Biennale College Cinema
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“There’s a Vulnerability That Can Isolate Us, Whether We’re in an Era of Analog Connectivity or Virtual…”: Five Questions for Colewell Writer/Director Tom Quinn
Receiving its world premiere tomorrow in the Launch section of the 2019 SFFILM Festival, Tom Quinn’s sophomore feature Colewell stars Karen Allen, whose filmography runs from intimate dramas to some of contemporary cinema’s biggest blockbusters, as a clerk in a small town post office whose way of life — and, actually, her life itself — are imperiled when her branch is scheduled for closure. Inspired, as Quinn relates below, from learning of an instance in which a town was literally erased from a map, Colewell is a gentle, melancholic film, one inflected by bursts of real anger and sorrow, that […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 12, 2019 -
Remembering Chantal Akerman, 1950 – 2015
Director Chantal Akerman died three years ago today, and I wrote the following remembrance in the Filmmaker newsletter just a few days later but never posted it online. I wrote it from the Venice Biennale College Cinema, where I arrive again today. So, it seems fitting to remember Akerman once again by finally posting it here. (Photo above, taken on an 1MP digital camera at the Rotterdam Film Festival, 2001.) Here in Venice, on the small island of San Servolo, we were talking about Jeanne Dielman. Tom Quinn, one of the filmmakers attending the Biennale College Cinema, had included a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 5, 2018 -
Precision Moves: Anna Rose Holmer, Lisa Kjerulff and Saela Davis on The Fits
“Stop thinking as an individual and start thinking as a team,” says Legs (Makyla Burnam), one of the Lionesses — a dynamic Cincinnati high-school drill team — to a group of young recruits, who include the shy, diminutive, but quietly purposeful 11-year-old boxer Toni. Played in writer/director/producer Anna Rose Holmer’s terrific, formally assured dramatic feature debut, The Fits, by the self-possessed and emotionally transparent Royalty Hightower, Toni has been drawn away from the comforting routine of her boxing practice by the sounds, music and movement of the Lionesses and, by extension, the more adult world they represent. But soon after […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 21, 2016 -
In Praise of Doubt
It turned out to be incredibly prophetic that my first day in Venice, Italy, as one of the leaders for the Biennale College-Cinema was spent at collector François Pinault‘s incredible Punta della Dogana. This beautiful museum opened in 2009, with its closest neighbor — the Santa Maria della Salute Church — constructed almost four hundred years prior. It was but the first example of old masters sitting side-by-side in conversation with the new I experienced during this magical and inspiring week. Filmmaker and fellow IFP Lab leader Jon Reiss and I entered the exhibition. In Praise of Doubt was based […]
by Amy Dotson on Feb 1, 2013 -
Spurlock Sisters at Biennale College Cinema: Part Two
They say that creative works are never really finished, we just let them go at some point. I guess that’s what deadlines are for. The new versions of step outline, budget and schedule for A Case of the Dismals were due a week after we arrived at San Servolo, at 2:00PM. So of course I finished at 1:55. I had also “finished” a couple of hours earlier when I thought the deadline was noon. With a sigh of relief, Mai and I clicked send and off our little package went to the Biennale. We then had about 15 minutes to […]
by Kim Spurlock on Jan 31, 2013 -
Spurlock Sisters at Biennale College Cinema: Part One
So I was thinking Don’t Look Now, but my sis had Scooby Doo on her mind as we drifted through the eerie fog on Venice’s Grand Canal. We were headed towards San Zaccaria, where we would catch a boat for the last leg of our journey to San Servolo island. Mai and I met up in Frankfurt — she from L.A. and I from Brooklyn — to fly together into Venice for the Biennale College Cinema, where we would develop and pitch our feature film A Case of the Dismals. The fog thickened as we boarded the waterbus to the […]
by Kim Spurlock on Jan 29, 2013
