6301 Results for “Open ”
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“Film is of its Nature Unruly… and Your Job is to Master its Unruliness”: Director Paul Greengrass on the Filmmaking and Politics of 22 July
22 July is a difficult film. Any film about the 2011 terror attack and massacre on Utøya island in Norway would have to be. Less expected is the film’s strong political edge. In that sense, 22 July is something of a return to roots for Paul Greengrass. Before taking on the Bourne franchise, the director made a mark with his 2002 docudrama Bloody Sunday, about the Bogside massacre of Northern Irish protesters by British soldiers in 1972. In that film, as in his new one, Greengrass combined his trademark visceral, shaky-cam documentary aesthetic with a strong sense of political urgency. […]
by Corey Atad on Oct 10, 2018 -
“We’re Using the Caribbean as a Lens Through Which to Explore Intersectionality”: The 2018 Third Horizon Film Festival
The trailer for this year’s Third Horizon Film Festival—the third Third Horizon, as time would have it—was beautiful, because the films comprising it are beautiful: wide-eyed children, skin aglow with flames, the massive, lime-green expanse of sugarcane fields, a sea coursing like blood. The preview’s song begins with a dissonant, bell-like din, stretched like sinew over the rest of the track, which moves a lot like, actually, waves: steel drums clanging like a ticking clock; keys that progress upward, then down, till the whole song heads somewhere melancholic, toward a wisp of its former self. Third Horizon Film Festival is […]
by Monica Uszerowicz on Oct 8, 2018 -
Peter Bogdanovich on How TV Grew From Rio Bravo, Orson Welles and Making What’s Up, Doc? on a Dare
Having now completed the long journey from upstart/wunderkind to venerated elder statesman, Peter Bogdanovich has amassed a lengthy CV that includes a celebrated career directing pictures, an early post programming films at the Museum of Modern Art, teaching, writing and, not unlike his mentor, Orson Welles, taking up the odd acting job. His contribution to the cinema in 2018 was twofold. First, he made the documentary The Great Buster, an interview-heavy appreciation of the pantheon silent filmmaker, Buster Keaton. His other project this year was, by design, one that required vigilant self-effacement—that’s the long-awaited post-production and release of Orson Welles’s The […]
by Jaime Christley on Oct 5, 2018 -
Remembering Chantal Akerman, 1950 – 2015
Director Chantal Akerman died three years ago today, and I wrote the following remembrance in the Filmmaker newsletter just a few days later but never posted it online. I wrote it from the Venice Biennale College Cinema, where I arrive again today. So, it seems fitting to remember Akerman once again by finally posting it here. (Photo above, taken on an 1MP digital camera at the Rotterdam Film Festival, 2001.) Here in Venice, on the small island of San Servolo, we were talking about Jeanne Dielman. Tom Quinn, one of the filmmakers attending the Biennale College Cinema, had included a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 5, 2018 -
NYFF 2018 Critic’s Notebook 3: Ash is Purest White, Three Faces
For otherwise underinformed viewers like myself, one of the functions of watching Jia Zhangke’s movies in real time as they came out was pedagogical: because I don’t read the news enough, I’m not sure I would have known about the construction of the Three Gorges Dam otherwise, let alone developed a visceral understanding of its impact. It was Jia’s extended project, in narrative and nonfiction films made during its construction, to continually integrate footage documenting the destruction of houses where some 1.4 million people lived, the subsequent flooding of valley living areas and the fallout from residents’ displacement. These images […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 3, 2018 -
NYFF 2018 Critic’s Notebook 2: Grass, Hotel by the River
Hong Sang-soo has long been an NYFF staple; last year they showed two of his three works for 2017. I didn’t write about the one that didn’t make it in, Claire’s Camera, which is a) by far the most uncomplicatedly funny/breezy thing he’s made in a while b) nearly made me jump out of my seat with an insert cut. I can’t remember now what the cut was to; the point is, in the extremely limited visual language Hong’s codified over time, the one-time use of previously off-limits but otherwise totally normal devices really gets viewer attention. This is, of course, on some […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 2, 2018 -
“I Don’t Think Reconciliation is Possible”: Benjamín Naishtat on Rojo, ’70s Filmmaking and Living in a Right-Wing Zombieland
A charcoal-black comedy about the early days of the Argentinean Dirty War, Benjamin Naishtat’s third feature Rojo accumulated a small but devout critical following after its world premiere at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, then went on to win Best Director, Best Cinematography and Best Actor last week at San Sebastian. Naishtat’s 2014 debut History of Fear questioned the companionability of day-to-day life with lingering, suppressed trauma, while his black-and-white followup The Movement cast a brutally acerbic eye to 19th century nation-building in the Pampas, satirizing the belief (perennial in Latin America and other places) that a strong autocrat can bring order and stability, […]
by Steve Macfarlane on Oct 1, 2018 -
A Pledge Towards Gender Equality at the 2018 San Sebastian Film Festival
The issue of gender equality in filmmaking was placed front and center by San Sebastian Film Festival this year as the festival signed the Charter for Parity and Inclusion of Women in Cinema. The initiative, which began in Cannes, requires the festival festival to commit to inclusivity, including producing a raft of statistics about female-led submissions and programming as well as having an equal number of men and women on the festival’s selection committee from next year—and it’s worth noting that its management committee already comprises four women and three men. During the course of this 2018 edition of the […]
by Amber Wilkinson on Oct 1, 2018 -
NYFF 2018 Critic’s Notebook 1: Monrovia, Indiana, American Dharma
It’s fitting that the first two films I saw at NYFF after returning from TIFF were Frederick Wiseman’s Monrovia, Indiana and Errol Morris’s American Dharma. It’s not that you never hear Our 45th President’s name in Canada (given that we’re at Twitter war with them or whatever the status is), but it doesn’t come up as much; to return to two movies that wrestle with Trump’s America was very much a “welcome home, whether you like it or not” moment. Monrovia is a highlight among Wiseman’s recent work, while Dharma continues what’s basically been a decade-plus downward spiral for Morris; nonetheless, the two pair […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 30, 2018 -
Twelve Recommended Films and Events to See at the 2018 New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival opens tonight with Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite and, over its three weeks, presents its usual assuredly-curated selection of highlights from the current festival season as well as number of strong filmmaker conversations, new media pieces and experimental films. Sidestepping most of obvious titles, here are twelve picks to dig-out from the current lineup. Ray & Liz. Richard Billingham’s directorial debut Ray & Liz expands on photographs he took of his alcoholic parents. Movies about alcoholics aren’t hard to come by; shot in elegant academy-ratio 16mm, Billingham’s contribution is notable for possibly being the quietest, least […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 28, 2018
