Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
-
Five WTF Must-Sees at the 2020 DOC NYC
Festival
If there’s one thing we can all agree on in these polarized times it’s that 2020 will inevitably go down in history as one WTF year. And since I generally tend to adore batshit insane films — and especially batshit insane cinematic nonfiction — I was pleased to discover a wealth of WTF treasure buried inside this year’s (a bit overwhelming at 108 features and 92 shorts!) virtual DOC NYC lineup, which begins today. So in honor of this global topsy-turvy moment, here’s just a handful of my favorite gems that, humbly and with little fanfare, screwed with my mind […]
-
“Women of Blumhouse: Shaping Genre Storytelling at the Iconic House of Horror” at the 2020 SCAD Savannah Film Festival
Appropriately presented the day before Halloween, the SCAD Savannah Film Festival’s “Women of Blumhouse: Shaping Genre Storytelling at the Iconic House of Horror” provided an intriguing peek inside the multifaceted production house from a female POV. Moderated by Variety’s Deputy Awards and Features Editor Jenelle Riley, the three executives Zooming in included Blumhouse Television’s head of physical production, Lisa Niedenthal; Blumhouse Productions’ executive vice president of development for feature films, Bea Sequeira; and Blumhouse Productions’ head of casting, Terri Taylor. There’s “so much emerging talent in this genre,” Niedenthal enthused when asked about working in today’s scary movie world. Though Niedenthal […]
-
Three Insights into America’s Predicament at the recent New York Film Festival: MLK/FBI, City Hall, Nomadland
The New York Film Festival concluded several weeks ago; the much-anticipated Presidential debates came and went. Today we face the outcome of an existential election, and I find myself still thinking about three exceptional films at NYFF 58, two documentaries and one drama, that throw certain features of our national political crisis into sharp relief, intentionally or not, as only great films can do. The documentary MLK/FBI, from accomplished director/producer/editor Sam Pollard, revisits the final decade in the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., ending with his assassination in 1968, a period during which our tax dollars underwrote […]
-
Wonder Women: Below the Line at the 2020 SCAD Savannah Film Festival
While laudable causes to achieve gender parity in the film industry have been all the rage for a number of years (remember the mad rush of fests signing on to – and then publicizing their signing on to – the 5050×2020 pledge?), too often the result seems to be simply seating a woman in the director’s chair and forgetting about the rest of the table. Which is why the SCAD Savannah Film Festival’s Wonder Women: Below the Line panel (which, like everything else these days, took place via Zoom at the all-digital fest) struck me as so important. How could […]
-
Wonder Women: Producers Zoom In at the 2020 SCAD Savannah Film Festival
Moderated by Megan Lombardo, a professor in the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Film & Television department, this year’s Wonder Women: Producers panel was an all-Zoom affair. And taking to the computer screen were six diverse (albeit all white) women with a variety of career stories to tell. There was Jayme Lemons, whose Dawn Porter-directed doc The Way I See It had played the virtual fest earlier in the day, and who runs Jaywalker Pictures (with another wonder woman Laura Dern). Also Julie Christeas, founder and CEO of Tandem Pictures, who most recently produced Lawrence Michael Levine’s Black Bear; […]
-
Drive-Ins, Sawed-Off Campers and Virtual Premieres: The 2020 Camden International Film Festival
Eight months since the pandemic forced (most) film festivals to pivot to video – striving, with varying success, to replicate their in-the-flesh experience via various digital platforms – some surprisingly viable models are coming to a laptop near you. One of them is the Camden International Film Festival, which engineered its annual autumn camp for non-fiction filmmakers, fans, industry and its coastal Maine community Oct. 1-12 by mixing an extensive online operation with a nightly drive-in, each matching the festival’s signature creative flair to the unique necessities of presenting a ton of films and workshops amid a global health crisis. […]
-
A Long Road for Women Directors in South Korea: NYAFF’s Female-led Korean Films and the Ongoing Struggle for Gender Equality
The 19th edition of New York Asian Film Festival spotlighted films with women both in front of and behind the camera, emphasizing a specific focus on women filmmakers across the region. And while it was exciting to see women directors and stories highlighted in a festival lineup, these examples were exceptions to the rule. Among NYAFF’s slate of over 50 films and television episodes, only ten were directed by women. Men are overrepresented in film industries globally, especially in Asia where patriarchal values are so deeply entrenched in culture and society. Among the ten female directors represented in NYAFF’s lineup, […]
-
Nomadland, Beginning and Slow Machine: The 2020 New York Film Festival
A glance back at the economic suffering of the post-crash Obama era that feels barely a day removed from the nation’s present multitude of crises, Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland is much more existential road movie than social tract. While it communicates something newsy about the pitiful state of things for the American worker, the story tracks an introspective quest, dramatized against the splendiferous, wide-open horizons of the American West. The odyssey of a Nevada woman who loses her home and takes to the road after the closing of her town’s gypsum mine, the film fits loosely into a body of work […]
-
“No Talking Heads on Camera”: Sam Pollard on MLK/FBI
In 1963, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover began wiretapping Martin Luther King, Jr. with the goal of undermining his authority as a civil rights leader. Utilizing a wealth of newly discovered and declassified files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as newly restored footage from the period, MLK/FBI delves into the Bureau’s deeply questionable methods and motives for surveillance, while painting a portrait of King that does not shy away from uncomfortable truths. Directed by Sam Pollard, best known as Spike Lee’s editor on films like Clockers and Bamboozled, MLK/FBI builds upon a lifetime of work […]
-
“I Have Not Seen My Film with Anyone Other than Two People”: Dea Kulumbegashvili on Beginning
Dea Kulumbegashvili should have had the year of her life. At any other moment, the Tbilisi-based writer/director would have already travelled to Cannes, Toronto and San Sebastián to screen her new film for festival audiences. A remarkable accomplishment for anyone, let alone a young director with a first feature, the success of Beginning has instead been a strange, bittersweet ride. In the absence of sold-out screenings and sponsored afterparties, the festival experience in 2020 has given way to far less glamorous rituals: Zoom Q&As, geo-locked streaming links and the solitary act of viewing from home. For Kulumbegashvili, 34, the process […]
