Coutinho, anime, Blade Runner, the filmic object, film criticism, and more ... plus a special interview with James Benning." The Museum of the Moving Image's "First Look" lineup has been announced and includes new films by Ulrich Seidl, Ken Jacobs, and Gina Telaroli. The series will be running between January 9th and 18th. For Criterion, Farren Smith Nehme writes on Frank Capra's It Happened One Night:

"An ideal romantic comedy doesn’t ignore reality; it converses with it. The Depression may be softened by moonlight and shining eyes,...

Looking back at 2012 on 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 2012—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2012 to create a unique double feature.

All the contributors were asked to write a paragraph explaining their 2012 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 would you program some...

"To anyone who was immersed in the fervent cinématheque culture of the immediate post-Salazar era in Portugal, the four films that António Reis, a poet, painter, sculptor, and filmmaker, made with his wife, Margarida Cordeiro, are the stuff of legend," writes Gabe Klinger for Moving Image Source. "Just ask Manoel de Oliveira, Pedro Costa, or Jean-Marie Straub. For those lucky enough to be in attendance, this year's Jeonju International Film Festival in South Korea has imported three of the films in gorgeous 35mm from the Cinemateca Portuguesa: Jaime, Trás-os-Montes, and Ana. Born to peasants in rural Portugal and growing up in humble, near-destitute surroundings before migrating to cities (Porto in Reis's scase, Lisbon in Cordeiro's), both adopted a profoundly moral position in their work that the critic Luis Miguel Oliveira sums up with the following equation: film that space, understand those people."

Ken Jacobs and his wife, Flo, will present...