One Child Nation, winner of this year’s Sundance U.S. Grand Jury Prize (and premiering theatrically August 9th via Amazon Studios), is a striking cinematic examination of China’s three-and-a-half decade long, one-child policy by filmmakers Nanfu Wang (Hooligan Sparrow, I Am Another You) and Jialing Zhang (Complicit). It’s also a stunning uncovering of the multi-layered machinations required for a government to negate reproductive autonomy. And ironically, as the NYC-based Wang herself points out towards the end of the film, advocates of China’s (now defunct) policy and the US’s (very much alive) anti-abortion stance both subscribe to a core belief in state […]
NYFF has announced the main slate for this year’s edition, set to run from September 27 to October 13. In addition to the previously announced opening night (Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman), centerpiece (Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story) and closing night screenings (Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn), 23 titles have been announced. In addition to expected titles from established auteurs including Pedro Almodóvar, Kelly Reichardt, the Dardennes brothers, Arnaud Desplechin and Bong Joon-ho’s Palme d’Or-winning Parasite, the selection includes deeper cuts like Pietro Marcello’s loose Jack London adaptation Martin Eden and Oliver Laxe’s Fire Will Come, the third feature from the director of You All Are Captains and Mimosas. Below, from […]
Rodney Evans’ Vision Portraits works his experience of gradually losing his eyesight while continuing to make films into a personal documentary that also considers the larger implications of this experience for artists and minorities. The film is structured around Evans’ own experience: he shows himself on film sets, dealing with the aftermath of falling onto an Amtrak train platform in New Jersey and traveling to Berlin to get surgery. But in between, he also profiles three artists who are largely or entirely blind: photographer John Dugdale, dancer Kayla Hamilton and writer Ryan Knighton. Dugdale makes the biggest impression; despite losing […]
The following is a guest post from Dan Schoenbrun of The Eyeslicer about what should be an exciting day devoted to independent film physical media occurring in New York on September 15. — Editor Every year a group of independent artists and publishers host Comic Arts Brooklyn, a daylong fair for graphic novelists, zine-makers, and small publishers. It’s an event I always look forward to: I love meeting artists in person who I’ve long admired, or browsing and discovering new work, chatting with people about what they make and what they’re reading, and doing all that surrounded by other like-minded […]
Julius Onah’s Luce follows the story of Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a Black 17-year-old prodigy. Adopted at a young age from a war-torn country by two Caucasian parents, this straight-A valedictorian and all-star athlete is deemed perfect by everyone. After his teacher, Ms. Wilson, finds illegal items in his locker and becomes concerned over the submission of a violence-themed research paper, she contacts his parents. His adoptive parents start to question his actions, leading to his mother Amy uncovering a barrage of secrets held by her son. Adapted from the stage play of the same name by J.C. Lee, the […]
Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent’s first two movies present different parental nightmares. In The Babadook, a mother’s fear that she doesn’t love her son manifests itself in the form of the titular monster. In her latest, The Nightingale, a young woman explores the extremes she’s willing to go to in order to punish someone who’s harmed her child. Set in the early 1800s, The Nightingale stars Aisling Franciosi as Clare, an Irish prisoner finishing out the final days of her sentence in servitude to brutal British soldier Hawkins (Sam Claflin). When Hawkins rapes her and attacks her family, Clare sets out […]
Hawaiian shirts. Leather jackets. Go-go boots. These are just a few of the costume staples that leave a defining visual mark on Once Upon A Time … In Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s latest film in which real history is viewed through a fictionalized lens. We are in 1969, a year of change — both in Hollywood and the U.S. Think the start of the Nixon presidency, the eroding of the studio system before the artistically adventurous New Hollywood came to the rescue and yes, the Manson Family murders that claimed five lives, including that of a very pregnant Sharon Tate, actress […]
During lunch break on a Western TV series, fading star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) settles into a director’s chair next to his nine-year-old co-star. The young actress is armed with a Walt Disney biography, Dalton a pulpy Western novel. The girl asks Dalton about the story in his book and he recounts the tale of an over-the-hill bronco buster that eerily mirrors his own circumstances. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is a loving valentine to an era of studio filmmaking that was coming to an end in 1969, but it’s also a rumination on the inevitability of aging and mortality […]
With Rick Alverson’s Filmmaker-recommended The Mountain opening today in theaters, we’re debuting this edition of Not Getting Stoned with Caveh featuring the Virginia-based auteur and his blissed-out interlocutor, Caveh Zahedi. Re the “not,” Alverson disdains pot smoke, allowing Zahedi to puff in his presence but not exhale. Topics discussed: why filmmakers talk about financing all the time, whether cinema produces a physiological response in our bodies that can’t be adequately described in words, and how Alverson thinks about his own filmography.
I loved shooting on film. Nothing was more exciting than the day of the telecine transfer—I finally got to see how the movie would look—but the day the bill was due, my attitude would always change. I hoped that one day the inflated price of the film transfer would come down to a realistic number that made sense. That day is now! My film making career started in the mid-1990s in Florida, around the same time digital was born. I can remember all my friends shooting on Mini-DV and nudging each other saying, “Check out how great the Canon XL-1 looks on TV. It […]