Authors — Lauren Wissot
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Phie Ambo on Free the Mind
Phie Ambo’s Free the Mind was one of my favorite flicks at this past International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, so I was thrilled to learn it would finally reach these American shores via a premiere at the Rubin Museum of Art in NYC on May 3rd. (And hopefully roll out nationwide if the filmmakers’ Indiegogo financing effort – which includes a photo op with the Dalai Lama as a reward – goes according to plan.) And I was even more excited to have the chance to speak with the Danish documentarian herself, whose film about University of Wisconsin professor Richard […]
by Lauren Wissot on May 1, 2013 -
All in the Family: Shawney Cohen on Hot Docs Opener The Manor
The titular subject referred to in Shawney Cohen’s debut feature has nothing to do with ladies and lords, but with the Cohen family business – a combo strip club/motel in a small Canadian town. And The Manor has nothing to do with in the ins and outs of the sex industry, so to speak, but with the inner workings of the Cohen family, which includes Shawney’s 400-pound father (who bought the place when the director was only six) and 85-pound anorexic mother. Ultimately, the doc’s not so much north-of-the-border, reality TV than a nuanced portrait of a loving yet dysfunctional […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 25, 2013 -
The Bermuda International Film Festival Celebrates Sweet Sixteen
Sweet 16 was the theme of this year’s Bermuda International Film Festival, though the vibe seemed more smooth continuation than a coming of age. Like its March 2012 edition, this April BIFF screened an international selection of prestige flicks (that those of us who don’t live on an enchanted island in the middle of the Atlantic had mostly seen by Oscar time). In addition to opening night’s Ginger & Rosa, Bermudians could catch everything from The Act of Killing and West of Memphis, to Rust and Bone and Amour. Not to mention Laurence Anyways, Beyond the Hills, Chicken with Plums, […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 24, 2013 -
Director Marten Persiel Discusses This Ain’t California
A while back I wrote about Marten Persiel’s This Ain’t California, the Berlinale-winning “punk fairytale” about skateboarding in East Germany that caused a bit of a stir overseas for its liberal use of staged reenactments. Regardless of the controversy, Persiel’s film is like nothing I’ve seen in recent years, the closest comparison probably being Grant Gee’s 2007 Joy Division (written by Jon Savage), which employs a collage of images to conjure up the Manchester atmosphere during that music scene’s heyday. In fact, Manchester and East Berlin shared a similar aesthetic in the ’70s and ’80s, composed of drab grey buildings […]
by Lauren Wissot on Apr 10, 2013 -
Five Questions with Remedy Writer/Director Cheyenne Picardo
Opening the 10th anniversary edition of CineKink NYC tonight is writer/director (and “habitual submissive”) Cheyenne Picardo’s Remedy, a look at the business side of BDSM through the eyes of a character crafted from Picardo’s personal experience Filmmaker spoke with the accidental director – who originally set out to be a critic – about converting a barn into a NYC dungeon, casting non-kinksters, and why Steve Martin’s The Jerk is more influential than Godard. Filmmaker: I noticed this quote from you in the press notes, “I’m hoping to demystify professional BDSM in a way that’s personal and accessible by showing it […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 27, 2013 -
Christine Turner on Homegoings
Just in the nick of time for Black History Month, and debuting at the 2013 Documentary Fortnight: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film, is Christine Turner’s Homegoings, a poetically crafted exploration of the history of African-American funeral traditions. Told via the Harlem neighborhood’s legendary funeral director Isaiah Owens – who found his calling as a small child, burying all deceased animals he stumbled across in his South Carolina surroundings – the doc manages to be poignant, inspirational, and unexpectedly uplifting. In other words, as one subject says about black burials themselves, a “sad good time.” Filmmaker spoke with the doc’s […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 26, 2013 -
The 6th Annual Thin Line Film Fest
First things first – Texas’s Thin Line Film Fest does not take place in Austin, nor in March, nor does it accept indie narratives, nor any fiction films at all. In fact, this six-year-old event, which plays a month prior to SXSW, smartly doesn’t define itself in relation to that cinematic elephant in the Lone Star State. Which is its strength. Texas’s only fest devoted strictly to docs – from local to international – Thin Line (the name inspired by its founders’ desire to explore that space between fact and fiction) does take over Denton, Texas, for 10 days in […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 25, 2013 -
Talking Legends with Terence Stamp
The 2013 edition of the Palm Springs International Film Festival was filled with glitzy events and screenings, including a Talking Pictures sidebar featuring movies followed by conversations with noteworthy actors like Alan Cumming (discussing Any Day Now) and Naomi Watts (for The Impossible). But it was the closing night gala for Paul Andrew Williams’ Unfinished Song, starring Vanessa Redgrave as a cancer-stricken septuagenarian in an old folks choir, that really grabbed my attention. Actually, it wasn’t the film (which I haven’t seen) so much as the possibility of interviewing the actor playing Redgrave’s character’s devoted husband that made me stand […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 8, 2013 -
Free the Mind Launches Distro Campaign via Indiegogo
Wanna give the finger to Big Pharma and maybe meet the Dalai Lama? Danish director Phie Ambo’s Free the Mind was one of my big discoveries at IDFA 2012. The film’s a truly revelatory exploration of the mindfulness movement, led here in the States by the University of Wisconsin’s Richard Davidson (who made Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world back in 2006), an expert in “contemplative neuroscience” who moved into the field after being asked by none other than the Dalai Lama why modern neuroscience didn’t study kindness and compassion. Ambo’s doc is a […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 7, 2013 -
The 24th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival: 4 Days, 3 Greats, 2 Duds
Palm Springs, California blossomed in the 1930s when Hollywood royalty started calling this Coachella Valley city, a couple hours drive from L.A., (second) home. It still has a sort of old-timey vibe, evidenced by the hundreds of names engraved in its downtown Walk of Stars, the majority of which faded from the collective celebrity conscious decades ago. And though the Palm Springs International Film Festival has only been around for 24 years – actually a ripe old age for an American film fest – it too feels like a throwback to another era, one in which the term “kick starter” […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jan 18, 2013
