Screen Forward
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“I’ve Always Been Cautious of Measuring Success”: Kazik Radwanski on How Heavy This Hammer
After premiering on home soil at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, Canadian filmmaker Kazik Radwanski’s second feature film, How Heavy This Hammer, screened at the Berlin International Film Festival to critical acclaim. A New York premiere, as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s annual winter First Look series, wouldn’t surface until a year later where, in anticipation of its Gotham debut, it was deemed by the Village Voice as “striking, clear-eyed, and very, very funny” and “justly celebrated as one of the best Canadian films in years.” A microbudget film about an overweight Canadian father saddled with a combative attitude and love for computer games (well, one […]
by Erik Luers on Feb 17, 2017 -
Fashionable Outsiders: A Conversation with Refinery 29’s Amy Emmerich and Comedian and Author, Jacqueline Novak
On Sunday, September 18th, IFP Film Week will host a discussion between Refinery29’s Chief Content Officer, Amy Emmerich, and stand-up comedian and author Jacqueline Novak, who recently released her non-fiction memoir, How to Weep in Public: Feeble Offerings on Depression from One Who Knows. Novak’s corresponding video series on mental health was developed and produced with Refinery29, and is just one example of how the popular lifestyle media site has turned its focus toward video content with full force. Their video production unit, R29 Originals, has released so far over a dozen original content series. The site aims to “debut […]
by Kishori Rajan on Sep 17, 2016 -
Twelve Programs and Events To Anticipate at IFP Film Week and Screen Forward Conference
In writing last year about IFP’s Film Week and Screen Forward Conference, I dubbed it the long-running event’s “most refined articulation yet,” a streamlined affair that, with “deceptive modesty,” did all the things IFP Film Week has historically done to support filmmakers and their projects with programming specific to today’s multi-platform world. Realizing that I sound like Apple designer Jony Ive in the sentence above, I guess I should then liken last year’s edition of IFP Film Week to the “most singular, most evolved” (per Ive) new iPhone 7, an event where the chassis remained the same but new tech […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 16, 2016 -
IFP Film Week: Gabo Arora and the UN’s First Virtual Reality App
“We’re great with empathy, but we really want action because we’re the UN. We need to shift the needle on things,” said filmmaker and United Nations creative director Gabo Arora about the UN’s first virtual reality app, UNVR, which launches today. The app launches with four VR films, including Clouds Over Sidra, which was created by Arora and filmmaker Chris Milk as a collaboration between the UN Millennium Campaign and UNICEF Jordan. Shot at the Zaatari refugee camp, Clouds Over Sidra tells the story of life inside the camp through the eyes of a 12-year-old girl named Sidra. The Sidra Project, which uses the […]
by Paula Bernstein on Sep 15, 2016 -
Previewing IFP Film Week and the Screen Forward Conference
I wonder what some time-traveling filmmaker would think of IFP’s Independent Film Week, which commences tomorrow up at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the New York Performing Arts Library. The non-profit IFP — formerly “Independent Feature Project” and now “Independent Filmmaker Project” — has done some version of its Film Week for nearly the entirety of its 35-year history. For much of that time it wasn’t called “Film Week,” but, nonetheless, events occurred annually over a few days in the Fall, and these events served to advance the interests of independent filmmakers by, initially, providing them with a market for […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 19, 2015 -
“Acceptance of The Other”: Iva Radivojevic on Evaporating Borders
Using the island of Cyprus as its setting and object of pointed criticism, Iva Radivojevic’s Evaporating Borders views the third largest island in the Mediterranean as both a place of familiarity and disconnect. With immigrants currently making up 25% of Cyprus’ residents (the majority being Greek and the minority Turkish), an intense feud has developed between the “natives” and the refugees who live in fear of their welfare benefits being confiscated by the government. As rallies and protests broke out magnifying the separation between the communities, Radivojevic, with camera in hand, took to documenting the experience in the form of […]
by Erik Luers on Jun 18, 2015 -
“For Every Kink, There is a Case”: Anja Marquardt on She’s Lost Control
The erotic meets the clinical in German director Anja Marquardt’s debut feature, She’s Lost Control, a quietly intense portrait of two characters brought together by deeply personal physical and internal deficiencies. Ronah (Brooke Bloom) is a graduate student doubling as a professional sex surrogate for men struggling with physical intimacy. The student faces the ultimate test when confronted with her most troubled patient, Johnny (Marc Menchaca), an imposing, solemn figure who needs an alcoholic beverage to get through each session. Those sessions — sequences that allow the leads to take real risks as their characters interact unsupervised — are set in darkened […]
by Erik Luers on Mar 19, 2015 -
Approaching the Elephant, She’s Lost Control, L For Leisure and I Believe in Unicorns to Have Theatrical Runs at Screen Forward
Following the Fall and Winter slate of Summer of Blood, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, Butter on the Latch, The Foxy Merkins and the currently screening Something, Anything, IFP has announced their Spring lineup for Screen Forward. The four films set for week long theatrical runs at Dumbo’s Made in NY Media Center by IFP are Approaching the Elephant, She’s Lost Control, I Believe in Unicorns and L For Leisure. Both Approaching the Elephant and L For Leisure screened in MoMa and Filmmaker‘s Best Film Not Playing At A Theater Near You series last December, while Approaching the Elephant and I Believe in Unicorns participated in IFP’s Independent Film Labs. Find […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 15, 2015 -
The Reagans and Sex Parties: Recapping Female Sexual Fantasies in Film
“So many fantasies are fear based, so I can understand why you’d want Ronald Reagan shoving cake in your mouth,” said Amy Seimetz. She was responding to a particular fantasy from an anonymous audience member after a screening of Josephine Decker’s Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, nearing the midway point in its one week run at the IFP Media Center. Seimetz and Decker, along with Mild and Lovely d.p. Ashley Connor, Ry Russo-Young, Emily Carmichael, and Celia Rowlson-Hall were all in attendance for an interactive panel on Female Sexual Fantasies in Film. The filmmakers began with a discussion that centered on the […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Nov 17, 2014 -
“My Vampire has a Beer Gut”: Director Onur Tukel on Summer of Blood
Charmingly crude and equipped with the gift of gab, filmmaker and painter Onur Tukel’s Summer of Blood is a Brooklyn-set vampire comedy with a love for witty banter. The film’s writer, director, and editor, Tukel also stars as the pugnacious Erik, a fast-talking pessimist who shoots down a marriage proposal from his longtime girlfriend. Now a solitary bachelor with a dead-end job, Erik takes to the streets to contemplate life and has an unfortunate encounter with an ominous vampire. A thirst for blood, a higher sex drive and fear of sunlight soon follow. Watching Summer of Blood, you observe a lead at […]
by Erik Luers on Oct 16, 2014
