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“Official history is a myth, and myths are made with fiction.”

A Conversation with Lucrecia Martel

Conversation
04.02.2026
EN

In October 2025 at the 63rd edition of the Viennale, Sabzian sat down for a talk with Lucrecia Martel, discussing how Nuestra Tierra echoes political concerns found throughout her body of work, the pitfalls of thinking of cinema in terms of fictions versus documentary, the trappings of both style and of the film industry, and how to integrate a very diverse array of imagery into a cohesive whole. Martel: “[T]he film, beyond the historical questions, is also a reflection on my own work. I’m someone who ended up making cinema. I never even said that I wanted to be a director or anything like that. But, well, it became my work. And it’s a reflection on what this work is, how powerful it can be.”

Art as Housework

Article
21.01.2026
EN

“I believe” Akerman famously said in 1976, “that form highlights class relations within the image.” In other words, the truly political claim of her film was precisely to defend its autonomy as a work of art. An autonomy that Jeanne tries to defend in her own life. Not as a sphere she enjoys or that we should celebrate but rather as a space defined by its own rules, self-governed. In other words, her resistance to what could make her lose control over her actions also offers Akerman a way to make art out of it. For Jeanne, housework is a space that is still protected from the estrangement of work under capitalism.

Frans van de Staak

People Passing Through Me in an Endless Procession

28.01.2026
A COLLECTION OF 7 texts, 4 film pages, 1 event, 1 news item,
NL FR EN

An artist and engraver, Frans van de Staak (1943–2001) first encountered the power of cinema in a sequence from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert. He went on to enrol in film school and founded CINEECRI, a journal he distributed himself. Using grant money earned through graphic design, he made a series of short films in the 1970s that laid the groundwork for his cinema: early attempts to transpose texts by writers such as Korneliszoon Poot and Spinoza to the screen. Rather than striving for faithful reproduction, he filmed amateur actors in their effort to give voice to the text, judging takes more by ear than by eye.

Een wrede dans

Sirât van Oliver Laxe

Article
10.12.2025
NL EN

Als Laxe’s ware onderwerp onthechting en onverschilligheid is, en zijn film een vorm van bestraffing, dan resulteert dat in een eigenaardige wreedheid. In verschillende interviews zei Laxe dat Sirât voortkwam uit een “wonde”, die hij terugvoert op de Gestaltpsychologie. “Kunst is grenzen verleggen, spiritualiteit is grenzen verleggen, en dáár leer je jezelf kennen,” zegt hij. In het woord “wonde” schuilt ook de dualiteit van de film: wonden kunnen worden geheeld en toegebracht. Vreemd genoeg doet Sirât beide.

With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari, 2025) | © Kamal Aljafari Productions
Prisma #60

12.01.2026
NL

Vanachter een muurtje, door een kijkgat, smeekt een meisje om aandacht: “Film me, dan heb ik een beeld.” De camera zoekt en vindt haar, hoewel ze amper zichtbaar is. Haar drang naar beeldwording spreekt luider dan het ontoereikende antwoord dat ze krijgt. Het is niet het eerste, noch het laatste kind dat het beeldkader opeist in With Hasan in Gaza (2025). Kamal Aljafari en cameraman Hasan beantwoorden hun verzoeken door via pans en tilts kinderen in het frame te vangen. Vervolgens kijken ze glimlachend de lens in, en vormen met hun handen een teken van vrede.

Pasolini, Poet of the Ashes
07.01.2026
A COLLECTION OF 9 texts, 21 film pages, 1 event, 2 news items,
NL FR EN

The year 2025 marked the mournful fiftieth anniversary of the death of Pier Paolo Pasolini. After his death, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a passionate plea for him, warning against the posthumous moralisation and simplification of his oeuvre, which he considered a threat to the radical complexity of his work and his person. “Do not pass judgement on Pasolini,” he wrote, “do not render harmless what was never meant to be harmless.” This collection of texts follows Sabzian’s recent publication WHO IS ME, a Dutch translation of Pasolini’s posthumous autobiographical text Poeta delle ceneri [Poet of the Ashes]. In that text, Pasolini writes: “No artist in any country is ever free. An artist is a living objection.” In that spirit, this collection gathers several texts on Sabzian dedicated to Pasolini’s films, his writings and his lasting legacy.

