Documentary
-
“IT’S ALL ABOUT WAVES” — TORONTO’S WAVELENGTHS 1: TITANS
The first 2009 Wavelengths Program (or Programme, as the Canadians say) was held at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). It’s a sophisticated building, one that spent years shrouded in mystery and scaffolding, and has only just revealed its new Gehry glory. Organized this year by talented film programmer Andréa Picard, Wavelengths is an annual extensive program of avant-garde cinema that is screened in six parts during the course of the Toronto International Film Festival. The Festival’s first installment, titled Titans, was an artful collection of films that that varied widely in technique, from an architectural piece by Heinz Emigholz […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 12, 2009 -
WHAT WE’VE HEARD SO FAR…
Even big time festivals goof up sometimes, Steven Soderbergh has finished his documentary on Spalding Gray and buzz builds for Tom Ford’s A Single Man.
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 12, 2009 -
DISPATCH #2 FROM 66th VENICE: POLITICS AND PERSONALITIES
This has been a festival of surprises, beginning with higher attendance than anticipated in view of the world-wide economic crisis, and the emergence of unexpected stars: how about Michael Moore and President Hugo Chavez as media darlings? Moore, who apparently is better known in Europe than one would imagine, brought Capitalism: A Love Story (right), drawing an overflow crowd to his press conference and enthusiastic audiences to the screenings. Moore’s is one of the six U.S. films competing for the Golden Lion. The real coup, however, was an international stage for Chavez in Oliver Stone’s South of the Border, signing […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 10, 2009 -
Joe Berlinger, Crude
A STILL FROM DIRECTOR JOE BERLINGER’S CRUDE. COURTESY FIRST RUN FEATURES. Joe Berlinger is a filmmaker who makes documentaries that tell important stories with integrity, while still always entertaining his audiences. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1961, Berlinger studied English and German at Colgate University, and got his first taste of the movie business while working on TV commercials at an advertising agency in Frankfurt. After deciding he wanted to make films, he moved to New York City, where he got a job working for the Maysles brothers. Berlinger’s first foray into directing was the documentary short Outrageous Taxi Stories […]
by Nick Dawson on Sep 9, 2009 -
Michael Tucker on His and Petra Epperlein’s How to Fold a Flag
With their latest film, How to Fold a Flag, documentary filmmakers Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein have come full circle. Their first feature was 2004’s Gunner Palace, which told the story of soldiers in the Army’s 2/3 Field Artillery as they patroled the streets of Baghdad in late 2003 and early 2004. Told in a gritty style that threw viewers right into the midst of conflict, the film resisted an overt political agenda, focusing instead on the daily lives of the troops. The Prisoner: Or How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair followed, a chillingly Kafkaesque story of an Iraqi […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 6, 2009 -
AND PROUD WE ARE OF ALL THEM
For anyone who’s payed the ultimate tribute to the Coen Brothers‘ The Big Lebowski by attending the Lebowski Fest, this one’s for you. I first heard of the Achievers last September when I interviewed the creators of Lebowski Fest for FilmInFocus. This group of die hards for everything Lebowski span the globe and are not fans of the film but are obsessed over it. Some dress up as their favorite characters and attend Lebowski Fest, others yell out every F-bomb at midnight screenings and some practice the religion Dudeism. The Achievers are now the subject of a documentary, The Achievers: […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Sep 3, 2009 -
Hirokazu Kore-eda on Still Walking
A connoisseur of longing and remembrance who brings great sensitivity to each of his reflective fables, Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda should be better known in the States, as his films extend the tradition of world-class artists like Naruse and Ozu. Enthralled with the operation of memory and the impact of grief on the lives of everyday people, Kore-eda has created a body of work that’s as rich with feeling as it is modest in tone. In Maborosi (1995), Kore-eda told the story of a quietly devastated young widow struggling to move on after her husband commits suicide. He then departed from […]
by Jason Guerrasio on Aug 26, 2009 -
JEREMIAH ZAGAR’S IN A DREAM ON HBO 2 TONIGHT
In our Spring, 2009 issue, Lauren Wissot interviewed In a Dream director Jeremiah Zagar as well as his longtime producer Jeremy Yaches and their executive producers Pamela Tanner Boll and Geralyn White Dreyfous. The feature, which is a fascinating look at artistic obsession and its effects on an entire Philadelphia family, receives its broadcast premiere on HBO2 tonight at 8pm with further screenings as detailed on this schedule: Wednesday, 8/19 @ 8pm – HBO2 EastWednesday, 8/19 @ 11pm – HBO2 WestMonday, 8/24 @ 6:30pm – HBO2 EastMonday, 824 @ 9:30pm – HBO2 WestFriday, 8/28 @ 1:30am – HBO2 EastFriday, 8/28 […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 19, 2009 -
PARSING THE MEANINGS OF NEIL BLOMKAMP’S DISTRICT 9
Unlike many critics, I liked the $30 million South African-shot sci-fi feature District 9 better as it went along, finding the apartheid metaphor set-up a little awkward and unrewarding. The more I thought about it, the more I found some of the movie’s strategies kind of contradictory to its implied social conscience. But the film works as a straight-out action film, which why its is looking like this week’s box-office winner. It’s easy to get off on the movie’s pulp-y energy and a vibe that reminded me of Robocop and the first Terminator movie. For a discussion of the metaphors […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 15, 2009 -
FROM ROBERT FRANK TO JEM COHEN TO… GOOGLE
After seeing Jem Cohen’s excellent historical reverie/political essay/performance documentary/poetic image symphony Empires of Tin at the IFC Center the other night, I’ve been thinking about street photography. Cohen’s practice has always involved a vaguely melancholy and Sebaldian filmic extension of the work of great street photographers like Robert Frank. In Empires of Tin, the kind of people typically captured by the street photographer (more, perhaps, Cartier-Bresson than a skeptic like Frank) are less caught in meaningfully decisive moments as they are announced as anonymous everymen, markers of history or, perhaps, poetic ciphers. Wall Street workers drifting down those sad streets […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 13, 2009
