The Oscars have released their shortlist of the 15 documentary features eligible for the Academy Award that have advanced to the next stage of consideration; the final five will be announced along with all other nominations on January 15. The titles and directors below, with links to our previous coverage as applicable: Art and Craft (Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman, Mark Becker) — click here to read a guest post from the directors about completing their film’s score. The Case Against 8 (Benjamin Cotner, Ryan White) — click here to read the directors’ pre-Sundance statement about their film. Citizen Koch (Carl […]
by Vadim Rizov on Dec 2, 2014Alejandro Jodorowsky premiered his first directorial feature in 23 years at Cannes this year with the fictionalized autobiographical film The Dance of Reality. The man behind cult favorites El Topo and The Holy Mountain delighted audiences with his magic-realist account of growing up in Tocopilla, Chile. It was met with a standing ovation, and the director called the film’s reception in France one of the proudest moments of his life. The Dance of Reality is marked by fantastic, surreal characters, from an opera-singing mother to an overzealous anarchist to a painted religious guru. It is easy to see how Jodorowsky’s […]
by Ariston Anderson on Jun 17, 2013“I wanted to make something sacred and free,” says Alejandro Jorodowsky about his planned adapation of Frank Herbert’s science-fiction classic, Dune. Indeed, Dune will be more than just a movie, argue the director and his collaborators in Frank Pavich’s Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary that premiered Saturday in the Directors Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival. Says Jodorowsky in the film, “Dune will be the coming of a god.” There are several documentaries about nightmare shoots and even unmade films — Lost in La Mancha comes to mind — but Jodorowsky’s Dune is the only documentary I can think of […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 20, 2013Yesterday, David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints was the sole U.S. entry in Critics’ Week, playing in a special screening. However, in the Directors’ Fortnight lineup, there is a more healthy dose of U.S. filmmakers. Magic Magic, one of two films starring Michael Cera that New York-based Chilean director Sebastian Silva premiered at Sundance, makes the leap from Park City to the Croisette, as does Jim Mickle’s cannibal movie We Are What We Are, starring “25 New Face” Julia Garner. Jeremy Saulnier, maybe better known as a stalwart indie cinematographer, premieres his second feature, Blue Ruin, in the strand, while […]
by Nick Dawson on Apr 23, 2013