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“As a Pilot Director, You Must Load the Toolbox for All the Directors that Come After You”: Director Michael Robin on All Rise
Simone Messick in the pilot of All Rise
The courtroom drama has been a staple of network television since Perry Mason and never really gone away, which makes the CBS series All Rise’s achievement of breathing new life into the genre truly impressive and exciting. An ensemble drama anchored by Simone Missick as a young judge out to challenge conventional wisdom, All Rise deftly explores complex ethical questions relating to race, class, gender and power via a sprawling examination of the lawyers, judges, clerks, cops, and defendants whose lives intersect in an LA courthouse. Following Jean Renoir’s dictum that everyone has their reasons, series creator Greg Spottiswood and his writers honor an array of perspectives with depth, empathy, and an approach to the narrative that views the legal… Read more
THIS LONG CENTURY Screening 30 Experimental Shorts Online, April 9-30, Including Work From Carlos Reygadas, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and David Lowery
Jennifer West's One Mile Film
Today through April 30, the website THIS LONG CENTURY, which describes itself as "an ever-evolving collection of personal insights from artists, authors, filmmakers, musicians and cultural icons the world over," is hosting two programs of experimental short work, with 30 shorts in total. The OUTSIDE program includes Lucile Hadžihalilović's 2017 De Natura, Carlos Reygadas's 2011 Este es mi Reino, and Deborah Stratman's 1997 medium-length From Hetty to Nancy. The equally strong INSIDE program includes Jodie Mack's 2012 Blanket Statement #1: Home is Where the Heart is, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's 2018 Blue, Peter Tscherkassky's legendary 1999 Outer Space and David Lowery's 2011 Pioneer. Streaming is free, though THIS LONG CENTURY asks that viewers donate to one of five nonprofit or relief funds in return (RAICES, Ali Forney Center, Navajo… Read more
“We’re Definitely Not ‘Social Distancing’ Distance”: Zia Anger on Performing My First Film Online
My First Film
After nearly two years of performing My First Film live in theaters, Zia Anger has reconfigured her piece for livestreaming. Currently being streamed to small groups in preview mode, each performance is announced on Anger's Twitter the morning of; capacity is small and quickly filled on a first come, first served email RSVP basis. The middle core of the show—Anger's story about her never-premiered first feature, told via a mix of video footage and select online browsing, narrated via TextEdit narration typed out in real time—has remained essentially the same. The beginning and ending have been necessarily rethought: where a key part of the live presentation was allowing audiences to mingle, settle in their seats and begin exchanging Anger's old Instagram… Read more
Watch: Agnès Varda’s Rare 2008 Los Angeles Short The Little Story of Gwen from French Brittany
The American Cinematheque has shared a rare 2008 Agnès Varda. A brisk five minutes with lots of nice Los Angeles footage, The Little Story of Gwen from French Brittany gives a biographical sketch of Gwen Deglise, now the American Cinematheque's head programer. Varda tells her story, with stops along the way to remember Jacques Demy, Chris Marker and Patricia Mazuy's early LA days.
Field of Vision and Topic Announce COVID-19 Relief Fund for Documentary Freelancers
Field of Vision and Topic Studios announced today a relief fund for documentary freelancers impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and corresponding economic shutdown. The $250,000 fund is financed from the two organizations's current operating budgets, and the funds, intended to alleviate economic hardship due to loss of income or opportunity, will be dispensed in two tranches and in amounts up to $2,000 per freelancer. Rent, healthcare, utilities, groceries and other life expenses can be covered by the funds. In a press release, co-founder and executive producer of Field of Vision, Charlotte Cook, said, "This is an incredibly hard time for the documentary field and we're hoping the fund is able to offer some relief. We started with our virtual mentorship and… Read more
The Future of Film is Female Launches Streaming Channel
How Does It Start by Amber Sealey
Nonprofit organization The Future of Film is Female has launched a streaming channel that will screen short and feature films by its members for free from now until April 14. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the site will release a new short film; on select Fridays, the site will stream a feature-length title. Their first week of films are (online) premieres of films by Laci Dent and Eleanor Wilson as well as what's termed a limited run of Veronica Kedar’s Family. Included in the upcoming The Future of Film is Female calendar are films from past “25 New Faces of Independent Film” such as Hannah Peterson’s East of River, Crystal Kayiza’s Edgecombe, and Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan’s Pahokee. Click here to see… Read more
When the Streaming’s Over: The Fight to Save Vulcan Video
Vulcan Video
“A producer buddy once said to me, ’You go to New York and Los Angeles to make movies, but you go to Austin to actually watch movies.’ That’s always rung true to me.” So avers Jacob Knight, general manager of Vulcan Video in Austin, a brick-and-mortar video rental shop that’s helped fuel cinephilia in Texas’s capital for more than 30 years. With an estimated 83,000 titles on DVD and Blu-ray and an additional 7,000 on VHS, Vulcan would’ve ranked as a world-class video store in any city during any era. But as streaming services continue to proliferate and rental shops dwindle, Austin’s ability to sustain not just one but two great video shops (Vulcan and I Luv Video, the latter similarly… Read more
Quarantine Reading: W. K.-L. Dickson’s The Biograph in Battle
As a publication about film, we find ourselves in the peculiar position of publishing during a moment when theatrical access to movies, and their ongoing future, is as much in question as everything else. During this suspension of normal filmwatching habits, we've reached out to contributors, filmmakers and friends, inviting them to find an alternate path to the movies by participating in a writing exercise engaging with any book about or lightly intersecting with film, in whatever way makes sense to them. Today: hello, it's me. — Vadim Rizov Last January, I went to MoMA to see British silent film scholar Bryony Dixon present a program of newly restored 68mm shorts from the late Victorian era. These astonishingly detailed actualities included… Read more
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