Second #6110, 101:50 1. Jeffrey has his hands full. There is Mike (who, in one of Blue Velvet’s weird tonal shifts, has suddenly become apologetic and even Jeffrey’s ally), and there is Sandy helping the naked Dorothy into the backseat of Jeffrey’s car which will take them to Sandy’s house, where, stark naked in the living room, Dorothy will call Jeffrey “my secret lover” in front of Sandy and her mother, and where she will tell Sandy that Jeffrey “put his disease in me.” 2. The shot is so heavily coded with cinema’s past that it’s as if fragments of […]
Brutus McCracker, a Chihuahua with a camera mounted on his collar, wandered through the Silver Spring Civic Building capturing low-angle moments of the AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Film Festival. The camera is featured in Seth Keal’s short CatCam, one of 114 films from 44 countries programmed in the 10th edition of Silverdocs that concluded yesterday. The canine mascot provided a cheery reminder of the relaxed nature and intimate setting of the festival in Silver Spring, Maryland, a multicultural suburb abutting Washington, D.C. With its proximity to our nation’s capital, the festival specializes in social issue docs and attracts activists and political […]
Last week at the the Los Angeles Film Festival, our very own Lady Vengeance, Farihah Zaman, premiered her documentary short Remote Area Medical, co-directed with her husband Jeff Reichert, himself a filmmaker (Gerrymandering) and film journalist. The film — which is embedded below — was made as part of the Focus Forward series, for which 30 filmmakers have been commissioned to make three-minute documentaries. There is, however, a feature-length version of Zaman and Reichert’s film in the works, to be released in 2013; to stay updated on its progress, “like” its Facebook page and follow @RAMmovie on Twitter. In a […]
On June 21st, the Supreme Court blinked. It used a legal technicality to sidestep determining the status of two long-simmering “indecency” cases and, thus, the legal status of broadcast television and radio, the traditional mass communications media. One case involves the spoken word and was against Fox over what are known as “fleeting expletives,” words like “fuck” and “shit” uttered by Cher, Nicole Richie and Bono at the Billboard Music Awards in 2002 and 2003. The second was against ABC for showing what can be called “fleeting nudity,” the brief display of a female actress’ nude buttocks during an episode […]
Walking around the opening party you couldn’t help but hear the word “rebirth” a lot. As the most heavily pregnant person in the room, this made me jump, but I soon joined in the celebration. The 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival had just opened with William Friedkin‘s Killer Joe, and the evening was a definite success. Not everyone liked the film — there were questions about on-screen violence towards women in particular — but everyone agreed that as an opener, new festival director Chris Fujiwara had hit the right note. Smacked it right on the kisser, you might say. There […]
In a very real way, Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and the Farm Midwives presents the other side of the Pincus coin: where that film teeters near death, Sara Lamm and Mary Wigmore’s documentary focuses on birth. Gaskin, regarded as the “mother of authentic midwifery,” has been present for over 1,200 births, written four books, and lectured across the U.S. and abroad since founding the Farm Midwifery Center in Tennessee in the early ’70s—no slim resumé. Lamm and Wigmore have compiled a great deal of footage from the period – bearded men wielding guitars, fuzzy camerawork, and hippie gatherings are […]
The filmmaker and critic Dan Sallitt has created some uncompromising, beautiful films over the years; from his feature debut All The Ships At Sea to the Honeymoon, Sallitt has examined the intersection of intimacy and personal identity with thrilling results. His latest film, The Unspeakable Act, which examines the incestuous sexual desire of a young woman named Jackie (Tallie Medel), had its World Premiere at the recent Sarasota Film Festival (where I serve as Director) and will be screened at the upcoming BAMcinemaFest on Sunday, June 24th. Filmmaker: I wanted to ask you about the issue of desire. The Unspeakable […]
Keith Miller’s Welcome to Pine Hill is a totally original mixture of gritty, semi-improvised urban drama and freefloating spiritual journey. When I first saw it, I flashed back to J. Hoberman’s take on Carlos Reygadas’s Japon: “handheld Tarkovsky.” The films are very different, but I sensed a similar impulse in Miller’s story of a drug dealer (played here by a revelatory Shannon Harper) attempting to go straight while receiving catastrophic health news. The film plays tomorrow night at BAMcinemaFest. Here’s an interview I did with Miller, previously posted for the film’s Slamdance premiere.
Second #6063, 101:03 Layered with unfolding narrative information, this frame depicts the brief confrontation with Mike, who threatens to kick Jeffrey’s ass “right in front of your own stupid house.” With the vintage cars, Mike’s friends looking on, the fight over the girl, and the classical-era wide framing, this could be a scene straight of Rebel Without a Cause. Except that there, having just emerged in the background and unnoticed by everyone at this point, is the completely naked and bruised Dorothy, who appears on Jeffrey’s porch just behind Mike’s friends. In a few seconds Mike will be the first […]
In Big Easy Express, director Emmett Malloy documents a tour by three cult-favorite indie-folk bands: Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, Old Crow Medicine Show, and Mumford & Sons. But the free-wheeling travelogue that develops is equal parts itinerant jam, extended family picnic, and traveling carnival, with Malloy and his crew as the cinematic roustabouts getting it all down for posterity. The film follows the three bands from Oakland to New Orleans, giving us a glimpse not only of their concerts but of their camaraderie as they live and travel on a train together, sharing songs, time, and experiences, and […]