Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Rethinking Middle Eastern Film: The Inaugural Qumra Meetup
“This is a first rough cut,” said Qumra Artistic Adviser Elia Suleiman. In his witty, prize-winning comedies about the Palestinian question, the director casts himself as a character unable to use his voice, but he proved adroit in the vocal position of film event organizer. He’s worked on the Qumra concept for two years, but last year the event was abandoned when it was deemed not ready. On the fourth day of this inaugural edition, which ran March 6 – 11, he chatted away contentedly — because if this is the rough version, it’s one that might end up being a Picasso. Qumra is an industry […]
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“We Live in an Attention Economy”: Eugene Kotlyarenko on A Wonderful Cloud
Within two minutes of talking to Eugene Kotlyarenko, separated in physical distance by about a mile, yet connected by phone via his marketing company’s office thousands of miles away in New York, we are discussing near-fatal car crashes and how a life-threatening experience can make a few seconds can feel like an eternity. Kotlyarenko was shooting an Interpol music video recently (he starred as the “sleazy guy” in a behind-the-scenes of a porn shoot). On the way home, his car spun out on a cloverleaf freeway entrance. “I literally felt like I was stuck in a time vortex,” he says. […]
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Five Questions with 7 Chinese Brothers Director Bob Byington
7 Chinese Brothers, Bob Byington’s latest, takes its title cue from an REM song, so the familial rapports on display might not be exactly what you suspect. Jason Schwartzman stars as Larry, a boozed-up, bedraggled sad sack, who punctuates his big gulp binges with extended visits to his grandmother (Olympia Dukakis) and her supervisor (Tunde Adebimpe) in a nearby nursing home. Things start to look up when he takes a gig at the local Quick-Lube, where he develops an instant crush on his boss, Lupe (Eleanore Pienta), even if her interests plainly lie elsewhere. Filmmaker spoke to Byington about his satirical treatment of […]
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True/False 2015 Shorts: Former Models, The Woolworths Choir of 1979, My Gal, Rosemarie and Abandoned Goods
Outside the avant-garde world, shorts are rarely granted extended critical writing — it’s hard to justify the expense of covering these hardest-to-see of items, confined as they often are to festivals and specialized screenings, so it’s up to salaried editors like me to step up when possible. (Making this my first piece about True/False 2015 may be straining to make the point, but I can live with that.) Case in point: Benjamin Pearson’s Former Models has been in circuation since 2012, but written information besides the broad outline is hard to find. In part, that’s due to the short’s sheer density: […]
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15 Picks for the 2015 SXSW Film Festival and Conference
The SXSW Music, Film and Interactive Festivals and Conferences haven’t even begun yet, and there’s already been one corporate contretemps (sponsor McDonald’s attempt to get bands to play for free), and the app of the festival has already been decided upon (it’s Meerkat, if the wi-fi in the Austin Convention Center holds up). As always, though, the films are mysteries. On paper the ’15 lineup looks like a good one, with several high-profile titles I’m really looking forward to, some first-time features that seem like real discoveries, and a number of returning veterans with films that seem very promising. I […]
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Not a Deleuze Lecture, but What? Thom Andersen’s The Thoughts That Once We Had
I’ve heard many mistake the voiceover in Los Angeles Plays Itself as belonging to its writer-director Thom Andersen when it’s actually Encke King. A fair assumption — King speaks in a first person voiceover in a rather curmudgeonly monotone, fitting for the film’s occasionally cantankerous examination of the relationship between the physical spaces of Los Angeles and the way Hollywood films have portrayed them. The real Andersen is a more elusive character. His voice is more casual but less direct, his articulated knowledge of his own projects is tempered, bouncing around a given topic than directly addressing it. He pauses […]
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Five Views of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2015
On the basis of the five films I sampled in the 20th edition of Lincoln Center’s annual “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema” series, I’m not inclined to make any diagnoses of either the state of French cinema or even this year’s edition. All five were worth seeing but only one skirted essential status, so let’s start there. Inelegantly labeled 40-Love in English (the French title, Terre batue, translates as “clay court”), Stéphane Demoustier’s first feature grows logically from his documentary short Fille du calvaire, a look at the long and difficult path awaiting young men training to be tennis pros. 40-Love initially appears to […]
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Tribeca Film Festival Announces 2015 Spotlight and Midnight Sections
Rounding out this week’s program announcement for the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival are the Spotlight and Midnight Sections, along with a handful of Special Screenings and Works-in-Progress. The Spotlight selection includes several world premieres, such as Tim Blake Nelson’s Anesthesia; Thought Crimes, directed by Erin Lee Carr, daughter of the late, great David; David Gelb’s A Faster Horse; as well as Sundance banner titles Sleeping With Other People, Cartel Land, The Overnight, Slow West, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, and more. The festival is also presenting a Special Screenings section, full of “eventized” affairs, like the world premiere of Mary J. Blige – The London Sessions, followed by […]
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Previewing the 2015 True/False Film Festival
I’m an unabashed partisan for the True/False Film Festival (this will be my sixth consecutive year attending), which kicks off tomorrow and runs through Sunday. There are 37 features in this year’s line-up, plus four shorts programs, the first five episodes of Andrew Jarecki’s HBO mini-series The Jinx, and another five “secret screenings” — films identified in the program only by color, shown here prior to their official world premieres elsewhere. This is also the third year of the Neither/Nor sidebar, and this year’s edition is especially ambitious, a plunge into the largely underknown world of Polish documentary, complete with […]
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Tribeca Film Festival Announces 2015 World Narrative, Documentary Competition and Viewpoints Selections
The Tribeca Film Festival today announced the first half of its 2015 slate — 51 of the 97 films, including both its World Narrative and Documentary competitions. Nearly one quarter of this year’s festival directors are women, including quite a few directors with titles anticipated by Filmmaker readers. These include cinematographer Reed Morano’s directorial debut, Meadowland; Pamela Romanowsky’s adaptation of Stephen Elliot’s true-crime memoir, The Adderall Diaries; Rikki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s latest, In My Father’s House; Vanessa Hope’s look at China’s role on the world stage through the story of former Utah governor Jon Huntsman and his adopted daughter, […]
