Heaven Knows What
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I Want to Take You Higher: Josh and Ben Safdie on Heaven Knows What
New York these days: There’s a chain store on every corner, Times Square is a paved-over pedestrian mall with $6 hot dogs and, if you want voyeuristic thrills, you peer into the bedrooms of the luxury condos flush against the beautifully manicured, elevated High Line that’s transformed the West Side. No one wants to reflexively cling to a misplaced nostalgia, but given the blanding of the city’s physical landscape it’s not hard to imagine that the number of urgently jaw-dropping stories in the Naked City is decreasing daily. Fortunately, for those of us who associate New York with subcultural energies, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2015 -
Trailer Watch: Josh and Benny Safdie’s Heaven Knows What
Timed to the SXSW debut of Josh and Benny Safdie’s Heaven Knows What is the film’s latest trailer from Radius. With stark, declarative titles attesting to the authenticity of the film’s storyline — Heaven Knows What is based on a memoir by the film’s star, Arielle Holmes, detailing her life on the streets while addicted to heroin — the trailer is a bold edit capturing the movie’s beguiling blend of underground romance and urban nightmare. Heaven Knows What opens later this Spring.
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 14, 2015 -
Cinema Eye Honors Announces 2015 Heterodex Nominees
The Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking today announced the five nominees for its annual Cinema Eye Heterodox Award, sponsored by Filmmaker Magazine, a publication of IFP. The Cinema Eye Heterodox Award honors a narrative fiction film that imaginatively incorporates nonfiction strategies, content and/or modes of production. The five films nominated this year for the Cinema Eye Heterodox Award are: Boyhood directed by Richard Linklater Heaven Knows What directed by Josh and Benny Safdie A Spell to Ward off the Darkness directed by Ben Rivers and Ben Russell Stop the Pounding Heart directed by Roberto Minervini Under the Skin directed […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Dec 8, 2014 -
NYFF ’14: Heaven Knows What, Eden, The Look of Silence
Josh and Benny Safdie’s filmmaking sensibilities are perhaps best summed up by the finale of 2009’s Daddy Longlegs. Unable to hire movers for their spur of the moment decamp to Roosevelt Island, Lenny (Ronald Bronstein) tasks his sons with hoisting their refrigerator onto his back, bootleg straps in hand. Atop Lenny’s spine, the near industrial-sized fridge is then caught between the closing doors of the tram, culminating in a moment that is hilarious, pitiful, and unexpectedly affecting. For years, the Safdies had been perfecting this brand of physical comedy, verisimilitude, cheeky humor and creeping sadness, all rendered on film with a handheld long lens, until 2012’s Lenny Cooke coaxed them outside their comfort […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 30, 2014
