Josh and Bennie Safdie
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“For Every LeBron James, There Are a Thousand Lenny Cookes”: Josh Safdie on Lenny Cooke and LeBron James
One of my favorite memories of Josh and Benny Safdie is sitting at a table with them at a gala event where they were receiving an award: their attention was on their phones the entire time because the Knicks were playing. The Safdies’ twin obsessions with basketball and filmmaking came together three years ago in making the documentary Lenny Cooke, about the rise and fall of a one-time basketball prodigy who was a rival to LeBron James. One of the most remarkable thing about the film is the way LeBron is used as a main character in the film, primarily through […]
by Miriam Bale on Jun 20, 2016 -
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 -
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 -
Hoop Dreams: Josh and Benny Safdie on Lenny Cooke
An intimate portrait of a near-forgotten high school basketball phenom turned undrafted afterthought, Lenny Cooke is the first documentary from the young New York wunderkinds Benny and Josh Safdie. Given that their previous films, The Pleasure of Being Robbed and Daddy Longlegs (I miss its original title, Go Get Some Rosemary), were intimate, 16 millimeter throwbacks to another era of rough and tumble New York independent filmmaking, this film comes as a surprise in a way. Made by self-professed basketball fanatics in the midst of a season of discontent (poor Knicks), Lenny Cooke is a project that predates any of the Safdies narrative efforts. An emotionally […]
by Brandon Harris on Dec 6, 2013 -
Watch Online: The Safdie Brothers’ Solid Gold
Josh and Benny Safdie’s latest street film, Solid Gold, is currently being featured on Kentucker Audley’s newly revamped No Budge website, where it is among a number of good short films being rolled out. (Surveyor, the awesome anti-Western by 2013 “25 New Face” Scott Blake, is upcoming on the site in September.) In the short, Benny plays a gold-painted street performer who seems rather ill-suited to his particular line of work. Go to the Red Bucket Films page on Vimeo for more of the Safdies’ work.
by Nick Dawson on Aug 21, 2013 -
Tribeca 2013 Critic’s Notebook #3: On The Margins
It’s easy to feel cheated at film festivals, especially ones that charge $18 per ticket. (Does Tribeca still do that?) You couldn’t get into this screening or you missed that party or the awards because you couldn’t find a cab or had to file some copy. The publicist you have a crush on just isn’t that into you. Cry me a river. And then the awards have been given, the parties have been had, the distribution panel nameplates thrown in the trash. The clock is ticking, always, and you can never see or do everything. Funny, when you’re young, you […]
by Brandon Harris on Apr 29, 2013 -
92YTRIBECA’S POST-MUMBLECORE LA DI DA FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCED
I’ve had wind of this for a while, via both filmmaker Kentucker Audley and programmer Miriam Bale (who has a feature on Beasts of the Southern Wild in our current issue), but now the news is public. On September 14 and 15, the 92Y Tribeca will host the first La Di Da film festival, which takes a look at the recent work of a group of post-Mumblecore figures, including Amy Seimetz, the Safdies, Sean Price Williams, Dustin Guy Defa, Alex Karpovsky, Kate Lyn Sheil, Eléonore Hendricks and Audley. In the press release explaining the genesis of the event, Bale says, […]
by Nick Dawson on Jul 23, 2012 -
SHORTS PROGRAM II: EVALUATING RELATIONSHIPS YOUNG, OLD, AND NEW
The films that make up Sundance’s Shorts Program II all address issues of basic intimacy and loneliness. Whether telling the story of a homecoming between wife and husband, an unexpected encounter with a stranger, or in one case, the way technology’s interference in everyday life renders a relationship unidentifiable, these young filmmakers are all attempting to understand emotions that still remain mysterious. Take Brie Larson, Sarah Ramos, and Jessie Ennis’ The Arm, for example. The film begins misleadingly. A narrative seemingly about a power struggle between two male teenage friends turns quickly into a darkly humorous depiction of a subject […]
by Alexandra Byer on Jan 23, 2012 -
THIS MOVIE EXISTS!
Benny Safdie hits the streets to promote Daddy Longlegs, opening Friday at the IFC Center in New York and in homes on VOD.
by Scott Macaulay on May 12, 2010
