Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Making Rent in Bed-Stuy at the Metrograph
Brandon Harris — whose insightful, politically sagacious and ruefully funny blend of memoir and criticism has graced the pages of the New Yorker, n+1 and Filmmaker, where you’ll recognize him as a Contributing Editor — has just released his debut book, Making Rent in Bed-Stuy, a cultural memoir on neighborhoods, race, millennial culture and filmmaking. Appropriately, he has also programmed a series of relevant films this weekend at New York’s Metrograph Theater. Running through the 12th, the films include Spike Lee’s Crooklyn (next to Do the Right Thing my favorite 40 Acres joint, actually), Jay-Z: Fade to Black, and Sebastián Silva’s […]
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From Race to Resistance to Refugees: The 28th Human Rights Watch Film Festival
The 28th edition of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, running June 9-18 at NYC’s Film Society of Lincoln Center and IFC Center, will be showcasing 21 feature docs and panel discussions (and no fiction films – a smart programming move as the fiction films in past years inevitably ended up the weakest links in the lineup). Glancing through the program there looks to be a whole lot of timely stuff to choose from, including a “From Audience to Activist” discussion in which “filmmakers, journalists and activists share best practices on how to hold powerful institutions accountable safely and effectively,” […]
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On Loving — and Panning — Shows in Television’s Renaissance Moment: A Report from the Split Screens Festival
A TV series is like a conversation — or, when a show turns awful, a bad relationship. That was just one observation from a spirited panel, “The Evolution of TV Criticism,” held at Split Screens, the new New York festival that celebrates and explores television in its current “renaissance moment.” Speaking were four well-read critics who represent two generations of TV writers. Matt Zoller Seitz, of New York Magazine and RogertEbert.com (and also the festival’s head programmer), began by saying that he got his start as a critic in 1991 with his first paid byline in the Dallas Olbserver. His debut piece […]
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Mr. Robot, Man in the High Castle and More are Dissected at the Inaugural Split Screens Festival
The inaugural year of Split Screens Festival, celebrating the art and craft of television, kicked off Friday night, June 2, at New York’s IFC Center, and it runs through June 8. The festival’s programming team is headed by Matt Zoller Seitz, Editor-in-Chief of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com and author of several books on film and television. I attended the first full day of screenings and panels on Saturday, and it was an incredibly varied line-up. Following “The Evolution of TV Criticism,” which I’ll cover in a separate post, there was a showcase of the behind-the-scenes […]
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Oregon Doc Camp: A Weekend in the Woods with Documentary Filmmakers
What happens when 50 documentary filmmakers converge in the woods of Oregon for a long weekend? It sounds like the premise of an episode of Portlandia or a new reality TV show. But Oregon Doc Camp, featuring four days of film talks, screenings, workshops, and campfires at a Silver Fall State Park in Oregon, is something entirely different. It’s a relaxed, non-competitive environment where nonfiction filmmakers can swap war stories, share hard-earned expertise and provide support and feedback. In its fourth year, Oregon Doc Camp, presented by Women in Film Portland from May 18-21, gained momentum with a top-notch lineup of speakers, including editor Kate Amend (The Keepers, The Case […]
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Cannes Dispatch #4: Thoughts on Prize Winners 120 Beats Per Minute, You Were Never Really Here, The Killing of a Sacred Deer
For the third year in a row, Cannes’s Main Competition jury — this year comprised of jury president Pedro Almodóvar, German filmmaker Maren Ade, and several celebrity industry professionals whose tastes in cinema had never previously been of much concern to anyone — awarded the Palme d’Or to a movie I didn’t much like. Considered by some to be True Cinema’s answer to the Oscars, the medium’s actual most prestigious prize has suffered some blows to its reputation in the last two years after being handed to mediocre films (Dheepan in 2015 and I, Daniel Blake last year) that weren’t […]
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At Cannes 2017, The Square Wins Palme d’Or; Coppola Best Director; and Lynne Ramsay’s Latest Wins Two
Here, as they are announced, are the winners of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Palme d’Or: The Square, Ruben Östlund. Special Prize for the 70th Anniversary: Nicole Kidman Grand Prix: 120 Beats Per Minute, directed by Robin Campillo Jury Prize: Loveless, Andrey Zvyagintsev Best Actress: Diane Kruger, In the Fade Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here Best Director: Sofia Coppola, The Beguiled Best Screenplay: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lathimos and Efthymis Filippou) and Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here) The Camera d’Or (given to best first film): Jeunne Femme/Montparnasse Bienvenue, directed by Leonor […]
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Twin Peaks and Film as Ritual: Sam Kuhn’s Cannes Diary, the Coda
Director, screenwriter and boatbuilder (!) Sam Kuhn is in Cannes premiering his short film, Möbius — described as “a moth-eaten tale of magic and mutation half remembered by a teen poet who’s beloved lies lifeless in a stream” — in Critic’s Week. Filmmaker asked Kuhn, who hails from the Pacific Northwest, to keep a diary of his experiences, which rapidly went from jet-lagged to deeply strange. Here is his final entry; click here for them all. CODA Full night sleep. First in what feels like forever. Hit the 4:00 PM day-after-screening of Twin Peaks in a Toronto Raptors jacket gifted […]
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Crying Seagull Tears Above the Croisette: Sam Kuhn’s Cannes Diary, Part Six
Director, screenwriter and boatbuilder (!) Sam Kuhn is in Cannes premiering his short film, Möbius — described as “a moth-eaten tale of magic and mutation half remembered by a teen poet who’s beloved lies lifeless in a stream” — in Critic’s Week. Filmmaker asked Kuhn, who hails from the Pacific Northwest, to keep a diary of his experiences, which rapidly went from jet-lagged to deeply strange. Here is his sixth entry; click here for them all. Day 8 Eight and it’s full circle, which seems fitting as “8” is a basic Möbius-like shape. Woke and walked immediately to the “morning […]
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Cannes Dispatch #3: Jeannette, the Childhood of Joan of Arc; The Florida Project; Good Time
Cannes, like virtually every other major international film festival showcasing feature-length filmmaking, is largely devoted to cinema that participates in a primarily theatrical mode — dialogue- and performance-driven works that feature subjects with whom we are meant to empathize to some degree. This is an expectation, fused into the medium’s DNA when it was still young, that is embedded in the layout of the festival itself; it’s the world’s largest film market (and therefore tilts mainstream, toward things that can make money), and the prizes it offers — honouring exemplary screenwriting and thespian turns rather than, for example, montage, photography, […]
