
The day after recording the video piece that has come to be known as BLUE TAPE (but which was never intended to have a title), Sondheim and Acker made a second, related tape. Commenting on and structured after the first, it similarly documents a charged intellectual and sexual encounter but with Sondheim and Acker’s roles reversed. Screened only once, in the UK, this film was presented for the first time in the U.S. at Anthology Film Archives on March 6th, 2023. 1974, 33 min, video.
The quiet ache of guilt sitting at the dinner table, the silence after a truth is buried, and the way pain is passed down like a name.
A short film that begins with the language of romance but slowly reveals something far more unsettling beneath the surface.
A decade since it aired, Shameless (U.S.) has always stuck to its guns (and baseball bats) about character diversity.
What seems like such a simple story of survival is so much more than that—it’s a story of family, and of war, and of destruction. It’s painful to watch, but not in a bad way. It makes its audience reflect on their own actions, and in how they are complicit in the sufferings of others as the adults in this film are. Grave of the Fireflies does not hold back from being heartbreaking, and it shouldn’t. It tells a message that needs to be heard decades after the war, and a story that cannot be forgotten by history.
The more we learned with each passing minute the bigger the reveal. This film ends with a serious bang and it was truly a joy to watch.