Dan Conley’s Writing Projects

I had an interesting experience recently while creating a PowerPoint for a client. This client had delivered a speech to audiences in the past in a different language and he had me translate it into English, then sent along the deck he had used so I could update that as

In my journey through Eastern European cinema, my favorite discovery has been a 2017 Hungary romance called “On Body and Soul.” Much has been made about this being, possibly, an autistic love story, but I think placing such labels distracts from the simple beauty of the film. There’s a

In the last segment, I mentioned how this episode could use some American style melodrama. But I’ve had second thoughts about that conclusion. There’s actually quite a bit of drama in this episode, and in these scenes featuring Majka and Wojtek. The challenge is reading Eastern European faces.

Dekalog 7 has a very interesting premise. It’s an unusual twist on child abduction stories. It is extremely well cast — right down to the little girl looking very much like young man cast as her father. And yet — the episode doesn’t live up to its potential. Kieslowski is

Episode 7 of The Dekalog concerns another emotionally powerful storyline — the abduction of a child. It raises two interesting early impressions that are somewhat in conflict. First, episode 7 has elements of Ingmar Bergman’s films in it. There’s an in-your-face emotional aspect to the episode that is unlike

I’m working on a theory that I introduced in my Stendhal wrap-up essays that I believe applies across my work. It goes something like this: Many of the most important decisions we make in life are ultimately inexplicable. They are driven by feelings, held deeply in our nervous system,