Holy Motors: The Beauty of Gesture, the Mechanics of Suffering

On masks, extinction, and the camera as the last fragile religion.

Mira Solano|March 1, 2026

Giuliana (Monica Vitti) framed against Ravenna’s factories—yellow smoke and grey-painted landscape, colour as pathology in *Red Desert* (1964).

Essay

The Chromatics of Sickness: Colour and Consciousness in Red Desert

Antonioni’s first colour film uses a radical, painterly aesthetic to map the internal landscape of a soul fractured by the brutal beauty of the modern industrial world.

November 4, 2025

A mother and daughter facing each other at a piano; Bergman’s close-up catches the moment they almost hear one another.

Essay

Prelude to Silence: Autumn Sonata and the Impossibility of Being Heard

Bergman’s Autumn Sonata dissects the tragedy of almost-understanding: speech and listening become weapons as a mother and daughter circle an impossible encounter.

November 4, 2025

Actress records her final lines in a Leningrad dubbing studio as the crew listens—evoking the body–voice split in Averbakh’s The Voice (1982).

Essay

The Eternal Echo and annihilation in Averbakh’s The Voice

Ilya Averbakh’s quietly devastating final film is a meditation on the space between the dying body and the immortal voice, where art becomes a final, painful act of transcendence.

November 4, 2025