6300 Results for “Open ”
-
Three Insights into America’s Predicament at the recent New York Film Festival: MLK/FBI, City Hall, Nomadland
The New York Film Festival concluded several weeks ago; the much-anticipated Presidential debates came and went. Today we face the outcome of an existential election, and I find myself still thinking about three exceptional films at NYFF 58, two documentaries and one drama, that throw certain features of our national political crisis into sharp relief, intentionally or not, as only great films can do. The documentary MLK/FBI, from accomplished director/producer/editor Sam Pollard, revisits the final decade in the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., ending with his assassination in 1968, a period during which our tax dollars underwrote […]
by David Leitner on Nov 3, 2020 -
Wonder Women: Below the Line at the 2020 SCAD Savannah Film Festival
While laudable causes to achieve gender parity in the film industry have been all the rage for a number of years (remember the mad rush of fests signing on to – and then publicizing their signing on to – the 5050×2020 pledge?), too often the result seems to be simply seating a woman in the director’s chair and forgetting about the rest of the table. Which is why the SCAD Savannah Film Festival’s Wonder Women: Below the Line panel (which, like everything else these days, took place via Zoom at the all-digital fest) struck me as so important. How could […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 3, 2020 -
Sundance Announces 23 New Documentary Fund Grantees
Twenty-three projects hailing from 21 countries will receive support from the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund. Announced today, the projects will receive $540,000 in unrestricted grant support with funds made possible by The Open Society Foundations and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. “During a time of shared crisis, it is essential that Sundance continue its steadfast support of artists across the globe,” said Documentary Film Program Director Carrie Lozano in a press release. “These films creatively assert our common quests, conditions and resilience as they interrogate notions of individual and collective power.” “Creative support for nonfiction storytellers feels […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 30, 2020 -
Rambo: Last Blood and Play Misty for Me: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo series is one of the more durable franchises in American cinema, which is somewhat surprising given that it didn’t really find its voice until its fourth installment and began with a film that didn’t lend itself to sequels at all. First Blood, which Ted Kotcheff directed from a script by Stallone, Michael Kozoll and William Sackheim in 1982, is a stand-alone action classic, an elegant and austere survival film in which Vietnam vet John Rambo takes on the town that wronged him without killing a single person. Stallone made up for First Blood’s low body count with […]
by Jim Hemphill on Oct 30, 2020 -
“Hey Lori, Do You Mind If We Put a Mic on You Today?”: Steve James on City So Real
When confronted by the press about Chicago’s overwhelming political corruption, city politicians often shrug and curtly concede: “That’s Chicago politics.” The city’s corruption is so native and unyielding that it just “is what it is,” has been and always will be. In Steve James’ five-part docuseries City So Real, a buoyant portrait of Chicago loosely wrapped around the 2019 mayoral election and the murder trial of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, the city’s denizens justify an array of their problems with that same self-referential and self-enabling sentiment, “That’s just Chicago for you.” But the city’s 2019 mayoral election saw […]
by A.E. Hunt on Oct 29, 2020 -
Crime Family
“We don’t call you ’hun’ or ’sweetheart’ or ’baby,’” says Theresa (Debra Winger) to her daughter Old Dolio (Evan Rachel Wood) late in Miranda July’s new Kajillionaire, the filmmaker’s dreamily eccentric interrogation into the social construct of familial love. “We don’t wrap little birthday presents with ribbons,” she continues, acidly, as Old Dolio looks on in despair. Old Dolio has just brought in $1,575 from an airport luggage scam—the family, which includes dad Robert (Richard Jenkins), makes their living from a succession of convoluted small-time cons that net in the two and three and, only sometimes, four figures—and she’d just […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2020 -
Get Ready to Stream: Delivering a Film in 2020 to a Virtual Festival
Six months ago, I was considering an update to my now biennial guide on how to prepare your film for festival exhibition. The 2018 version of that guide is available on the Filmmaker website and is a good reference if you are showing your film at a drive-in or outdoor screening that has a DCP server or some other file-based playback system. However, the majority of festival screenings happening this fall and into next year will be on virtual festival platforms. Pre-pandemic, I would’ve told you that the widespread adoption of a streaming component to festivals was as likely as […]
by Sergio Andrés Lobo-Navia on Oct 28, 2020 -
Seeing the Unseen: Charlie Kaufman’s 2020, Antkind and I’m Thinking of Ending Things
“My thinking is silly. My memories are preposterous. My ideas are laughable. I am a pompous clown. I can, on occasion, become aware of this. There are moments of clarity that I find all the more humiliating because I can see myself as others likely do, but I cannot control any of it. The pathetic, comical thought process continues, almost as if a script is playing out. Almost as if I myself am a puppet, defined by some external force, written to be the foil in some strange cosmic entertainment witnessed by someone somewhere. But who or what? And why? […]
by Vikram Murthi on Oct 28, 2020 -
The Noise Inside: Writer/Director Darius Marder on Sound of Metal
The following interview with Darius Marder about Sound of Metal, currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, was originally published in Filmmaker‘s Fall, 2020 print edition. Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal stars Riz Ahmed as Ruben, the drummer for a two-person heavy metal band who loses his hearing and, for much of the film, his perspective and sense of self as a result. His hearing falters and almost entirely disappears early in the film during the middle of a tour with his girlfriend/bandmate Lou (Olivia Cooke). Both are recovering addicts, and as their world is turned upside down, Lou fears Ruben […]
by Alison O'Daniel on Oct 28, 2020 -
Audiences Are Our Biggest Stakeholders, And We Can’t Leave Them Behind
The daunting prospect of capturing the attention and engagement of new audiences is not a recent development. For years, the Film Festival Alliance has held panel sessions like “What Millennials Want” and “Cultivating A Love of Cinema Culture in Young People,” but the pandemic, which has people affixed to their devices 24/7, has certainly heightened the urgency for film festivals, while also blowing the lid off an old model, exposing all of its cracks and forcing us to do the essential hard work of thinking differently. In a post-COVID-19 world, assuming a vaccine does become readily available late next year, […]
by Lela Meadow-Conner on Oct 28, 2020
