Two Tribeca titles — 17 Blocks, Davy Rothbart’s decades-spanning documentary about an African-American family living in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, and Smriti Mundhra and Sami Khan’s award-winning short doc St. Louis Superman — were announced today as the debut acquisitions of  MTV Documentary Films, a division of Viacom’s MTV Studios headed by producer and executive Sheila Nevins. Nevins previously headed HBO Documentary Films and was hired to launch this new MTV division in May. In a press release, Nevins said,  “At the heart of American Democracy, there is an injustice that gnaws at the soul of the have-nots and […]

I loved shooting on film. Nothing was more exciting than the day of the telecine transfer—I finally got to see how the movie would look—but the day the bill was due, my attitude would always change. I hoped that one day the inflated price of the film transfer would come down to a realistic number that made sense. That day is now! My film making career started in the mid-1990s in Florida, around the same time digital was born. I can remember all my friends shooting on Mini-DV and nudging each other saying, “Check out how great the Canon XL-1 looks on TV. It […]

On the heels of last week’s announcement of TIFF 2019’s opening night film, today the festival dropped the first titles announced for its Gala and Special Presentation sections. Per usual, this first wave announcements is heavy on big-name festival titles. Among the galas, world premieres include Marielle Heller’s follow-up to Can You Ever Forgive Me?, the Tom Hanks-starring Mr. Rogers biopic A Beautiful Day in the Neighbhorhood; Western Stars, a performance film co-directed by Bruce Springsteen for his latest album; the Eddie Murphy-starring Rudy Ray Moore biopic directed by Craig Brewer; and Rian Johnson’s Agatha Christie-inflected murder mystery comedy Knives Out. Other prominent titles include […]

Appearing online for the first time, here is Scott Macaulay’s report on Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction, from our Winter, 1995 edition. It appears here in newly revised form. ***“Addiction will be our question: a certain type of ‘Being-on-drugs’ that has everything to do with the bad conscious of our era.” — Avital Ronell, Crack Wars “Look at this,” Abel Ferrara says, tracing his finger across the video monitor in his Manhattan office/editing room. On the screen: black-and-white images of blood-streaked, bullet-ridden Bosnian casualties. “This is the real thing.” These images, and others of Nazi concentration camp victims from Ferrara’s new […]

Exhibitor, distributor, producer and director — one of the seminal figures of the modern American independent film movement, Ben Barenholtz, died last Wednesday in Prague. He was 83. In the late ’60s, Barenholtz programmed New York rep house the Elgin Cinema, where his scheduled mixed experimental films with mainstream movies. It was also where he popularized the concept of the “midnight movie,” playing Alejandro Jodoworsky’s El Topo for months on end. Another midnight movie — Eraserhead — was an early marquee title of Barenholtz’s first distribution company, Libra Films, and later, at Circle Films, he bought and distributed the classic […]

A soccer star weaving through giant puppies on a stadium pitch clouded by cosmic cotton candy is the wildest and most memorable image from Gabriel Abrantes’s and Daniel Schmidt’s screwball satire, Diamantino, which opens its theatrical run in LA today. Debuting at Cannes in 2018, where it won both the Critics’ Week Grand Prize and the Palm Dog Jury Prize for best canine performance, the roving comedy weaves together a wacky plot with hyper-topical subjects like rising neo-facism, genetic modification and the refugee crisis. Named for its protagonist soccer stud loosely inspired by Christian Ronaldo, Diamantino begins with a fall […]

SFFILM in partnership with the Kenneth Ranin Foundation announced today the seven feature films receiving a total of $200,000 in funding as part of the SFFILM Ranin Spring, 2019 grant cycle. These grants are one of the few supporting narrative features, especially in the early stages. One of the films here receives development funding, four receive funds for screenwriting and twofor post-production. From the press release: SFFILM Rainin Grants are awarded twice annually to filmmakers whose narrative feature films will have significant economic or professional impact on the Bay Area filmmaking community and/or meaningfully explore pressing social issues. 

Applications are […]

Beast Beast, the first feature from Danny Madden, took the top prize at U.S. in Progress Paris on Friday. In a statement, the jury (of which I was a member), wrote of the multi-strand story, “The film is a successful attempt to capture the present teenage generation. The director approaches his protagonists with empathy and understanding. The film has a strong political (gun control in particular) and social aspect while remaining an entertaining and creative piece of work.” Beast Beast is produced by Vanishing Angle (Matt Miller, Tara Ansley, and Benjamin Wiessner), and Alec Baldwin is an executive producer. A […]

Politics is confusing at the best of times. But in the age of Brexit, Trump and now Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, it’s impossible to keep track of the fake news, alternative facts and the good old-fashioned lies, damned lies and statistics. Since January 1st of 2019, President Bolsonaro has been ruling the roost in Brazil, following hot on the heels of a president who was almost impeached (Michel Temer), one who was impeached (Dilma Roussef) and one who now keeps a prison bed warm (Lula). The political shenanigans came so thick and fast from the biggest nation in South America […]