Steven Soderbergh’s most persistently recurring subject is economic inequality, attacked from a number of angles: lone dispossessed protagonist vs. powerful corporation (Erin Brockovich), the ways in which minimum-wage employees are demeaned by employers (Bubble), capitalism as sex work against the backdrop of the last recession (The Girlfriend Experience), white collar crime (The Informant!), attacks on pharmaceutical companies (Side Effects) and private health insurance (Unsane), a general emphasis on stratification and the bottom rung of the ladder (Magic Mike and Logan Lucky, the proletarian Ocean’s Eleven, in which a heist doubles as praxis redistribution). Che speaks for itself, and this year there are two […]
Having already revealed the Foucauldian dynamic that will run through this year’s Camden International Film Festival — a focus on “story and power” — the festival’s parent organization Points North Institute unveiled today the forum and artist programs that will take place over the event’s mid-September weekend. The annual Points North Forum will ask “critical questions about how the documentary film and media community reflects existing power structures, including questions of racial equity, access, funding, and which stories are being told, how, for whom, and by whom,” according to the press release. Other highlights and programs include masterclasses by Apollo […]
Cinematic overdrive takes effect every summer for an 11-day spree at the New Horizon festival in Wroclaw, Poland, a “best-of” assortment of festival bangers from Rotterdam, Berlin, Cannes and elsewhere that also splinters into provocative sidebars, career retrospectives and funky late-night fare. The companion festival to fall’s American Film Festival likewise unspools at Kino Nowe Horyzonty (New Horizons), a contemporary multi-level nine-screen movie complex embedded in the city’s nightlife hub, well-designed as a life support system for cinephiles embarked on 14-hour immersive viewing sessions. (Which is to say, espresso and marvelous pastries are never far from reach). I’ve gotten to […]
The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), Filmmaker‘s parent organization, announced today its public program during the 41st IFP Week, including a series of over 40 panel conversations, informative workshops and screenings. IFP Week, one of IFP’s signature annual events, will take place in Brooklyn, New York from Sunday, September 15 to Thursday, September 19. The week kicks off on Sunday, September 15th with a series of panel conversations with filmmakers at BRIC, including: Keynote Presentation by Tyler Mitchell, Head of Impact at Imagine Impact “An Exciting Time” – a conversation with the creative visionaries behind TIME Studios, the recently formed premium content […]
The Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) announced today the 38 features, 51 short films, and 17 virtual reality and immersive experiences that comprise its 15th edition, taking place September 12-15, 2019 throughout Camden, Rockport and Rockland, Maine. “Story and Power” is the theme of sorts for this year’s festival, which aims to prompt industry-wide conversations that examine “the ways in which power structures deeply embedded in society have continued to shape the documentary field, including which stories are told, by whom and for whom.” “Our 2019 slate celebrates documentary as a reimagining of the ways we engage with stories from […]
NYFF has announced the main slate for this year’s edition, set to run from September 27 to October 13. In addition to the previously announced opening night (Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman), centerpiece (Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story) and closing night screenings (Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn), 23 titles have been announced. In addition to expected titles from established auteurs including Pedro Almodóvar, Kelly Reichardt, the Dardennes brothers, Arnaud Desplechin and Bong Joon-ho’s Palme d’Or-winning Parasite, the selection includes deeper cuts like Pietro Marcello’s loose Jack London adaptation Martin Eden and Oliver Laxe’s Fire Will Come, the third feature from the director of You All Are Captains and Mimosas. Below, from […]
The following is a guest post from Dan Schoenbrun of The Eyeslicer about what should be an exciting day devoted to independent film physical media occurring in New York on September 15. — Editor Every year a group of independent artists and publishers host Comic Arts Brooklyn, a daylong fair for graphic novelists, zine-makers, and small publishers. It’s an event I always look forward to: I love meeting artists in person who I’ve long admired, or browsing and discovering new work, chatting with people about what they make and what they’re reading, and doing all that surrounded by other like-minded […]
“A whole week of fun,” reads a prominent advertisement in the background of the final scene of Henry King’s State Fair (1933), as Janet Gaynor and Lew Ayres slip out of frame in a lovers’ embrace and “The End” unfurls behind them on a billboard. This happened also to be my final image, projected in 35mm on the screen before me, of Il Cinema Ritrovato, the blissful, week-long festival in Bologna, Italy that each year offers itself up as an event of seemingly endless Elysian splendour. But of course, like the Iowa State Fair in King’s movie, it had to […]
IFP, Filmmaker‘s publisher, announced today the 150 films, series, digital and audio projects to be showcased at the Project Forum this September. The Project Forum, says IFP, is “the only international co-production market in the U.S. featuring stories for multiple platforms and hosting over 3,000 pre-scheduled artist & industry meetings dedicated to moving those projects forward. In addition, IFP Week presents a multi-day slate of talks, public screenings and events celebrating bold and singular storytelling in all its forms. Approximately 300 directors, writers, producers, executive producers and other creators will attend the event this year to pitch their projects to […]
Bertrand Bonello, cinephile filmmaker, is not one to conceal his references. On War, with Mathieu Amalric in the lead as a director called Bertrand, quotes from Apocalypse Now at length, House of Tolerance transplants Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s Flowers of Shanghai to belle époque Paris and Nocturama concocts a beautiful synthesis of Carpenter and Romero. Yet, as the disparity of these citations indicates, Bonello’s shapeshifting, consistently surprising cinema makes it difficult to pinpoint what might have been his formative influences. Had I been pressed to try, I wouldn’t have come up with Pasolini, so it was a surprise to discover that his […]