Biographies of artists have typical rises and falls, eddies into new enthusiasms and returns to consistent themes. But when it comes to musician, artist and cultural provocateur Genesis P-Orridge, such rhythms occur in truly outsized relief. In S/He Is Still Her/e — The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary, director Charles Rodrigues, whose previous Tribeca-premiering feature was Gay Chorus Deep South, proceeds biographically through P-Orridge’s life, from her childhood in Manchester through early assaultive work with the UK performance group COUM Transmission, industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle and finally the more beatific psych-rock outfit Psychic TV. P-Orridge’s ultimate destination was the body-morphing Pandrogyny […]
A real-life high stakes thriller from Emmy (and BAFTA and Cinema Eye)-winning filmmaker James Jones (Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes, Wanted: The Escape Of Carlos Ghosn), Antidote follows a few brave men who have chosen to put their lives (and thus those of their families) on the line to bring down the Putin regime: a whistleblowing insider to Russia’s poison program; the twice-poisoned, Russian-British activist-journalist (and current political prisoner) Vladimir Kara-Murza; and Bellingcat’s Christo Grozev, last seen in Daniel Roher’s Oscar-winning Navalny exposing the murderers who unsuccessfully poisoned the late activist before confinement to a Siberian prison finished the job. Which, […]
While Max Duncan and Xinyan Yu’s Made in Ethiopia takes place in the titular country, it in many ways echoes last year’s Central African Republic-set Eat Bitter, co-directed by Ningyi Sun and Pascale Appora-Gnekindy, which similarly explored China’s capitalist push throughout the continent; and specifically from the POV of the shared personal toll it’s taking on individuals from very unalike cultures. In this case we’re introduced to an inexhaustibly optimistic woman named Motto, the upbeat Chinese head of a mega industrial park in a rural Ethiopian town. She’s also a true believer that the Chinese dream can be exported to […]
Abel Ferrara has said, “In movie making, money is no excuse. It doesn’t cost anything to set up a cool looking shot.” In a Violent Nature is the embodiment of that credo. A deconstruction of the slasher genre, the movie tells a familiar story from an unfamiliar point of view as the camera stays with its undead killer Johnny (adorned in a vintage fireman’s mask and armed with a pair of logging hooks) as he traipses through the forest from victim to victim. The film poses the question, as director Chris Nash puts it, “What if Gus Van Sant directed a […]
The New York City nightmare of giving up a rent-stabilized apartment inspires (literal) dramatic vengeance in The French Italian, writer-director Rachel Wolther’s feature debut. Long-term couple Doug (Aristotle Athari) and Valerie (Catherine Cohen) live in a gorgeous brownstone on the Upper West Side—that is, until they’ve had it with their raucous downstairs neighbors oscillating between screaming matches and belching off-key karaoke renditions of “La Bamba.” They move out after obsessively peeping and eavesdropping on their newfound enemies; their hatred drives them to Rye, New York, where they take over Doug’s parent’s house while they’re in Boca. Now forced to shuttle […]
With Run Lola Run‘s 25th anniversary release this weekend in a new 4K restoration, we are reposting our Spring, 1999 cover interview with director Tom Tykwer. Among the last year’s festival staples, the most exhilarating may have been Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run. The self-taught 34-year-old Berliner’s third feature is a clock-driven, lighter-than-air romantic-action-comedy-thriller floating atop a percolating electronica score. The film plays out three potential narratives of what dangers and distractions the streets of Berlin hold just before noon for Lola (Franka Potente) and Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), two effortlessly cool, suddenly in trouble twentysomething lovers. Manni loses 100,000 marks […]
After setting her directorial debut Saint Maud in a fading English seaside town, London-born filmmaker Rose Glass turns her gaze toward the American southwest for the neo-noir follow-up Love Lies Bleeding. Set in 1989 and shot in New Mexico by Maud cinematographer Ben Fordesman, the film follows the violent repercussions when a nomadic bodybuilder (Katy O’Brian) falls for a small-town gym manager (Kristen Stewart) with a family full of criminals (including gun-running dad Ed Harris). With the A24 movie out today on VOD, Blu-ray and UHD following its theatrical run, Fordesman spoke to Filmmaker about emulating film on digital, pick-ups […]
With Chris Wilcha’s recommended documentary Flipside opening today — including at NYC’s IFC Center — from Oscilloscope, we’re reposting Vikram Murthri’s deep dive interview below. — Editor In his first feature, The Target Shoots First, Chris Wilcha documented his tenure at Columbia House, the mail-order music service whose ads famously promised “12 CDs for a penny.” Then a recent NYU philosophy graduate, Wilcha landed the job partly due to his familiarity with “alternative culture,” a burgeoning new market at the time (Nirvana’s In Utero was soon to be released), and brought a sardonic Gen X sensibility to chronicling his time […]
With Vanessa Hope’s recommended documentary Invisible Nation opening today in theaters, including NYC’s Quad Cinema, where Hope and producer Ted Hope will be doing Q&A’s tonight and tomorrow, we’re reposting Lauren Wissot’s interview with the director published last Fall. — Editor Though producer-director Vanessa Hope has spent her career zeroing in on China—from producing Wang Quanan’s The Story Of Ermei and Chantal Akerman’s Tombee De Nuit Sur Shanghai to directing her own short China In Three Words and feature-length debut All Eyes and Ears—Hope’s followup feature is nonetheless a bit of a surprise. An intimate portrait of Taiwan’s first female […]
The Story of Souleymane follows an undocumented delivery worker as he prepares for an asylum application interview while pedaling through the Paris streets. But belying the innocuous title and unassuming premise, this latest narrative feature from veteran filmmaker Boris Lojkine is actually a fast-paced thriller. And also a logistical feat as Lojkine’s lens races to keep up with his less than honest protagonist (played by dazzling newcomer Abou Sangare, an immigrant from Guinea who, unlike his titular character, is a mechanic by trade) as he literally cycles through a Kafkaesque EU system in which even the most mundane move might […]