Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Adam Rifkin on Giuseppe Makes A Movie
With the maniacal film geek erudition of Quentin Tarantino and the madcap family values sensibility of John Waters, Giuseppe Andrews has made 30 independent features that you’ve most likely never heard of. And he probably couldn’t care less about that. A veteran of both Hollywood and indie film, Adam Rifkin, on the other hand, is a name familiar to any fan of the 1999 cult comedy Detroit Rock City, which Rifkin directed, and which starred Andrews alongside Edward Furlong. Now Rifkin and Andrews have teamed up again as Rifkin follows the director in his quest to shoot in two days […]
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Looking Both Ways: Tales of Future Past at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2014
Talent, money, and press descended on the otherwise quiet northern English city of Sheffield last week for the 21st edition of Doc/Fest — officially named the Sheffield Documentary and Digital Media Festival. With its mix of screenings, live events, music, and genuinely fantastic parties, this five-day celebration earns its reputation as the Glastonbury of documentary festivals (albeit without the mud). The analogy is encouraged by the seemingly endless days (the sun doesn’t set until 11pm), as well as some remarkable outdoor venues. These include a giant cave affectionately known as the Devil’s Arse, where I caught an evening screening of […]
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MoMA Björk Retro in 2015 to Feature Installation Directed by 25 New Faces Alum
A new press release from MoMA announces that the museum will be the sole host of a Björk retrospective from March 7 to June 7. From the press release: The installation will present a narrative, both biographical and imaginatively fictitious, cowritten by Björk and the acclaimed Icelandic writer Sjón Sigurdsson. Björk’s collaborations with video directors, photographers, fashion designers, and artists will be featured, and the exhibition culminates with a newly commissioned, immersive music and film experience conceived and realized with director Andrew Huang and 3-D design leader Autodesk. Andrew Thomas Huang, who directed Björk’s “Mutual Core” video, was one of […]
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Hive Minds and Solitary Settings: BAMcinemaFest’s Sixth Edition
A carefully curated round-up of the festival circuit’s notable American titles, BAMcinemaFest begins its sixth edition today with the New York premiere of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. Though the program is designed to favor nascent talent — Spike Lee, Les Blank and other repertory screenings aside — it’s hard to think of a more exemplary opener than this American independent masterwork. As a narrative experiment, Boyhood is every bit as unparalleled as you’ve heard, elevating its seemingly generic arc with moments of searing veracity. Given the holistic scope, I would wager that any viewer is bound to encounter a mirror image demanding of introspection and a helping side of tears. Not all of the festival’s inclusions scrape […]
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Six Filmmaker Picks for the 2014 Northside Film Festival
The Williamsburg-based Northside Film Festival is in swing this week with its typically eclectic mixture of pictures curated by various local film partners (including IFP, Filmmaker‘s publisher) as well as, for the DIY Competition, their in-house team. Below are seven picks for those on the L train this week. More details on these screenings can be found at the Northside site here. i hate myself :). Any cultural critic namechecking Lana, Lena and Leslie (Jamison) while untangling the limits of autobiography, masochistic self-portrayal and the representation of female sexuality in the pornified internet age should reserve a paragraph or two […]
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Cutting Sports and Spielberg: The “Sight, Sound & Story” Editing Workshop
A not very wise man once reflected that the strongest examples of film editing are the sequences where you don’t notice it. Day-long seminars such as “Sight, Sound & Story,” which took place last Saturday at the Florence Gould Hall in Manhattan, seek to pull back the curtain on the constantly evolving digital tools and techniques in need of demystification. Structured around a series of topical, industry-specific interests, the panels I attended approached the craft (and the difficulties of perfecting it) from a myriad of vantage points, none the least being narrative structure, the identification of theme and post-production sound […]
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Tales from the Emerald City: The 40th Seattle International Film Festival
At film festivals worth their metaphorical salt (or just the free labor the volunteers put into them), there is too much to see, too much to do. Your existential clock gets real prominent: time is going to run out and you’ll inevitably have missed most of the fun. You try to make four screenings a day but make three if you’re lucky and two if you’re acting like a relatively normal human, one who tries to consume food at a pace that doesn’t upset the stomach. That 10 am panel sounds real promising until you get wasted the night before […]
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Cannes 2014: 5 Questions for Wild Tales Director Damián Szifrón
Argentine director Damián Szifrón’s Wild Tales opens with the ultimate revenge fantasy, one that unfolds into a firestorm before the credits finish. The film’s six stories get only more wicked, quickly descending into the depths of the human psyche on the verge of imploding. There is truly never a dull moment, a rarity for the Cannes lineup. A waitress gets help paying back the loan shark who drove her father to suicide. A quick road rage incident unfolds into a searing tale that will warn anyone against yelling at another driver. An explosives engineer fires back against his city’s criminal […]
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Letter to the Editor: A Response from the Richmond International Film Festival
“Kentucker Audley, the Richmond International Film Festival and A Checklist for Avoiding Bad Publicity,” by Lauren Wissot, an article based around contributing editor Wissot’s trip to the Richmond International Film Festival, drew the following response from Heather Waters, the festival’s founder and producer. Aside from editing out email signatures and footers, we are reprinting it in full. Dear Scott, When Lauren Wissot contacted us about covering the Richmond International Film Festival (RIFF) for your magazine, we were excited about the national press (“Kentucker Audley, the Richmond International Film Festival and A Checklist for Avoiding Bad Publicity,” published May 7). However, […]
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Old and New: The 60th Oberhausen International Short Film Festival
Nestled in the industrial Ruhr region and dubbed “Germany’s Detroit” due to its distinction as the most debt-ridden city in the country, Oberhausen may not immediately sound like a great place to host an international film festival. Nevertheless, believe it or not, the 2014 Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen marked the festival’s 60th iteration. This year, Oberhausen featured 61 films from 35 countries in the International Competition, 21 films in the German competition, 12 video production in the North-Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) competition, a themed program curated by Mika Taanila (discussed at length later), four profiled filmmakers receiving one to three individual programs each, […]
