Authors — Howard Feinstein
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TRAGIC POIGNANCY: THE TINIEST PLACE
Imagine a village of peasants in a mountainous jungle region of El Salvador that would be completely devastated by bombs during the Civil War (1980-92), and most of its inhabitants, including teenaged boys and girls, brutally murdered by the National Guard. Or better yet, let filmmaker Tatiana Huezo imagine it for us and update it in her unforgettable documentary, The Tiniest Place, one of the finest docs I’ve seen over the past year. The puebla is Cinquera, which was suspected by the government of being a hotbed of leftist guerrillas. Several families, many of which lost most of their children, […]
by Howard Feinstein on Aug 14, 2011 -
AND THE BEAT GOES ON
“This year’s program captures how eclectic and varied in genre and style Latin American cinema has become,” says the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Marcela Goglio, who, along with colleague Richard Pena, programs the films that play at the Walter Reade Theater during the 12th edition of Latin Beat (August 10-24). “In spite of ongoing financial struggle, good commercial films coexist with low-budget and more experimental ones.” Even though it is the oldest of all, Latin Beat has not received its just due in a community that hosts so many mediocre Latin American and Latino film festivals and exhibitions. (Check […]
by Howard Feinstein on Aug 5, 2011 -
Laura Israel
Laura Israel cut her teeth editing experimental works, commercials and music videos while still a film student at NYU. She shifted her focus from directing to editing, and from cinema to video. By the time she graduated she had formed her own New York City company, Assemblage. Her client list reads like a hipper-than-hip door list: John Lurie, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Keith Richards, Sonic Youth, New Order, Ed Lachman and especially over the last two decades, her good friend Robert Frank with whom she has been archiving and preserving his film and video work over the past two years. […]
by Howard Feinstein on Jul 17, 2011 -
VON TRIER AT CANNES: FRENCH HYPOCRISY AT ITS WORST
The controversy that has resulted in the Cannes Film Festival — which shows itself to be the spineless tool of a government uniquely, like many of its citizens, obsessed with self-image — declaring Lars von Trier persona non grata on account of his comments that began with his upbringing as a Jew is a despicable, hypocritical mountain made from a molehill. (Would The Producers be banned here? Hardly. Will I lose my accreditation in the future for writing this? I would not put it past them.) Laws about expressing antisemitism are strict here (six months in prison, clearly related to […]
by Howard Feinstein on May 20, 2011 -
Cannes : Films I’m Hoping Will Work Me Into A (Scentless) Sweat
The Australian-born critic Shane Danielsen wrote an amusing piece for Indiewire about this year’s Berlin Film Festival. He compared the smell outside some of the screening rooms to that of sperm. I remember it being stinky, but not that particular odor. Shane is, however, a reliable source. One of two things at Cannes that really gets on my nerves is the smell inside the press screenings, especially those that take place at 8:30 a.m. The 5000-seat theater is packed. No pun intended, but these projections are the pits, the lower depths of hygiene. Maybe it’s time constraints or perhaps cultural practices, but you […]
by Howard Feinstein on May 7, 2011 -
SEPARATING THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF: NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS
The late Sam Fuller, master of low-budget westerns and over-the-top psychosexual dramas, famously expressed to an adoring Godard the following overly quoted opinion of cinema (but it’s relevant here): “Film is like a battleground…Love. Hate. Action. Violence. In one word, emotion.” From the evidence on screen at this 40th edition of New York City’s New Directors/New Films (March 23-April 3) — I must admit, my favorite New York movie event, given that, theoretically, the choices are early works with edge — films built around long takes and a high ratio of long shots (Winter Vacation, Gromozeka, and Attenberg, for example) […]
by Howard Feinstein on Mar 20, 2011 -
PAST TENSE
Winner of the Palme d’Or at this past year’s Cannes Film Festival, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is an enlightening journey graced with a fairytale feel that’s unlike anything you’ll see in theaters this year. By Howard Feinstein.
by Howard Feinstein on Jan 24, 2011 -
DUBAI INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
It’s all in the mix. I’m going to borrow from the overly quoted urban sociologist Jane Jacobs, who maintained that for a city to be vital it requires a blending of old and new neighborhoods, cultural sites, and areas of commerce. For Jacobs, Lincoln Center was poisonous, a large, concentrated collection of arts facilities that is usually lifeless and could have worked better spread out around New York City. As far as I know, Jacobs never got to Dubai. Almost everything there is new, oversized, and sanitized; the scale is not human. After all, the Emirate boasts the world’s largest […]
by Howard Feinstein on Dec 27, 2010 -
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
Like a bitch-slap to those who have accused it of excessive reverence for French fare over the past 48 years, the 2010 New York Film Festival is bookended and centered on American movies—oddly enough, all from the big studios. David Fincher‘s The Social Network (pictured above) opens the event September 24; Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter is the October 10 Closing Night selection; and Julie Taymor’s The Tempest, the Centerpiece. I’ve seen none of them, but early reviews of The Social Network have been very positive, not surprising from the director of Se7en and Fight Club. Evaluations of Hereafter have been much […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 23, 2010 -
TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL: IN A BETTER WORLD
More than any filmmaker in recent memory, the Danish director Susanne Bier examines familial breakdown with an eye toward rupture in the larger social order. In After the Wedding (2006), the protagonist operated a charity in India but his domestic life was in complete disarray. Now, in the powerful In a Better World, written by her longtime collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen, and which just had its world premiere in Toronto, the main adult character, Anton (the sensational Swedish actor Mikael Persbrandt), is a doctor who spends much of his time in Africa (it could be Darfur) treating the maltreated in […]
by Howard Feinstein on Sep 14, 2010
