Back in 2009, I interviewed Nicolas Winding Refn about his movie Bronson, and in the course of our conversation he mentioned a director whose name meant very little to me: The filmmakers I would have loved to meet are more obscure, like Andy Milligan. He’s a very obscure filmmaker who made films for Times Square in the 60s and 70s. After our conversation, I went to seek out more information about Milligan and discovered that, little-known as he was, there was a book on him by the biographer Jimmy McDonough called The Ghastly One. (This book was, in fact, what […]
If a massive UFO descended upon the city you lived in, what would you do? Would you cower in fear, waiting for rescue? Or would you rally a ragtag band of resistance fighters to confront this encounter of the third kind? Or maybe you would do nothing, waiting for the aliens to make the first move and inviting a cosmic game of chess with the fate of Earth at stake. Nacho Vigalondo offers his own answer to this question in his latest film, Extraterrestrial, a romantic comedy/science fiction synthesis about a love triangle struggling to resolve itself in the wake […]
25 New Faces alum Laura Colella’s Breakfast with Curtis unfolds at its own pace, not unlike the leisurely chats it spends so much time documenting. Colella, who wrote, directed, and acted in the film, used her own home as a shooting location and cast her real-life neighbors and housemates in prominent roles. Centered around a bookseller named Syd (Theo Green) who enlists the help of his young neighbor (Jonah Parker, in the title role) to record a series of video diaries for his business, the story hinges on the subtle interplay between family and friends as they cautiously come closer […]
Robert Downey Sr.’s films are ribald, socially-conscious, highly experimental works that make Richard Lester’s oeuvre seem polite and Godard’s plot-heavy. Though he achieved cult success with 1969’s Putney Swope, some of Downey’s other, more radical works from the period are arguably more interesting, and their revival by way of an Eclipse box set is exceptional news. Up All Night With Robert Downey Sr. brings together five early films which show the director at his unhinged best, and if nothing else should prove a hedge against Downey becoming a mere footnote to his more famous son’s career. A part of New […]
The Internet is transforming social life and the political landscape. The growing pallet of digital media content-production technologies and social networking distribution sites, like Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, is redefining the meaning of “democracy” and an individual’s ability to participate in the political process. The annual Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) is a geek and political-wonk fest, a 21st century Woodstock – without the drugs, rain and rock ‘n’ roll – and this year’s gathering was no exception. This is a momentous election year, with a day of reckoning coming in November. The nation is living through what Nobel Prize-winning economist […]
India-born, Toronto-bred Nisha Pahuja’s beautiful and poignant The World Before Her won the World Documentary Competition Award at Tribeca Film Festival, where it premiered a few weeks ago. And while Pahuja grew up and lives in Toronto, she still has a fascination for her homeland. The World Before Her is her third film, after Diamond Road and Bollywood Bound, and her second dealing with India. It presents two sides of the country. For one segment of the film, Pahuja’s crew follows 20 “Miss India” contestants as they endure the pageant’s controversial month-long training regimen. The audience accompanies the women on […]
Today, IFP in conjunction with RBC (the Royal Bank of Canada) announced the winners of the 2011 RBC Emerging Visions Program. The Emerging Visions Director Prize went to Adam Bowers (New Low) who received a cash prize and the chance to shoot an advertising campaign for RBC. The runner-up, Ryan O’Nan (The Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best), was also awarded a cash prize. The two filmmakers were among 25 writers and directors who participated in the 2011 RBC Emerging Visions Program, a day-long event intended to bring filmmakers together to network with industry professionals and each other. In order to […]
The self-described “grandmother of performance art,” Marina Abramovic has for almost 40 years been one of the leading lights of a still-marginalized form. Born to ex-partisan parents in 1946, in the early days of Tito’s Yugoslavia, she is the fascinating subject of Matthew Akers’ new documentary, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. Despite her international renown, the Belgrade-born, New York-based Abramovic failed to enter the public consciousness in the States until her blockbuster 2010 MoMA retrospective. Akers’ film is a sinewy tour through Abramovic’s peculiar life and working process as she embarks upon her most high profile performance yet, one […]
Second #5781, 96:21 Sandy and Jeffrey, on their way to the dance in the basement of a house. Jeffrey tends to arrive and depart the Williams house at night. The car creaks as it moves. What space does the car drive though? The space of streets at night, the insides of stores illuminated like enormous aquariums behind Sandy. But also the space of a mind, the mind of the film, with its own series of codes that reference other films, other images. Carl Jung: The collective unconscious—so far as we can say anything about it at all—appears to consist of […]
Two figures from different ends of the independent film spectrum have a chance meeting in 1998. For the story behind the picture, visit Kentucker Audley’s Tumblr.