Over the last decade, Los Angeles-based film artist Anna Biller has eked out a small but fervid following; watching her films is like undergoing hypnosis by means of feng shui, wherein the viewer is lulled into a stilted, cheeky and brilliantly manicured simulacra of golden-era Hollywood staging, blocking and delivery. However indebted these forms are to their masculinist forebears, Biller is not content to be considered a pastiche artist: in the below discussion she concedes that her choices are guided by what gives her cinephilic pleasure, although — because? — the feminist interrogations of her work are impossible to ignore. She […]
by Steve Macfarlane on Jun 23, 2016To revisit Martin Bell‘s landmark documentary Streetwise 32 years after its initial release is an experience that would at times seem to beggar an audience’s capacity for prejudice. Never was a community so commonly perceived as forlorn and despondent as Seattle’s homeless youth population ever depicted in such a sharp contrast to common notions of indigence. To endure the film alongside Bell’s feature-length update, TINY: The Life of Erin Blackwell — made possible as part of BAMCinemaFest’s NY Premiere Double-Feature this Saturday — is to stand the test of self-questioning that belies any deeper look into the reality of poverty and its lifelong repercussions. TINY, […]
by Evan Louison on Jun 23, 2016