Longform writing is the raison d'être of Animus. These free-to-access essays, by writers from around the world, cut through the noise and are guaranteed to be worth your time.
Essays
On watching Patricio Guzmán’s My Imaginary Country in Goa, India The film wasn’t the main thing that day. What really counted then was the warmth of the air and the noise of the traffic on a busy road — a man hurtling past on a Vespa carrying two multi-packs
Essays
E. Elias Merhige’s cult classic makes us look between the frames People who worry about the distinction between the life lived and the life examined need to check out that thing called cinema. Watching a film always involves a degree of push-pull between watching the screen, and being afraid
Essays
On stargazing and the journey towards screening E. Elias Merhige’s Begotten, Din of Celestial Birds and Polia and Blastema in a planetarium 1. For me, the journey goes back twenty-five years. Early October 1998, at the Institut français, London, where I had organised ‘A Weekend with Andrzej Żuławski’. There
Essays
Artwork by Neven Udovičić Watching films can be uncomfortable when they ask us to leave some of our ego at the door. Not to be confused with our brain, of course, which in fact tends to go into overdrive when our more self-indulgent impulses quiet down. Cinema is often talked
Essays
On Charles Vanel's Dans la nuit Charles Vanel was one of the most prolific French actors of his or any time. His career spanned more than 75 years (1910 to 1988) and comprises nearly 200 credits, though he is perhaps best known for his role in Henri-Georges Clouzot’
Essays
On Samuel R. Delany's The Orchid Writer and philosopher Samuel R. Delany has long envisioned a utopia, stemming from the unique potential of cities as sites of radical egalitarian communion. A constellation of concrete, glass and humanity that’s like a counterpoint to what has, typically, been prophesied
Essays
On Leonard Kastle's The Honeymoon Killers and Barbara Loden's Wanda At its heart, The Honeymoon Killers is a love story. This heart is black, and this love story twisted — defined by manipulation and violence more than anything else — but director Leonard Kastle goes to great pains
Essays
On Gerald Kargl's Angst For all its brutality, Angst isn’t above having fun. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a man — let’s call him The Psychopath — approaches a home, a woman answers the door, and The Psychopath shoots the woman. He flees and
Essays
On Juraj Lerotić's Safe Place, Florian Zeller's The Son and the Netflix series Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story tw: discussion of depression and suicide This Be The Verse By Philip Larkin They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to,
Essays
Artwork by Neven Udovičić Any list of the best films of all time suggests the idea of consensus. Yet so much of creativity, both in terms of writing for the journalists voting in polls, and for the filmmakers who make the films being voted for, is about resisting consensus to
Essays
Director Daniel Goldhaber on his film How to Blow Up a Pipeline In August of 2003, a few months after George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, the Pentagon’s Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, an anti-guerilla task force, circulated a flier to officers and civilians advertising a
Essays
Several recent attempts to deconstruct American megachurches and televangelists fail to grasp what truly makes institutionalised evangelicalism so insidious One glance at the news can provide an immediate insight as to why American society is currently living in decidedly faithless times. In the wake of a pandemic that has ravaged