Brooklyn Film Festival
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There Goes the Neighborhood: the 16th Brooklyn Film Festival
It’s a tough thing, being the Brooklyn Film Festival. Perched right at the beginning of the summer, the festival, which just concluded its 16th year, has the potentially world-class brand of Williamsburg Cool to exploit. According to most casual observers, it has never been able to adequately do so. The New York cinerati just doesn’t take the event seriously. If they don’t, who else will? The reasons for its reputation remain somewhat murky, but most lay the blame on the festival’s programming. The festival certainly suffers from its placement in this regard, between its newer, more prestigious Gotham neighbors Tribeca […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 12, 2013 -
Five Questions with Last Kind Words Director Kevin Barker
New York City writer/director Kevin Barker’s Last Kind Words – which gets its first hometown screening June 8 and 10 as part of the Brooklyn Film Festival – is a supernatural thriller with a Southern Gothic setting, starring Deadwood’s Brad Dourif, Spencer Daniels (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and Sarah Steele (Spanglish). Barker has a parallel career as a musician, having worked with Devendra Banhart, Antony & The Johnsons, and Joanna Newsom, in addition to recording his own music. Ghosts, violence, and murky atmosphere abound in the multi-talented Brooklynite’s film, in which music unsurprisingly plays a key role. Filmmaker: […]
by Jim Allen on Jun 5, 2012 -
FROM BROOKLYN TO FINLAND: DOCS OF SUBSTANCE (PART 2)
The recent DocPoint NYC featured 47 Finnish documentaries in celebration of the Helsinki festival’s 10th anniversary. Here, Stuart Nusbaumer considers two in a weekend that bounced him between DocPoint and the Brooklyn Film Festival. Part 2: DocPoint New York City Reindeerspotting: Escape from Santaland Reindeerspotting is set in northern Finland in the town of Rovaniemi, which is not important since a junky is never part of a town. The central character, 19-years-old Jani, is not particularly important since junkies are nearly all young and mostly all alike. The overwhelming importance of their drug addiction makes the junkies overwhelming the same. […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Jun 16, 2011 -
FROM BROOKLYN TO FINLAND: DOCS OF SUBSTANCE
Part I: Brooklyn Film Festival Two film festivals just wrapped-up in New York City, the Brooklyn Film Festival which screened more than 100 narratives and documentaries — 36 by New York City based directors, and over a dozen shot in Brooklyn — and the DocPoint NYC which featured 47 Finnish documentaries in celebration of the Helsinki festival’s 10th anniversary. I ping-ponged between the two festivals, between Brooklyn the mecca of American independent film and Manhattan the site of the Finnish event, Finland being part of Scandinavia a powerhouse of European filmmaking. Good cinematic bloodlines for both fests. First, three films […]
by Stewart Nusbaumer on Jun 13, 2011
