6294 Results for “Open ”
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Center of Gravity: Justine Triet on Anatomy of a Fall
Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall begins with no image, just sound: the click of a recording device being turned on and Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller) asking, “What do you want to know?” Starting from this clearly symbolic opening line, the ensuing brief exchange foreshadows much. Sandra is an autofiction author whose work has generated controversy (her family objected to her first book, an event she dramatized in her second), so volunteering herself for interrogation by earnest graduate student Zoé (Camille Rutherford) isn’t merely an opportunity to provide biographical context but a risky invitation for moral scrutiny. Their conversation turns […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
The Man Machine: On the NPC Streaming Phenomenon
On a hot July afternoon, a friend sent a video, a TikTok livestream, to a group chat, followed by a question: “What is this genre called?” A young man in a Spider-Man suit and hoodie was rhythmically swaying back and forth in a parking garage as he stared into the camera. He frequently broke his silence when he received a “gift” sent by one of the stream’s 2,000 viewers. Depending on the gift type, he repeated one of a few phrases, each with the same delivery: “Hey, thanks for the rose”; “Too much ice cream makes me cold”; “Nothing like […]
by Deniz Tortum on Sep 20, 2023 -
Paradigm Shift: The Current State of Development Labs
When the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) announced in spring 2020 that they would shutter, many in the independent film community were shocked. For 17 years, TFI had supported hundreds of filmmakers and projects, including underrepresented artists, through its Tribeca All Access program, as well as Latin American filmmakers and VR visionaries. At the time, TFI’s closure appeared to be the result of a unique case of pandemic skittishness combined with its parent organization’s increasingly for-profit ambitions. Rather than an outlier, it may have been a sign of things to come. Given the lingering effects of the COVID era and the […]
by Anthony Kaufman on Sep 20, 2023 -
John Rosman
Set in Oregon, John Rosman’s debut feature New Life initially keeps its cards close to its chest. The opening shot of a bloodied, frantic woman looking for a place to hide implies someone dangerous is hot on her trail—but is she a victim or a wanted fugitive? Retrieving keys from the front steps of an empty house, the woman enters and finds an engagement ring that may or may not be hers. Within minutes, law enforcement arrives, and she’s back on the run, befriending anyone who will get her closer to the United States/Canadian border. A tale of two women—one […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Inhabiting the Role: Todd Haynes on May/December
Todd Haynes’s May December, which premiered this year at the Cannes Film Festival and was snatched up by Netflix almost immediately, marks a return to the kind of expressive women’s drama for which the director is arguably most beloved. Think Far from Heaven (2002) or Carol (2015), two films about forbidden romance whose lush, stylized aesthetics both encourage nostalgia and destabilize easy emotional identification. As the title suggests, May December, too, concerns a taboo love affair—one whose throwback elements are anchored to the tabloid frenzies and true-crime obsessions of the 1990s. Written by Samy Burch, a casting director making her […]
by Beatrice Loayza on Sep 20, 2023 -
Holiday Misfits: Alexander Payne on The Holdovers
Before The Holdovers, director Alexander Payne and actor Paul Giamatti hadn’t worked together in nearly two decades. After premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2004, their Oscar-winning comedy Sideways went on to garner countless awards and generate profitable spinoffs—a Japanese remake, musical theater adaptation, film-branded bottles of pinot noir. During the 19 years since the film’s release, Payne and Giamatti attempted to team up on new projects, but none came to fruition until a screenplay by David Hemingson arrived on Payne’s desk a few years ago. Envisioning the script as something that could be revised and expanded upon […]
by Erik Luers on Sep 20, 2023 -
Ben Brewer
“I’m not a big visual effects guy,” says Ben Brewer. “I just think of it as a democratizing tool. There’s no reason why we have to watch Star Wars—anyone with a laptop and access to YouTube can literally make Star Wars.” Or, in Brewer’s case, A Folded Ocean, which premiered at this year’s Sundance in the midnight shorts program. Ocean presents a couple who swoon around each other with an almost unbearably cloying closeness that goes from metaphorical to literal when they wake up one morning to find themselves fused at the arm. The two grow increasingly inseparable, a process […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Playing Politics: Developing the Best-Selling Board Game Shasn
I have made two feature documentaries in my home country of India. The second, While We Watched, came out on the same day as “Barbenheimer” and just finished a month-long run at the IFC Center in New York. The first one, An Insignificant Man, which I co-directed with Khushboo Ranka, ran in theaters across India for nine weeks. However, my most commercially successful project isn’t either of these—it’s a board game, Shasn (“Governance,” created by Zain Memon), that was born out of An Insignificant Man’s impact campaign and has been sold in more than 75 countries across the world today, […]
by Vinay Shukla on Sep 20, 2023 -
Jane M. Wagner
During the winter holiday break in 2015, Jane M. Wagner found herself unable to defeat a difficult boss in Nintendo 64’s Diddy Kong Racing. Viewing YouTube tutorials on how to advance to the next level, Wagner was introduced to the concept of speedrunning—the act of progressing through a video game in record time via advanced techniques or by taking advantage of glitches in the game’s code. A financially lucrative endeavor thanks to Twitch viewers’ support, speedrunning found one of its greatest overachievers in Narcissa Wright, a transwoman known for speedrunning through games in The Legend of Zelda series with unprecedented […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023 -
Jess X. Snow
Growing up, Jess X. Snow and their mother frequently moved. “We followed wherever the Chinese diaspora [of my mother’s family] planted roots,” they say, which brought the two everywhere from Alberta, Canada, where Snow was born, to Seattle, Washington, where they immigrated. “None of these places affected my art practice more than the feeling and uncertainty of movement did,” says Snow, now a filmmaker and cinematographer with a prolific background as a muralist, children’s book illustrator and poet. When Kai, the protagonist of their recently finished short film, Roots That Reach Toward the Sky, experiences a panic attack after her […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 20, 2023
