Sabzian is an international film magazine, hailing from Belgium.Sabzian est une revue de cinéma internationale, originaire de Belgique.Sabzian is een internationaal filmtijdschrift, afkomstig uit België.
Sabzian is a free online magazine that relies on the work of a group of dedicated volunteers.We could use your support. Please consider a donation!Sabzian est un magazine en ligne gratuit qui dépend du travail d’un groupe de bénévoles dévoués. Votre soutien nous aide beaucoup. Pensez à faire un don !Sabzian is een gratis online magazine dat afhankelijk is van het werk van een groep toegewijde vrijwilligers.We kunnen uw steun goed gebruiken. Overweeg een donatie!
The popularity of The Social Reckoning’s narrative lies in the political function it serves for both liberals and tech entrepreneurs, rather than in its accuracy. For Silicon Valley moguls, despite their apparent uneasiness with the subject, it works as the perfect sales pitch for their business model. The idea that platforms can change – or even control – political behaviour through “psycho-targeting” is precisely what they sell to advertisers.
Of all the filmmakers to receive retrospectives at the Play-Doc International Film Festival in recent years, Germany’s Viola Stephan is the least known. And while discovering forgotten directors is one of the joys of attending this small but smartly-curated nonfiction-focused festival Stephan’s obscurity presents a unique challenge for critics and historians who may assume that the story of art cinema of the 1990s, and of films from that era about post-Soviet culture and the sociopolitical currents between Germany and the former USSR, has already been written.
Terwijl de stad gonst en kreunt onder de hitte, zoek ik verkoeling in de cinemazaal van Bozar voor 7 Walks with Mark Brown (2024). Botanicus Mark Brown neemt filmmakers Pierre Créton en Vincent Barré mee op sleeptouw door het Normandische platteland. Nu en dan houdt hij halt, het signaal voor de filmcrew om in actie te komen. Wanneer de camera begint te ratelen, wordt het verder stil. Vijf mensen staan bewegingloos rond het apparaat, turend naar het gras. Opperste concentratie blijkt vereist om het zeldzame plantje in beeld te brengen.
For as long as I can remember I always liked the pictures. As a boy I spent so much time in cinemas, a friend suggested I take my bed with me. I would have, had it been possible. That was my real home, my happiest place when I was lucky enough to be there. Outside, whether in the village or the city, whether I was seven or seventeen, it always seemed to be raining or grey and my heart would sink to despairing depths. I hated reality.
On April 10, 2026, the Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem presented the New York City premiere of The Magic City: Birmingham According to Sun Ra (2025), the first feature co-directed by French-born, Brussels-based filmmakers Guillaume Maupin and Pablo Guarise. The film, an inventive portrait of jazz pianist/composer/bandleader/cult-icon Sun Ra, focuses on his first three decades in segregated Birmingham, Alabama. The screening was followed by a discussion with the filmmakers and programmer Andrew Castillo.
The red-hot sun, enormous, rising on the distant horizon. A stillness before everything else. Yeelen – brightness, light – opens not with a character or a crisis but with the world itself. This is the first and most decisive of Souleymane Cissé’s refusals: to begin where narrative cinema usually insists one must. Instead, we are made to wait, to look, to be reminded that the cosmos predates the story, and that the story – any story – simply emerges from it.
After the international premiere of Le journal d’une femme de chambre (2026) at the Cannes Film Festival, Flavia Dima spoke to Radu Jude during a brief break between final rehearsals for his next film about how his films transcend cultural codes and local specificity, his views on adaptation and the usage of ultra-contemporary technologies in cinema, and his growing influence on both Romanian and international cinema. Radu Jude: “Nobody feels under attack because someone takes their violin into the street and is playing, or records themselves singing in the shower and puts it on YouTube. In cinema, by contrast, there is a constant anxiety – perhaps also a fear that cinema is dying. And so any new technology provokes fears, as AI does.”
