BFI London Film Festival
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“Paying Rent in Winnipeg”: Guy Maddin’s AR Project Haunted Hotel
Just in time for Halloween, Guy Maddin is inviting London Film Festival attendees to his Haunted Hotel. The Canadian auteur behind films like The Saddest Music in the World, My Winnipeg and The Heart of the World has long explored both installation pieces and filmmaking as an expression of his worldview. With Haunted Hotel he’s managed to blend the two, creating what he calls “a melodrama in augmented reality” for LFF’s Expanded programming. The project, which allows visitors to use iPads to look into and beyond Maddin’s storyboard-like collage art, is set to audio by Magnus Fiennes, giving it a distinctly […]
by Marah Eakin on Oct 21, 2022 -
Gabe Klinger on Shooting Porto on Multiple Film Gauges, Approaching Sex Scenes and Manoel de Oliveira’s Influence
After taking home the Best Documentary prize from the Venice Film Festival for Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater, critic-turned-director Gabe Klinger’s first scripted feature is the fractured, woozy love story, Porto. Set in the titular Portuguese city, it dramatizes in non-linear fashion the shared experiences of a rail-thin American nomad, Jake (Anton Yelchin, in a hypnotic parting performance), and a charming local woman, Mati (Lucie Lucas, making her feature starring debut). Porto debuted at the San Sebastián International Film Festival in late September and followed with showings at the Zurich Film Festival, where I was able to catch up with him […]
by Carson Lund on Oct 11, 2016 -
“The Odds Were in Our Favor to Fail”: Krisha at the BFI London Film Festival
Krisha Fairchild is a 64-year-old actress who lives in Mexico and has four dogs. She’s named after a young Polish girl who saved her father’s life during the Invasion of Normandy in 1944. With an older sister named Vikki and a younger one called Robyn, Fairchild grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. Today, the three sisters take turns visiting their 91-year-old mother — who suffers from cognitive brain damage as a result of her late onset closet alcoholism — in an assisted living facility in Texas. Fairchild’s mother is remorseful about the addiction, and like her own alcoholic father, is charming […]
by Taylor Hess on Nov 20, 2015 -
“I Can’t Try to Be an Activist If People Don’t Know My Real Story”: Tangerine’s Mya Taylor
“I can’t keep beating around the bush because I’ll eventually run out of bushes to beat around,” sighs Mya Taylor. We’ve just spent 90 minutes together in her hotel room at the 59th London Film Festival. In that time, I don’t speak much, but when I do, I’m drawing parallels between Taylor and Marlon Brando. To be fair, I’d just seen Stevan Riley’s Listen to Me Marlon, so referencing some uncovered Brando philosophy from the documentary during my conversation with Taylor felt pertinent at the time. Mya Taylor is a black trans-woman born in 1991, so in retrospect, the comparison is pretty ridiculous. […]
by Taylor Hess on Oct 29, 2015 -
2014: The Year in 11 Film Festivals
The start of the Sundance Film Festival is when film festivals traditionally reboot. A new wave of films comes in with the new year and festival films that have been trotting around the globe throughout 2014, especially the last three months of the year, will fall by the wayside. The changing modes of distribution of recent years, and the increased number of films being released, has meant that frequently the only time to catch certain films – often the best of the year – is at film festivals. A few years ago, some were questioning whether film festivals were still relevant, […]
by Kaleem Aftab on Jan 13, 2015
