Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook.NEWSNostalgia.Industry experts warn that digital cinema files are not being properly maintained (“You have an entire era of cinema that’s in severe danger of being lost”), emphasizing the importance of amateur preservation efforts like Rarefilmm, recently profiled on Notebook.After a caucus week of intra-union meetings, negotiations between IATSE and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers continued, with their current contract set to expire on July 31. This week’s discussions focused on specific proposals from each of the 13 West Coast locals, starting with the International Cinematographers Guild, Local 600.Vision du Réel has announced the full program for its 55th edition, running April 12 to 21 in Nyon, Switzerland. The competition slate includes mostly first features.In PRODUCTIONLittle Shop of Horrors.
- 3/20/2024
- MUBI
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Film at Lincoln Center
A retrospective of Denis Villeneuve’s work also brings the director’s programming choices, among them films by Godard, Resnais, Cassavetes, and Wong Kar-wai.
Roxy Cinema
Bob Fosse’s Star 80, The Piano Teacher, The Pillow Book, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and End of Night all play on 35mm.
Anthology Film Archives
As retrospective of Haitian cinema continues, films by Hollis Frampton and Ernie Gehr play Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
Film Forum
“Sapph-o-rama” continues with films by Nicholas Ray, Jonathan Demme, Lizzie Borden, and more; a 4K restoration of Pandora’s Box has begun a run; a print of The Third Man continues, while the Harold Lloyd film Hot Water shows on 35mm this Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
A retrospective of snubbed performances brings films by Scorsese, Elaine May, Jonathan Demme, and Gus Van Sant...
Film at Lincoln Center
A retrospective of Denis Villeneuve’s work also brings the director’s programming choices, among them films by Godard, Resnais, Cassavetes, and Wong Kar-wai.
Roxy Cinema
Bob Fosse’s Star 80, The Piano Teacher, The Pillow Book, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and End of Night all play on 35mm.
Anthology Film Archives
As retrospective of Haitian cinema continues, films by Hollis Frampton and Ernie Gehr play Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
Film Forum
“Sapph-o-rama” continues with films by Nicholas Ray, Jonathan Demme, Lizzie Borden, and more; a 4K restoration of Pandora’s Box has begun a run; a print of The Third Man continues, while the Harold Lloyd film Hot Water shows on 35mm this Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
A retrospective of snubbed performances brings films by Scorsese, Elaine May, Jonathan Demme, and Gus Van Sant...
- 2/16/2024
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Le chinoise.Most serious writing about Jean-Luc Godard tends to be both high-flown and forbidding, rather like the films it’s discussing. Translations from French to English or vice versa can make things even dicier. But according to the literary scholar Fredric Jameson, who contributes an enthusiastic preface and afterword, Reading with Jean-Luc Godard—a compendium of 109 three-page essays by 50 writers from a dozen countries, announced as the first in a series—launches “a new form” and “a new genre.”The brevity of each entry tends to confirm Jameson’s claim. The book can be described as an audience-friendly volume designed to occupy the same space between academia and journalism staked out by Notebook while proposing routes into Godard’s work provided by his eclectic reading—a batch of writers ranged alphabetically and intellectually from Louis Aragon, Robert Ardrey, Hannah Arendt, and Honoré de Balzac to François Truffaut, Paul Valéry,...
- 1/30/2024
- MUBI
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Film at Lincoln Center
The films of Kijū Yoshida are now playing in a massive retrospective. Read our piece on him here.
Roxy Cinema
A five-film retrospective of Matthew Modine (read my interview here) takes place this weekend, including work by Abel Ferrara, Alan Rudolph, and the man himself.
Museum of the Moving Image
A career-spanning Todd Haynes retrospective begins, with the director present on Friday and Saturday; Robert Altman’s Popeye plays on 35mm this Saturday and Sunday.
Museum of Modern Art
A massive Ennio Morricone retrospective begins, this weekend bringing Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy.
Anthology Film Archives
The films of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project are screening, while Joseph Cornell, Tony Conrad, and Bruce Conner programs run in Essential Cinema; a Hollis Frampton retrospective is also underway.
Film Forum
Michael Powell’s career-killing masterwork Peeping Tom plays in a long-overdue restoration,...
Film at Lincoln Center
The films of Kijū Yoshida are now playing in a massive retrospective. Read our piece on him here.
Roxy Cinema
A five-film retrospective of Matthew Modine (read my interview here) takes place this weekend, including work by Abel Ferrara, Alan Rudolph, and the man himself.
Museum of the Moving Image
A career-spanning Todd Haynes retrospective begins, with the director present on Friday and Saturday; Robert Altman’s Popeye plays on 35mm this Saturday and Sunday.
Museum of Modern Art
A massive Ennio Morricone retrospective begins, this weekend bringing Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy.
Anthology Film Archives
The films of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project are screening, while Joseph Cornell, Tony Conrad, and Bruce Conner programs run in Essential Cinema; a Hollis Frampton retrospective is also underway.
Film Forum
Michael Powell’s career-killing masterwork Peeping Tom plays in a long-overdue restoration,...
- 12/1/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Lost in the Night (Amat Escalante).The more familiar one becomes with Cannes, the less one comes to expect anything like aesthetic coherence from it. Even if one accepts its nominal (or self-proclaimed) status as the standard-setter for international arthouse cinema, there’s still a fair amount of variation within its vast program. Which is to say that while one can lament the general calcification of festival-circuit aesthetics, the arbitrary programming decisions of Thierry Frémaux, or the often perplexing set of awards handed out each year, there are always films worth seeking out. In 1982, the French critic Serge Daney remarked that Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman and Godard’s Passion were part of cinema’s “secret factory”: that is, films which wouldn’t receive awards, but from which future directors would draw inspiration in years to come. The challenge with each edition, of course, is to discover which films those are.
- 5/25/2023
- MUBI
News arrived this morning of Michael Snow’s passing at age 94. With it came deserved, customary notices of Snow’s genius: his capacity to rework film form with what seemed little more than a careful turn of the camera and distortion of the sound mix, a transmission between artist and audience that I wouldn’t even say few equaled because, in truth, few even thought to try.
