The SXSW Film Festival announced today 50 new films, XR projects and television programs that complete the 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival lineup. Among the world premieres are the latest from The Voyeurs director Michael Mohan, who reunites with star Sydney Sweeney in Immaculate; Dev Patel’s action thriller Monkey Man; Alice Lowe’s followup to her Prevenge, Timestalker; and a new film from The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby director Ned Benson, The Greatest Hits. Festival favorites traveling from Park City to Austin include Didi, Black Box Diaries, Love Machina, Ghostlight and I Saw the TV Glow. Of particular interest to […]
With its 2024 edition kicking off today, Sundance turns 40. In the words of festival director Eugene Hernandez and director of programming Kim Yutani, this anniversary edition will be a mixture of the old and new—with the heaviest emphasis, of course, on the new. “We sincerely thought it would best honor and celebrate the history and the legacy of the festival by nodding to it and certainly digging into it in a few key spots, but really it’s the looking ahead and discovery that is what Sundance is all about,” said Sundance Festival Director Eugene Hernandez to Filmmaker in an […]
Those of us who live in New York are treated each fall to a Whitman’s Sampler of world cinema, a curated selection of highlights from some of the year’s most prestigious international festivals. It’s hardly a large sample size, given the annual output of theatrical films worldwide, but it’s a weathervane nonetheless. Which way were the winds blowing this year? Take what I say below with a grain of salt. I saw 27 feature films at NYFF 61, out of the 44 selections programmed in the Main Slate and Spotlight sections. A modest sample within a modest sample, in other […]
During the NBA playoffs this year, a Miller Lite commercial unexpectedly compelled my attention. The frames’ edges were rounded, the images’ scratches conspicuous—this was either shot on film or trying very hard to look like it. Further digging confirmed the spot (title: “You Never Forget”) was shot on 35mm, perhaps in keeping with its nostalgic world of bars with CD jukeboxes and cathode-ray TVs. I’d often read over the past decade that commercials and music videos have been using celluloid with increasing frequency; collating this year’s (tenth!) annual edition of U.S.-released features shot in whole or part on 35mm [2014, […]
A long-gestating passion project for Tran Anh Hung, The Taste of Things takes as its starting point Marcel Rouff’s eccentric, echt-French novel The Life and Passion of Dodin-Bouffant, Gourmet, which follows Dodin-Bouffant in the wake of the death of his longtime cook and occasional sexual companion Eugénie. For his adaptation, Hung retains a few of the book’s incidents but otherwise chooses to tell the story of Dodin-Bouffant and Eugénie’s life before the novel starts. A period romance set in 1889, Taste begins with a lengthy sequence of pure cooking—when I saw the film at Cannes, a woman behind me moaned […]
After nearly flatlining during the pandemic years, American independent film saw some signs of life in 2023. While optimists might call it a year of transition as the industry looks for new audiences and a new equilibrium, cynics see an unsustainable and contracting arthouse marketplace, with most producers and distributors increasingly unable to recoup. But, if you look at the fates of last year’s Sundance titles, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. For all the doom and gloom about the acquisitions market (“No one is buying films!”), 10 out of 12 films in this year’s Dramatic Competition […]
The Sundance Institute announced today the 2024 Sundance Film Festival short film lineup and the 40th Edition Celebration Screenings and Events — programming featuring alumni artists looking back on the festival’s four-decade history. The 40th Edition events will take place the second half of the festival (January 23 – 26) and will include brand-new 4K restorations of Napoleon Dynamite (20th anniversary) Go Fish (30th anniversary), Three Seasons (25th anniversary), and an extended version of DIG! (20th anniversary), featuring over 30 minutes of additional footage, titled DIG! XX. Also showing will be The Babadook and Pariah, and restorations of Mississippi Masala […]
Kino Lorber, a leading name in independent film distribution for over 45 years, has launched Kino Film Collection, a new streaming service available in the U.S. on the Amazon Service via Prime Video Channels for $5.99 per month. As their press release states, “The Collection will feature new Kino releases fresh from theaters, along with hundreds of films from its expansive library of more than 4,000 titles, many now streaming for the first time.” Highlights now available on the service or soon to be added include notable titles Filmmaker has covered over the years, such as Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess, […]
The Gotham Film & Media Institute, Filmmaker‘s parent publisher, today announced the nominees for the 33rd annual Gotham Awards, to be held this Monday, November 27 at Cipriani Wall Street. All of Us Strangers leads the feature film nominations with four total. Click here to watch the live-streamed nominations announcement, or read them below. Best Feature Passages Ira Sachs, director; Saïd Ben Saïd, Michel Merkt, producers (MUBI) Past Lives Celine Song, director; David Hinojosa, Pamela Koffler, Christine Vachon, producers (A24) Reality Tina Satter, director; Brad Becker-Parton, Riva Marker, Greg Nobile, Noah Stahl, producers (HBO Films) Showing Up Kelly Reichardt, director; […]
Reviewing a boxset of writer-director Larry Fessenden’s work in 2015 for Filmmaker, I began by noting that “Fessenden can frequently be found on the outskirts of the New York filmmaking community, using his production company Glass Eye Pix as an outlet of support for fellow filmmakers.” While my summation of the celebrated horror auteur’s altruism remains accurate (the company turns 40 in 2026), Fessenden’s own films have grown tougher to get off the ground. A new film by him is therefore a major event, albeit one that happens quietly. Having made its world premiere at the 27th Fantasia International Film […]