With over 50 credits to his name, including Life Animated, A Walk into the Sea and the Emmy-nominated Boy’s State, composer T. Griffin brings sure melodies, inventive arrangements and a clever blending (and treatment of) of acoustic instruments with electronics to his film scoring work. Both an omnivorous listener and a performing musician — he’s a former member of Vic Chestnutt’s band and has performed for live film/media events by artists such as Sam Green — Griffin is invigoratingly thoughtful about the role of music in film, and his scores benefit from that inquisitive process. They buzz with musical ideas while […]

One of the most storied shows of the punk era was seen by just a tiny audience at an unlikely venue — a California mental hospital. The punk rockabilly band The Cramps and theatrical art-punk band The Mutants played the Napa State Hospital on June 13, 1978, one of a series of concerts programmed at the institution for its residents during that era. What made this concert different was its documentation — it was recorded on old Sony equipment by Bay Area documentarian Joe Rees and his Target Video crew. “Somebody told me you people are crazy, but I’m not […]

Shuttered last year by the pandemic, the Tribeca Film Festival returns this year with a large program (many of last year’s selections are included) and hybrid format full of large outdoor events and stay-at-home screenings. The festival opens with the premiere of Jon M. Chu’s exuberant In The Heights, and there’s new work by Steven Soderbergh, a film about and live performance by Blondie, and talks with Amy Schumer, M. Night Shamalayan and others. But as usual, though, we’ll point you here to films by emerging makers that might have flown beneath your radar. Here are 12 picks from Vadim Rizov […]

Kino Lorber and Dedza Films announced today their first collaborative release, Who Will Start Another Fire, an international short film omnibus featuring the works of nine emerging filmmakers from underrepresented communities around the world. Beginning June 11, the films will be released digitally on KinoMarquee.com, the distributor’s virtual theatrical platform in partnership with arthouse cinemas around the country. The anthology will also be released day and date on VOD on KinoNow.com, and forthcoming will be a limited edition DVD with an introduction by Charles Burnett. In-person screenings will occur across the country at independent cinemas that are open. From the […]

A Brooklyn teen and her Guyanaese cousin, who has traveled to New York for an uncle’s funeral, spend a day together before the wake, an afternoon that arcs from a gentle hang to a more complex articulation of vulnerability and friendship. Mandy Marcus’s incredibly assured and beautifully directed short, Cousins, is confident in its clear-eyed realism. It allows its story to unfold as we observe the girls’ subtly redefine their relationship, with moods and textures shifting as the day moves from afternoon to night and the excellent soundtrack pulses with cues from Sudan Archives and Carlton and the Shoes, among […]

Love, lust, heartbreak and solitude — Edward Hancox’s clever relationship drama, Things That Happen in the Bathroom mines a home’s most private space for the full spectrum of feelings that can occur there. For Jak, a lonely young queer man, the bathroom is his place for contemplation and introspection, and Hancox’s short explores the charged interactions that occur when Jak invites a new hookup into the space. True to its title, the short stays within the bathroom’s four walls, but the space itself transforms continually as the shifting sun throws different shadows through the windows and, later, when Jak outfits […]

The sensations of summer — the heat, the mild ennui, but also the complicated feelings when teenage friendship and romance blur during those carefree months — are beautifully captured in Temple graduate Molly Sorensen’s short film, Mud and Honey. Maeve, a bit of a loner, seems sure of her sexuality but unsure if the object of her affection, Delilah, is sincere in her reciprocation. The popular Delilah, on the other hand, enjoys her languid afternoons with Maeve but could also easily spend them with a group of local boys. The tension between the two simmers in a film in which […]