Authors — Paul Dallas
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Letter from Locarno, Week Two
The Locarno Film Festival is characterized by its relaxed atmosphere and by its expansive programming. One can meander easily from a George Cukor classic on 35mm (he’s receiving a complete retrospective here), to the latest Ben Rivers and Ben Russell experimental narrative (part of the “Signs of Life” series, named after the Herzog film), to Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin screening in the 8,000 seat Piazza Grande. And in between, you can take a dip in the lake. It’s the kind of festival where you never have to wait in line for a press screening. This exceptional experience is in part […]
by Paul Dallas on Aug 15, 2013 -
Letter from Locarno, Week One
The Locarno Film Festival opened Wednesday with a bang — or two, to be exact. There was the bombastic Opening Night selection in the Piazza Grande, which was the Mark Wahlberg/Denzel Washington vehicle 2 Guns — what one fellow critic called Lethal Weapon for 2013 (and seemingly a bizarre choice incongruous with the rest of the programming) — and there was the massive summer storm that stole the film’s thunder and literally dampened the affair. The Piazza, one of the largest outdoor screening venues in Europe, is where Locarno the town and Locarno the international festival literally come together — and […]
by Paul Dallas on Aug 10, 2013 -
Bad Trip: A Conversation with Sebastián Silva on Crystal Fairy and Magic Magic
Sebastián Silva is that rare filmmaker who manages to be both independent and prolific. With five features and a Digital HBO series under his belt, plus three new projects in the works, the 34-year-old writer/director shows little sign of slowing down. At Sundance this year, Silva premiered not one but two new films, the improvisational road trip comedy Crystal Fairy and the Magic Cactus and 2012, and the dark psychological thriller Magic Magic. Both films, made in quick succession, were shot in the director’s native Chile, center on the erratic adventures of displaced Americans, and feature effectively off-kilter performances by […]
by Paul Dallas on Jun 20, 2013 -
Street Views: a Conversation with James Nares and His Cinematic Ode to New York
In James Nares’s 1976 film Pendulum, a large metal sphere swings ominously from a bridge in a desolate TriBeCa street. We watch with unease as the ball, viewed from multiple positions, traces a giant arc, pulling on the cable, which emits a low rhythmic groan on the soundtrack. This tense, hypnotic Super-8 film, which transforms a forlorn streetscape into existential theater, offers a strange love-letter to a city (at that moment) riddled with danger and alive with artistic possibility. Pendulum was made several years after Nares’s arrival in New York at age 21 from his native England. The city’s been […]
by Paul Dallas on May 21, 2013 -
Teenage Riot: A Conversation with Matt Wolf, Jon Savage and Jason Schwartzman
Youth culture didn’t start in the ’60s. In the parlance of today’s teens, the appropriate response to this might be “duh.” Teenage, director Matt Wolf’s artful new non-fiction film, uncovers the “hidden history” of youth culture and locates its origins in various youth movements in the first half of the 20th century. From German Swing kids to American Victory Girls, the film offers a veritable lexicon of lost teen vocabulary (“teen canteen,” “buzz bucket,” “boogie in the strut hut”), and reminds us that the invention of teenager culture depended on the invention of a new language — and one that […]
by Paul Dallas on Apr 25, 2013 -
Relative Truths
Over the course of two narrative features, and now a documentary, Sarah Polley has made a habit of taking on unexpected subjects, all the while managing to produce a remarkably consistent body of work. Polley’s films explore the vagaries of relationships and intimacy, and in particular, the challenges of marriage. Filled with tonal shifts and narrative reveals, Polley’s naturalism is always accompanied by flights of fancy and spontaneous moments of romance that may twist against the viewer’s sympathies. Her 2006 debut, Away from Her, stars two aging icons of cinema, Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent and the ever-radiant Julie Christie, as […]
by Paul Dallas on Apr 23, 2013 -
Culture Wars: Talking Brazilian Cinema and its Discontents with Director Kleber Mendonça Filho
The Brazilian drama Neighboring Sounds made it onto many critics’ best-of lists for 2012 and recently won Best Feature at the Cinema Tropical Awards in New York, which recognize excellence in Latin American cinema. The film’s director, Kleber Mendonça Filho, was in town to accept the award and to attend a screening at the Museum of the Moving Image of short films he produced over the last decade. The first of these shorts was made in 2002, the year Fernando Meirelles’ urban epic City of God burst onto the international scene and Madame Satã played at Cannes. In the decade […]
by Paul Dallas on Jan 28, 2013 -
All At Sea
The world of commercial sea fishing is captured in all its stark and violent beauty in LUCIEN CASTAING-TAYLOR and VÉRÉNA PARAVEL’s Leviathan.
by Paul Dallas on Jan 21, 2013 -
Shape of Things to Come: MOMI’s First Look Gives Adventurous New Cinema a Home
If you’re heading off to Sundance in a few weeks (or just wincing at the January film releases), you may want to make a stop off in Queens. First Look, the annual showcase of new international cinema, opens today at the Museum of the Moving Image and offers filmgoers many compelling reasons to shake off the post-holiday doldrums and to leave the Netflix cave. It also suggests the expansiveness of independent cinema worldwide. Curated by Dennis Lim (editor of Moving Image Source, the Museum’s multimedia magazine) and the museum’s film curators, Rachael Rakes and David Schwartz, the series presents a […]
by Paul Dallas on Jan 4, 2013 -
A Rogue’s Gallery of Gorgeousness: Charles Atlas and Antony’s Turning
It’s been a banner year for Charles Atlas. In 2012, the filmmaker and video artist was included in the Whitney Biennial, opened his first New York solo show, “The Illusion of Democracy” (the inaugural show of Lurhring Augustine’s brand new Bushwick gallery, no less), had seminal, rarely-screened works revived care of keen programming at local NYC film series’ Dirty Looks and Light Industry, and is now unveiling his long-awaited collaboration with enigmatic singer/musician Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons), which opens today at IFC Center. Turning, which had its New York premiere this past weekend at DOC NYC, is […]
by Paul Dallas on Nov 16, 2012
