Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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NYFF ’15: Right Now, Wrong Then and Maggie’s Plan
About three-quarters of the way into Hong Sang-soo’s deja vu diptych Right Now, Wrong Then, the camera zooms in on a pair of women alternately shielding their eyes and ogling a drunken man as he strips before their dinner table. It’s a classic instance of attraction/repulsion, a train wreck one can’t quite turn away from despite knowing exactly where it’s headed. The same could be said for Hong’s latest outing, which is certainly no train wreck, but nevertheless employs a structure that redoubles the film’s first hour from a slightly skewed angle, pushing the reinvention conceit of In Another Country into subtler, more challenging territory, which ultimately begets two variations […]
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“We Basically Had Pianos Falling the Whole Time”: The Creative Team of MA at the Venice International Film Festival
With Celia Rowlson-Hall’s bold and original MA opening today in New York at the IFC Center, with wider digital distribution next month, we’re reposting Taylor Hess’s interview with the writer/director/star and her collaborators out of Venice. Check the IFC site for screenings and Q&A moderators, who include, tonight at 8:30 PM, Lena Dunham. Barefoot on a sandy shore of the Mediterranean coast, I’m only mildly bothered by the luxury cruise ships obstructing the horizon. It’s an otherwise picturesque pre-dusk afternoon in Venice, and I’m focused mostly on keeping up with Celia Rowlson-Hall, who sets an intimidating pace as we walk […]
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Professional Development, Pleasures and Promiscuity at IFP Film Week: A Filmmaker Post-Mortem
IFP Film Week 2015 has come to an end, and while the Filmmaker Conference, with its front-facing elements — all the panels, events and screenings — may have dominated ours and others’ home pages, the real action, arguably, was behind-the-scenes, at the Project Forum. That’s where filmmakers hustling the projects of tomorrow all convened, looking for the support that will enable them to bring their vision to screens in the years ahead. To call it a wrap on Film Week, we asked a number of directors, writers and producers attending the Project Forum to sum up their experience and, if they’ve […]
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NYFF ’15: Laura Poitras, AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook Talk Field of Vision
Ahead of the official launch of Field of Vision at 1 pm today, co-creators Laura Poitras, AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook gave an NYFF free talk last night on the brand new documentary unit of The Intercept. The trio spoke at length about their aims within the realm of episodic and short form nonfiction, and how the filmmaker-driven platform will function at the nexus of journalism and documentary. Below are a few highlights. Poitras was inspired to create Field of Vision after working with both The New York Times and Julian Assange. While working on the feature films that constitute her post-9/11 trilogy, Poitras […]
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TIFF 2015 Critic’s Notebook #5: An Old Dog’s Diary, Cemetery of Splendour and Chevalier
Ghostly echoes fill An Old Dog’s Diary (2015), a highlight of the Wavelengths experimental short programs at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. This impressionistic, documentary portrait takes as its subject F. N. Souza (1924-2002), a man anointed by The Guardian “India’s most important and most famous modern artist.” Made by Shumona Goel and Shai Heredia, each an accomplished artist in her own right (Heredia is also the founder of Experimenta, a leading Indian experimental film society), the evocative 11-minute film takes a sidelong approach to cinematic portraiture. Textural glimpses of Goa, Souza’s birthplace, are casually depicted on black-and-white Super 8 and 16mm film: the shimmer of the water in a verdant bayou; […]
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NYFF Critics’ Notebook: Carol and The Assassin
At no point in Todd Haynes’ Carol is the word “lesbian” heard — nor “homosexual,” the now-arcane “homophile” or any other period-appropriate descriptor of the LGBTQ spectrum. This is the love that literally dare not speak its name, a conspicuous absence viewers will automatically fill in (especially after seeing dozens of headlines and articles bluntly/reductively identifing the film as a “lesbian drama”). Depending on your POV, this resistance to labeling is either an accurate depiction of period repression, or oddly up-to-the-minute given increased aversion to categorical sexual labels and regular terminological resets. As in Safe, Far From Heaven and Mildred Pierce, […]
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In the Pope’s Shadow: Michael Curtis Johnson at IFP Film Week
[Editor’s note: this is Michael Curtis Johnson’s second guest post from IFP Independent Film Week. His first can be found here.] Sunset. Jamaica, Queens. The final day of IFP Film Week 2015. I’m spending my last night in a hotel watching Pope Francis’ Mass at Madison Square Garden on TV. The plan is to eat one last slice of New York Pizza from Margherita, get on a redeye and “go in peace.” “Thanks be to God!” Cue the recessional hymn. But let me take it back to the Introductory Rites. My trip started with the marketing portion of the the […]
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Festen: The New York Film Festival 2015
For the first time in recent memory, it’s extremely difficult to select the top of the crop at this 53rd edition of the New York Film Festival (September 26-October 11), a question of too many contenders. I am not taking into consideration the tentpole films that anchor the festival, or any big studio movies, like Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies. That’s another kettle of fish. Down below I list what I consider the crème de la crème (appropriate phrase, considering the usual Gallic slant) and review those titles briefly. Since they will all have commercial runs, I’ll be reviewing at length […]
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Distributors, End the 20-Year License Term! Producer Mike Ryan Talking TV vs. Film and More at IFP Screen Forward
Earlier this summer, veteran producer Mike Ryan — an Independent Spirit “Producer of the Year” nominee as well as one of Variety’s “10 Producers to Watch” in 2007 — sparked a conversation with his Filmmaker article, “TV is Not the New Film.” Acknowledging the declining role of cinema in the broader culture amidst the rise of episodic television, Ryan spent the bulk of the piece detailing strengths of the film medium that are specific to its form. He called on filmmakers to embrace these formal qualities or else just go make TV instead. Ryan’s declarations sparked passionate agreement from cinephiles […]
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“Pitching Is Just An Extension of Your Best Self”: Reinaldo Marcus Green at IFP Independent Film Week
[This is Reinaldo Marcus Green’s second guest post from IFP Independent Film Week; his first one can be found here.] It’s a wrap on IFP Film Week! Having the Pope in New York City this week certainly added some delays to my daily commute, but I think somehow it also added hope to my meetings. If you saw a Black and Puerto Rican man in a suit and tie running in front of the Vivian Beaumont theater (across from the Henry Moore sculpture pond in Lincoln Center) every single day last week, it was probably me. I want to take […]
