Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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FOUR TRIBECA DOCS: FROM ZEN TO MADNESS TO SEXY
At 85, Tony Bennett looks and sounds great. In The Zen of Bennett, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and will soon appear on Netflix, Bennett relies on a single word, repeated over and over throughout the documentary, to describe his life philosophy. That word is “quality.” For the clothes he wears, for the songs he sings, for the people who are his friends, for everything, quality is his guiding principle. Conversely, the elderly singer with the smoothest pipes in the business, disparages cheap songs, crude and outlandish behavior, and anger. “Everything you do should be done with love, […]
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TRIBECA CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK #1: I WROTE THIS SONG FOR YOU, INDIEWOOD
How to take stock of the Tribeca Film Festival? 9/11 was a long time ago, after all. Bin Laden is dead. Rebuild the neighborhood, De Niro said. Bring back economic activity and all that. Perhaps the machinations of the real estate market took care of it. A classy sandwich down here costs $16. Not like I buy any food during the festival in Tribeca; it’s all free. Go to the Apple Store (in SoHo, but close enough) and have some wine. The 92YTribeca had bite-sized bacon cheeseburgers during GE’s-sponsored Film Forward shorts program yesterday. And if I actually want to […]
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TRUTH AND DOCS AT TRIBECA
Truth-Telling from Mississippi to Israel to China to Texas Yes, truth is the essence of documentaries. But whose truth? What truth? In dangerous times, truth is elusive. When pain lingers, truth digs deeper into the obscure. Regardless, sometimes truth must come out. Sometimes there is no choice. Sometimes even fear is no match for truth — such as in Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story. In 1965, filmmaker Raymond DeFelitta traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi to shoot a documentary for NBC News on racial tensions in the South. DeFelitta initially planned to capture the conflict from the perspective of Southern whites, yet […]
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THE SONOMA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Once-in-a-lifetime experiences abounded at this year’s Sonoma International Film Festival, a boutique event in the heart of northern California’s wine country – complete with complementary wine and cheese before every screening (and a trailer featuring an animated, tap-dancing wine bottle named Tipsy whose tagline read, “Is everything out of focus, or is it just me?”). Held early April, a week apart and an hour’s drive – yet a world away – from that longest running festival in the U.S., SIFF serves as a worthy reminder that attending non-market-driven fests not only allows one the opportunity to discover overlooked diamonds amongst […]
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THE BERMUDA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
“Location, location, location” could very well serve as the tagline for the Bermuda International Film Festival. Set on a paradise island surrounded by spectacular pink sand and Technicolor-blue waters in the North Atlantic, it’s only a couple hours’ plane trip from NYC (or less if you can hitch a ride with the private-jetting Mayor Mike). This gracious and warmly welcoming fest – a reflection of the country’s unbelievably gregarious and helpful population (pull out a map and you’re just as likely to have a total stranger walk you to your destination as point the way) – is now in its […]
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Lady Vengeance: A Genre Fan’s Guide to 2012 New Directors/New Films
New Directors/New Films is known for bringing some of the freshest, boldest films to light, and not necessarily just for New York audiences. Arthouse theaters around the country often make selections from this well-regarded festival’s programming. The relatively high-brow co-presentation of the The Museum of Modern Art and the The Film Society of Lincoln Center is not, however, generally considered a place to discover new genre film, despite its reputation for supporting ballsy young upstarts. Yet perhaps the increasing cultural and cinematic significance of sufficiently well-made genre films is now keeping them from being overlooked by the festival that saves […]
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A MAKER’S DOZEN: NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS
Don’t be fooled: Paranoia, alienation, and irrepressible ghosts of the past are some of the common threads among the features in the 41st edition of New Directors/New Films. No one could mistake it for a series of frothy comedies or unchallenging genre fare: feel-good is hardly an operative term. What is unmistakable is that, to my mind, it remains the finest, most original film festival in New York. These mostly first and second films from around the world are edgy but accessible, fresh but polished. A combination of fiction, docs, and animation, they are not intended to soothe but rather […]
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SXSW: Tchoupitoulas vs. Beasts, Battle for the Innocents
Bill and Turner Ross’ new documentary Tchoupitoulas premiered in Emerging Visions this year at SXSW. The film was eagerly anticipated by fans of their debut feature, 45365, the Documentary Jury Prize winner a few years ago. Three young brothers in Louisiana take a ferry into New Orleans, observe and engage in everything from transvestite clubs to street musicians Mardi Gras floats to an abandoned ship yard on the outskirts of town. Pretty soon the youngest brother, William, a sensitive kid who plays the recorder at school, starts to get tired. “I’m just a child,” he insists, to the jeers of his brothers, who want to stay up […]
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Ten Tips on Shooting Low-Budget Movies from SXSW
At SXSW a panel titled “The Great Cinematography Shootout” gathered a group of directors and cinematographers to discuss independent film lensing in an age of proliferating formats and lower-cost, high-quality cameras, like the Canon 5D. The directors of photography were Jody Lee Lipes (Girls, Tiny Furniture, and also the director of Opus Jazz), James Laxton (Medicine for Melancholy, Leave Me Like You Found Me), Clay Lifford (Gayby, and also the director of such films as Wuss and Earthling), PJ Raval (Trouble the Water, Sunset Stories, and also the director of Trinidad); and filmmaker, editor and d.p. David Lowery (Pioneer, and, […]
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TRUE/FALSE DISPATCH, PART 2
In its ninth year, the True/False Film Festival sold over 37,000 tickets. This is my third year attending, but no serious growing pains have been felt with the increasing numbers of first-time attendees: screenings start on time, it’s not overwhelmingly difficult to get into anything if you have an advance ticket, and the programming is unusually trustworthy. (If anything, True/False has a terrific track record of exhuming gems lost in the festival cycle; it’s a good doc fest-of-fests, but a great festival for discovery.) The festival encourages/lubricates sociability without distracting from daily film-watching. This year seemed special even by the […]