It is, of course, often the case that an avant-garde artist’s work rests in harder-to-reach places—archives, museums, 16mm prints only screened in major cities—rendering their passing a more complicated affair. But Snow is a marvelous exception for the wealth of material readily available on YouTube, and in commemoration of his death it seemed right to point any curious parties towards personal favorites.
A key thing about Michael Snow is that he was very funny. Wavelength, on paper, suggests experimental cinema...
It is, of course, often the case that an avant-garde artist’s work rests in harder-to-reach places—archives, museums, 16mm prints only screened in major cities—rendering their passing a more complicated affair. But Snow is a marvelous exception for the wealth of material readily available on YouTube, and in commemoration of his death it seemed right to point any curious parties towards personal favorites.
A key thing about Michael Snow is that he was very funny. Wavelength, on paper, suggests experimental cinema...
- 1/6/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Peter Greenaway in The Greenaway Alphabet.On the occasion of its 40th anniversary, Peter Greenaway’s second feature The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) has received a handsome 4K restoration courtesy of the British Film Institute. The film established the Welsh filmmaker’s penchants for carefully staged tableaus, fearless eroticism, baroque violence, and a devilish sense of humor. All of these preoccupations would carry his work over the subsequent decades, evinced in films like A Zed and Two Noughts (1985), The Pillow Book (1996), and his best-known title The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989). In more recent years, he’s embraced the infinite canvas of digital filmmaking with more vivaciousness than most filmmakers a fraction of his age. In works like Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015) and Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012), he thrusts his characters into gleeful unreality—impossibly deep backdrops and overlaid projections, pictures within pictures, surreal montage, and much more.
- 12/5/2022
- MUBI
Playing with Cinema, a retrospective of John Smith’s work, is currently screening on Mubi. On October 1, 2022, a ten-week survey of Smith’s films, “John Smith: Introspective (1972-2022),” launched at London’s Ica, with further events at Close-Up Cinema. Screening 50 films to celebrate his 50 years of filmmaking, it is the most extensive look at his work to date.Hotel Diaries (2001-2007).In the films of John Smith, nothing is quite as it seems. Even if you already come to them with preconceived notions about the destabilizing powers of the avant-garde, Smith’s work still defies expectations. Its distinct marriage of formal dexterity and a clever, questioning, wily wit has been integral to the British filmmaker’s art world–transcending appeal and ongoing success in the field of moving images over the last 50 years.There are plenty of ways into Smith’s expansive body of work, from prescient debates on...
- 10/7/2022
- MUBI
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Museum of Modern Art
Peter Bogdanovich’s very funny, never-before-seen Squirrels to the Nuts has an exclusive run (about which more here), while a retrospective of Larry Fessenden’s genre house Glass Eye Pix is underway.
Metrograph
A Robert Siodmak retrospective has started, as has “Pop Plays Itself,” a collection of musicians onscreen, while Resnais, Demy, and Marker lead Left Bank Cinema; Metrograph A to Z continues with Powell-Pressburger and Ray; Perfect Blue and Son of the White Mare are in “Late Nights“; Charles Grodin is paid tribute with screenings of Midnight Run and Clifford.
Anthology Film Archives
A series on imageless films—featuring Hollis Frampton, Guy Debord, and Derek Jarman—is underway while some of Buster Keaton’s greatest works screen in “Essential Cinema.”
Film Forum
Joseph Losey’s great Mr. Klein has been restored, as has Bronco Bullfrog...
Museum of Modern Art
Peter Bogdanovich’s very funny, never-before-seen Squirrels to the Nuts has an exclusive run (about which more here), while a retrospective of Larry Fessenden’s genre house Glass Eye Pix is underway.
Metrograph
A Robert Siodmak retrospective has started, as has “Pop Plays Itself,” a collection of musicians onscreen, while Resnais, Demy, and Marker lead Left Bank Cinema; Metrograph A to Z continues with Powell-Pressburger and Ray; Perfect Blue and Son of the White Mare are in “Late Nights“; Charles Grodin is paid tribute with screenings of Midnight Run and Clifford.
Anthology Film Archives
A series on imageless films—featuring Hollis Frampton, Guy Debord, and Derek Jarman—is underway while some of Buster Keaton’s greatest works screen in “Essential Cinema.”
Film Forum
Joseph Losey’s great Mr. Klein has been restored, as has Bronco Bullfrog...
- 4/1/2022
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Paris Theater
An all-35mm Jane Campion retrospective is underway, with the director present for The Piano on Sunday.
Metrograph
Films by Varda, Chris Marker, Demy, and Resnais play in a new series on Left Bank cinema; “Metrograph A to Z” returns with Polanski’s Bitter Moon; Heavy Metal, Fantastic Planet, and Perfect Blue screen late.
Museum of Modern Art
A Peter Bogdanovich retrospective has begun, as has a look at the films of Larry Clark.
Roxy Cinema
Prints of Black Orpheus and Pink Narcissus play this weekend.
Film Forum
A new restoration of Joseph Losey’s The Servant begins playing, while Donkey Skin screens on Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
As First Look commences the Museum offers “Second Look,” a retrospective of past festivals that includes a print of Chantal Akerman’s Almayer’s Folly and Loznitsa’s Donbass.
Paris Theater
An all-35mm Jane Campion retrospective is underway, with the director present for The Piano on Sunday.
Metrograph
Films by Varda, Chris Marker, Demy, and Resnais play in a new series on Left Bank cinema; “Metrograph A to Z” returns with Polanski’s Bitter Moon; Heavy Metal, Fantastic Planet, and Perfect Blue screen late.
Museum of Modern Art
A Peter Bogdanovich retrospective has begun, as has a look at the films of Larry Clark.
Roxy Cinema
Prints of Black Orpheus and Pink Narcissus play this weekend.
Film Forum
A new restoration of Joseph Losey’s The Servant begins playing, while Donkey Skin screens on Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
As First Look commences the Museum offers “Second Look,” a retrospective of past festivals that includes a print of Chantal Akerman’s Almayer’s Folly and Loznitsa’s Donbass.
