Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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“Like Reading a Diary You Wrote as a Teenager”: Britni West on Tired Moonlight
Since taking home the Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance, most reviews have charged Britni West’s naturalistic narrative Tired Moonlight with the “documentary-like” or “hybrid” stamp of approval, but more than anything else, the film seems to suggest that such classifications were meant to be broken. An interwoven portrait of the inhabitants and topography of Kalispell, Montana, West collapses the conventions of an ensemble driven film by allowing her characters to roam free, presenting a beautiful, like-minded series of vignettes that form a cohesive whole. Recently back from Austin where she presented the film at RxSM (along with 7 Chinese Brothers at SXSW, on which she […]
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Krisha, Peace Officer Top SXSW Film Festival Awards
Krisha, Trey Edward Shults’ drama of an older alcoholic woman attempting to reconcile with her family one holiday weekend, won the Narrative Feature Grand Jury Prize last night at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival. At an awards ceremony at the Paramount Theater hosted by Trainwreck co-star Vanessa Beyer, the Documentary Grand Jury Prize went to Peace Officer, Scott Christopherson and Brad Barber’s expose of militarized police. Special Jury Prizes were given to two films. Benjamin Dickinson’s dramatic feature Creative Control — a social satire set in New York’s advertising world of the near future — was cited for “Visual Excellence.” […]
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Listen: At SXSW, Jim Cummings on the Dangers of a Hollywood that Caters Exclusively to the Young Adult
Yesterday at SXSW, ornana producer Jim Cummings gave a 15 minute extrapolative talk on his Medium article, “We’re the Bad Guys.” In an impassioned plea for better popular content, Cummings explains how Hollywood has reduced their output to a derivative franchises, geared towards a young adult age bracket that are somehow consumed by mass demographics. There isn’t the symbiotic relationship between creator and audience that should, and often does, exist in independent film. His mini keynote is available online, and well worth listening to in full, but I’ve outlined a few of his points below. Traditional film advertising is obsolete, so […]
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True/False 2015: Rules of the Game, Spartacus & Cassandra and I Am The People
For once my favorite movie of True/False 2015 was an honest-to-goodness crowdpleaser, a counterintuitively funny film on a grim topic. Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard had the earned gumption to title their film Rules of the Game; in French it’s distinguished from Renoir’s film by the first word being Les rather than La, but that distinction doesn’t translate. It’s not just a cutely attention-getting appropriation: Renoir’s film anatomizes unspoken codes of conduct for French high society which, if observed, should successfully conceal hypocrisies and personal betrayals. Bories and Chagnard’s reworked title refers to clothing, eye contact, portfolio neatness and other job interview variables that — rather than work ethic and qualifications […]
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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 […]
