Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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“… the Convergence of Many Different Narratives Clashing All at Once”: Dan Chen on his Tribeca-Debuting High School and College Admissions Doc, Accepted
Filmmaker Dan Chen planned to make an inspiring doc about a group of high-achieving students attending a most unconventional school in rural Louisiana, one that had a 100 percent college acceptance rate and sent its BIPOC kids to the likes of Harvard, Yale and Stanford. Well, so much for best laid plans. Unfortunately, right in the midst of production, the Ivy League dreams of Alicia, Adia, Isaac and Cathy, along with the rest of their classmates who were already under immense pressure from the unrelenting boot camp tactics of the school’s founder Mike Landry, morphed into a slow-motion nightmare. Even […]
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“I’m Drawn to Spaces Where the Paradoxes of Everyday Life are Made Apparent”: Jessica Kingdon on her Tribeca-Premiering Ascension
An all-female factory floor that manufactures made-to-order sex dolls (which seems every bit as titillating as crafting car parts). A workshop featuring a social media entrepreneur who rhapsodizes about the “fan economy.” (Why be a regular boss when you can be a “star boss”?) An instructor in a class on business etiquette quizzing the Stepford Wives-creepy assemblage on how many teeth should be displayed when smiling at a client. (The correct answer? The “upper eight teeth.”) A dinner conversation in which the wealthy discuss the pros and cons of vacationing in Xinjiang. These are just a few of the unnerving glimpses […]
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12 Films and VR Works to Catch at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival
Shuttered last year by the pandemic, the Tribeca Film Festival returns this year with a large program (many of last year’s selections are included) and hybrid format full of large outdoor events and stay-at-home screenings. The festival opens with the premiere of Jon M. Chu’s exuberant In The Heights, and there’s new work by Steven Soderbergh, a film about and live performance by Blondie, and talks with Amy Schumer, M. Night Shamalayan and others. But as usual, though, we’ll point you here to films by emerging makers that might have flown beneath your radar. Here are 12 picks from Vadim Rizov […]
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“Can Jupiter Use his Powers and Wisdom to… Rectify Racial Injustice and Inequality?”: Ram Devineni and Yusef Komunyakaa on their Tribeca-Premiering AR Comic Book Jupiter Invincible
Jupiter Invincible, the latest augmented reality comic book from Ram Devineni and his NY-based Rattapallax media house, marks a bit of a departure for the doc filmmaker and technologist. Best known in the AR world for his comic book series Priya’s Shakti — starring India’s first female superhero and rape survivor (and UN Women-designated “gender equality champion”) — Devineni now travels both back to these shores and back in time, all the way to pre-Civil War Maryland. And he brings along an impressive trio of collaborators. Our superhero of this tale, the titular Jupiter, is the invention of the Pulitzer […]
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Sundance Institute Documentary Fund Announces Grants for 18 Projects
The Sundance Institute today announced the latest cohort of Sundance Institute Documentary Fund Grantees. A total of $590,000 in unrestricted grant support has been provided to 18 projects in various stages including five in development, eight in production, and five in post-production. From the press release: This granting cycle’s supported projects are from 20 countries and territories across five continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America), with over half the projects having international roots. Granting focused on projects by artists from historically underrepresented communities, ensuring that these stories are being told from within the communities. This year all […]
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“Our Crew was Three People”: Slow Machine’s Paul Felten, Joe DeNardo and Stephanie Hayes on Their Rivette-Inspired Punk Thriller
Originally published out of Rotterdam 2020, this interview with the creators and star of Slow Machine is being republished today alongside the film’s release from Grasshopper Film. It is currently available for streaming through Metrograph. Kudos to the author of the unusually compelling copy for Slow Machine in the International Film Festival Rotterdam’s catalogue. The elephantine program, encompassing more than 500 films whose wild assortment of lengths, genres and formats defies any attempt at meaningful categorization (its four main sections this year were split into 23 subsections) is filled with gems, but offers scant assistance in discovering those not already […]
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True/False Film Fest 2021: Unboxing
The box arrived in mid-April while I wasn’t home, so my confused roommates kindly brought it in. “What is this?” one asked when we regrouped; their initial assumption, based on The Box’s shiny black and vaguely sinister appearance, was that our other roommate had ordered bulky apparel from a goth website. Friends described it, variously, as resembling a monolith and/or child’s coffin. This was the first offering from True/False Film Fest 2021’s “Teleported” incarnation, intended as not just another at-home streaming festival but an entire experience—birthed out of pandemic necessity, but hopefully joyous on its own terms. Instead of unlocking the entire […]
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“There is a Particular Way Young People from the Caribbean Diaspora Speak to Their Parents and Interact with Family…”: Mandy Marcus on Her Student Short Film Showcase Short, Cousins
A Brooklyn teen and her Guyanaese cousin, who has traveled to New York for an uncle’s funeral, spend a day together before the wake, an afternoon that arcs from a gentle hang to a more complex articulation of vulnerability and friendship. Mandy Marcus’s incredibly assured and beautifully directed short, Cousins, is confident in its clear-eyed realism. It allows its story to unfold as we observe the girls’ subtly redefine their relationship, with moods and textures shifting as the day moves from afternoon to night and the excellent soundtrack pulses with cues from Sudan Archives and Carlton and the Shoes, among […]
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“…The Character Comes Home from Work and Smokes a Bowl in the Bath”: Edward Hancox on His Student Short Film Showcase Short, Things That Happen in the Bathroom
Love, lust, heartbreak and solitude — Edward Hancox’s clever relationship drama, Things That Happen in the Bathroom mines a home’s most private space for the full spectrum of feelings that can occur there. For Jak, a lonely young queer man, the bathroom is his place for contemplation and introspection, and Hancox’s short explores the charged interactions that occur when Jak invites a new hookup into the space. True to its title, the short stays within the bathroom’s four walls, but the space itself transforms continually as the shifting sun throws different shadows through the windows and, later, when Jak outfits […]
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“I Like to Remind Myself that Creativity is Cyclical”: Molly Sorensen on Her Student Short Film Showcase Pic, Mud and Honey
The sensations of summer — the heat, the mild ennui, but also the complicated feelings when teenage friendship and romance blur during those carefree months — are beautifully captured in Temple graduate Molly Sorensen’s short film, Mud and Honey. Maeve, a bit of a loner, seems sure of her sexuality but unsure if the object of her affection, Delilah, is sincere in her reciprocation. The popular Delilah, on the other hand, enjoys her languid afternoons with Maeve but could also easily spend them with a group of local boys. The tension between the two simmers in a film in which […]
