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Laura Staab

@laurastaab.bsky.social
448 followers 324 following 71 posts

writer and editor // writing @ Another Gaze, FIDback, MUBI/Notebook, RE:VOIR, Sight & Sound, etc. // laurastaab.xyz

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Reposted by Laura Staab
Fireflies Press @firefliespress.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Announcing the new book of the Decadent Editions: Morvern Callar by Anwen Crawford! Pre-order your copy: firefliespress.com/Morvern-Callar
firefliespress.com
Morvern Callar — Fireflies Press
Morvern Callar Anwen Crawford 22 September 2026 180 Pages ISBN 9780645454741 €14  Pre-order Pre-orders will be shipped by late August 2026. In...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
'[She] takes Morvern as she is: telling us that the lights are on, yeah someone is home, but no, she won't fucking let us in.' i wrote about Anwen Crawford's clever, careful @firefliespress.bsky.social book on Morvern Callar in this month's issue of Sight & Sound www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-so...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
‘The term /experimental/ now has the same nasty sound it must have / had in the era before bacon’
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
"In lieu of bright communist poster-children, he thought of changeable characters—comrades among them—who were vulnerable to love, delusion, and disappointment." i wrote about Konrad Wolf and his waywardly ambivalent East German cinema for MUBI mubi.com/en/program-n...
mubi.com
Incongruous Skies: The Films of Konrad Wolf
Tearing down ironclad expectations of what the cinema of the German Democratic Republic could be, Konrad Wolf made films about dissidents and dreamers. In an essay on the East German writer-director, ...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I prefer leaves / yellowed by the rain to false / victories / so I listen to the wind. It's good to live / where there's dying, where the legends / go out...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
standing side-by-side with the one and only @sophiasb.bsky.social to introduce ICA audiences to Niki de Saint Phalle's fantastical, explosive cinema (via UK premieres of new 4K restorations) next wk 💕 tkts here >> ica.art/films/in-foc...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
"You can’t die by mimicry alone, but that won’t stop a girl from trying." ... thrilled to have commissioned one of my favourite critics, Audrey Wollen, to muse on Mascha Schilinski's Sound of Falling >> mubi.com/en/program-n...
mubi.com
Down, and Down: Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling
Dwelling with Sound of Falling, and its nonlinear chorus of girls’ desires and shared sufferings, Audrey Wollen sees its director reanimating an obsolete practice of death portraiture to create her ow...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
i'll be introducing Werner Schroeter's blazing adaptation of Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina tonight @ ICA London 🔥 still some tkts here >> ! ica.art/schroeter-ma...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
put the phone in a bowl of rice
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
ineffable gentleness (how often is it cinnamon? amber?)
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Reposted by Laura Staab
London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 14/03/2026
‘We can’t avoid the fact that, if Chantal Akerman’s is a bedroom cinema, it might well be because she spent months at a time in bed. And if it’s also a manic, joyful cinema, this might be indebted to her highs.’ Daniella Shreir (@shreir.bsky.social) on the director. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Daniella Shreir · My Mother’s Prison: Chantal Akerman’s Predicament
Although she often responded to questions with anecdotes and talked about the role of chance and the necessity of...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
for @another-gaze.bsky.social 💜 i wrote about Niki de Saint Phalle's life-long mission to help children protect themselves from the trauma and tedium of the adult world, and her wonderful film in which the quixotic fantasies of little girls become more than dream www.anothergaze.com/niki-de-sain...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
opencitylondon.com/events/zechm... good film
opencitylondon.com
Zechmeister - Open City Documentary Festival
Angela Summereder | 1981 | Austria | 79’ | digital | German spoken, English subtitles  Returning to a provincial crime scene, Zechmeister reconstructs the case of its (near absent) central character M...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
"Do you at least believe in my plastic bag?"
