Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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Announcing Rathaus ESCAPES, an Online Film Series, “Presented with Love” from Filmmaker
The production company Rathaus is partnering with a Filmmaker for a free three-night screening series, April 14 – 16, of its new and recent work, both features and shorts. The films include 2020 Sundance selection The Mountains are a Dream that Call to Me and 2019 BAMcinemafest title De Lo Mio. Says Rathaus producer and partner Alexandra Byer, “Our ESCAPES series comes from wanting to give people a night off to feign normalcy and just go to the movies in these weird times. Amongst all the chaos, we feel we have an opportunity to let people, even if just for […]
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THIS LONG CENTURY Screening 30 Experimental Shorts Online, April 9-30, Including Work From Carlos Reygadas, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and David Lowery
Today through April 30, the website THIS LONG CENTURY, which describes itself as “an ever-evolving collection of personal insights from artists, authors, filmmakers, musicians and cultural icons the world over,” is hosting two programs of experimental short work, with 30 shorts in total. The OUTSIDE program includes Lucile Hadžihalilović’s 2017 De Natura, Carlos Reygadas’s 2011 Este es mi Reino, and Deborah Stratman’s 1997 medium-length From Hetty to Nancy. The equally strong INSIDE program includes Jodie Mack’s 2012 Blanket Statement #1: Home is Where the Heart is, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2018 Blue, Peter Tscherkassky’s legendary 1999 Outer Space and David Lowery’s 2011 Pioneer. Streaming is free, though THIS LONG […]
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The Future of Film is Female Launches Streaming Channel
Nonprofit organization The Future of Film is Female has launched a streaming channel that will screen short and feature films by its members for free from now until April 14. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the site will release a new short film; on select Fridays, the site will stream a feature-length title. Their first week of films are (online) premieres of films by Laci Dent and Eleanor Wilson as well as what’s termed a limited run of Veronica Kedar’s Family. Included in the upcoming The Future of Film is Female calendar are films from past “25 New Faces of […]
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Going Virtual in the Pandemic Age: CPH:DOX 2020, The Digital Edition
Hard to believe just a few weeks back I was eagerly preparing for my annual pilgrimage to Copenhagen to begin the spring doc fest season. Well, we all know how that turned out. Or not. As a deadly virus forced festivals the world over to cancel, CPH:DOX, long a champion of outside-the-box filmmaking, counterintuitively decided the show must go on. Rather than cut losses and hunker down in social isolation, festival director Tine Fischer and her scrappy team did the exact opposite, reaching out online to actually expand the CPH:DOX audience on a global scale. Picking up and relocating to […]
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DAFilms, DocAlliance’s Streaming Service for Seven European Nonfiction Festivals, Launches in the US
DAFilms is a VOD platform run by the DocAlliance, which (per their press release) is “a creative partnership between seven of the major European documentary festivals.” Those seven are CPH:DOX, Doclisboa, Millennium Docs Against Gravity FF, DOK Leipzig, FIDMarseille, Ji.hlava IDFF and Visions du Réel. As of March 30, America-based streamers can start streaming for the site for $6.99/month (or $4.99/month with an annual subscription, with individual rental fees for certain titles). While the exact catalogue has yet to be determined, the plan is to showcase some of the best titles from these festivals, both old and new, with future […]
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“Avoid Time Blur”: at CPH:DOX, the Red Heaven Filmmakers on Surviving Isolation
Keeping calm and carrying on (digitally, that is) during the global pandemic, CPH:DOX fittingly launched its five-day CPH:CONFERENCE series with a program titled “Science is Culture.” The “day celebrating the value of science in society and exploring how new approaches to science storytelling can engage the audience” was moderated by Jessica Harrop, supervising producer of science-centric doc studio Sandbox Films. (And impressively so. Not only did Harrop seem to be downloading questions directly from my head, but she kept the proceedings running swiftly and smoothly, all while sheltering in place from her Brooklyn apartment no less.) While every discussion was […]
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“…An Attempt to see Anorexia From a Perspective That Goes Beyond That of the Spectacle”: Moara Passoni on Her CPH:DOX Debut Ecstasy
Premiering in the DOX:AWARD main competition at this year’s (now digital) CPH:DOX, Ecstasy (Êxtase) is the astonishing debut of Brazilian filmmaker Moara Passoni, a longtime collaborator of The Edge of Democracy Oscar nominee Petra Costa (who serves as the doc’s producer). It’s a mix of fiction and nonfiction, of historical images and staged scenes, of autobiographical diary entries obsessively developing a “geometry of hunger” even as political chaos grips ’90s Brazil (and it’s all tied together by a stunning soundtrack, including music by David Lynch and Lykke Li). It’s also a startlingly unusual coming-of-age story, one in which the director […]
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True/False Film Fest 2020: The Value of the Theatrical Experience (Coronavirus Remix)
“You guys are going to spend the next year stuck quarantined with buskers,” a friend wrote on my way to True/False, which seemed to be sliding just under the wire of possibility even before I got there–a foreboding confirmed by day two, when SXSW became the first film festival to cancel. Onscreen, every handshake and hug was charged with an unintended jolt; in the theaters, elbow bumps were exchanged, nervous jokes made and telltale pools of soapy foam collected at the bottom of bathroom sinks. On its last day, True/False added one of SXSW’s now-homeless premieres, a special by (noted […]
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CPH:DOX Goes Live (and Virtual): Online Talks and Debates
CPH:DOX, having already established itself as one of the most cutting-edge festivals on the circuit, can now take the prize for the ballsiest fest around. As a global pandemic causes cancellations and postponements from SXSW to Tribeca on these shores, the feisty Copenhagen International Documentary Festival has nevertheless refused to concede defeat. Within hours of the Danish government announcing restrictions on public gatherings, the festival made an announcement of its own. CPH:DOX 2020 would keep calm, carry on, and simply pivot to the virtual world. And as manmade “natural” disasters are primed to become the new normal, it might also […]
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An Evening of Derek Jarman, Before the Lockdown: Jeffrey Babcock on the (Temporary, We Hope) Loss of Underground Cinemas
In 2011, Lauren Wissot wrote about underground cinema curator Jeffrey Babcock, who programs films in theaters throughout Amsterdam. She forwarded me the below email, from his Jeffrey’s underground cinemas newsletter, and I think it captures beautifully the emotional tenor of the present moment as it pertains to film exhibition. With Babcock’s permission, we’re reprinting it here. — Editor Greetings everyone, I hope you are doing well, of course. This is one of the saddest announcements since I started the cinemas, because all the screenings have been cancelled by government orders. I hear people panicking, and others are suggesting good things […]
