6302 Results for “Open ”
-
A Year in 17 Festivals: A Look Back at the Movies, and the Movie Theaters
Rotterdam Film Festival The year started with my first visit to the Rotterdam Film Festival, which is once again being seen as a festival for experimental and challenging films under the auspices of Artistic Director Bero Beyer and which offers an eclectic mix of cinemas. The Willem Burger Complex — where I saw a number of films, including one-time Spike Lee cinematographer Ernest Dickerson’s Double Play, a playful but ultimately unsatisfactory adaptation of Frank Martinus Arion’s Curaçao-set novel — is a beautiful building designed for conferences, but the seats do make you feel like you’re in a lecture hall, befitting […]
by Kaleem Aftab on Dec 29, 2017 -
Our Stories are True: Porto/Post/Doc 2017
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.” opens William Gibson’s Neuromancer, set in Chiba, Japan (while generally accepted as a reference to the novelist’s home in Vancouver). A similar pall intermittently lingered over the northern Portuguese city of Porto during the city’s Porto/Post/Doc festival. The pallid grey and smoke were reminders of the devastating fires that have engulfed northern regions of the country since the summer, claiming many lives. The cinematic image of smokey cobblestone streets — with a knowledge of the real, if unseen forces behind them — provided a somber and […]
by Jesse Cumming on Dec 27, 2017 -
Sex Crimes and Virtual Reality: Best VR Storytelling of 2017, Gina Kim’s Bloodless
Nabbing Best VR Story at Venice, Bloodless is veteran filmmaker Gina Kim’s (perhaps best known for 2007’s Vera Farmiga-starring Never Forever) 12-minute immersive stunner. The US-South Korea coproduction was also selected as part of this year’s IDFA DocLab Digital Storytelling program, which is where I experienced it, having gone into the VR Cinema without even bothering to read the synopsis. And because of my cluelessness, the story’s climax packed a punch I never saw coming — one that shook me to the core. This is another way of saying that if you plan on experiencing the project on a future […]
by Lauren Wissot on Dec 22, 2017 -
All the Magician’s Tricks: DP Brandon Trost on The Disaster Artist
In Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, Jason Schwartzman plays a precocious prep school student whose interests include staging age-inappropriate plays like Serpico. Rushmore’s crew had its own precocious teenager in 16-year-old Brandon Trost, who worked on the film as an assistant to his dad/special effects coordinator, Ron. “I grew up on set with my dad. I’ve never had a job outside of the film industry,” said Trost, who was working on set by the age of 12. “You would think that growing up in movies would ruin the magic for you, because you know everything that goes into putting a movie together. But […]
by Matt Mulcahey on Dec 19, 2017 -
Interactive Video in a Gallery Experience: Lisa Truitt on National Geographic Encounter: Ocean Odyssey
For years the space at 226 West 44th Street in Manhattan was known as Discovery Times Square; it served as a tourist-oriented gallery space that housed temporary exhibits that alternated between artifacts like the Dead Sea Scrolls or Chinese terracotta warriors and contemporary pop—and film—culture like The Avengers, Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. By and large these relied on physical items and held little relevance to those interested in film and video. On October 6, however, the space reopened as National Geographic Encounter, and the first exhibit there, Ocean Odyssey, relies entirely on interactive video, motion-tracking gaming technology, 3D animation and intricate […]
by Randy Astle on Dec 18, 2017 -
My Favorite Film Screenings of 2017
Here are my favorite film experiences of the year: 10. Loving Vincent (2017; dir. Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman; Lincoln Plaza Cinema) 9. The Red Turtle (2016; dir. Michaël Dudok de Wit; Lincoln Plaza Cinema) 8. Metropolis (1927; dir. Fritz Lang; Marble Collegiate Church) 7. La Belle et la Bête (1946; dir. Jean Cocteau; Tribeca Film Festival at Town Hall) 6. The Last Animals (2017; dir. Kate Brooks; Tribeca Film Festival at Cinépolis Chelsea) 5. City Lights (1931; dir. Charlie Chaplin; United Palace) 4. Harmony of Difference (2017; dir. Kamasi Washington; Whitney Biennial) 3. Romeo + Juliet (1996; dir. Baz Luhrmann; Little Cinema at House of Yes) 2. Imponderable (2015-16; […]
by Randy Astle on Dec 17, 2017 -
Disquiet
“There’s an ambition that comes with wanting to work for Harvey Weinstein. Every day that I worked for The Weinstein Company I woke up with fear. You rationalize it as normal, that this is the dream we all want to be a part of; thinking you have to act a certain way, even though it’s an outdated way, an old way of doing business, but still how TWC operated. You begin to feel that hopeless, dreamless Hollywood factory. The culture was just so toxic. Everyone was scared, nervous, anxious, and now we’re confronting not only the sexual violence but the […]
by Taylor Hess on Dec 14, 2017 -
Keeping Print Criticism Alive in the Digital Age
As Filmmaker contemplated its 25th year of print publication, we took note of a younger generation of filmmakers and critics investing their own new energies into the form. One is SVLLY(wood), a “biannual multimedia experimental print and digital magazine, geared toward building a new cinephilia through diverse themes and leftist ideology.” Here, its editor and founder, Rooney Elmi, explains the magazine’s creation. SVLLY(wood) was created on a whim or, as stated in our inaugural bulletin: “This magazine is the creation of the goals, ideas, ramblings, heartache, desire, and — most supreme — sheer optimism for carving a subversive current in […]
by Rooney Elmi on Dec 14, 2017 -
American Head Trip: Joshua Oppenheimer Talks to Errol Morris About his Netflix Docudrama Hybrid Wormwood
Recounting a recent conversation, Errol Morris says that he’s happy his friend understood Wormwood, the documentary filmmaker’s epic new work, as “an essay on ‘doing history.’” “I think it’s a lot of things, too,” Morris goes on to say, “but I like to hear that it’s about my obsessions with epistemology.” Obsession and epistemology—doesn’t the latter usually require the former? It certainly does in these reality-challenged times, when the act of landing on some honest reckoning with the social and political record requires a scrupulous method, unrelenting tenacity and, indeed, some small degree of obsession. All these qualities have been […]
by Joshua Oppenheimer on Dec 14, 2017 -
On the Cut
On a film screen, a single edit flies by in the blink of an eye — usually, in 1/24th of a second. In the edit room, though, a cut is teased, strategized, finessed and obsessed over. We asked six editors from six of the fall’s best films to give us the frames on both sides of one particularly noteworthy cut — and to explain why these edits are so important. Call Me By Your Name Director: Luca Guadagnino Editor: Walter Fasano Fasano: Sensual. That’s the way I’d like to define our approach to the editing of Call Me By Your […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Dec 14, 2017