Met de kortfilm Dans le noir du temps (2002) componeert Jean-Luc Godard een eschatologisch filmessay, “un film sur la fin de tout”. Verspreid over elf segmenten schikt en herschikt hij filmbeelden volgens nieuwe gedachtebewegingen die samen het einde evoceren van “alles” wat de mensheid heeft voortgebracht. Godard recycleert daarbij beelden uit zijn eigen oeuvre (Made in USA, Le petit soldat, Vivre sa vie), uit de filmgeschiedenis en uit anonieme archieven. Toch is de film meer dan een eenvoudige collage. Door beelden te vertragen, te herfilmen, te vervormen en plastisch te bewerken, laat hij ze oplichten in een poëtische compositie.
70 years ago, in 1956, Lionel Rogosin made On the Bowery, a landmark of American cinema and a key work in the revival of American independent filmmaking. The texts gathered here return to this formative period in Rogosin’s career: to his influences, his encounters on the Bowery, his collaborators and his search for a cinematic language. The collection coincides with the retrospective of Rogosin’s films at CINEMATEK, presented in collaboration with Sabzian.
For the past fifty years, John Smith has been making himself at home in the ambiguous realm of image and language. He worked within and parallel to the London Film-makers’ Co-op in his early years, adding to the collective’s structural approach to cinema an equal concern with the construction of narrativity. In all seriousness, he creates a game in every film, deconstructing the givens of words, sound and images, remaking them with humour, even when laughter seems inappropriate. Sabzian spoke to Smith during Courtisane Festival 2026.
In the weekend of 20–22 November, LUCA School of Arts presents a series of films at Sphinx Cinema in Ghent by filmmakers whose limited but influential bodies of work left a mark on film history.
From 22 October to 13 December, the ICA in London presents a major retrospective of Shōhei Imamura, one of post-war Japan’s most distinctive filmmakers. More than 25 years after the UK’s last major Imamura retrospective, the programme brings together new restorations, rarely seen works, contextual screenings and guest introductions, alongside a new monograph on his work.
The fourth edition of Palestine Cinema Days Around the World, organised by Filmlab Palestine, will take place on 2 November 2026, marking the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. The initiative brings Palestinian cinema to audiences worldwide, inviting cinemas, universities, cultural centres and community groups to organise screenings that highlight Palestinian stories, histories and lived experiences.
In the current cultural landscape, which seems to lean increasingly towards conservatism and prudishness, it is easy to forget the radical changes that representations of sexuality on the silver screen have undergone in the past few decades. From the sexual revolution of the sixties to expressions of third-wave feminism in cinema, the portrayal of women’s sexuality onscreen has often sparked debate. The questions remain as relevant as ever: how can we escape the curse of the male gaze? Is it even possible to properly portray women as sexual beings in a mainstream culture that seeks to commodify everything it touches?
In 1968, at the height of the sexual liberation movement, Barbarella was released in theatres. Directed by Roger Vadim (the supposed “inventor” of Brigitte Bardot) and starring Jane Fonda in the titular role, the movie is praised by its cult following for being one of the first science fiction flicks dominated by female characters. The flip side of the coin, however, is the incessant objectification of the heroine, who is catapulted from one hypersexual encounter to another.
Jed Johnson’s Bad (1977) (also known as Andy Warhol’s Bad), screening on Monday at OFFoff, has also been the subject of feminist analyses. Hazel runs a beauty salon from her home, but she also employs several “hitwomen”. She actively avoids hiring male assassins but decides to take a chance on J.T., a young man desperately looking for a job. However, he turns out to be much less ruthless than his female colleagues, which some critics interpret as a reversal of stereotypical gender roles.
In Paul Verhoeven’s Basic Instinct (1992), the female protagonist is a mysterious novelist under investigation for murder. Detectives try to penetrate the enigmatic and provocative front she puts up, but their efforts remain fruitless. While Verhoeven can be credited for his three-dimensional female characters whose ambiguity and nuance were relatively unusual in mainstream Hollywood, a scandal surrounding the film raises questions about the ethics of its production: the much-talked-about interrogation scene features a glimpse under Sharon Stone’s skirt, which the actress has stated she did not knowingly consent to filming.
