For his tenth Cannes feature premiere, Arnaud Desplechin chose to present a docu-fictional love letter to cinema. Two years after Brother and Sister was in Competition, Spectateurs (or Filmlovers!) is one of the festival’s Special Screenings, an effervescent walk down memory lane with a director who has helped shape contemporary French cinema for the better. It’s not hard for a Frenchman to be a cinephile––almost everyone is trained in film knowledge, either formally or informally, as part of their cultural upbringing. But Filmlovers! manages to set itself apart from all the other meta-documentaries or essays about how cinema made their director the person they are today. Instead it is both an honest and highly poetic feature that quite naturally absorbs film and literary references to address the structural role cinema has played for both Desplechin himself and our way of viewing the world.
Filmlovers! is narrated by Paul Dédalus,...
Filmlovers! is narrated by Paul Dédalus,...
- 5/26/2024
- by Savina Petkova
- The Film Stage
If an animated film turns up in the Competition at Cannes, chances are it’s not going to be another Bambi — although, if it were made today, the traumatic shooting of Bambi’s mother would certainly tickle the selection committee. No, Cannes prefers its animation to be skewed towards adults, like René Lalou’s surreal sci-fi Fantastic Planet (1973), Robert Taylor’s raunchy sequel The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974) or Ari Folman’s wartime docudrama Waltz with Bashir (2008). And with The Most Precious of Cargoes, actor turned director and now graphic artist Michel Hazanavicius has turned to the most controversial topic it is possible to approach with pen and ink: the Holocaust.
Five long years in the making, Hazanavicius’s adaptation of the 2019 novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg arrives in Cannes two years after the death of its narrator, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and, unfortunately, a year after the debut of Jonathan Glazer...
Five long years in the making, Hazanavicius’s adaptation of the 2019 novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg arrives in Cannes two years after the death of its narrator, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and, unfortunately, a year after the debut of Jonathan Glazer...
- 5/25/2024
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Competing for Cannes’ top prize, The Most Precious of Cargoes deploys animation to tell a semi-contemporary fairy tale about a lost baby girl who is thrown from a train bound for Auschwitz and found in the snow by a childless woodcutter’s wife. It’s the latest feature by French filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius, who’s been a favorite of the Cannes programmers ever since his cinephile- and crowd-pleasing serio-comic pastiche The Artist (2011) broke him onto the international stage, going on to scoop up awards — including a best picture Oscar — and box-office records (for a near-silent film, at least) worldwide.
Sadly, Hazanavicius’ subsequent films haven’t enjoyed the same success. This latest effort, however, might just be his most commercially viable in a while since Holocaust films nearly always travel. Its portability is only enhanced by it being animated, making it easy to dub this for different territories. If nothing else,...
Sadly, Hazanavicius’ subsequent films haven’t enjoyed the same success. This latest effort, however, might just be his most commercially viable in a while since Holocaust films nearly always travel. Its portability is only enhanced by it being animated, making it easy to dub this for different territories. If nothing else,...
- 5/24/2024
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
MK2 Films has acquired worldwide rights, including France, to French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann’s films, including his landmark documentary about the Holocaust, “Shoah,” which is inscribed in Unesco’s Memory of the World register. The deal was signed with Les Films Aleph.
“Shoah,” considered one of the most important works in world cinema, tells the story of the genocide of European Jews by the Nazis during World War II. With a duration of nine and a half hours, it is the result of 12 years of research, giving voice to the protagonists of the concentration camps — survivors, perpetrators and bystanders. It was edited over five years from 230 hours of footage and virtually no archival images. The film, first released in 1985, won two BAFTA awards. It is available in a restored 4K version.
In addition to “Shoah,” the agreement also includes five other films by the French filmmaker and writer: “The Karski Report...
“Shoah,” considered one of the most important works in world cinema, tells the story of the genocide of European Jews by the Nazis during World War II. With a duration of nine and a half hours, it is the result of 12 years of research, giving voice to the protagonists of the concentration camps — survivors, perpetrators and bystanders. It was edited over five years from 230 hours of footage and virtually no archival images. The film, first released in 1985, won two BAFTA awards. It is available in a restored 4K version.
In addition to “Shoah,” the agreement also includes five other films by the French filmmaker and writer: “The Karski Report...
- 5/18/2024
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
When Jonathan Glazer began developing the project that became The Zone of Interest — nominated for five Oscars, including best picture and best international feature — he and producer James Wilson began to ask a series of questions that would require them to find the rationale behind making another film that depicts the events of the Holocaust.
The subject has been well-worn cinematic territory before and after Schindler’s List took best picture three decades ago — becoming the first film about the subject to win the Academy’s top prize. Both Glazer and Wilson knew that they had to do something completely different than what came before them, and Wilson tells THR the pair were less interested in depicting the extermination of European Jews than they were focused on grappling with the culture that contributed to those atrocities.
