6300 Results for “Open ”
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Sundance 2020 Final Dispatch: Softie, Farewell Amor, A Machine for Viewing, Infinitely Yours
Previously, when attending a premiere heavy festival like Sundance, I was usually lucky enough to be present as part of a team of programmers. We divided the screenings between all of us to cover as many of the films as possible. (There are spreadsheets and rating systems involved.) Watching films as a freelancer, I realized over the first few days at Sundance that I was playing it safe by watching films by filmmakers I was already familiar with for the guarantee that at least the film would appear finished at the screening. For programmers working at festivals like Sundance, what […]
by Abby Sun on Feb 19, 2020 -
“War Is a Source of Human Nature”: Kantemir Balagov on His Women-Centered Period Two-Hander, Beanpole
Exquisitely grueling yet fiercely humane, Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole, an astounding Russian period drama, cements the artistically mature director as a prodigy of international cinema moving towards an auspicious career. At age 28, Balagov has had his first two features premiered at Cannes with both earning prizes in the Un Certain Regard section. Situated in 1945 Leningrad among the ashes of World War II, Beanpole, which was also shortlisted for the Best International Film Academy Award, explores the harsh aftermath of the conflict through the tortured friendship between Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko) and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), two women who served in the […]
by Carlos Aguilar on Feb 19, 2020 -
Back to One, Episode 97: Zoey Deutch
Acting wunderkind Zoey Deutch returns to the podcast on the occasion of the release of Buffaloed, the raucous indie she stars in (and produced) where she gets to flex her high octane comedy chops. We get into the weeds discussing comedy performance, she talks about striving to make her characters relatable, and about her love for auditioning (despite the hiccups). I delicately ask her what makes up the bulk of her now legendary script binder and she graciously explains. Plus much much more! Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and […]
by Peter Rinaldi on Feb 18, 2020 -
Looking for the New at the 2020 Sundance New Frontier
Like couture as the harbinger of everyday fashion, Sundance positions New Frontier — New Frontier at the Ray, New Frontier Central and the Biodigital Theatre — as the pilot showcase for what is coming down the pike for moving-image storytellers (a likely justification for programming what only relatively few people wearing headsets can experience at a film festival, which, by definition, caters to large audiences). Begun in 2007 with art installations, Sundance’s New Frontier shifted in 2012 with Nonny de la Pena’s Virtual Reality Hunger in Los Angeles, and now the exhibition portion of NF exclusively shows new technologies. I […]
by Susan Morris on Feb 14, 2020 -
“Power and Organizational Pressure Win Over Logic”: Kazuo Hara on Reiwa Uprising at Rotterdam 2020
Kazuo Hara has always aligned himself with the political left, but it was nevertheless surprising to hear about his latest film, Reiwa Uprising, which depicts the ascent of Japan’s newest left-wing political party, Reiwa Shinsengumi, from grassroots agitators to seated parliamentarians during the 2019 election. It is not unusual for Hara, best known for Extreme Private Eros (1974) and The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1987), to take almost a decade or even longer between films, yet Reiwa Uprising follows Sennan Asbestos Disaster by just two years. That expedited time to completion was largely out of necessity: Reiwa Shinsengumi was […]
by Forrest Cardamenis on Feb 12, 2020 -
“An Auteur’s Cinema in Spite of the Violence”: Patricio Guzmán on The Cordillera of Dreams
Patricio Guzmán is indefatigable. For over 50 years, the Chilean director has chronicled his country’s political trauma—namely, the military coup d’état coup and brutal reign of Augusto Pinochet—with a commitment and passion that is unparalleled. Propelled by a period of tumultuous unrest in Latin America in the 1960s, Guzmán helped forge a radical-left documentary movement, most famously with his momentous trilogy The Battle of Chile (1974-1979), an epic verité street-level account of his nation’s CIA-backed right-wing takeover. But for the last decade, Guzmán may be more recognized for a different type of triptych: Starting with Nostalgia for the Light (2010), and then […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Feb 12, 2020 -
“Sometimes Directing is Not Saying Anything and Just Putting Vodka Shots in Front of People”: Luis López Carrasco on El Año del Descubrimiento at Rotterdam 2020
At a festival as big as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, early screenings are essentially shots in the dark. There is no buzz yet, and most films have little written about them or are by filmmakers whose previous works have received relatively little exposure. I opted on the second day to give Luis López Carrasco’s El Año del Descubrimiento a shot partly because I had heard of his previous feature, El Futuro, but mostly because its 200-minute runtime helped it to stand out amid a slate of films I knew next to nothing about. From the very beginning, its use […]
by Forrest Cardamenis on Feb 11, 2020 -
“…We Wanted Our Cameras to Listen and Play Witness”: Emily Taguchi and Jake Lefferman on After Parkland
On Valentine’s Day 2018 the community of Parkland, Florida was irrevocably transported into the headlines. That was the day when a 19-year old gunman walked into the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and took the lives of 17 of its students. In the aftermath of the horrific event news crews descended as grieving parents and children struggled to find footing in a new reality. And while a great many reporters packed up once the soundbites ran out, veteran journalists Emily Taguchi and Jake Lefferman stayed behind — and got to truly know the fathers and mothers and siblings, the significant […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 11, 2020 -
“Exploring the Toll Activism was Taking on People of Color Specifically”: Smriti Mundhra and Sami Khan on Their Oscar-Nominated Short St. Louis Superman
Bruce Franks Jr., an African-American resident of St. Louis, Missouri, grew fed up with senseless gun violence running rampant throughout his community. Inspired in part by the Black Lives Matter protests of Ferguson, MO following the 2014 slaying of unarmed teenager Michael Brown, Franks Jr. decided to run for office and was elected to the House of Representatives as a Democractic state legislator. Filmmakers Smriti Mundhra and Sami Khan’s St. Louis Superman, nominated for Best Documentary (Short Subject) at this weekend’s Academy Awards, chronicles Franks Jr.’s year-long quest to pass a bill that will classify youth-affected gun violence as an epidemic. […]
by Erik Luers on Feb 7, 2020 -
To the Mauna: the 39th Hawai’i International Film Festival
Attendees of this year’s Hawai’i International Film Festival enjoyed the organization’s usual blend of contemporary world cinema, Hollywood Oscar bait, gala celebrations and various other initiatives, but it was events off the screen—and the festival’s response to them—that made 2019 a year to remember for many. The re-emergence of a powerful indigenous cultural movement, fueled by the fight against the proposed Thirty Mile Telescope on the Big Island’s Mauna Kea mountain and similar native land-rights issues on Oahu (HIFF’s home base), was the talk of the community when the festival took place in November and lent a different kind of […]
by Jason Sanders on Feb 7, 2020
