by Mattie Lucas
Cinema from a Decidedly Queer Perspective
I’m Still Here | 2024
One thing I love about Walter Salles as a filmmaker is his ability to find an eternity in a single moment. That may sound like a backhanded compliment for a filmmaker, but think about those moments in life when you suddenly become keenly aware of your surroundings, of the people around you and your connection to them, those snippets you choose to savor when you know something is coming to an end, when your life seems to stretch out into infinity and everything for a few fleeting seconds appears to be right with the world.
For most of its life, the Cannon Group was a minor studio known for brawny B-movies like Death Wish, Cobra, Missing in Action, and Masters of the Universe. But during the 1980s, under the direction of co-owners Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who bought the company in 1979, Cannon also used some of its profits to take chances on risky auteur-driven projects in an attempt to gain some prestige. One such project was Jean-Luc Godard's King Lear, a deal Golan and Globus infamously made with Godard on a napkin at the Cannes Film Festival, where the pair were tenaciously courting filmmakers.