6300 Results for “Open ”
-
Venice Film Festival 2020: Notturno, Dear Comrades, In Between Dying
Seven years after Sacro GRA became the first nonfiction feature to win the Golden Lion, Gianfranco Rosi returned to Venice with Notturno. The opening titles succinctly provide context—three years of footage captured adjacent to ISIS-related warfare in Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon—while the first shot immediately re-establishes Rosi’s total ability to sculpt reality: groups of soldiers jogging in laps, separate squads with just enough time between one brigade passing and the next that it’s a visual and sonic surprise every time, the whole unignorably and beautifully color corrected. The shot holds as multiple divisions jog past the camera, their bodies outlining […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 16, 2020 -
“Can a Psychopathic Institution Be Redeemed, or Should It Be Eliminated?”: Joel Bakan and Jennifer Abbott on Their TIFF-Premiering Doc The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel
I can still recall my red pill moment while watching Jennifer Abbott and Mark Achbar’s 2003 documentary The Corporation with my best friend, at the (pre-financial crisis) time an analyst at a big bank. “Corporations are people? What the hell?” I practically shouted. “Yup,” he simply responded with a weary shrug. For many clueless progressives like myself, unaware that corporate power had been spreading like the coronavirus, silently hijacking all branches of our government for decades, The Corporation was both horror film and wakeup call. The real deep-state conspiracy. Since then we’ve endured the Great Recession and our current economic calamity/health catastrophe/racial injustice awakening. […]
by Lauren Wissot on Sep 14, 2020 -
“My Faith (and It’s Not Catholic) In My Cinema Remains Pure”: Lav Diaz on Genus Pan
It’s the end of the gold mining season and time for the workers to pack up and head home. Andres (Don Melvin Boongaling) and Paulo (Bart Guingona) wait in line to receive their payment while Baldomero (Nanding Josef) daynaps in his hammock. The lifelong friends cut a deal. Baldomero arranged their voyage to the jobsite for a portion of their pay. But come payday, Andres protests: His sister is sick and he needs to buy her medication. After their manager gets his cut and the Captain and Sergeant who overlook their bayan each extort theirs, he won’t have enough money […]
by A.E. Hunt on Sep 12, 2020 -
“A Young Woman in a Very Harsh, Muscular Environment”: Nicole Riegel on Her Powerful and Flinty Debut, Holler
When I last spoke to Nicole Reigel for Filmmaker, it was in 2014 to profile the Jackson, Ohio native for our 25 New Faces list. After a stint in the military and then time producing her own plays for theater, Riegel had arrived in Los Angeles and quickly made a name for herself as a screenwriter, with directors such as Cary Fukunaga and Justin Lin on board for her scripts. But her ultimate goal, she revealed in the piece, was to direct — an ambition realized this year with her flinty, tremendously assured and compellingly acted debut, Holler. Selected for […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 11, 2020 -
TIFF 2020 (I): David Byrne’s American Utopia
Even without the pandemic, and the attendant pulling of high-market-value films from the festival circuit until it’s over (?), it’s likely Spike Lee’s David Byrne’s American Utopia would have been the opening night film of TIFF 2020. The goal of gala presentations is to sell out expensive seats, and the Q&A combo of Lee and Byrne after a concert movie would have been a surefire bet. A mostly workmanlike rendering of Byrne’s 2019 Broadway show, American Utopia opens with “Here,” one of two songs co-written with Daniel Lopatin from the fairly poky album of the same name—the least familiar selections, five in all, […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 10, 2020 -
15 Films and Events We’re Looking Forward To At the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival
For me, TIFF 2020 began yesterday with a stroll from my bedroom to the computer, coffee in hand, to check whether the promised link and password to the festival’s new digital portal had arrived. It did, I logged in, noted that the streaming platform supports AirPlay, and started a calendar of screening times, as most titles are available only in 48-hour windows. (Plus, some are geoblocked here in the States.) A far cry from my usual short flight to Billy Bishop Airport, an afternoon typing P&I screening times into my phone and then looking for a party to go to. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 10, 2020 -
“You Have to Make Sure Hair Continuity is 100%”: Hair Department Head Brian Badie and Key Hairstylist Andrea “Mona” Bowman On Lovecraft Country
Lovecraft Country was inspired by one of those punch-line horror conceits like “Meeting your partner’s family is scarier than a house under siege” (You’re Next). Or, “Nothing’s scarier than meeting your lover’s liberal, racist, white family”(Get Out). Lovecraft Country is a high production value literalization of the pun that H.P Lovecraft invented no horror scarier than his own racism: the invisible effects of racism manifest the series’ monsters, reflected in the actions of the show’s predatory whites. It’s also no coincidence that racism materializes in such outlandish forms that white people wouldn’t believe in them if the victims told them, […]
by A.E. Hunt on Sep 8, 2020 -
“You Can’t DM People on 4chan”: Arthur Jones and Giorgio Angelini on Pepe the Frog Documentary Feels Good Man
“Pepe the Frog,” an anthropomorphized stoner, originated in the 2006 comic book, Boy’s Club, by artist Matt Furie. Like most amphibious beings who take an interest in cannabis accoutrements, Pepe is innocent enough, hanging out with his roommates and being an all around chill dude. Who could ever mistake Pepe for being something malicious? And how in the world could he ever be associated with (and co-opted by) the rising Alt-Right movement? Pepe’s unfortunate journey from kid-friendly, zen bro to sinister symbol of hatred and domestic terrorism—jointly Google “Pepe the Frog” and “9/11” if you dare—is the basis for Arthur […]
by Erik Luers on Sep 8, 2020 -
The Five Rules of Success, PVT Chat, Time of Moulting and Wildland: The 2020 Fantasia Festival
While it’s doubtful anyone really wants to see their favorite film festival go virtual, in this year (and maybe more) when nearly everything is pivoting to online status, Montreal’s annual Fantasia marathon is one you’d expect to suffer the most from the transition. Yet, from the other side of a screen 1,500 miles away, the festival sure seemed to pull off the difficult feat of making it all work. No late-night Irish bar hangs, no traditional audience chants, no horror fan takeover of the utilitarian urban campus of Concordia University and its construction-riddled surroundings for three weeks of sleepaway-camp shenanigans. […]
by Steve Dollar on Sep 5, 2020 -
Ventilation, the 10-Hour Day, and No Day Players: 14 Takeaways from the PGA’s New COVID Safety Protocols
The Producers Guild of America (PGA) issued this week “COVID Safety Protocols for Producing Independent Productions,” a 57-page set of mandates, recommendations and guidelines for shooting during the coronavirus pandemic. Following similar documents — like the more studio-oriented “Safe Way Forward,” issued by IATSE, SAG-AFTRA and the DGA — the PGA paper, drafted by its Production Safety Task Force, both further codifies new industry safety practices while addressing issues specific to independent (i.e., non-studio or streamer-backed) productions. Additionally, like this summer’s documentary guidelines from Doc Society, Field of Vision and Sundance Institute, the PGA’s “COVID Safety Protocols” broadens its mandate […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 3, 2020
