Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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New Directors/New Films 2021: Short Vacation, Wood and Water, Azor, Moon, 66 Questions and Madalena
Kwol Min-pyo and Seo Han-sol’s Short Vacation is a graduate thesis film, a side benefit of which is not needing two opening minutes for production company logos but instead being able to jump right into a trim, conflict-free 79 minutes. Four South Korean middle school girls—three long-time friends, the fourth a new-in-town addition to their group—take a long train trip to photograph the rural end of the railroad line. Their photography club teacher has handed out disposable 35mm cameras with the summer vacation assignment to photograph “the end of the world,” however they’d like to interpret that. Taking the train a few […]
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Nomadland, Promising Young Woman, I May Destroy You Win Multiple 2021 Film Independent Spirit Awards
The Film Independent Spirit Awards were held last night — virtually, as opposed to at its customary Santa Monica beach location — and Nomadland was the big multiple winner, scoring wins for Best Feature, Director, Editing, and Cinematography. Other multiple winners included Promising Young Woman, Sound of Metal and, in the new television categories, I May Destroy You and Unorthodox. The complete list of winners follows as well as Melissa Villaseñor’s opening monologue. BEST FEATURE – Nomandland (PRODUCERS: Mollye Asher, Dan Javey, Frances McDormand, Peter Spears, Chloé Zhao) BEST DIRECTOR – Chloé Zhao, Nomadland BEST FEMALE LEAD – Carey Mulligan, […]
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CPH:DOX 2021: Live and Inter:Active
After a full year of attending virtual fests – CPH:DOX 2020 marked the start – I can honestly say that the most exciting and unexpected upside has been the democratization of the film festival experience. A surprising number of fests have not only thrown open the gates of exclusivity, allowing non-jet-setting cinephiles to stream films at a reasonable cost from home, but also gone out of their way to make select portions of their programs free to the general public. And though it’s long been at the forefront of accessibility, the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (which takes place in a […]
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Live from CPH:DOX 2021: What to Attend Virtually (And for Free!)
“Reset!,” the theme of this year’s CPH:DOX, signals a focus “on a number of the most significant structural crises the world is facing today, but also on opportunities that arise and new solutions that present themselves.” This according to a recent press release quoting CPH:DOX CEO Tine Fischer, who will soon be leaving the festival she founded all the way back in 2003 to become the new director of the National Film School of Denmark. To say that Fischer is going out on a high – and highly ambitious – note is an understatement. Having ushered the 2020 edition seamlessly […]
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True/False Film Fest Announces 2021 Lineup
True/False Film Fest has announced its 2021 lineup. On the programming side, this year’s edition is notable for the return of festival co-founder David Wilson in an interim director position, as well as the addition of new programmer Angela Catalano, joining returning programmer Amir George. The festival will take place in two different parts from May 5 to 9. For those in Columbia, Missouri, all the features listed below will be screening outside, in four outdoor amphitheaters well as at a drive-in; those who sign up for the festival’s new, virtual “Teleported” option have access to seven features, designated with […]
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SXSW Critic’s Notebook: The Feast, Gaia, The Spine of Night, Swan Song
William Burroughs’ explained the title of his 1959 masterpiece Naked Lunch as “a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.” Director Lee Haven Jones appears to share the Beat novelist’s intention in his feature film debut (after a decade of UK television), The Feast. The Welsh-language shocker serves up a stomach-churning bounty of visceral delights and/or dread in its deliberate 90 minutes, as it builds to a jaw-dropping third act – steadily foreshadowed throughout the preceding course (er, courses) of events. Yet another entry in the resurgence of the folk horror genre, the film […]
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“The Only Similarity Between My Film and Brecht’s Play Lies in the Title”: Sabrina Zhao on The Good Woman of Sichuan
“This is neither an adaptation nor a work of fiction,” an intertitle informs the viewers after five minutes of uninterrupted observation of the rural landscape through the window of a passing train. “Only the quoted lines from The Good Person of Szechwan are supposed to be fictitious.” Sabrina Zhao’s directorial debut The Good Woman of Sichuan is upfront when it comes to disclosing its hybrid nature—between documentary and fiction, the film borrows the little plot there is from Bertolt Brecht’s play The Good Person of Szechwan. Or does it really? After the first disorienting encounter with the film’s seemingly disjointed […]
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SXSW Critic’s Notebook: Poly Styrene: I am a Cliché, Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes, Disintegration Loops, J’ai Été Au Bal
I’ll never forget the first time I heard Poly Styrene. I was in college, hanging out at a buddy’s one evening. We were drinking beer, smoking pot and playing records. One of them was something new, a document of the current London punk-rock scene: Live at the Roxy London WC2, featuring now-legendary acts like Wire and the Buzzcocks. The songs were by turns arty or aggro, surging out of a mix that felt submerged in an ambient murk. And then this teenager’s voice cut through. Over the curdled notes of Lora Logic’s saxophone, drums clamor and the song explodes. “Bind […]
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What to Stream at Doc Fortnight 2021 (The 20th Anniversary Edition)
Having rolled out its inaugural edition in the wake of 9/11, Doc Fortnight will now be celebrating its 20th anniversary virtually (from March 18-April 5), the result of another world-upending tragedy (politically and personally dissected in Nanfu Wang’s compelling, opening night feature In the Same Breath). And yet the full-steam-ahead spirit of MoMA’s Festival of International Nonfiction Film and Media remains. The 2021 lineup, both eclectic and ambitious, spotlights 18 features and four shorts – another 10 films screen in the “Non/Fiction 20 Years of Doc Fortnight” sidebar – alongside a revival of Moroccan director Mostafa Derkaoui’s banned/lost/found doc-fiction from […]
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13 Features to Look Forward to at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival
SXSW boasts the unenviable distinction of being the first major festival on the ’21 calendar to have its typical live edition disrupted for the second time by the COVID-19 pandemic. Last year the teeming Austin event, which encompasses not just film but music and interactive, was cancelled by the City of Austin as the pandemic spread. “The cancellation itself, it felt like a tsunami,” SXSW Film Festival Director Janet Pierson told The Texas Standard. “Waves coming at you, the ground underneath you. I mean, it was just so intense and the repercussions were so devastating for so many people and […]