Using Martin Amis’ 2014 novel as their template — the book tells three interwoven stories surrounding the fictional commandant of Auschwitz,...
The subject has been well-worn cinematic territory before and after Schindler’s List took best picture three decades ago — becoming the first film about the subject to win the Academy’s top prize. Both Glazer and Wilson knew that they had to do something completely different than what came before them, and Wilson tells THR the pair were less interested in depicting the extermination of European Jews than they were focused on grappling with the culture that contributed to those atrocities.
Using Martin Amis’ 2014 novel as their template — the book tells three interwoven stories surrounding the fictional commandant of Auschwitz,...
- 2/27/2024
- by Tyler Coates
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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It was only a few days ago that the Criterion Collection had a surprise flash sale. The home video company’s entire catalog was slashed down to 50% off list prices. While that sale only lasted for 24 hours, there are a number of titles that are still on sale for half-off at Amazon.
We rounded up the best deals on Criterion Collection releases, including Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing,” Dennis Hopper’s “Easy Rider,” Whit Stillman’s “The Last Days of Disco” and much more. In fact, even a few boxed sets are half off, such as Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “The Dekalog” and Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” anthology.
Ahead, check out the best Criterion Blu-ray discs currently on sale for 50% off at Amazon:
‘Do the Right Thing...
It was only a few days ago that the Criterion Collection had a surprise flash sale. The home video company’s entire catalog was slashed down to 50% off list prices. While that sale only lasted for 24 hours, there are a number of titles that are still on sale for half-off at Amazon.
We rounded up the best deals on Criterion Collection releases, including Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing,” Dennis Hopper’s “Easy Rider,” Whit Stillman’s “The Last Days of Disco” and much more. In fact, even a few boxed sets are half off, such as Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “The Dekalog” and Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” anthology.
Ahead, check out the best Criterion Blu-ray discs currently on sale for 50% off at Amazon:
‘Do the Right Thing...
- 10/20/2023
- by Anna Tingley and Rudie Obias
- Variety Film + TV
’No Me Llame Ternera’ features interview with a former leader of the Basque terrorist group Eta.
The San Sebastian Film Festival has rejected public calls for it to withdraw a Netflix documentary from its line-up that features an exclusive interview with a former leader of Basque terrorist group Eta.
Directed by Jordi Évole and Màrius Sánchez, No Me Llame Ternera is set to open the festival’s Made in Spain section on September 22.
The documentary explores some of Eta’s decisive moments until it disbanded in 2018, and has an interview between Évole and Josu Urrutikoetxea, also known as Josu Ternera,...
The San Sebastian Film Festival has rejected public calls for it to withdraw a Netflix documentary from its line-up that features an exclusive interview with a former leader of Basque terrorist group Eta.
Directed by Jordi Évole and Màrius Sánchez, No Me Llame Ternera is set to open the festival’s Made in Spain section on September 22.
The documentary explores some of Eta’s decisive moments until it disbanded in 2018, and has an interview between Évole and Josu Urrutikoetxea, also known as Josu Ternera,...
- 9/13/2023
- by Tim Dams
- ScreenDaily
The San Sebastian Film Festival has issued a statement standing by its decision to screen a Netflix-backed documentary about Josu Urrutikoetxea, the former leader of the Basque separatist militant group Eta.
The documentary entitled No me llame Ternera revolves around an exclusive interview between renowned Spanish journalist Jordi Évole and Urrutikoetxea, who goes by the nickname of Josu Ternera. The title translates as “Don’t call me Ternera”.
Over its 60-year history, Eta killed 883 people as part of its campaign to create a separate Basque state northern Spain and southwest France, before it was dissolved in 2018.
On the run for 16 years, Urrutikoetxea was arrested in France in May 2019 having been found guilty in absentia of being a member of a terror group. He was acquitted in a retrial in 2021 for lack of evidence.
The inclusion of No me llame Ternera as the opening film of San Sebastian’s Made...
The documentary entitled No me llame Ternera revolves around an exclusive interview between renowned Spanish journalist Jordi Évole and Urrutikoetxea, who goes by the nickname of Josu Ternera. The title translates as “Don’t call me Ternera”.
Over its 60-year history, Eta killed 883 people as part of its campaign to create a separate Basque state northern Spain and southwest France, before it was dissolved in 2018.
On the run for 16 years, Urrutikoetxea was arrested in France in May 2019 having been found guilty in absentia of being a member of a terror group. He was acquitted in a retrial in 2021 for lack of evidence.
The inclusion of No me llame Ternera as the opening film of San Sebastian’s Made...
- 9/12/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Hara Kazuo’s Minamata Mandala is a testament to how the body becomes politicized when it’s subjected to the ruinous practices of industry. The documentary’s overall effect is similar to Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah for its painstaking interest in the aftermath of human-made catastrophe, and its refusal to sentimentalize or exploit those whose lives have been inexorably altered—and in many cases defined—by corporate malfeasance and corruption.