- 3/11/2022
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSMartin Scorsese and Paul Schrader in 1973.Martin Scorsese will be executive producing Paul Schrader's upcoming The Card Counter, a casino-set thriller starring Tiffany Haddish, Oscar Isaac, and Willem Dafoe, marking the pair's fifth collaboration. Though we're a little late, we're thrilled by news that the Safdie Brothers have teamed up with comedian Nathan Fielder to pen a half-hour pilot for Showtime. The story reportedly stars Fielder and Benny Safdie in the tale of a curse that threatens the marriage of a couple on a Hgtv show. Recommended VIEWINGMetrograph's official trailer for the 4K restoration of Fruit Chan's Made in Hong Kong, a portrait of nihilistic youth in the city. Abel Ferrara's surreal Siberia stars Willem Dafoe as an isolated man who ventures into "dreams, memory and imagination in an attempt to find his true nature.
- 2/26/2020
- MUBI
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Metrograph
Alain Corneau’s Série noire has been restored and brought to screens. See the trailer here.
“Welcome to Metrograph: A to Z” has a stacked weekend of Antonioni, Tashlin and more.
House, Mulholland Dr., and Fantastic Planet play late-night, while The Black Stallion screens early.
Film at Lincoln Center
A number of new restorations...
Metrograph
Alain Corneau’s Série noire has been restored and brought to screens. See the trailer here.
“Welcome to Metrograph: A to Z” has a stacked weekend of Antonioni, Tashlin and more.
House, Mulholland Dr., and Fantastic Planet play late-night, while The Black Stallion screens early.
Film at Lincoln Center
A number of new restorations...
- 9/26/2019
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Under Childhood is a monthly column on children’s cinema—movies about and for kids.1The Chinese animated series The Leader (currently on its first season) is a crisp condensation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel’s formation of communist thought via a timeline that starts from Marx’s childhood and continues towards his completion of Capital: Critique of Political Economy. The success of the series relies on the explicit connection made between the foundational tenets of Marxism and the ambitions of young people. Flowers and sparkles float across blue skies as a theme song by rap group Nzbz describes a fearless journey towards liberation and hope for “all people.” Its refrain, an extremely catchy one, proclaims that each of these dreams is “very Marx”! The man himself is of chiseled features and fiery charm. Children, onscreen projections of the audience, approach him with variations of a question: Why must we—the poor and sick,...
- 3/4/2019
- MUBI
Part One of this series is about the origin of the Robert Beck Memorial Cinema (Rbmc). Part Two covers all the screenings in 1998.
Continuing into 1999 at the Collective Unconscious theater space in NYC, the Rbmc — co-programmed by Brian L. Frye and Bradley Eros — went on hiatus for the first week of the year, but resumed on January 12. Below is a list of screenings from then until a May 18 event that celebrated the Rbmc’s first full year of existence.
The films and filmmakers selected to screen by Frye and Eros represent an interesting time in the sphere of avant-garde and experimental cinema. Up until this point, there seemed to be a distinct separation between the formal style of, say, structuralism, and the more raucous, punk rock world of the “underground.” However, in the 1990s, these two worlds appear to be colliding. The Rbmc seemed just as content screening Hollis Frampton‘s Critical Mass (Feb.
Continuing into 1999 at the Collective Unconscious theater space in NYC, the Rbmc — co-programmed by Brian L. Frye and Bradley Eros — went on hiatus for the first week of the year, but resumed on January 12. Below is a list of screenings from then until a May 18 event that celebrated the Rbmc’s first full year of existence.
The films and filmmakers selected to screen by Frye and Eros represent an interesting time in the sphere of avant-garde and experimental cinema. Up until this point, there seemed to be a distinct separation between the formal style of, say, structuralism, and the more raucous, punk rock world of the “underground.” However, in the 1990s, these two worlds appear to be colliding. The Rbmc seemed just as content screening Hollis Frampton‘s Critical Mass (Feb.
- 6/17/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The Video Essay is a joint project of Mubi and Filmadrid Festival Internacional de Cine. Film analysis and criticism found a completely new and innovative path with the arrival of the video essay, a relatively recent form that already has its own masters and is becoming increasingly popular. The limits of this discipline are constantly expanding; new essayists are finding innovative ways to study the history of cinema working with images. With this non-competitive section of the festival both Mubi and Filmadrid will offer the platform and visibility the video essay deserves. The six selected works will be shown during the dates of Filmadrid on Mubi’s cinema publication, the Notebook. There will also be a free public screening of the selected works during the festival. The selection was made by the programmers of Mubi and Filmadrid.HollisA video essay by Miguel RodríguezThis essay examines the visual similitudes, double strategies...
- 6/10/2018
- MUBI
In 1976, a crudely published fanzine devoted to the experimental film scene made its debut. It was called Idiolects and the first issue offered a definition of its name: “An idiolect is the language of an individual at a particular time.” That definition certainly could be applied to both the filmmakers covered in the zine and to the writers who contributed articles.
Although not an official publication of New York City’s Collective for Living Cinema screening society, Idiolects was closely tied to the organization, offering a “temporary” publication address of 52 White Street, New York, 10013 in the indicia. That was the Collective’s then permanent screening space in 1976 after having bopped around Manhattan for several years prior.
In addition, the Living Cinema was formed in the early 1970s by students who had studied filmmaking at Binghamton University in upstate New York and then moved to New York City. While Idiolects #1 gives no clear main editorial voice,...
Although not an official publication of New York City’s Collective for Living Cinema screening society, Idiolects was closely tied to the organization, offering a “temporary” publication address of 52 White Street, New York, 10013 in the indicia. That was the Collective’s then permanent screening space in 1976 after having bopped around Manhattan for several years prior.
In addition, the Living Cinema was formed in the early 1970s by students who had studied filmmaking at Binghamton University in upstate New York and then moved to New York City. While Idiolects #1 gives no clear main editorial voice,...
- 3/19/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Criterion Reflections is David Blakeslee’s ongoing project to watch all of the films included in the Criterion Collection in chronological order of their original release. Each episode features panel conversations and 1:1 interviews offering insights on movies that premiered in a particular season of a year in the past, which were destined to eventually bear the Criterion imprint. In this episode, David is joined by William Remmers, Josh Hornbeck, Jason Beamish and Aaron West to discuss a selection of short films released in 1969. Titles include: Carroll Ballard’s Rodeo and The Perils of Priscilla; Paul Bartel’s Naughty Nurse; Les Blank’s The Sun’s Gonna Shine; Octavio Cortázar’s For the First Time; Hollis Frampton’s Carrots and Peas and Lemon; and Clu Gulager’s A Day with the Boys.