Three Travelers Watch a Sunrise

Article
19.11.2025
EN

From [Frans van de Staak], I learned not only how to make films but also how to be determined in doing so. He was open, unassuming, modest, but very strong. He was one of those rare people whose life and art matched perfectly. He spoke very little. He would laugh and say, “I started talking very late; my mother took me to the doctor for that.” Yes, his films tend to be modestly silent, but they could delve deeply into what he was telling, reaching the very essence of the subject, without any bombast.

Useful Fictions

Bugonia (2025) by Yorgos Lanthimos

Article
26.11.2025
EN

[Bugonia] sets itself in a broader genre of conspiracy movies such as Alan Pakula’s 1974 The Parallax View, Philip Kauffman’s 1978 Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and John Carpenter’s 1988 They Live. In such movies, aliens or conspirators are generally de-individualized so that they can function effectively as metaphors for “the system”. A way to see such movies is as an attempt to thematize conflict in late capitalism, meaning a contradiction that cannot express itself anymore in the terms of class war. For atomized workers, the conspiracy theory provides a “useful fiction” to understand the social totality itself.

State of Cinema 2025

In Praise of the Unexpected

Manifesto
12.11.2025
NL FR EN

The magic of cinema is something which leaps out, which isn’t planned: it’s what happens beyond all the work, the materials tools, the script, etc. In my life as an actress, it’s the encounters and surprises which attract, or even enchant, me.

ISSUE
19.11.2025
André Bazin, televisiecriticus André Bazin, critique de télévision EN
André Bazin, Television Critic
COMPILED BY Tillo Huygelen

Few figures in film history have left a greater mark than André Bazin (1918–1958), considered by many to be the film critic of the twentieth century. Between 1942 and his early death in 1958, Bazin wrote an impressive body of work comprising nearly three thousand texts – amounting to an average of roughly one piece every two days. Less well known are the hundreds of articles he wrote as a television critic. He began doing so primarily for health reasons: in the early 1950s, his fragile condition forced him to give up his daily activities, leave Paris and seek rest in the small town of Bry-sur-Marne. But there was also a deeper reason: for Bazin, television formed an integral part of the emerging visual culture, an evolution he wanted to follow closely and comment on.

Cinema and Television

An Interview with Jean Renoir and Roberto Rossellini

Conversation
19.11.2025
NL FR EN

Television is still rather frowned on – particularly by the intellectuals. How did you come to it?

Renoir: Through being immensely bored by a great number of contemporary films, and being less bored by certain television programs. I ought to say that the television shows I’ve found most exciting have been certain interviews on American TV. I feel that the interview gives the television close-up a meaning that is rarely achieved in the cinema. [...]

Rossellini: Let me make an observation on that note. In modern society, men have an enormous need to know each other. Modern society and modern art have been destructive of man: man no longer exists – but television is an aid to his rediscovery. Television, an art without traditions, dares to go out to look for man.

Support Sabzian!
NEWS
15.10.2025
NL FR EN

Vorig jaar vierde Sabzian zijn 10-jarig bestaan. Sinds 2014 publiceren we essays, interviews, vertalingen, gecureerde “Collections” en “Issues”, een agenda en meer – allemaal gratis toegankelijk en met liefde voor film gemaakt. Om dit werk verder te zetten, hebben we jullie steun nodig! Word Supporter of Patreon, of doe een eenmalige donatie.

86 printemps, Jean-Luc Godard
NEWS
06.01.2026
EN

In January 2017, Jean-Baptiste Thoret and Nicole Brenez travelled to Rolle to meet Jean-Luc Godard, then 86 years old, at his home. This long, open conversation later became the basis for a film that, for years, could not be released due to rights issues. On 3 January, Thoret released the film for free on YouTube, for an unspecified period of time.

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