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Sight & Sound

The international film magazine

Discover the best world cinema:

Informed and independent film news and comment
In-depth interviews with leading filmmakers
Retrospective articles vividly bringing film history to life
Reviews of every new cinema release

Features and interviews

Theo Angelopoulos: the sweep of history
In memoriam

The features of the late Theo Angelopoulos – who was tragically killed in a road accident on Tuesday – have defined a contemplative style of European filmmaking that’s as instantly recognisable as it has been influential. David Jenkins spoke to him late last year, for this feature interview from our current issue. Read more…

Jean Vigo: Artist of the floating world The best films of all-time?

Vigo’s sole full-length feature bridged the surrealism of 1920s French cinema and the poetic realism of the 1930s. Graham Fuller makes the case for its inclusion in S&S’s forthcoming ‘Greatest Films of All Time’ poll

The Viennale’s Hans Hurch:
“I sleep with a gun under my pillow”
The festival directors

The curator of the much-admired Viennale festival talks to Kieron Corless

» Ghosts of Christmas past: M.R. James and Lawrence Gordon Clark Out of the archive
» Michael Shannon: trouble in mind Interview
» The Singing Detective: 25 years on Feature

Reviews

The Descendants February

Alexander Payne’s follow-up to About Schmidt and Sideways is a characteristic mix of funny and painful, with Hawaii lawyer George Clooney struggling with family baggage as his wife lies in a coma. By Philip Kemp

The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short
Lost and found

Tony Rayns welcomes the revival of a forgotten Belgian classic from the 1960s

Coriolanus New release

Ralph Fiennes’s bold modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s caustic late combat drama makes a strong fist of merciless material, says David Jays

A Useful Life New release

A genial homage to a failing cinematheque and its waning artform, Federico Veiroj’s comedy also proves an ode to reinvention, says Mar Diestro-Dópido

» The Iron Lady New release
» The Conversation DVD
» Dara Birnbaum: the caged artist Exhibition

News and views

London Short Film Festival:
Winners and rejects Postcard

This year’s LSFF even showed the films it wasn’t showing. Dylan Cave peruses the award winners – and refusés

Harry Fowler, 1926-2012

Chirpy cockney character actor, from Hue and Cry to MBE

Encounters short film festival: Circumnaviga-ting the world (and some time travel) Report

At Bristol’s short film expo, Nick Bradshaw and Dylan Cave encounter Mark Cosgrove’s philosophy of festival programming, the magical early silents of Segundo de Chomón and short highlights from Britain, Scandinavia and the Ukraine

» London Short Film Festival: Nine of the best Preview
» The Gilbert Adair files In memoriam
» In a lonely place: Pyongyang International Film Festival Report

The current issue

Sex, death, odysseys and cold climates:
the February 2012 issue

Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender on Shame, plus The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Ken Russell, John Akomfrah, Theo Angelopoulos and Charles Dickens

Polls and surveys

The DVDs of 2011
Year in review

23 critics and curators pick out their releases – and rediscoveries – of the year, including Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End, Zoltán Huszárik’s Szindbád, the several versions of Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil and ‘The Theo Angelopoulos Collection’

The films of 2011
Year in review

In a strong year for arthouse cinema, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life emerged as the clear winner of the S&S poll of international critics’ best films of 2011, says Nick James

PLUS: see the full poll

» Forgotten pleasures of the multiplex