Film Forum
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Director Ted Kotcheff on Wake in Fright
Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright was a hit at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971, but as the film made its way across the Atlantic, its stateside distributor decided to do a bit of rebranding. Against Kotcheff’s will, his intense fish-out-of-water tale was released in New York the following winter as Outback, a perfectly bland title for a movie that’s anything but. If the new name threw some film-goers off the trail, United Artists’ failure, as Kotcheff recalls it, to “spend 25 cents on publicity” made certain that the rest of its potential audience never heard about it in the […]
by Kevin Canfield on Oct 1, 2012 -
Director Matthew Akers on Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present
The self-described “grandmother of performance art,” Marina Abramovic has for almost 40 years been one of the leading lights of a still-marginalized form. Born to ex-partisan parents in 1946, in the early days of Tito’s Yugoslavia, she is the fascinating subject of Matthew Akers’ new documentary, Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. Despite her international renown, the Belgrade-born, New York-based Abramovic failed to enter the public consciousness in the States until her blockbuster 2010 MoMA retrospective. Akers’ film is a sinewy tour through Abramovic’s peculiar life and working process as she embarks upon her most high profile performance yet, one […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 13, 2012 -
This Is Not A Film — A Hammer to Nail Review
(This Is Not A Film begins a two-week engagement at Film Forum today, courtesy of Palisades Tartan. The movie will then open in other U.S. locations, starting with Los Angeles in early March. Go to the film’s website for details.) For those unfamiliar with the backstory: Jafar Panahi, one of Iran’s most acclaimed directors (The White Balloon, The Circle, Crimson Gold, Offside), was arrested in 2009. A known supporter of the opposition movement, Panahi was charged with “activity against national security and propaganda activities against the regime.” Despite domestic and international outpourings of support, he was sentenced in 2010 to […]
by Nelson Kim on Feb 29, 2012 -
Do the Yam: Astaire & Rogers: The Complete Works
“I wanted to be a dancer,” says Fred Astaire, wheezing out a tune on a harmonica with his gangly frame draped casually over a medical couch. “Till I was psychologized.” Astaire plays doctor—a shrink, of all things—in Mark Sandrich’s Carefree (1953), a little-known screwball comedy gem as antic and goofy as Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby (1938) with dance. And what dance! Accompanied by an Irving Berlin score, Astaire and Rogers are at the top of their game in the tale of a therapist (Astaire) who must find the root of the commitment phobia that plagues his new patient (Rogers). […]
by Livia Bloom Ingram on Sep 1, 2010