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
we're back! applications are now open for the Open City x Another Gaze Critics Workshop ✍️ more info here >> opencitylondon.com/news/open-ci... @opencitydocs.bsky.social
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
yesss www.silverpress.org/products/angst
silverpress.org
Angst by Hélène Cixous
In this novel by the iconic French feminist theorist, a woman replays her abandonment by her mother, who is sometimes addressed as a male mother-god.
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
had fun at the m o v i e s in 2025 intervalslondon.com/2026/01/01/m... thanks @ intervals for asking me to participate in this EOY list 📽️ 🖤
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
for a new RE:VOIR release, i wrote about how Jennifer Reeves dragged classic cinema and avant-garde heroism through the screwed-up realities of the '90s across three works. they’re nervy, they’re grungy; i love them re-voir.com/shop-films/p...
Girls Daydream About Hollywood (1992)The Girl's Nervy (1995)Fear of Blushing (2001)
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
"I am attracted to things; I think, yes, my films are probably very fetishistic." spoke with Lucile Hadžihalilović for Notebook 🤍 👑 mubi.com/en/notebook/...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
“This is what film festivals could be like, Petzold ventured: talking about cinema, talking about wood.” on the 2025 Viennale, and how the festival and its films orientated themselves in relation to the world, for Notebook mubi.com/en/notebook/posts/woodcutters-from-the-viennale
mubi.com
Woodcutters: From the Viennale
Masao Adachi and James Benning model an introspective form of political filmmaking, cutting through the dull platitudes of festivalspeak.
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
u can try to outrun yrself ... and u will still find a Haribo Tangfastic stuck to yr shoe (crocodile, green)
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
u can try to outrun yrself ... and u will still find yrself reading Deleuze's Cinema 2 in Heathrow Terminal 2 💎 🤷
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
⬇️ a must-read! lareviewofbooks.org/article/maus...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
the ice tower 🩵🩵🩵
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
In Focus: Pia Frankenberg starts /tomorrow/ at the ICA ❕ ⛸️ The Assault on 35mm and Ain't Nothin' Without You 🩶 followed by an in-person Q&A with Pia www.ica.art/frankenberg-...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 17/09/2025
you can now read @caitlinquinlan.bsky.social's lovely essay on Never Sleep Again, the importance of place to Pia Frankenberg, and a cinema of women walking ❤️ >> ica.art/media/11895.pdf
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
💓 Tess Little on Lynn Hershman Leeson's artworks: "They visit the California Department of Motor Vehicles and submit application forms for driving licences. They meet suitors for dates in San Francisco’s Union Square, wearing blonde wigs and Revlon blush." www.anothergaze.com/woman-viewer...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
come to the cinema for Schanelec's minimalist take on melodrama – and my little introduction about that, cinematic Arianes, and an image of happiness – this Saturday >> ica.art/my-sisters-g...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
❤️ ⬆️ ⬇️ @sophiasb.bsky.social on Amy Halpern's Falling Lessons, which 'evokes a range of way of seeing and being in the world. We see a baby bottom up and a woman bottom down. In a moment, everything can turn on its head.' 🌀 www.ica.art/media/11715....
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 02/09/2025
you can catch me waxing lyrical about Angela Schanelec 🤍 🤍 🤍 before My Sister's Good Fortune and Dreamed Path at the ICA in London on Saturday 13 and Tuesday 30 September ica.art/my-sisters-g... ica.art/schanelec-th...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
serendipitous double bill at the ICA on 23 September: walk Marseille with Maren Eggert and Angela Schanelec, then come back to Cinema 1 in the evening to wander post-reunification Berlin with Pia Frankenberg, Lisa Kreuzer, and co🚶‍♀️💜 ica.art/marseille-on... ica.art/frankenberg-...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
thrilled to confirm Pia Frankenberg will now be joining, in person, for a post-screening Q&A on Friday 19 September! www.ica.art/frankenberg-...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 12/08/2025
for the ICA, i've programmed a comprehensive retrospective of Pia Frankenberg's charming, irreverent cinema. it plays Friday 19–Tuesday 23 September across three screenings, contextualised by new writing and an intro on opening night. more info and on sale here! >> www.ica.art/films/in-foc...