Episode Time Markers Introduction: 0:00:00 – 0:04:51 The Sun’s Gonna Shine: 0:04:52 – 0:17:58 For...
Episode Time Markers Introduction: 0:00:00 – 0:04:51 The Sun’s Gonna Shine: 0:04:52 – 0:17:58 For...
- 2/8/2018
- by David Blakeslee
- CriterionCast
The 2018 Sundance Film Festival wasn’t a big marketplace compared to previous editions, but critics found plenty of cinematic highlights to celebrate in this year’s lineup, regardless of how much interest they attracted from hungry buyers. IndieWire invited dozens of critics attending the festival to vote on their favorite films of the lineup, and the movie that received the most support won no awards and didn’t even land distribution before the end of the festival, but stood out as one of the most widely praised selections anyway.
Read More:The 2018 IndieWire Sundance Bible: Every Review, Interview, and News Item Posted During the Festival
“Madeline’s Madeline,” the third feature from writer-director Josephine Decker and her first at Sundance, topped IndieWire’s annual critics survey of the top films with 15% of the vote in the Best Film category. Decker’s surreal drama, which premiered in the festival’s Next section,...
Read More:The 2018 IndieWire Sundance Bible: Every Review, Interview, and News Item Posted During the Festival
“Madeline’s Madeline,” the third feature from writer-director Josephine Decker and her first at Sundance, topped IndieWire’s annual critics survey of the top films with 15% of the vote in the Best Film category. Decker’s surreal drama, which premiered in the festival’s Next section,...
- 1/29/2018
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
“The emotions you are having are not your own, they are someone else’s. You are not the cat — you are inside the cat.” So begins Josephine Decker’s “Madeline’s Madeline,” an ecstatically disorienting experience that defines its terms right from the start and then obliterates any trace of traditional film language, achieving a cinematic aphasia that allows Decker to redraw the boundaries between the stories we tell and the people we tell them about. The result is an experimental movie with the emotional tug of a mainstream hit, a fragmented coming-of-age drama that explores the vast space between Hollis Frampton and Greta Gerwig in order to find something truly new and ineffably of its time. This is one of the boldest and most invigorating American films of the 21st century.
“Madeline’s Madeline” is essentially a movie about its own making, a dazzling hall of mirrors that reflects...
“Madeline’s Madeline” is essentially a movie about its own making, a dazzling hall of mirrors that reflects...
- 1/23/2018
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
Star Wars Dialogue is a 5-part dialog between Mike Thorn, Isiah Medina, Chelsea Phillips-Carr, Isaac Goes, and Neil Bahadur about George Lucas's first six films in the Star Wars franchise.Mike Thorn: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and writing about George Lucas’s work, especially his Star Wars films; I hold this six-part series in extremely high regard, especially the prequel trilogy. In my Bright Lights Film Journal article “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith: George Lucas’s Greatest Artistic Statement?”, I discuss the breadth of Lucas’s extratextual reference and his brazenly unique sensibility. In “George Lucas’s Wildest Vision: Retrofuturist Auteurism in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002),” I pay serious mind to Lucas’s interest in cinematic form and his avant-garde background, unpacking the ways in which his early experimental projects inform his later work. For the purpose of...
- 1/14/2018
- MUBI
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
David Lynch: The Art Life (Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, and Olivia Neergaard-Holm)
Before David Lynch was a filmmaker, he was a struggling painter, whose lifeblood was to “drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and paint.” That’s what he dubbed “the art life,” and what an image – as featured in the many contemporary photos seen in this new documentary – it is, the bequiffed 20-something Lynch sitting back in his Philadelphia studio,...
David Lynch: The Art Life (Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, and Olivia Neergaard-Holm)
Before David Lynch was a filmmaker, he was a struggling painter, whose lifeblood was to “drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, and paint.” That’s what he dubbed “the art life,” and what an image – as featured in the many contemporary photos seen in this new documentary – it is, the bequiffed 20-something Lynch sitting back in his Philadelphia studio,...
- 6/30/2017
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?May is an interesting time for a film festival. In a sense, the calendar year for cinema is starting over in May, since that’s when two major international festivals occur—Cannes and Oberhausen. Where Cannes showcases the latest work from global arthouse auteurs—your Almodóvars and von Triers and Hanekes and the like—Oberhausen specifically focuses on short films, some of them by the world’s most prominent avant-garde filmmakers. A significant portion of what screens at both Cannes and Oberhausen will set the agenda for other film festivals in the coming year, in terms of which films and filmmakers ought to be shown.San Francisco’s Crossroads happens during May as well, and this puts it in a unique position with respect to other, larger festivals. Artistic director Steve Polta is able to assemble an experimental film festival comprised of older,...
- 5/19/2017
- MUBI
Editor’s Note: This article is presented in partnership with FilmStruck. The exclusive streaming home for The Criterion Collection, FilmStruck features the largest streaming library of contemporary and classic arthouse, indie, foreign and cult films as well as extensive bonus content, filmmaker interviews and rare footage. Learn more here.
Todd Haynes is one of the most distinct voices working in film today. He’s also a cinematic chameleon. For every period film Haynes makes, he and his team of craftsman adapt not only the look of the movies or photography of that era, but the visual language as well.
For example, both “Carol” and “Far from Heaven” are Haynes films set in ’50s-era America, but they are worlds apart. While “Carol” got its color palette and sense of composition from the photographers like Saul Leiter who documented the period, “Far From Heaven” recreated the manufactured studio look of Douglas Sirk’s melodramas of that era.
Todd Haynes is one of the most distinct voices working in film today. He’s also a cinematic chameleon. For every period film Haynes makes, he and his team of craftsman adapt not only the look of the movies or photography of that era, but the visual language as well.
For example, both “Carol” and “Far from Heaven” are Haynes films set in ’50s-era America, but they are worlds apart. While “Carol” got its color palette and sense of composition from the photographers like Saul Leiter who documented the period, “Far From Heaven” recreated the manufactured studio look of Douglas Sirk’s melodramas of that era.
