The World is Full of Secrets
When The World is Full of Secrets showed earlier this year at a festival for debut films in remote Khanty-Mansiysk, Siberia, its director, Graham Swon (a 25 New Face of Film in 2016), briefly became almost as much of interest to the public audience and critics there as did his hypnotic cinematic spectacular. That I was there as the only international journalist in attendance to witness Swon fielding eager questions from this newfound audience of intrigued Siberian spectators strikes me now as a fluke of wondrous good fortune. The movie’s long, discursive monologues, in which 15- and 16-year-old girls narrate bloodthirsty stories to each other at night, preserve the enveloping feeling of being told a spooky story in real time.… Read more
By Christopher Small
Keep It for Yourself
Founded in 2015 by Marie-Louise Khondji, the streaming site Le Cinéma Club relaunches today with an exciting offering: Claire Denis’s long-lost 1991 40-minute short Keep It for Yourself. The only film she’s ever made in the states, it stars Vincent Gallo and Sara Driver, has a John Lurie score and was shot in New York City. After years of unavailability, a copy was found on a Japanese VHS being sold on Australian eBay. (For more on that story, click here.) From the official press release: The opening weeks of programming are completed with other streaming premieres, rarities and films by new talents including: a restoration of Chris Marker’s The Koumiko Mystery (1965, 54 min), a beguiling portrait of a young woman… Read more
By Filmmaker Staff
Forky (Tony Hale) and Sheriff Woody (Tom Hanks) in Toy Story 4
A few weeks ago, Apple dropped a staggering ill-advised promoted tweet into my timeline: “With the longest battery life in an iPhone ever, you’ll lose power before your iPhone XR will.” I enjoy thinking about death even less than the average person, so my first reaction was that I’m not particularly cheered by a poorly worded suggestion that I’ll probably exit before my technology. My next thought was that Apple had inadvertently provided a solid metaphor for the eternal franchise era: assuming all goes as planned, it is not inconceivable that there will be Star Wars movies coming out after my death, certainly not an expectation I grew up with. In live action, returning to a property that’s grown more respectable… Read more
By Vadim Rizov
Leave the Bus Through the Broken Window
A stranger in a foreign land, with a camera and a penchant for cheap beer: Andrew Hevia’s hyperdigital documentary Leave the Bus Through the Broken Window follows the Miami-bred filmmaker as he visits Hong Kong for the Chinese edition of Art Basel. At first determined to make a traditional documentary accessible for public television audiences, Hevia’s plans are quickly thwarted once he discovers the elusive intricacies of the region. He’s a Cuban-American who can’t understand the language of his new surroundings. Rather than view that as a hindrance, he takes to meeting artists and art collectors, attending art shows, wooing potential lovers, decompressing on ferry rides and learning about Hong Kong’s history. Like the region he finds himself in, Hevia’s… Read more
By Erik Luers
So Pretty
Before Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli began the bulk of production on her second feature So Pretty, she wrote an essay for this site outlining some of the goals and background behind the production: The film is an adaptation of a 1980s German gay novel [Ronald M. Schernikau’s So Schön] that I am transposing and translating to a cast of feminine people of many genders in 2018, New York City. […] Given the explicit gender-trouble and queer elements of So Pretty, as well as the fact that it takes seriously the novella’s paraphrased subtitle “a utopian film,” my film must create an image of a queer and transgender community, and an associated leftist politics, as well as creating an image of a kind… Read more
By Vadim Rizov
Through six seasons on House of Cards and multiple Emmy nominations, Michael Kelly has brilliantly embodied the character of Doug Stamper, navigating him through the highs and lows of loyalty, devotion, and dark-heartedness, culminating with a new layer of antagonism in the final season. It was a tour de force performance. In this episode he sits down to talk about the nuts and bolts of his craft, his meticulous and elaborate script breakdown process, how David Fincher knocked him off his game, and why he will never stop worrying about the next job no matter what awaits him post-Stamper. Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including
By Scott Macaulay
Synchronicity
Although it starts just days before Cannes, the Venice Arts Biennale is routinely ignored by film journalists. Perhaps it’s because of the (incorrect) presumption that the yearly film festival sweeps up the important material, or perhaps it’s the weird art/film world divide. But key film figures routinely make their presence known at the Biennale: when I first attended in 2007, José Luis Guerín represented Spain with an installation-based riff on In The City of Sylvia, while Tsai Ming-Liang screened It’s A Dream for Taiwan. Meanwhile, a figure then best-known in the art world, Steve McQueen, shared two filmed works in the festival pavilion that caught my eye, though not in a way that suggested a decade hence he’d be helming… Read more
By Doug Dillaman
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
On a scale of one to ten, I’m probably about a 6.5 when it comes to Bob Dylan. Define one as “Dylan is the single most visible/still living manifestation of hyper-steroidal Boomer nostalgia and must be destroyed,” ten as the level of obsessiveness practiced by the singer-songwriter’s personal scourge A.J. Weberman, who literally coined the term “Dylanology” and famously dug through Robert Zimmerman’s trash for clues. Dylan wasn’t having it; in Weberman’s indelible telling: I’d agreed not to hassle Dylan anymore, but I was a publicity-hungry motherfucker… I went to MacDougal Street, and Dylan’s wife comes out and starts screaming about me going through the garbage. Dylan said if I ever fucked with his wife, he’d beat the shit out… Read more
By Vadim Rizov
Pahokee
Parasite
I Will Always Love You: Amy Dotson’s BAMcinemafest Speech
Jun 15, 2019
What to See at the 2019 BAMcinemafest
Jun 14, 2019
An On-Set Education: Graham Swon on The World is Full of Secrets
Jun 14, 2019
Le Cinéma Club Relaunches With Claire Denis’s Very Rare Keep It for Yourself
Jun 14, 2019
Toy Story 4: Woody and Buzz Embrace the Gig Economy
Jun 13, 2019
A Sneak Peek at the 30th Human Rights Watch Film Festival
Jun 13, 2019
“I Just Saw People Falling Out of the Sky”: Andrew Hevia on Leave the Bus Through the Broken Window
Jun 12, 2019
“A Movie Where Nobody Wears Clothes and It’s PG-Rated”: Jessie Jeffrey Dunn Rovinelli on So Pretty
Jun 12, 2019
Back to One, Episode 62: Michael Kelly
Jun 11, 2019
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese: Tangled Up in Tanner
Watch: “Thirst,” Gaspar Noe’s Sebastian Music Video
Watch: Caveh Zahedi’s “Not Getting Stoned with Alex Ross Perry”
Trailer Watch: Jim Jarmusch’s The Dead Don’t Die
