There are two barely related images that repeatedly come back to me as I begin to write about Port of Memory (2010) by Kamal Aljafari. One is a house cat languishing on top of a television set, in a family’s living room. The TV is playing a dramatization of the life of Jesus. At first the cat appears inert; the viewer is unsure whether it is an odd piece of bric-a-brac or a living but particularly lethargic mammal. The camera lingers long enough to confirm the latter. The second is a short stretch of Jaffa streets. An Israeli man singing […]
by Webadmin on Feb 18, 2011Documentary Fortnight, MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media, kicked off its 10th season last night with the world premiere of Self Made. The film, a first for British artist (and Turner Prize winner) turned filmmaker Gillian Wearing, takes the audience through the cathartic process of a Method Acting class populated by a small group of hand-picked non-professionals and led by acting teacher, Sam Rumbelow. The movie shows how strong performances can result from emotional excavation. It’s a raw and emotionally powerful film and one that makes clear that Method Acting, first invented by Stanislavski over a hundred years […]
by Webadmin on Feb 17, 2011Brent Green is a self taught filmmaker and artist who lives and works in the Appalachian hills of Pennsylvania. His unique hand drawn and stop motion short films have played venues including the Sundance Film Festival, the L.A. Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. He was also one of Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces in 2005. Recently he wrapped up filming his first feature-length film, Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then. Shot entirely in stop motion using human beings, the film tells the true story of Leonard and Mary Wood, two people joyously brought together but separated through forces far […]
by Webadmin on Feb 17, 2011