- 5/9/2017
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
Is it possible to make a documentary about the future? Following a widely-praised festival run that included screenings at Locarno, Tiff, and Nyff, Isiah Medina’s debut feature 88:88 was recently made available on YouTube. Since then, I’ve encountered questions asking whether or not 88:88 is a collapse or amalgamation of modern technology, and the seemingly contradictory nature of such inquiries emphasizes only a portion of the blurring of distinctions Medina’s cinema orchestrates. The Head of Programming at Locarno, Mark Peranson, called Medina the “most adventurous and contemporary practitioner of the avant-garde of his generation.” Perhaps the most contemporary avant-garde filmmaker is the most suited to draw the cinematic contours of our collective future. Medina is now in the process of adapting Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams’s Inventing the Future, a manifesto that insists on the emancipatory role of technology as we push towards the full automation of labor.
- 4/21/2017
- MUBI
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook)
The Handmaiden is pure cinema — a tender, moving, utterly believable love story. It’s also a tense, unsettling, erotic masterpiece. There’s a palpable exhilaration that comes from watching this latest film from Park Chan-wook. From its four central performances and twisty script to the cinematography of Chung Chung-hoon and feverish, haunting score by Cho Young-wuk, The Handmaiden is crafted to take your breath away.
The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook)
The Handmaiden is pure cinema — a tender, moving, utterly believable love story. It’s also a tense, unsettling, erotic masterpiece. There’s a palpable exhilaration that comes from watching this latest film from Park Chan-wook. From its four central performances and twisty script to the cinematography of Chung Chung-hoon and feverish, haunting score by Cho Young-wuk, The Handmaiden is crafted to take your breath away.
- 4/14/2017
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Mubi is exclusively playing Tyler Hubby's Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present (2016) from April 8 - May 8, 2017 in the United Kingdom and United States.This month Mubi is screening Tyler Hubby’s documentary Tony Conrad: Completely in the Present, which focuses on the life of the musician, filmmaker and teacher who died in April 2016. The release coincides with a series of special memorial events to be held across the U.S., including musical performances. Tyler Hubby spoke to me by Skype about making the film and the many facets of Conrad’s innovative media and community activities, many of which are still being uncovered.Notebook: I was in contact with you last when I wrote a piece for the Notebook, just after Tony Conrad passed away. You helped out with an image for it, which was fantastic.Hubby: Oh good. Yeah, that was a really strange time. I just reread...
- 4/8/2017
- MUBI
I can see the comments now. Who the hell is Tony Conrad, and why the hell is there a documentary about him?
In many ways, that’s kind of the point with regards to the existence of the debut film from editor-turned-director Tyler Hubby. Hubby, best known for editing award-winning documentaries like The Devil And Daniel Johnston, jumps behind the camera for a briskly paced and yet lovingly dense look at an artist who has gone far too long unsung among the masses.
Entitled Tony Conrad: Completely In The Present, Hubby’s film takes a look at the life and work of Conrad, who may not be familiar but has surely inspired or been directly involved with some of your favorite musical and avant garde art collectives. An artist in various mediums, Conrad has worked in realms ranging from experimental film to public access television over his expansive 50-plus year career,...
In many ways, that’s kind of the point with regards to the existence of the debut film from editor-turned-director Tyler Hubby. Hubby, best known for editing award-winning documentaries like The Devil And Daniel Johnston, jumps behind the camera for a briskly paced and yet lovingly dense look at an artist who has gone far too long unsung among the masses.
Entitled Tony Conrad: Completely In The Present, Hubby’s film takes a look at the life and work of Conrad, who may not be familiar but has surely inspired or been directly involved with some of your favorite musical and avant garde art collectives. An artist in various mediums, Conrad has worked in realms ranging from experimental film to public access television over his expansive 50-plus year career,...
- 4/7/2017
- by Joshua Brunsting
- CriterionCast
Last night, at the end of a busy week at work when I was just in the mood to hang out at home and unwind a little, I decided that it was a good time for me to wrap up my viewing of Criterion ’68 by ingesting an assortment of short films that had accumulated, like the last crumbs of cereal at the bottom of the bag, in my chronological checklist of films that I’ve been blogging about over the years. It was a suitable occasion for me to fully immerse myself into what turned out to be a festival of random weirdness. My wife, recovering from a bout with illness, was feeling a bit better but wanted to find a productive use of her time with the resurgence of energy, so she kept herself busy by working on a new quilting project. That left me free to indulge without...
- 2/25/2017
- by David Blakeslee
- CriterionCast
David’s Quick Take for the tl;dr Media Consumer:
As William Greaves declared, “it’s important that as a result of the totality of all these efforts, we arrive at a creative piece of cinematic experience.”
The same could be said of any movie, I suppose. But the sentiment expressed above is especially applicable and indicative of the net cumulative impact that resonates in the sensory receptor system of individual viewers of that hilariously salacious film known as Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One, filmed in the summer of 1968 on a lawn in Central Park, New York City, and also in a few relatively nearby locations including a room situated in an undisclosed location (presumably somewhere in Central Manhattan) where members of the crew gathered to provide an additional layer of insider commentary filmed in real time to shed light on the genesis, exodus and revelation of what Director Greaves may or...
As William Greaves declared, “it’s important that as a result of the totality of all these efforts, we arrive at a creative piece of cinematic experience.”
The same could be said of any movie, I suppose. But the sentiment expressed above is especially applicable and indicative of the net cumulative impact that resonates in the sensory receptor system of individual viewers of that hilariously salacious film known as Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One, filmed in the summer of 1968 on a lawn in Central Park, New York City, and also in a few relatively nearby locations including a room situated in an undisclosed location (presumably somewhere in Central Manhattan) where members of the crew gathered to provide an additional layer of insider commentary filmed in real time to shed light on the genesis, exodus and revelation of what Director Greaves may or...
- 2/17/2017
- by David Blakeslee
- CriterionCast
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson)
Charlie Kaufman, the writer behind Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, teams up with animator Duke Johnson to create a complex emotional drama starring lifelike puppets. The premise is riddled with existential dread of modern-day life, presented uniquely through Kaufman’s idiosyncratic point-of-view. For protagonist and self-help author Michael Stone (voiced soulfully by David Thewlis), everyone around him has the same voice (thanks to...
Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson)
Charlie Kaufman, the writer behind Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, teams up with animator Duke Johnson to create a complex emotional drama starring lifelike puppets. The premise is riddled with existential dread of modern-day life, presented uniquely through Kaufman’s idiosyncratic point-of-view. For protagonist and self-help author Michael Stone (voiced soulfully by David Thewlis), everyone around him has the same voice (thanks to...
- 12/23/2016
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
I’ve been making 16mm durational urban landscape voiceover films, slowly but surely, since the late ‘90s. My short film Blue Diary premiered at the Berlinale in 1998. My two features, The Joy of Life (2005) and The Royal Road (2015) both premiered in the prestigious New Frontiers section at the Sundance Film Festival and have been as wildly successful as experimental films can be. Which is to say, they remain fairly obscure. My small but enthusiastic fan-base frequently asks me for recommendations of films that are similar to my own in terms of incorporating durational landscapes and voiceover and a meditative pace. While it is certainly one of the smallest subgenres in the realm of filmmaking, here are a handful of excellent landscape cinema examples by the practitioners I know best. I confess that my expertise here is limited and hope that the learned Mubi community will chime in with additions in the comments field below.
- 10/11/2016
- MUBI
When Tony Conrad passed away in April of 2016, I knew of him as an experimental filmmaker. It’s hard to be an art student at the University at Buffalo — despite his teaching in Media Studies rather than Fine Art — and not know his name. But that was all I knew: a name, reputation, and the plaudits of countless friends who knew so much more. Only when obituaries started being released in the likes of the New York Times did I realize how renowned a figure he was beyond local heroic status working alongside Paul Sharits and Hollis Frampton in my hometown. Then Rolling Stone posted. Pitchfork, Stereogum, NME, and other music publications quickly followed suit. Suddenly a whole world was opened by his sprawling legacy.
This is where documentarian Tyler Hubby arrives — with a film twenty years in the making that proves perfectly suited for a Conrad novice like myself.
This is where documentarian Tyler Hubby arrives — with a film twenty years in the making that proves perfectly suited for a Conrad novice like myself.
- 10/9/2016
- by Jared Mobarak
- The Film Stage
“Endless” opens with a techno sample from German artist Wolfgang Tillmans, singing in accented robotic tones: “With this Apple appliance/You can capture live video/Still motion pictures/Shot at high frequency/Blurring/Blurring the line.”
Calling Frank Ocean’s visual album a music video doesn’t do it justice. It might be opus to creativity, or digital music sculpture, but more than anything it’s an ode to a kind of handmade art that that can only exist on a device.
Read More: Watch ‘Possibilia,’ The Moving Interactive Film From ‘Swiss Army Man’ Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
Blurring lines is exactly what Ocean succeeds in doing — wresting that phrase from Robin Thicke’s creepy hands is just a bonus. The album can only be streamed with an Apple Music subscription (the free trial lasts three months) while the film plays. The captivating black-and-white images aren’t exactly...
Calling Frank Ocean’s visual album a music video doesn’t do it justice. It might be opus to creativity, or digital music sculpture, but more than anything it’s an ode to a kind of handmade art that that can only exist on a device.
Read More: Watch ‘Possibilia,’ The Moving Interactive Film From ‘Swiss Army Man’ Directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
Blurring lines is exactly what Ocean succeeds in doing — wresting that phrase from Robin Thicke’s creepy hands is just a bonus. The album can only be streamed with an Apple Music subscription (the free trial lasts three months) while the film plays. The captivating black-and-white images aren’t exactly...
- 8/19/2016
- by Jude Dry
- Indiewire
Tony Conrad, 1983. Photo by Joe Gibbons.Tony Conrad, who passed away on April 9 aged 76, was a vital figure in the fields of both filmmaking and music. His work in each is often characterized by its visceral power, its clear-eyed critique of Western art traditions, its interest in social questions and relations of control, its technical virtuosity and wit.Conrad was an indisputable innovator. His film works, beginning with The Flicker (1966) and continuing through, the Yellow Movies (1973), Film Feedback (1974), the ‘cooked film’ and ‘pickled film’ series, and many others, pushing the medium to its inner and outer limits: exploring the potential of long durations, stroboscopic effects, the physical properties of celluloid, the relation of filmmaker to spectator, the relation of film to other arts and to history. Conrad also created a vast number of video works, reflecting the same incisive energy. Too seldom referred to in contemporary writing about experimental film,...
- 4/19/2016
- by Yusef Sayed
- MUBI
Mark, Aaron and Keith Enright give a look at D.A. Pennabaker’s documentary portrait of Bob Dylan in Dont Look Back (the no apostrophe is intentional). This was a pivotal period in the artist’s career, and both the film and the music were influential. We dig deep as to what type of persona Dylan revealed, the cinéma vérité filmmaking style that captured him in his element, and also his attitude towards the press and others who wanted to label him.
About the film:
Bob Dylan is captured on-screen as he never would be again in this groundbreaking film from D. A. Pennebaker. The legendary documentarian finds Dylan in England during his 1965 tour, which would be his last as an acoustic artist. In this wildly entertaining vision of one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Dylan is surrounded by teen fans, gets into heated philosophical jousts with journalists, and...
About the film:
Bob Dylan is captured on-screen as he never would be again in this groundbreaking film from D. A. Pennebaker. The legendary documentarian finds Dylan in England during his 1965 tour, which would be his last as an acoustic artist. In this wildly entertaining vision of one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists, Dylan is surrounded by teen fans, gets into heated philosophical jousts with journalists, and...
- 1/25/2016
- by Aaron West
- CriterionCast
Her Silent SeamingPerhaps more than most other forms of cinema, experimental film and video is an auteur’s medium through and through. Since the production model for avant-garde work is almost exclusively artisanal, with a single individual (or possibly a duo or an artists’ collective) making the work from a studio context similar to that or a sculptor or photographer, it only makes sense to consider these works are expressions of an artist’s point of view. As such, those of us who regularly engage with experimental work will inevitably use the artist as the primary mode of categorization—who to keep track of, who seems promising, etc.But there’s a bit more to it. One of the greatest joys of avant-garde filmgoing, as any fan will tell you, is seeing an expertly curated program of films, be they new short works, recontextualized classics, or some combination thereof. A...
