The Dead Sea is one of the unknown casualties of the turbulent politics of the Middle East. Population growth since the founding of Israel has diverted much of its source water for human use. Mineral extraction companies have reduced it even further, and of course global warming is continually increasing temperatures and making the region more arid. Since the watershed basin is shared between Israel and Jordan it requires international cooperation to address, and though there have been attempts to do so they have not matched the challenge that the Sea is facing. The result is that the Sea shrinks […]

A Remote Festival The Sundance Film Festival, which ended February 3, succeeded remarkably well despite the pandemic, and nowhere was that more obvious than in the New Frontier lineup of virtual/augmented reality and other new media. In fact, as has been commented throughout 2020, in many ways virtual reality was made for this moment. With VR headsets reaching ever further into the consumer population it was feasible for this year’s New Frontier lineup, including several 2D browser-based works, to be shown remotely with essentially no loss in quality, especially when compared with feature films being screened on a laptop or […]

One of the most understated pieces at Sundance’s New Frontier this year was Namoo, an animated short by Baobab Studios and director Erick Oh. Baobab has been pushing the boundaries of top-tier animated virtual reality since its founding in 2015, with its short immersive films growing in depth, length, and complexity and leading to a slew of awards and spun-off properties including feature films and series. Erick Oh is an award-winning director and animator from South Korea and based in California who’s worked at Pixar and with Tonko House and whose work has shown at Annecy, Anima Mundi, and other festivals. […]

Alvin Ailey’s choreography was as powerful and muscular as it was elegant and sublime. Most dance outsiders probably come to him through his most famous work, 1960’s Revelations, which exemplifies the fierce pride of the Black community moving from slavery through baptism and into celebration. The work also includes delicate and restrained moments, such as in an early pas de deux, where a slowly raised arm contains all the beauty of a the later exultation. This dichotomy is also present in director Jamila Wignot’s new biographical doc, simply titled Ailey, which tells his life story with searing intimacy but also […]

David Garrett Byars made his feature documentary debut with No Man’s Land in 2017, a riveting chronicle of the the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon (I spoke with him about it during its Tribeca premiere). In the largely verité film he manages to not only paint empathetic portraits of both the occupiers and their government opponents, but communicate the larger social and political movements that caused his characters to behave as they did. This eye for explaining complex topics comes to the fore in his sophomore film Public Trust, out September 25 from Patagonia Films. This new […]

In the past few days trademarks and brands like Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s and Eskimo Pie have been discontinued or altered in a long overdue reevaluation of racist stereotypes and iconography in American consumer culture. And the broader groundswell of change that finally got these brands removed — along with numerous other changes in everything from Congressional legislation on police reform to NASCAR banning the Confederate battle flag — seems poised to challenge one of the most infamous cases of corporate use of derogatory imagery, the Washington Redskins. Activists have long protested the use of a racial slur as an […]

When the coronavirus descended on the U.S., Firelight Media, like every other organization, quickly shifted its activities online. The Harlem-based nonprofit has been supporting nonfiction filmmakers of color since 2008, helping move hundreds of films forward through its Documentary Lab and other programs, and it functioned as a production company for another decade before that. Thus when the pandemic stopped film production and real-world gatherings the Firelight team responded quickly with a range of new programs, a service made all the more critical by COVID-19’s disproportionate affect on the Black population. Then, of course, came the murder of George Floyd […]

One thing that’s been uplifting to observe throughout all the recent closures of movie theaters, festivals, and other cultural institutions has been how individuals and companies have stepped in to provide relief, support, and camaraderie during an unprecedented crisis. This is true in the virtual and augmented reality community as much as in the broader film industry, as content creators and distributors have come together to support each other as their work has come to an essential standstill. Of course, some companies and services have seen an uptick in their business, as consumers explore using VR products to hold meetings, […]

Frequent visitors to major film festivals will have spent the last few years tracking the improvement not only of virtual and augmented reality pieces, but also of how they’re shown. Throughput has increased, displays and decorations gone from relatively slipshod to professional, and most recently entire groups of viewers have been accommodated simultaneously in group viewing sessions through synchronized headsets. In the meantime, commercial venues—some permanent, some pop-ups—have sprung up around the globe, offering VR games and films as part of a new wave of location-based entertainment (LBE). The Paris-based Diversion cinema is at the forefront of developments like these. […]

It’s been quite a year for composer Nathan Halpern. He had four films at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival—the feature-length documentaries After Parkland and One Child Nation and the narrative features Goldie and Swallow—and while he hasn’t slacked in his new output, all four of these projects have gone on to impressive post-festival activity. One Child Nation (directed by Nanfu Wang, a previous collaborator of Halpern’s) premiered at Sundance in 2019, and was acquired by Amazon Studios for a theatrical run in August; it’s now streaming on Amazon Prime. And three of the films are hitting theaters right now: After Parkland (directed by Emily Taguchi and Jake […]