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“We Go from 16mm to Super 16 to 35mm”: Alice Rohrwacher on La Chimera

A group of men huddle around a dirt digging site on a sunny afternoon by a beach.Melchiorre Pala, Josh O'Connor and Vincenzo Nemolato in La Chimera, courtesy of NEON

Italian filmmaker Alice Rorhwacher’s puckish and scintillatingly tactile fourth feature is her most ambitious to date. Once again dramatizing the conflicting ideals of modernity and tradition, past and present, Rohrwacher continues to pay debt to forebears of Italian cinema like Ermanno Olmi while also infusing her film with a symbolic surrealism and neo-realist class consciousness reminiscent of the respective likes of Pier Paolo Pasolini Roberto Rossellini. La Chimera follows English archaeologist Arthur (Josh O’Connor), who possesses a mystical ability to divine the location of subterranean treasures. Freshly released from prison, he reunites with a band of tombaroli (essentially grave robbers) to plunder the spoils of ancient Etruscan burial sites. As inspiration, Rohrwacher draws as much from historical and anthropological texts…  Read more

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Bodiless Entities, Body Politics and Bodily Functions: CPH:DOX Inter:Active 2024

Unbuilt Environments

Expertly curated (under the direction of Londoner Mark Atkin, who also serves as Head of Studies of the CPH:LAB), this year’s edition of the Inter:Active exhibition at CPH:DOX (March 13-24) featured the provocative theme “Who Do You Think You Are: The Body Reexamined.” As the title might suggest, the 17 XR works were wide-ranging and eclectic, both in form (VR yes, but also mixed reality and AI chatbots) and substance (perhaps unsurprising coming from a group of creators with myriad intersectional identities). Indeed, quite a number of the works I experienced on the top floor of the invitingly designed (palace turned contemporary arts space turned festival headquarters) Kunsthal Charlottenborg actually spoke to me — a few literally as well as figuratively.…  Read more

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Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival 2024: European Disunion

A woman bathed in turquoise light raises her hand to testify in a courtroom.Stray Bodies

One of the world’s leading forums for nonfiction work, this year the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival became a lightning rod for extremist rage. As widely reported, the opening night world premiere of Greek filmmaker Elina Psykou’s Stray Bodies happened under the watch of riot police amid a temporary ban on public protests after the film’s controversial poster — an image of a topless pregnant woman nailed to a cross —set off right-wing and religious figures and generated a volley of threats. The film also premiered in the wake of a massive public protest in support of a transgender couple that had been attacked by a mob a few days before, a short walk from the festival’s luxe showcase movie palace,…  Read more

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“All You Can Do is Give Your Offering” George MacKay, Back To One, Episode 284

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You know the gifted actor George MacKay from films like 1917 or True History of The Kelly Gang. Now he has given us two absolutely incredible performances in Femme (in select theaters now) and The Beast (out on April 5th). On this episode, he takes us into his process of inhabiting these two extremely different characters. He explains why context is becoming more and more important to him in his preparation, talks about the actor as storyteller, the secret to appearing truly menacing, those sex scenes in Femme, a lesson about respect that he learned from Eddie Marsan, and much more. Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. And if…  Read more

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A Conversation with Luke Lorentzen from Mary Lampson’s The Cutting Room (A Work in Progress)

A woman in a black top and pink pants holds her face in despair in a deserted hallway.Margaret Engel in A Still Small Voice

The following conversation is an excerpted chapter from The Cutting Room, an upcoming book by documentary film editor Mary Lampson tracing the story of a woman building a life and career as an editor in an industry hostile to both women and independent filmmaking. Traveling over the decades through massive changes in documentary storytelling and filmmaking technology, the book revisits her work with some of the great talents of the documentary form while chronicling major technological changes connected directly to her brother Butler Lampson’s groundbreaking work on the development of the personal computer. In a moment when the conversation about documentary film feels all too focused on commerce, Mary’s book invites readers into a reflection that is both memoir and a rare account on the art of editing. Mary Lampson…  Read more

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“It’s a Confusing World That We Inhabit”: Ryan Martin Brown on Free Time

A white man with a mustache smirks at the back of a crowded room.Colin Burgess in Free Time

In Free Time, writer-director-producer Ryan Martin Brown’s debut feature, directionless office drone Drew (comedian Colin Burgess) decides to quit his job. After all, the position is hardly fulfilling (nor is he particularly gifted at it), and why spend all day bleary-eyed behind a screen when all that New York City has to offer exists just outside the door? Soon enough, Drew’s naive work-life musings are proven to be drivel, and his joblessness puts a mighty strain on his few remaining social relationships. His WFH roommate Rajat (Rajat Suresh) doesn’t seem thrilled with Drew’s daytime presence in the apartment, nor does his girlfriend (comedian Holmes). Even the band he occasionally “plays” in is exhausted by his escalating feedback during practice.   Without…  Read more

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“If There are Esoteric Titles in the List, the Unfortunate Thing is That They are Esoteric at All”: Sean Price Williams on 1000 Movies

Sean Price Williams outside the Metrograph, NYC

The debut release from Metrograph Editions, Sean Price Williams‘s 1000 Movies is just that — a list of 1,000 movies seen and appreciated in some way by the director/cinematographer, listed chronologically across its 6″ x 4.25″ pages. There is much white space. Not included is any kind of foreword, such as a personal essay explaining the project’s genesis. (For that, you’ll have to look to interviews such as this one, or Matt Folden’s on the Metrograph site.) There are no Letterboxd-style ratings, no film stills, and not even an author bio; there’s just Lizzie Harper’s drawing up front of an old TV set and a fold-out picture in the middle of Lyndon B. Johnson and his dog. But in an…  Read more

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Critic’s Notebook: The 2024 Berlin International Film Festival

Comme le feu (Who By Fire)

Off-screen at least, Berlinale was a political mess this year. The final edition of director Carlo Chatrian, who came from Locarno six years ago and brought his adventurous taste with him, was marred by conflict. The festival began with prominent and necessary protests against genocide in Gaza and controversy over the invitation (later revoked) of leaders from Germany’s far-right AfD party. And it ended ugly, when No Other Land co-director Yuval Abraham, who made his film with a Palestinian-Israeli collective of filmmakers and activists, received death threats and had his family in Israel menaced after his acceptance speech for its win as best documentary. German politicians – including the mayor of Berlin – denounced his words, which called for a…  Read more

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