Daniel Clarkson Fisher

I’ve got a new article, my first for PopMatters, at their website. The title is “In Defense of Errol Morris’s Standard Operating Procedure“. In it, I use the occasion of the film’s tenth anniversary to write about the great director’s oft-misunderstood masterpiece, which centers around the photos that emerged from Abu Ghraib prison.

You can read the whole thing here.

[UPDATE, 5/22/2018: I’m completely amazed to report that Errol Morris himself recently retweeted this piece. See below.]

😮

A post shared by Daniel Clarkson Fisher (@danielclarksonfisher) on May 17, 2018 at 6:57am PDT

I’ve got a new article, my first for the venerable New Politics magazine, at their website. The title is “The ‘Inescapable Need and Possibility’ of Third Cinema”. In it, I talk about the radical, global filmmaking movement known as “Third Cinema”; its adherents in the United States; and what might be learned from their work at this particular moment in time. If you’re actively thinking about film as a form of cultural resistance, you might just be interested in this.

You can read the whole thing here.

As a contributor to Nonfics, I participated in their year-end poll. The results are in, and you can check them out right here.

Individual ballots aren’t included, and I won’t share mine. However, I will say that documentary fans should make it a point to see Karl Marx City, The Work, and Starless Dreams. The 2017 docs that you’ve heard about are very fine indeed, but it was this year’s comparatively less ballyhooed titles that really stayed with me.

I’m honored and delighted to have been a contributor to Sight & Sound’s “Best Video Essays of 2017” poll. Big thanks to Kevin B. Lee, David Verdeure, and Sight & Sound!

You can see my ballot and everyone else’s right here.

I’ve got an interview with Laura Dunn, director of the new documentary Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, over at Nonfics. Laura’s first theatrically released feature, 2007’s The Unforeseen, not only boasted Robert Redford and Terrence Malick as executive producers but also garnered rhapsodic reviews, an Independent Spirit Award and television distribution on both PBS and the Sundance Channel. Special screenings of Look & See are currently taking place around the country, and it’s now available on Netflix U.S. as well.

Take a look at out our conversation here.

I’ve got a new article, my first for Culture Matters, up now at their website. It’s my political reading of Christopher Nolan’s critically-acclaimed new film Dunkirk. In the piece, entitled “Dunkirk: Keep Calm and Carry On?”, I discuss the moral obligations of the artist, the World War II combat genre, and the potential for a “truly radical flowering” of progressive film culture.

You can read the whole thing here.

I’ve got a new article, my first for the genre magazine Diabolique, up now at their website. Entitled “‘Just Wait’: On the 35th Anniversary of John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982)”, it argues that the classic 1980s horror film is “the best exemplar of a hugely influential director’s gifts.”

You can read the whole thing here.