Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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28 Films, TV and VR Pieces We’re Excited About at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival
Kicking off tonight with an all-star Radio City concert following the premiere of the Clive Davis doc, The Soundtrack of Our Lives, the Tribeca Film Festival once more offers a near-overwhelming array of new work spread across not just film but TV, VR, gaming and music. The program has been slimmed down this year, say the programmers, but the below list of works we’re excited about could still stretch many times fold. Nonetheless, from myself and our various Tribeca contributors this year, here are 28 works we have reason to excitedly anticipate. The Departure. Lana Wilson follows up her abortion […]
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The Cannes Film Festival Announces its 2017 Official Selection
New films by American independents Benny and Josh Safdie, Todd Haynes, Sofia Coppola and Noah Baumbach will all premiere in Competition at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. The official selection’s full slate includes the Safdie brothers’s Robert Pattinson-starring Good Time, Haynes’s Amazon-financed childrens picture Wonderstruck, and the latest from Baumbach, the Netflix-acquired, Adam Sander-starring The Meyerowitz Stories. International auteurs include Lynne Ramsay’s collaboration with Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here; Michael Haneke’s Happy End, dealing with the European refugee crisis; and Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer, one of four festival films featuring Nicole Kidman. Also noteworthy […]
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CPH:DOX 2017: The Inaugural Spring Edition
The “something for everyone” film festival is a rarity these days. While most fests like to think they’re providing a wide array for a curious cinephile to choose from, what they usually end up showcasing is a large selection of subject matter. In other words, the films themselves often look and feel very similar in style. (Indeed, I can often spot a Sundance film ten minutes in, and from a last row seat.) That makes CPH:DOX, “the third largest documentary film festival in the world,” something truly special. This was only my second time attending Copenhagen’s premiere nonfiction fest, but the combination […]
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Don’t Bring Your Business Card to Borscht
I missed my 6am flight on the last day of the Borscht Film Festival. I blame Moonlight. And Miami. It had been an insanely inspiring weekend of art, film and new friendships at the festival’s 10th year down in Miami. Borscht ran February 22-26, encompassing live performances, film screenings, art installations, parties on islands and even a viking funeral — which I, regretfully, missed. I’d been hearing about Borscht for years through a number of my friends in the film community and via co-founders Jillian Mayer and Lucas Levya’s visionary films/art. Over and over, I was told the fest was […]
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Eight Shorts From SXSW 2017
As the 2017 edition of SXSW comes to a close, here’s a list of eight short films I saw that are worthy of your attention. There’s no clear throughline apparent here: documentary work investigating the infected water supply of the DC water crisis, midnight selections featuring mannequin heads that come to life to suck face, and miscellaneous narrative shorts that cover everything from the ending of a romantic relationship to a bond formed during an impending school shooting. Many will continue to screen on the festival circuit throughout the year, and some will be made readily available online before you know it. […]
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SXSW 2017: Nanfu Wang’s I Am Another You and Jason Cortlund & Julia Halperin’s La Barracuda
While resisting the urge to hyperbolically and lazily link any one film I see at this year’s SXSW to another, allow me to quickly note that Nanfu Wang’s I Am Another You (a world premiere in the Documentary Feature Competition section) and Julia Halperin and Jason Cortlund’s La Barracuda (which world premiered in Narrative Feature Competition) are, at their core, about women voluntarily visiting a piece of America foreign to them (Florida and Texas, respectively) to reveal their bare selves in the process. Wang is from China, the character of Sinoloa is from England; both come to town with a purpose that may not always be clear, […]
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Richard Linklater on the Future of the Austin Film Society: “This is the Best Year We’ve Ever Had”
The Austin Film Society hosted a media-exclusive lunch this past Friday to discuss their most exciting current project: the redesign and expansion of their cinema and event space. Presented by Founder & Artistic Director Richard Linklater, CEO Rebecca Campbell, Head of Film & Creative Media Holly Herrick, architect Michael Hsu and Designtrait, the afternoon stressed a shared belief in making a place for Austinites to discover artistically significant cinema old and new. A repertory house, a first-run theater, a shrine to great records and beautiful poster art, and an event space equipped to host a multitude of special gatherings: it’s clear that the AFS […]
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SXSW 2017: Lauren Wolkstein and Christopher Radcliff on The Strange Ones
Expanded from their 2011 short, Lauren Wolkstein and Christopher Radcliff’s The Strange Ones starts with a house fire. A young boy (James Freedson-Jackson) stands paralyzed in front of it, and next we see him on the road with someone (claiming to be?) his older brother (Alex Pettyfer). Over the course of a long, strange road trip, we slowly put together some (but definitely not all) the pieces of a story of sexual assault and two people on the run from the law. Motels, diners and farms are among the upstate New York locations. The impressively assured, enticingly semi-enigmatic film had its premiere Saturday morning […]
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True/False 2017 Critic’s Notebook 1: Resistance and Futility
This was my eighth (!) year attending the True/False Film Fest, and the first during which I wasn’t in a continuously 100% optimal mood — not the festival’s fault, attributable instead to the foul ambient fug emanating from the White House. I’ve written about my skepticism/aversion towards the “now more than ever art must lead the resistance” school of thought and was in no mood for any such films; instead, I was jolted by a series of works about the frequent futility of such practices. Carmine Grimaldi and Deniz Tortum’s half-hour If Only There Were Peace is a documentary about making a narrative film, […]
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The Questions You’re Asked at Film Festivals: On the Meanings and Evasions of Movie Small Talk
Every week I send out an email editor’s letter that isn’t published here on the site. Our weekly newsletter also includes lists of movie openings, festival deadlines and other, hopefully useful, information. I often use the newsletters to riff on ideas or try out topics that might later make their way to the site or print magazine, and I always ask for feedback. A couple of weeks ago I wrote the below piece on the four questions you get asked at film festivals, and it prompted a smart reply from filmmaker and script doctor Fernanda Rossi, printed her with permission. […]
