Top Films from SUP Authors
Contrary to popular belief, we’re not always buried in a book. Sometimes, we’re buried in a film. We reached out to a few of our authors to tell us about some of their favorite films – films that inspired their research, or films that they just happened to enjoy.
- Chronicle of a Disappearance (dir. Elia Suleiman, 1996)
In Elia Suleiman’s debut feature, the director plays a version of himself, E.S., an expat Palestinian filmmaker attempting to piece together the fragmented story of a journey home and match it up with hilarious and poignant vignettes of life under occupation. Suleiman opts for deadpan humor to convey trauma and absurdity. An inheritor of Chaplin, Keaton, and Tati, Suleiman speaks volumes even though E.S. hardly utters a word in the entire film. When asked for a speech, E.S. finds himself drowned out by feedback from the microphones that are supposed to amplify his voice.
- Memoria (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021)
Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a visionary 21st century filmmaker, whose debut feature, Mysterious Object at Noon, was released in the year 2000. Memoria is nominally about an investigation into a mysterious loud sound that awakens Jessica (Tilda Swinton), an expat living in Columbia. Her search for an explanation leads her on an inner and outer journey that explores various secular and supernatural origins for the possible source of the uncanny sound. Personal and collective trauma bleeds into haunted places and lives whose histories are somehow joined across the world. There is no return home, only further openings into the unknown.
Contributed by J. M. Tyree, author of Vanishing Streets: Journeys in London.
Joshua recently contributed his own top ten list to the BFI.
You can explore his top picks here.