- 1/22/2016
- by Michael Sicinski
- MUBI
Last weekend, as the weather began to turn crisp and cold, the ninth iteration of the Buffalo International Film Festival went off, to bigger crowds and bigger acclaim than ever before.
The Film Stage’s first-produced short film Strange Bird was lucky enough to be included in the line-up, premiering at the newly-restored North Park Theatre on Hertel Avenue in front of writer/director Perry Blackshear’s Diy-thriller They Look Like People, which won a Special Jury Award at the Slamdance Film Festival along with a slew of other accolades at several impressive fests.
It was a bittersweet year for the festival following the passing of its founder, Edward Summer, in November of 2014. An accomplished artist, writer and filmmaker, Summer was celebrated throughout this year’s proceedings, including a touching memorial during the fest’s opening night gala.
In Summer’s hands, Biff emerged as an annual event for local cinephiles,...
The Film Stage’s first-produced short film Strange Bird was lucky enough to be included in the line-up, premiering at the newly-restored North Park Theatre on Hertel Avenue in front of writer/director Perry Blackshear’s Diy-thriller They Look Like People, which won a Special Jury Award at the Slamdance Film Festival along with a slew of other accolades at several impressive fests.
It was a bittersweet year for the festival following the passing of its founder, Edward Summer, in November of 2014. An accomplished artist, writer and filmmaker, Summer was celebrated throughout this year’s proceedings, including a touching memorial during the fest’s opening night gala.
In Summer’s hands, Biff emerged as an annual event for local cinephiles,...
- 10/23/2015
- by Dan Mecca
- The Film Stage
A holiday roundup of new issues of Cinema Scope, Senses of Cinema, Lola, La Furia Umana and many more titles gathers interviews with the likes of Christian Petzold, Nadav Lapid, Peter Strickland, Philip Kaufman, James Benning, Mike Hoolboom and Abderrahmane Sissako as well as articles on Manny Farber, Bruno Dumont's P'tit Quinquin, Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, Harun Farocki, Aleksandr Sokurov, Ernst Lubitsch, Terrence Malick, Jacques Becker, George Kuchar, Eric Rohmer, Hollis Frampton, Alex Proyas and the 25th anniversary of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. » - David Hudson...
- 12/25/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
A holiday roundup of new issues of Cinema Scope, Senses of Cinema, Lola, La Furia Umana and many more titles gathers interviews with the likes of Christian Petzold, Nadav Lapid, Peter Strickland, Philip Kaufman, James Benning, Mike Hoolboom and Abderrahmane Sissako as well as articles on Manny Farber, Bruno Dumont's P'tit Quinquin, Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, Harun Farocki, Aleksandr Sokurov, Ernst Lubitsch, Terrence Malick, Jacques Becker, George Kuchar, Eric Rohmer, Hollis Frampton, Alex Proyas and the 25th anniversary of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. » - David Hudson...
- 12/25/2014
- Keyframe
Exposed! What people do in the privacy of their very own homes is put on display for all to see in Adele Horne‘s very dirty movie, Maintenance. Horne’s subjects do it all: Scrubbing, dusting, sweeping, mopping. No, those aren’t euphemisms. Maintenance exposes the private act of cleaning in an entirely engrossing way.
Horne’s use of single, long takes documenting the cleaners’ actions seems indebted to the work of James Benning, who even appears in one of the segments. (Both are faculty members at the California Institute of the Arts.)
But, Maintenance also has something of a Hollis Frampton vibe to it, especially in the way she follows each documentary vignette with an on-screen text monologue of each cleaner. This gives the film a narrative vibe that it wouldn’t have otherwise, which is entirely not similar to, but feels vaguely reminiscent of Frampton films like Nostalgia or Poetic Justice.
Horne’s use of single, long takes documenting the cleaners’ actions seems indebted to the work of James Benning, who even appears in one of the segments. (Both are faculty members at the California Institute of the Arts.)
But, Maintenance also has something of a Hollis Frampton vibe to it, especially in the way she follows each documentary vignette with an on-screen text monologue of each cleaner. This gives the film a narrative vibe that it wouldn’t have otherwise, which is entirely not similar to, but feels vaguely reminiscent of Frampton films like Nostalgia or Poetic Justice.
- 11/8/2014
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Why don’t we take humor seriously? There have been exceptions to the pattern. Bruce Conner’s films were funny, but he “made up” for it by having an instantly recognizable style. The avant-garde comic whose work has probably been afforded the most serious attention over the years is Owen Land, but this is owing to the nature of his jokes. They are academic, abstruse and deeply hermetic, lending them an air of the “funny-strange” that offsets any perceived frivolity in his moments of “funny-ha-ha” (jokes about salted plums, giant pandas or outright parodies of Hollis Frampton). As I often point out, P. Adams Sitney’s classic tome Visionary Film, now in its third edition, addresses pranksters George and Mike Kuchar in a single sentence, which strikes me as damning evidence for the prosecution.>> - Michael Sicinski...
- 9/22/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Why don’t we take humor seriously? There have been exceptions to the pattern. Bruce Conner’s films were funny, but he “made up” for it by having an instantly recognizable style. The avant-garde comic whose work has probably been afforded the most serious attention over the years is Owen Land, but this is owing to the nature of his jokes. They are academic, abstruse and deeply hermetic, lending them an air of the “funny-strange” that offsets any perceived frivolity in his moments of “funny-ha-ha” (jokes about salted plums, giant pandas or outright parodies of Hollis Frampton). As I often point out, P. Adams Sitney’s classic tome Visionary Film, now in its third edition, addresses pranksters George and Mike Kuchar in a single sentence, which strikes me as damning evidence for the prosecution.>> - Michael Sicinski...
- 9/22/2014
- Keyframe
Amazon is having a massive sale on Criterion Collection titles, virtually all of them listed at 50% off and I have included more than 115 of the available titles directly below along with a selection of ten I consider must owns. Titles beyond my top ten include Amarcord, Christopher Nolan's Following, David Fincher's The Game, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory and The Killing, Roman Polansk's Rosemary's Baby, Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited and plenty of Terrence Malick. All the links lead directly to the Amazon website, so click on through with confidence. Small Note: By buying through the links below you help support RopeofSilicon.com as I get a small commission for the sales made through using these links. Thanks for reading and I appreciate your support. Top Ten Must Owns 8 1/2 (dir. Federico Fellini) 12 Angry Men (dir. Sidney Lumet) The 400 Blows (dir.
