Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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“The Vanity of Trans-People Versus the Humanity of Trans-People”: Sara Jordenö and Twiggy Pucci Garcon on KIKI
“One of my friends was killed over there,” says Christopher Waldorf, reflecting back to a scene from KIKI, the 66th Berlinale’s Teddy Award-winning documentary. In an early scene from the film, Waldorf is captured voguing down a dangerous street in Harlem. “The Trade are straight hood guys,” says Waldorf, explaining the threat of violence and harassment that the Trade inflicts on Voguers like himself. “The only reason we were able to joke around when we were filming there,” chimes in another featured subject in the film, Gia Marie Love, “is because we were with white people.” First-time documentary filmmaker Sara […]
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Alongside Spotlight, Mya Taylor, Krisha, The Look of Silence Nab 2016 Spirit Awards
Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, about a team of Boston journalists investigating Catholic Church pedophilia scandals in the 1980s, swept the Film Independent Spirit Awards yesterday, scoring Best Feature, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Editing awards, in addition to the Robert Altman Award for Best Ensemble. As if often the case at the Spirits, the Open Roads released film was by far the highest-grossing film in all of its winning categories, sometimes to a surprising degree. On the awards circuit this year, Spotlight has been that rare frontrunner without a galvanizing lead, or even supporting, performance. (Perhaps acknowledging that fact, the […]
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Anohni, Academy’s Only Transgender Nominee Ever, Explains Decision to Skip the Oscars
As a viewer it’s easy and arguably admirable to skip the Oscars. As a film writer, a disinterest in the Academy Awards can provide thoughtful commentary on the artistic and commercial priorities of our film business. But for those with more vested interest, not attending the Awards is a powerful statement. In the year of the Oscar boycott, this essay by Anohi (aka Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons), the first transgender performer ever to be nominated, is particularly bracing. Anohni, who was nominated for Best Original Song (“Manta Ray,” her collaboration with J. Ralph from the movie Racing […]
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Deadline Approaching for the IFP Narrative and Documentary Labs
The IFP Labs, which offer intensive, year-long mentorship to first-time filmmakers with features in post-production and budgeted less than $1 million, has a March 1 deadline coming up. Still the only Labs focused on post-production, festival strategy, marketing, distribution and DIY strategies, the program is, I think, an invaluable resource and one of the IFP’s best activities. (Full disclosure: IFP publishes Filmmaker, and I was a creator of the IFP Narrative Labs.) In addition to the guidance and advice from Lab Leaders and professional mentors, the Labs also create a tight-knit community of filmmakers who wind up being their own […]
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The Origins and Challenges of Cartel Land, Amy, What Happened, Miss Simone? and Winter on Fire
Few festivals do a better job of rounding up the year’s most enticing documentaries than the always charming Savannah Film Festival. During its 18th edition last fall, the festival — largely curated by publicist Steven Wilson and entertainment reporter Scott Feinberg on behalf of the Savannah College of Art and Design — brought many of the leading lights in documentary filmmaking to the northeastern corner of Georgia for its second annual “Docs to Watch” sidebar. The culmination of the program is a panel, moderated by Feinberg, that includes a smorgasbord of directors whose movies will figure prominently in the award season races to […]
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“Treat Me Like a Man”: K8 Hardy on Outfitumentary
“I wanna be where the boys are…” sings K8 Hardy as she makes her way to the final TigerPro discussion at the 2016 Rotterdam International Film Festival. She’s a panelist in a 90-minute panel discussion, “Commodifying the Queer,” and her attitude walking in is guarded. “Lately, my perspective is just, you know, treat me like a man,” she sighs before the panel begins. Gender, feminism, queerness, and identity are all subjects in Hardy’s work as an artist and filmmaker, but being “called upon as the radical feminist lesbian,” as she says once the panel begins, is stifling. “It’s so minimizing […]
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Berlinale 2016 Dispatch #2: Midnight Special, Creepy, and A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery
The only American narrative in Berlinale’s Competition selection this year was Midnight Special, Jeff Nichols’s cryptic homage to utopian sci-fi and early Spielbergian iconography, and something of a return to the more fantastical genre territory seen in his breakout, Take Shelter. In the film, which reportedly had a budget of $18 million and tends to look like it cost ten times that, Roy (Michael Shannon) and Lucas (Joel Edgerton) are on the lam in Texas following their apparent kidnapping of a young boy named Alton (Jaeden Lieberher), a “special child” coveted by the CIA, cultish rural religious organizations, and other […]
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Convergent: Columbia DSL Live at the Film Society of Lincoln Center
Columbia University’s Digital Storytelling Lab (DSL) is launching a monthly live event and podcast on the changing nature of storytelling in partnership with New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center. “Convergent: Columbia DSL Live at the Film Society of Lincoln Center” will explore new forms and functions of storytelling and pull back the curtain on what’s required to tell stories in the digital age. The initial program, to be held at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center on Tuesday, Feb. 23, will celebrate the Lab’s first annual “Digital Dozen: Breakthroughs in Storytelling” with a line\up of speakers that includes New […]
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Rotterdam International Film Festival Director Bero Beyer on His New Position
“Are you the new festival director?” asks a woman after briefly interrupting our interview. She approached us to ask for directions to a screening room in de Doelen, the central hub of Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR). In his native Dutch, Bero Beyer provides what seems to be an elaborate route, but the woman is satisfied. “It’s a great one,” he tells her in English after learning the title she’s off to watch. All at once, the woman realizes who she’s talking to but asks for confirmation anyway. “It’s so nice to meet you, sir,” she blushes, rushing off to […]
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Berlinale 2016 Dispatch #1: Homo Sapiens, Eldorado XXI, and Havarie
Away from the spotlight of the Berlinale’s (increasingly arbitrary-looking) pick of films competing for the Goldener Bär, the festival’s Forum section sits pretty as a well-established delivery system for reliably bold films that can range anywhere from quirky American character studies to rigorous, avant-garde documentaries. Many Forum artists and filmmakers are unknown quantities in North America, and walking into most of the screenings is as close I get lately to genuine tabula rasa cinema experiences; you really don’t know what you’re going to get here. Lately, the Teutonic-favored American artist/filmmaker James Benning has been taking his feature-length works to the […]
