Who in cinema has left us these last few years (in this PB, Post-Bresson, age)? Andre De Toth, Jean Rouch, Walerian Borowczyk, Stan Brakhage, Maurice Pialat, to name a few that hit hard for me. Giants who aren't walking the earth any longer. But I suppose the cinema would not be the cinema without the threat of death and loss looming all around it--inside and outside of it. That's something John Ford might have understood better than anyone, and the Straubs, great admirers of Ford, surely had a enviable grasp of this basic truth. I find something oddly compelling in the fact that, at this moment, this by-all-reports fundamentally symbiotic filmmaking couple is now straddling the divide between the living (Straub) and the dead (Huillet). Jean-Marie Straub will never read this, but, regardless, I offer these images of Fordian communion ...




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