Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Prismatic Ground Year Two: Documentary Waves
In the introduction to their co-edited collection Documentary Across Disciplines, Erika Balsom and Hila Peleg articulate contemporary documentary practice not as a category or genre, but “an attitude – a way of doing, engaging, and creating that accords primacy to the multiple and mutable realities of the world.” Emerging from the Berlin Documentary Forum, the collection embraces a vision of global documentary that spans “film, photography, contemporary art, anthropology, performance, architecture, cultural history, and theory.” If this sounds like a lot—it is, because it is. Still, rather than become amorphous in the ways terms like “glitch” or “expanded”-as-an-adjective have become, […]
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NAB Show 2022 Exhibitors Race to the Cloud
All it took was a billion dollar acquisition for the industry to take a bigger leap into the cloud. Not to say that cloud-based workflows haven’t been part of productions already, but if you wanted to stamp a singular theme on NAB Show 2022, it would be: “to the cloud we go.” Following a COVID-19-induced two-year hiatus, NAB 2022 returned as an in-person event. Show producers announced 52,468 attendees took part in the multi-day tradeshow, roughly half the number of the last three pre-pandemic editions: 91,460 (2019), 92,912 (2018) and 103,443 (2017). While the “natural buzz” of the show floor […]
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“I Want to Make Big, Unforgettable, Life-Changing Works”: Martine Syms on Her New Directors/New Films Closing-Night Film, The African Desperate
The 2022 edition of New Directors/New Films — the annual showcase of emerging filmmakers co-presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art — concludes this weekend with three screenings of its closing-night film, Martine Syms’ The African Desperate. Syms is an art-world luminary whose work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim, LACMA, MoMA, and the Tate, among others, and her extraordinarily varied and prolific output includes video art, installations, essays and manifestos, and a publishing press. Much of her oeuvre reflects a deep engagement with the moving image, from her […]
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“People Are Not ‘the Trauma They’ve Experienced'”: Trauma-Informed Storytelling at CPH:CONFERENCE 2022
For a film journo who closely followed last year’s he said (filmmakers)/she said (ISIS “sex slave” subjects) controversy that entangled Hogir Hirori’s Sundance-premiering (followed by film-festival-shunned) Sabaya, the recent CPH:DOX panel “Beyond Courage: Trauma-Informed Storytelling” was simply a must-see. The discussion, expertly moderated by Gavin Rees, Executive Director of Dart Center Europe (a satellite of Columbia Journalism School’s Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma), was part of the “Claim Your Story!” program, one of three engaging afternoons under CPH:CONFERENCE’s “Business As Unusual” banner. (“Follow the Money!” and “Shaping Success.” were likewise smartly curated by The Catalysts, a multimedia agency that “turns […]
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“In-Person Only”: The 2022 New Directors/New Films Festival
After an online-only edition in 2020 and a hybrid Golden Jubilee last year, New Directors/New Films is once again “in-person only,” a phrase whose very existence reveals how thoroughly the COVID-19 pandemic has altered industry and audience expectations. If the advisability of our “return to normal” (masks are now optional at both host venues) is questionable, more laudable is the festival’s gender equity: 21 of the 39 directors whose films are included in this year’s slate are women, although the disparity between features and shorts demonstrates the political and social obstacles to feature filmmaking that women continue to face. Most […]
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Columbia’s Digital Storytelling Lab Announces its Annual Digital Dozen
Columbia’s Digital Storytelling Lab announced its “Digital Dozen” earlier this week—its annual list of the most innovative examples of digitally enabled storytelling. Unlike other awards programs, this one has no categories, so what you saw was a typically eclectic mix of XR, immersive theater and interactive installations, this time with some NFTs thrown in as well. But the Breakthroughs in Storytelling Awards, as they’re officially known, always come with a few surprises, and this year was no exception. The DSL’s top honor, the 2022 Breakthrough Award, went to “Life After BOB: The Chalice Study,” a narrative animation by the New […]
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From Analog to TikTok: Female Directors Sweep CPH:DOX 2022
In keeping with its 50/50 gender balance pledge, this year’s DOX:AWARD program—CPH:DOX’s international main competition showcasing an all-premiere lineup—featured six male- and six female-directed films from a range of countries. And, as in years past, I agreed to watch and rate them all on a scale of one (not my cup of tea) to four (brilliant!) stars for the Danish film magazine Ekko’s international film critics’ jury grid. It’s an annual duty I’ve come to grudgingly love. On the one hand, I have to watch a dozen films that weren’t necessarily on my must-see list (that I’d carefully whittled down from […]
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“You Never Know When You Will Have a Great Image”: Ryusuke Hamaguchi on the Oscar-Winning Drive My Car
Originally appearing here in July, 2021, Filmmaker‘s interview with Ryusuke Hamaguchi about Drive My Car is being reposted today alongside the film’s Best International Feature win at the 2022 Academy Awards. — Editor It might strike some as sacrilege when I say that the excitement I’ve felt around Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s run of recent work reminds me of watching (and catching up with) the films of Arnaud Desplechin in the 2000s. Drive My Car, which had its world premiere in Competition at Cannes, follows the ecstasies and agonies and everything in-between of Happy Hour, Asako I & II (worth singling out […]
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Watch Now: Short Films from the Filmfort Film Festival
Filmmaker is happy to partner with the Filmfort Film Festival, part of the Treefort Music Fest, by exclusively hosting selections from their online showcase. These films will stream exclusively here on the site through Saturday. This year five films travel from the caves of Italy to interior mindscapes to places in between. You can watch all the films embedded below, and check out the rest of the lineup at Filmfort. Cyllinder Day dir. Milly Cohen 2021, USA, 3 mins As the whole town rejoices around a maypole to celebrate the arrival of spring, this tradition holds a dark underlying secret. […]
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Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Announces its 2022 Program
Full Frame announced today the films comprising its virtual 25th Annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, which takes place April 7–10, 2022. Among the 37 films are two world premieres, one North American premiere and three U.S. films. “It is an honor to present these 37 films at our 25th annual festival,” said interim festival director and artistic director Sadie Tillery in a press release. “I am humbled by the range of experiences revealed on screen—the palpable tenderness, violence, pain, strength, vulnerability, and resolve witnessed in these works. And I am equally moved by the commitment and artistry displayed by the filmmakers, […]
