Unstrung Nerves is an outlet for expressing not just a love of film, but a love of thinking critically about the films we love (and hate, for that matter) and their impact on society. Dziga Vertov, the Soviet filmmaker and theorist, believed that “Cinema’s unstrung nerves need a rigorous system of precise movement.” This site believes the opposite: that truly radical film lies in the unruly, the uncontrollable, the painfully human. This site is for those people who feel left out by mainstream cinema’s relentless march of fascistic film automata, who know that film can be more than just a corporate magic trick. The unstrung nerves of cinema will not be put in place.

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Apr
22

Cycling Godzilla

By | FilmGamesHorrorMagic

April 16th saw the release of Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, the newest Magic expansion, through WotC’s online platforms only (the tabletop release has been delayed due to the pandemic). Not only does the set bring back one of Magic‘s best mechanics, cycling, the set features an alternate-art series in which certain card names and artworks are […]

The Look, Confounded: A Fantastic Woman is a Film About Films About Transphobia

By | FilmTrans

Apr 07, 2020

[Reposted from my Tumblr page.] The most prominent thought I had as I watched Sebastián Lelio’s Oscar-nominated A Fantastic Woman (Una Mujer Fantástica, 2017) was how literate the film is in transgender cinema compared to other transgender films I watch. As Marina (Daniela Vega) is thrust through a gauntlet of transphobia following the death of her boyfriend, […]


The Return of the Return

Jan 16, 2021

I have been absent from this site for a couple of months. I went from gung-ho about starting up a membership program to being scarcely able to string a few words together. I guess you could call it a 2020 fatigue, a depression brought on by, among other stresses of 2020, my cousin’s suicide. When […]