Clementine DuCinema

Clementine DuCinema received her MFA and PhD in filmology from the University of Petrochemical Fumes and Fine Arts in Baytown, Texas. She specialized in Soviet-era cinema, and her dissertation was titled “Boy Meets Tractor: Boy meets tractor. Boy falls in love with tractor. Tractor represents collective hope.”

Today, she brings her razor-sharp wit and velvet-gloved opinions to WLBOTT’s cinematic corner. Whether she’s analyzing the narrative arc of a chicken’s escape in Cluckwork Orange or applauding the quiet beauty of a five-hour Estonian documentary about moss, Clementine’s reviews are equal parts poetic, precise, and preposterous.

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Clementine DuCinema – WLBOTT Film Critic

Clementine DuCinema got her start in film criticism by reviewing Soviet cinema, a genre she fondly refers to as “Heroic Agricultural Realism.” Her earliest essays focused on classics such as The Trundling Heart and Steel and Sentiment, in which, as she often notes, “Boy meets tractor. Boy falls in love with tractor. Tractor represents collective hope.”

Educated at the semi-mythical École du Film Égaré (The School of Lost Film) in southern France, Clementine developed a soft spot for films that blend sweeping ideology with the oddly tender mechanics of plowing. She once wept openly during a black-and-white montage of a combine harvester in Wheat Shall Overcome.

Today, she brings her razor-sharp wit and velvet-gloved opinions to WLBOTT’s cinematic corner.

She lives in a modest stone cottage draped in ivy, keeps three rescue chickens (Béla, Ingmar, and Henson), and believes popcorn should be both salted and philosophically considered.

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🧾 Selected Works by Clementine DuCinema

Doctoral Dissertation:

• Boy Meets Tractor: Romantic Ideology and Agricultural Machinery in Soviet Cinema
  (Ecole du Film Égaré, 1997 — later adapted into a short interpretive dance piece performed entirely on a threshing floor)

Notable Reviews in the WLBOTT Archives:

1. Cluckwork Orange
   “A harrowing portrait of poultry rebellion—Kubrick would have approved of the beak work.”
2. Wheat Dreams Are Made of This
   “A surreal Lithuanian musical about a haunted silo and forbidden grain. Surprisingly moving.”
3. The Combine Whisperer
   “John Deere meets Jean-Paul Sartre in this existential agricultural thriller.”
4. My Tractor, My Love, My Lie
   “Cinematic gear-grinding at its finest—Stalinist longing wrapped in grease-stained poetry.”
5. Henrietta’s Lament
   “A barnyard chamber drama that lays bare the yolk of oppression.”
6. Spool Over Beethoven
   “A film about twine and passion—part biopic, part allegory, all unraveling.”
7. The Moss Directive
   “Five hours of Estonian moss filmed in real time. Clementine watched it twice.”
8. Furrowed Lines: Cinema of the Plow
   “An avant-garde documentary narrated by a sentient furrow. Beautifully unsettling.”
9. Silent Roost
   “A poultry-centric remake of The Seventh Seal. The chicken wins.”
10. Twine & Prejudice
    “A Regency-era romance filmed entirely on a farm supply lot. Surprisingly faithful to Austen.”