Pia Frankenberg in Ain't Nothin' Without You (1985)Pia Frankenberg in Burning Beds (1988)
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 06/08/2025
sacromonte cave museum 🍶🤍
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Reposted by Laura Staab
London Review of Books @lrb.co.uk · 08/07/2025
‘Whenever Thierry Frémaux is asked about the political position of the festival, he replies with a variation on: “Le cinéma, rien que le cinéma.”’ Daniella Shreir at Cannes: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Daniella Shreir · Diary: What happens at Cannes
I arrived​ in Cannes with a terrible line from Sélection officielle ringing in my head: ‘To paraphrase Woody Allen...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
filmmaker interviews from the @opencitydocs.bsky.social's critics workshop are now online! wonderful work ft. words from Maeve Brennan, Diana Allan, John Smith, Alexander Horwath, Saeed Taji Farouky, Armand Yervant Tufenkian, Jessica Sarah Rinland, Morgan Quaintance >> opencitylondon.com/notes/
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
www.lespressesdureel.com/EN/ouvrage.p... delighted to be back in FIDback ❤️ i wrote on Lilith Kraxner and Milena Czernovsky's colour/character studies, where being alone is red, round, and bouncy for Beatrix, and bluish for others 🔴 🔵
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 19/07/2025
‘But I wanted to be the first / to tell you that the words / have turned and have transformed themselves: / they are long intelligent fish-faced snakes’
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
‘Does a thick meaty porridge / of language actually nourish?’
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Angela Winkler and Hanna Schygulla in Margarethe von Trotta's SHEER MADNESS 🖤
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
applications for the Another Gaze x @opencitydocs.bsky.social Critics Workshop are open only until 9PM (UK time) on Monday: opencitylondon.com/news/open-ci... don't miss that deadline! 🕘 Dani and i want to read yr apps!
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
best film of last year – don't miss it
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Reposted by Laura Staab
m.t. @mattlloydturner.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
applications are open for the locarno critics academy. doing this and meeting everyone involved in 2017 gave me the confidence to write and work in and around film. and now @celizotte.bsky.social is on board too, so it’s even better now. www.locarnofestival.ch/about/factor...
locarnofestival.ch
Locarno Film Festival · Critics Academy
The Locarno Critics Academy is an extensive workshop in film criticism that gives young writers a crucial entry point into the world of film festivals. During...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
wrote about Esther Kinsky's Seeing Further in this month's issue of Sight & Sound – an elegy for modernity's cinema-going publics in which the trusty pickle does a lot of poetic work 🥒 www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-so...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
applications are now open for the Open City x Another Gaze Critics Workshop! Dani and i will spend five days talking film and criticism with ten participants and invited speakers, in the context of one of our most exciting festivals... more info here >> opencitylondon.com/news/open-ci...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
come write with us! jobs.ashbyhq.com/MUBI/3fdfcbe...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 18/01/2025
Joan Snyder’s ‘Landscape’ (1970) – it ‘will and will not decide what world it shows’ 🩷
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 20/12/2024
thanks to @sophiasb.bsky.social 💛 x Open City Documentary Festival and the Barbican for programming two radiant films among the gloom that was this year ... here is my 2024 fantasy double bill mubi.com/en/notebook/...
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
2024 favourites ~
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Laura Staab @laurastaab.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
two Narcisa Hirsch films are available to watch @ Media City Film Festival this month! mediacityfilmfestival.com/program/narc... i wrote about the worlds of her films – 'places where people come and go' – in 2023 for the Viennale >> www.viennale.at/en/blog/hang...
viennale.at
Hanging Out with Narcisa Hirsch in the 1970s | Viennale
A text by Laura Staab: Maya Deren’s Morton Street apartment in Greenwich Village and Marie Menken’s Montague Street apartment in Brooklyn Heights were cradles of experimental film in 1950s and 1960s N...
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