Spring 2013
Funny Girl: Noah Baumback and Greta Gerwig on Frances Ha
In 2008, Noah Baumbach surprised many people by teaming up with Joe Swanberg, first on a couple of Saturday Night Live Digital Shorts (which Baumbach directed and Swanberg shot), and then on Alexander the Last, Swanberg’s fourth feature, which Baumbach produced. The director of The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding seemed to have little in common with the most prolific of the mumblecore directors, but the association was indicative of a desire on Baumbach’s part to reinvent himself and find new ways of working. For his 2010 comedy drama Greenberg, Baumbach recruited Swanberg’s former muse (and […]
Features
Caught On Film
In Medan, Indonesia, when the government was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar Congo was one of many small-time gangsters who hawked movie tickets and plotted petty crimes in front of cinemas showing American movies. He and his buddies, who translate “gangster” as meaning “free men,” were enlisted as death squads after Communists cut off imports of U. S. films, such as their beloved Elvis Presley musicals. More than a million intellectuals, ethnic Chinese and alleged Communists and leftists were murdered. The “movie theater gangsters” were always eager to dance across the road to garrote an alleged Communist or […]
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Third Time Around
It began with a glance. When Céline hurried down the aisle of the Vienna-bound train, did she notice Jesse first — or he her? It’s been so long since the two met — 18 years! — and so much has happened since then (divorce, commitment, children). It’s easy to forget that Jesse and Céline were once proverbial strangers on a train. But the couple still sees each other, sees through each other as only romantic partners can, and their romance has spanned millennial change. What was once a Gen X, pre-Internet love affair has aged into a full-blown, middle-age relationship — […]
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Relative Truths
Over the course of two narrative features, and now a documentary, Sarah Polley has made a habit of taking on unexpected subjects, all the while managing to produce a remarkably consistent body of work. Polley’s films explore the vagaries of relationships and intimacy, and in particular, the challenges of marriage. Filled with tonal shifts and narrative reveals, Polley’s naturalism is always accompanied by flights of fancy and spontaneous moments of romance that may twist against the viewer’s sympathies. Her 2006 debut, Away from Her, stars two aging icons of cinema, Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent and the ever-radiant Julie Christie, as […]
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Frame of Reference
What does it mean, in 2013, to photograph — to reproduce — a painting? Does it, as Walter Benjamin wrote in his 1936 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” drain the painting of an essential “aura,” even as it makes the image itself accessible to a much larger audience? Does it, as John Berger elaborated in his 1972 book and television program, Ways of Seeing, alter the painting’s meaning, rendering the original a symbol of capitalist exchange? Or, in today’s image-sharing world of Tumblr, is reproduction nothing more than whimsical statement of affinity, of a […]
Third Time Around
Relative Truths
Frame of Reference
Other articles
- Back to the Future with 4K: Large-Sensor Motion Picture Cameras in 2013
- Secrets of the Glam Squad: Inside the World of Film Hair and Makeup Departments
- Meeting Ingmar Bergman
- Numbers? What Numbers?
- Learning to Love the Heterodoxy
- Pod Wants to Know You
- Better Living Through Cinema
- The Invisible Filmmakers
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The Next World
In his breakout 1994 feature Cold Water, Olivier Assayas turned his eye on the adolescent scene in a provincial town not far from Paris in the early ’70s, focusing on a young man named Gilles and his troubled girlfriend, Christine. That film, notable for containing some of the director’s most self-consciously bravura camerawork and a more or less complete absence of the political machinations that defined the era, is a cousin of sorts to the 58-year-old Assayas’ newest work, Something in the Air. Returning to similar environs during the same period, he once again focuses on a young pair named […]
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Uneasy Does It: The Comedic Filmmaking of Issa Rae
“My name is J, and I’m awkward and black. Someone once told me those were the two worst things anyone could be. That someone was right.” So says the title character in the pilot episode of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, one of YouTube’s biggest Web series that’s spawned two seasons and a major career. Issa Rae, 28, is the creator and lead actress of the series (commonly referred to as ABG), which has millions of views and legions of fans, including Pharrell Williams, now an executive producer on the series, and Shonda Rhimes, who has added Rae’s forthcoming […]
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Should Documentary Filmmakers Learn to Code?
A decade ago, the question would have seemed outlandish, but today, interactive documentaries have established themselves as a small, but growing, genre. Born out of experimentation, interactive docs are at once hard to define and easy to recognize. Some look like films and some don’t, but all draw on the language of cinematic storytelling, even though they’re native to tablets, mobile phones and the Web. Inspired by the impact of emerging technologies on nonfiction storytelling, MIT’s Comparative Media Studies department launched the Open Documentary Lab last March. As our team at the MIT OpenDocLab mapped the field and connected with […]
The Next World
Uneasy Does It: The Comedic Filmmaking of Issa Rae
Should Documentary Filmmakers Learn to Code?
Also: Sundance Film Festival 2013 Berlin International Film Festival 2013 SXSW 2013 True/False Film Festival 2013 Civilian Casualties Load & Play Super 8 Handed Down: On Deceptive Practices: The Mysteries and Mentors of Ricky Jay Bring on the Major Leagues Look Your Customers in the Eye Editor’s Letter Tobias Lindholm
