Phindie: “Varina presents such a raw, rich interior life that you almost believe her when she cheekily declares that she “couldn’t care less about you real people” except she takes such good care to make things real for her audience.”
agnès films: “Varina does a beautiful job of portraying a woman on an artistic quest without a definite end goal.”
Unseen Films: “There is a physical tactile quality to the experience of seeing Varina and it feels wonderful.”
FF2 Media: “The risks Varina took while creating this film could have easily turned it into an incomprehensible mess, but the compassion she put into it pulls it together into a powerful and personal piece. Simple editing and minimal narrative structure allow the viewer to find pieces of their own experience within it, and create a personal meaning through their own connections to the film.”
Film Threat: “Carrying out the role of director, writer and leading actor, Irina Varina’s Us, Forever Ago is a film created by a probing artist, and rooted in fluctuating perception… Varina wants the viewer to reflect on their own life with as much meditation.”
DC Metro: “Speculum Diaries is in many ways like a drunken conversation between intimate friends, Irina and her audience; unedited and unashamed. It is the ruminations of a person caught between two worlds—a dream world filled with pleasure and warmth, and a real world that is all too often, absent of both.”
Moviejawn: “2015 Varina wants to know how to live, and asks these artists’ advice, hoping for an explicit response she can emulate. 2030 Varina seems to understand that life itself is the process of asking this question, and that we ask it every day, with every action we take.”
Interviews:
Talking about Us, Forever Ago – We Are Moving Stories
Interview with Irina Varina, Director of Us, Forever Ago – agnès films
A Discussion with Filmmaker Irina Varina – Product Versus Process (archive)
A Web Series Irina Varina Made Instead of Thinking About Men – phindie
Video Interview at 2018 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival – AoBFF
Womanhood, Sexuality, Longing – phindie
By me:
Feeling lonely? Come sit with me, the minister of loneliness for The Inquirer
From the Diaries of a Street Performer for Hobart
Philly Arts, Half-Naked for Thinking Dance
How do you frame it? for Talkhouse, reflecting on a series of short films I made throughout 2020
Conversation as a Project: Masculinity Interviews for Headlong Performance Institute
Two short stories inspired by the same date: Hey, I like you, maybe it wasn’t obvious and 3 hours
#Crucial21DbW: Seder-Masochism directed by Nina Paley for communal blogging initiative about crucial 21st century cinema directed by women
Validating Myself for #DirectedbyWomen