- 6/6/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Amazon is having a massive sale on Criterion Collection titles, virtually all of them listed at 50% off and I have included more than 115 of the available titles directly below along with a selection of ten I consider must owns. Titles beyond my top ten include Amarcord, Christopher Nolan's Following, David Fincher's The Game, Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory and The Killing, Roman Polansk's Rosemary's Baby, Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore and The Darjeeling Limited and plenty of Terrence Malick. All the links lead directly to the Amazon website, so click on through with confidence. Small Note: By buying through the links below you help support RopeofSilicon.com as I get a small commission for the sales made through using these links. Thanks for reading and I appreciate your support. Top Ten Must Owns 8 1/2 (dir. Federico Fellini) 12 Angry Men (dir. Sidney Lumet) The 400 Blows (dir.
- 6/6/2013
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty is such a fine, rare bird: Terence Nance’s Gotham Award-winning debut film is, regardless of its aesthetic pyrotechnics and self-reflexivity (it consists of a series of short experimental films that radically deconstruct Nance’s romantic foibles), wholly, fully, truly accessible to everyone. If Hollis Frampton and Nina Paley had somehow, through the force of magic realism, had a black love child, it would have grown up to direct something like this. It’s altogether unusual strategy for detailing Nance’s obsessive courtship of a young woman named Namik Minter — using reenactments, direct address, doc interviews, stop-motion and traditional animation to …...
- 4/24/2013
- by Brandon Harris
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
The Ann Arbor Film Festival, having survived their half-a-century blowout in 2012, is back with another rip-roarin’ 51st edition in 2013, which will run from March 19-24, screening a mind-boggling amount of experimental short films and a few features.
Highlights of the fest include:
Special presentations by this year’s jurors, including Marcin Gizycki round-up of Polish animation from the 1950s to the present; Laida Lertxundi’s selection of some of her films as well as her biggest influences; and Kevin Jerome Everson’s mini-retrospective of his own films.
There’s also special tributes to Pat O’Neill, including a retrospective of his short films from the ’70s to the present as well as a screening of his 1989 35mm experimental epic Water and Power; Suzan Pitt, with selections of short films from her career; and a screening of Ken Burns’ latest doc The Central Park Five, co-directed with his daughter Sarah Burns and son-in-law David McMahon,...
Highlights of the fest include:
Special presentations by this year’s jurors, including Marcin Gizycki round-up of Polish animation from the 1950s to the present; Laida Lertxundi’s selection of some of her films as well as her biggest influences; and Kevin Jerome Everson’s mini-retrospective of his own films.
There’s also special tributes to Pat O’Neill, including a retrospective of his short films from the ’70s to the present as well as a screening of his 1989 35mm experimental epic Water and Power; Suzan Pitt, with selections of short films from her career; and a screening of Ken Burns’ latest doc The Central Park Five, co-directed with his daughter Sarah Burns and son-in-law David McMahon,...
- 3/19/2013
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Looking back at 2012 on what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2012—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2012 to create a unique double feature.
All the contributors were asked to write a paragraph explaining their 2012 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.
How would you program some...
All the contributors were asked to write a paragraph explaining their 2012 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.
How would you program some...
- 1/9/2013
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
Since last November saw the premiere at the Austrian Film Museum of several new works by James Benning after the Viennale had ended—YouTube Trilogy, small roads, Two Cabins and Faces—the festival seems to be making up to its international guests like myself that had left the city last year disappointed at being unable to catch them. This year new and old works by Benning are being shown during the festival. One day was entirely devoted to what one might call the One Way Boogie Woogie project, showing first the 1977 film by that name shot on 16mm, a cryptic graphic-materialist narrative primarily documenting a particular rundown, industrial neighborhood of Milwaukee, followed by One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later (2005), which revisits the same area again through 16mm, and concluded by a new, longer digital work based on the area and following a related principle, One Way Boogie Woogie 2012. Another visit...
- 11/13/2012
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
This week’s Must Browse is the new Tumblr blog by the Anthology Film Archives, which you must bookmark, add to your feed reader, etc.! The site has, of course, notes about upcoming screenings, plus lots of great film stills posters, notes, anecdotes and more. (Wish they had a sidebar calendar of their screenings on the blog, tho’. Something to think about…)Donna k. jumps into the “death of cinema” fray and finds life! Albeit in a film about death: V/H/S.In all articles about comics made into films, all journalists must include this one dug up by the Temple of Schlock: Sex in the Comics!One+One Filmmakers Journal’s latest film primer is on Ralph Bakshi’s Heavy Traffic. Also, a couple of big updates re: the Journal.366 Weird Movies has a capsule o’ weirdness devoted to Hollis Frampton’s Zorns Lemma.As he promised, Jon Jost...
- 11/11/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
On the occasion of Anthology Film Archive's retrospective on Jean Epstein and the publishing of a new anthology on the filmmaker edited by Sarah Keller and Jason N. Paul, Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations, we are here reprinting the essay by Nicole Brenez, "Ultra-Modern: Jean Epstein, or Cinema 'Serving the Forces of Transgression and Revolt.'" The anthology is published by Amsterdam University Press and available in the Us and Canada from the University of Chicago Press. Many thanks to Amsterdam University Press, University of Chicago Press, Magdalena Hernas, Sarah Keller and Nicole Brenez.
Jean Epstein disappeared over half a century ago, in 1953. Yet, few filmmakers are still as alive today. At the time, a radio broadcast announced the following obituary: “Jean Epstein has just died. This name may not mean much to many of those who turn to the screens to provide them with the weekly dose of emotion they need.
Jean Epstein disappeared over half a century ago, in 1953. Yet, few filmmakers are still as alive today. At the time, a radio broadcast announced the following obituary: “Jean Epstein has just died. This name may not mean much to many of those who turn to the screens to provide them with the weekly dose of emotion they need.
- 5/30/2012
- MUBI
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