A thief breaks into a Manhattan penthouse filled with priceless art. Trapped by a high-tech security system, unable to communicate with the outside world, he must figure out a way to survive. At the same time, he begins to question how much the art surrounding him is really worth. Working on his first feature, writer-director Vasilis Katsoupis set his appropriately-titled film Inside almost entirely within a single set. A few other characters appear on monitors, through windows and in flashbacks, but the movie is a showcase for Willem Dafoe, who plays the thief. Starring with him is a remarkable collection […]

There’s the concept of art as therapy, and then there’s the concept of a specific artist as a therapist, which is how debuting filmmaker Ken August Meyer introduces the Swiss-German painter Paul Klee at the start of his Angel Applicant, premiering today in the SXSW Documentary Feature Competition. At the beginning of the 21st century, Meyer, an art director at Wieden+Kennedy, is struck by systemic scleroderma, a life-threatening autoimmune disease that causes scarring and tightening of the skin and which can damage internal organs. As he embarks on a treatment path, Meyer finds solace as well as a kind of […]

One of the most surprising revelations about the painter (and multimillion-dollar mass marketer) Thomas Kinkade, “the most successful artist of his time” according to the synopsis for Miranda Yousef’s SXSW-premiering doc Art for Everybody, is not that he was, well, “the most successful artist of his time.” Nor that after his death a decade ago from a drug and alcohol overdose his family discovered a secret trove of rather dark and sometimes disturbing work, images at complete odds with the sugary sweet depictions of small-town life that once graced the walls of the Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery franchises, a ubiquitous presence […]

In the nine years since Serial, the “true crime podcaster” has become, variously, a career goal, sociological type and, in TV shows like Only Murders in the Building, object of satire. In Citizen Sleuth, world premiering in SXSW’s Documentary Spotlight section, debuting director Chris Kasick considers his voluble, no-filter subject—Emily Nestor of the Mile Marker 181 podcast—from all of these angles while also producing a work that is something of a moral reckoning for the popular audio genre. In 2011, Jaleayah Davis, a 20-year old Ohio woman, died in a horrible drunk-driving accident, her head severed from her body. Or […]

“Like an Abel Ferrara Jr., [Calvin Lee] Reeder meshes thought and design with genre storylines, like a Euro-filmmaker making ’70s drive-in films,” wrote Mike Plante in his 2007 25 New Face profile of the Portland, Ore.-born filmmaker. Sixteen-years later, the alt-horror auteur is still moving between the border spaces of various horror and science-fiction sub-genres, with his newest work — the SXSW-premiering independent TV pilot Harbor Island — being one of the most existentially offbeat yet. The festival’s program book provides the narrative gist but not the work’s extremely odd affect, which is something like watching Rupert Pupkin act in […]

The drive to donate a kidney to a stranger is not a desire I—nor the majority of the population, for that matter—can relate to. (But then again I’ve personally no great love for humanity in general, as arguably the planet would be far better off had we gone the way of the dinosaurs. And luckily for Mother Earth, we still may!) Which puts me at philosophical odds with veteran filmmaker (and main protagonist) Penny Lane, whose latest doc Confessions of a Good Samaritan is a deep dive into the science as well as ethical implications behind altruistic donation. It’s also a […]

When it comes to music documentaries, the bar is low—some new footage, a long-unseen live performance, maybe a fresh anecdote or two—and yet rarely cleared. For Pavement fans, though, Louder Than You Think will be essential viewing. The trim 90 minutes tell the story of the band’s original drummer, Gary Young, also the engineer of their first sessions at the Stockton, California record studio from which the film gets its name. It’s no secret that Young was essentially kicked out of the band for his heavy drinking habit, which is still on full display in this film; throughout his interviews, Young […]

I first saw Justin Zuckerman’s Yelling Fire in an Empty Theater—the writer-director’s ultra-low-budget, MiniDV-shot feature debut—back in December at Williamsburg’s Spectacle Theater. I’d been invited on a whim by the film’s emerging producer Ryan Martin Brown, and I happened to be long overdue for a visit to the volunteer-run microcinema. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but was quickly charmed by Yelling Fire‘s humble yet lived-in digital aesthetic, impressively taut script and endearing ensemble of adrift, wannabe New Yorkers. Shot between November and December of 2019 and made for less than $3,000, the film feels like a strange, beautiful […]

I first became introduced to the work of Robert Townsend unceremoniously when his family sitcom, The Parent ‘Hood, premiered on The WB network in 1995. A professorial father figure with a wife and four children, Townsend’s character seemed, at least to my adolescent eyes, the ideal American dad. A noble role that fit him like a glove, Townsend must have enjoyed following up his caped-crusader directorial effort, The Meteor Man, with a sitcom that afforded him a more domesticated form of heroism.  Those types of roles were not often offered to Townsend. Released in 1987, his directorial debut, Hollywood Shuffle, […]

The Tokyo Reels, a project by Subversive Film (Mohanad Yaqubi and Reem Shilleh), was first exhibited as an installation and mini film festival at documenta fifteen. This collection of 20 films depicting the Palestinian struggle was safeguarded for decades by Japanese activists before its preservation by Subversive Film. Following its restoration, the collection served as the basis for R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity (2022), set to have its North American premiere at this year’s True/False Film Festival. In November 2022, as R21 was having its world premiere at the International Documentary Festival of Amsterdam, we spoke with Yaqubi on transnational film […]