Anna Weltner – Medium

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Fact and poetry in Kiarostami’s Close Up

Abbas Kiarostami’s Close Up (1990) opens with a reporter in a Tehran taxicab, on the way to the residence of a middle-class family. He tells the driver — and us — about the big story he’s about to break. A con man with a passing resemblance to the Iranian film…

Documentary Film

3 min read

Fact and poetry in Kiarostami’s Close Up

Documentary Film

3 min read

Pinned

A pop quiz on Cindy Sherman

As a student I missed a test question about one of my favorite artists, and it led me on a weird journey. When I was a student at Portland State University, I took a course in the history of photography. It was a class that perfectly linked my twin loves…

Art History

11 min read

Art History

11 min read

Jun 4, 2019

Grey Gardens, genre influences, and the American Nightmare

David and Albert Maysles’ documentary film Grey Gardens (1975), a portrait of “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” Beale — a mother and daughter with high-society connections living in a squalid mansion in the Hamptons — is recognized as a crowning achievement of the direct cinema movement. Rather than deal in…

Film

13 min read

A melodrama in a haunted house: tracing genre influences in Grey Gardens

Film

13 min read