6302 Results for “Open ”
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Hot in the City: Previewing the 11th Annual CineKink NYC
This year’s edition of CineKink NYC, now in the final day of its Kickstarter fundraising drive, wastes no time heating up, opening on February 26 with a cinematic bang in the form of Wiktor Ericsson’s The Sarnos: A Life in Dirty Movies, a stellar pic about softcore pornographers with a love story at its heart. (The festival’s gala kickoff party is the day before, February 25.) The titular elderly couple at the center of this doc are the legendary porn director Joe — the “Ingmar Bergman of 42nd Street” — and his longtime wife and support system (and sometime actress) […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 22, 2014 -
In the Ruins: Paul W.S. Anderson on Pompeii
Pompeii, so-called vulgar auteurist Paul W. S. Anderson’s latest extravaganza, is a love story and a disaster movie, a prison film and a paean to a certain kind of tried-and-true action pic many directors attempt but few make as involving and effortlessly enjoyable as “the other” Paul Anderson. Since his 1994 debut, Shopping, he has, with moxie and aplomb, uncorked one high-concept genre thrill ride after another. In his first film since 2008 without his wife, the actress and model Milla Jovovich, the British veteran deftly takes on the sword-and-sandals adventure epic. After opening with an odd epigraph about the […]
by Brandon Harris on Feb 22, 2014 -
Five Questions with Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me Director Chiemi Karasawa
Chiemi Karasawa is fascinated by people. So after having worked in the film industry for almost 15 years as a script supervisor on dozens of narrative films, among them High Fidelity and Adaptation, Karasawa founded her production company Isotope Films in 2005, which she’s devoted to creating intimate studies of interesting characters. Karasawa has since produced several documentaries, including the award-winning Billy the Kid – a coming-of-age film about a confused teenager, and the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning The Betrayal, a film shot over the course of 23 years about a family’s will to survive after moving from Laos to New York. With her first film as […]
by Arielle Grinshpan on Feb 20, 2014 -
Full Lineup for 2014 New Directors/New Films
A Sundance heavy set of additional titles has been announced for this year’s New Directors/New Films series, taking place at MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center from March 19 – 30. I covered the first announcement back in January, noting that the festival’s obscure spirit was alive and well, though the recent inclusions appear to be verging on BAMcinemaFest territory, with such buzzed titles as Obvious Child, Dear White People, She’s Lost Control, The Babadook, To Kill A Man and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night. I’ve enjoyed the festival for international discoveries, and we still have plenty of those too: Fish & Cat […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 20, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love
At times, independent film can be a homogenous place for women. Since the Lena Dunham boom, tastemakers obsessively concern themselves with tales of 20-something perpetual adolescents, jobless and adrift in Brooklyn, looking for love in all the wrong places. Not so much a tonic as a blast of originality, Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love announced the arrival of one of the most assured and exciting young filmmakers in recent memory when it premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Though the film’s narrative may not seem entirely unfamiliar — we’re still coming of age in Brooklyn, experimenting sexually — Hittman’s atmospheric […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 19, 2014 -
Child’s Pose Director Calin Peter Netzer on Rigorous Preparation, Letting Go on Set and Riding the Romanian New Wave
More than a year after winning the Golden Bear at last year’s Berlinale, Calin Peter Netzer’s Child’s Pose, a Romanian domestic drama that covers class and motherly impulses, is finally receiving a U.S. release, opening today at New York’s Film Forum and spreading to L.A. by week’s end. The latest entry in the ever-burgeoning Romanian New Wave, which has given us everything from Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills to Radu Muntean’s Tuesday, After Christmas, Child’s Pose zeros in on wealthy Bucharest native Cornelia Keneres (Luminita Gheorghiu) and her family, paying particular attention to her connection to her grown son, Barbu […]
by R. Kurt Osenlund on Feb 19, 2014 -
Sebastian Junger on Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues
Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues is surely one of the most fitting tributes to a fallen comrade ever dreamed up. Founded by Sebastian Junger in the wake of the combat zone death of his Restrepo co-director Tim Hetherington (I interviewed both back in 2010) RISC, based on a Wilderness Medical Associates course adapted for combat, aims to provide freelancers in all media with the kinds of lifesaving equipment and techniques that may have prevented Hetherington’s shrapnel wounds in Libya from killing him. Indeed, when I first heard about RISC its mission seemed so obviously crucial – to give combat journos […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 19, 2014 -
Las Marthas Filmmakers Cristina Ibarra and Erin Ploss-Campoamor on Documenting Colonial Tradition on the U.S.-Mexico Border
Just in time for President’s Day, Las Marthas, an unlikely and unexpected tribute to America’s founding father, makes its broadcast debut tonight as part of PBS’ Independent Lens Series. Set in the south Texas border town of Laredo, Las Marthas tells of a century-long tradition in which debutantes from both sides of the border commemorate George Washington’s birthday. Both the film and its subject matter stand apart from so many negative expectations about the U.S.-Mexico border — there is no talk here of the drug war or weapons trafficking. Instead, the month of celebrations that culminates with the debutante ball […]
by Lisa Y. Garibay on Feb 17, 2014 -
The Festival of (In)appropriation #6 at Los Angeles Filmforum
The Festival of (In)appropriation, a celebration of “contemporary short audiovisual works that appropriate film or video footage and repurpose it in “inappropriate and inventive ways” is the brainchild of co-founder and co-curator Jaimie Baron (who, not inappropriately, has a book on found-footage filmmaking coming out soon). Presented by Los Angeles Filmforum (no relation to NYC’s Film Forum – more like the West Coast’s answer to Anthology Film Archives, as for close to four decades it’s been L.A.’s longest-running organization dedicated to experimental film and animation, docs and video art) the annual event is now in its sixth year. For more […]
by Lauren Wissot on Feb 14, 2014 -
Is the Future of Film Distribution in the Live Format?
A few weeks back, I went to see a one woman show called HAPPY, performed by my friend Eleanore Pienta. It was confluence of many emotions and personalities, but found a recurring framework in the live realization of film. A projection of Eleanore, in character, in a setting, would appear against a backdrop for several minutes, before the lights switched on and Eleanore strode onto stage as that same character. She was effectively bringing these short films to life, something I recalled while reading Sheri Candler’s post at Hope for Film entitled “Creating ‘Live’ Films Can Be Artistically and Financially […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 13, 2014