Minamata disease, a neurological disorder caused by mercury poisoning, gets its name from the Japanese city where it was first discovered. Starting in the 1930s, a chemical factory owned by Chisso Corporation began releasing toxic chemicals into industrial wastewater, and five years after the factory, in 1951, changed the co-catalyst in its acetaldehyde-producing system, of which mercury is a byproduct, the first case of what is now known as the disease was detected.
Divided into three parts, Minamata Mandala begins, following...
Minamata disease, a neurological disorder caused by mercury poisoning, gets its name from the Japanese city where it was first discovered. Starting in the 1930s, a chemical factory owned by Chisso Corporation began releasing toxic chemicals into industrial wastewater, and five years after the factory, in 1951, changed the co-catalyst in its acetaldehyde-producing system, of which mercury is a byproduct, the first case of what is now known as the disease was detected.
Divided into three parts, Minamata Mandala begins, following...
- 8/15/2023
- by Clayton Dillard
- Slant Magazine
Whether or not you agree with Quentin Tarantino’s unsparing assertion that “’80s cinema is, along with the ’50s, the worst era in Hollywood history,” there’s a curiously undeniable truth to his follow-up statement: “Matched only by now! Matched only by the current era.” Revisiting the defining movies of the ’80s from our current perspective at the height of Barbenheimer summer, two things become abundantly clear.
The first is that modern Hollywood would probably need a Barbenheimer every month in order to equal the creative output of a studio system that used to be capable of releasing “Blade Runner” and “The Thing” on the same night as if it were just another Friday. The second is that, in a wide variety of different ways both negative and not, the ’80s provide a perfect match for the movies of our current moment — if not the current moment itself.
Perhaps that...
The first is that modern Hollywood would probably need a Barbenheimer every month in order to equal the creative output of a studio system that used to be capable of releasing “Blade Runner” and “The Thing” on the same night as if it were just another Friday. The second is that, in a wide variety of different ways both negative and not, the ’80s provide a perfect match for the movies of our current moment — if not the current moment itself.
Perhaps that...
- 8/14/2023
- by IndieWire Staff
- Indiewire
With his latest film “Oppenheimer,” Christopher Nolan has returned to war; World War II, specifically. Although the J. Robert Oppenheimer biopic doesn’t feature any scenes of soldiers heading into battle, it’s a war movie at its heart, with the conflict in Europe and Asia motivating the morally reprehensible actions of the Manhattan Project in the States. “Oppenheimer” makes, in some ways, a good companion piece to Nolan’s 2016 hit “Dunkirk”: a more conventional (relatively speaking) depiction of the war, from the perspectives of the ordinary soldiers during the Dunkirk evacuation.
From the moment it ended, World War II has proven fertile ground for hundreds of directors, as Hollywood stars have geared up to fight some Nazis. But, perhaps due to the relative recency and large scope of the conflict, the war has also invited an unexpected level of nuance and diversity of perspectives. One of the earliest...
From the moment it ended, World War II has proven fertile ground for hundreds of directors, as Hollywood stars have geared up to fight some Nazis. But, perhaps due to the relative recency and large scope of the conflict, the war has also invited an unexpected level of nuance and diversity of perspectives. One of the earliest...
- 8/3/2023
- by Kate Erbland and Wilson Chapman
- Indiewire
Italian actor-turned-director Andrea Di Stefano, whose sleek cop thriller “Last Night of Amore” just had its U.S. premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival, is in advanced stages of development on “Karski” a feature about Jan Karski, the World War II Polish resistance fighter who risked his life to blow the whistle on the Holocaust.
Di Stefano’s high-profile project, which is titled “Karski,” is being developed by New York City-based production company Phiphen Pictures, the indie founded by Molly Conners most recently behind Netflix’s “Like Father” and “It’s Bruno!,” the director said. Italy’s expanding Indiana Production, which shepherded “Amore,” is also on board.
Karski in 1942, defying great danger, twice infiltrated Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto to witness its horrors and managed to give first-hand accounts of the Holocaust from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Allies, including U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943. But his alarm cries fell on deaf ears.
Di Stefano’s high-profile project, which is titled “Karski,” is being developed by New York City-based production company Phiphen Pictures, the indie founded by Molly Conners most recently behind Netflix’s “Like Father” and “It’s Bruno!,” the director said. Italy’s expanding Indiana Production, which shepherded “Amore,” is also on board.
Karski in 1942, defying great danger, twice infiltrated Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto to witness its horrors and managed to give first-hand accounts of the Holocaust from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Allies, including U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943. But his alarm cries fell on deaf ears.
- 6/15/2023
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. A24 releases the film in select theaters on Friday, December 15.
Holocaust cinema has so implicitly existed in the shadow of a single question that it would no longer seem worth asking if not for the fact that it’s never been answered: How do you depict an atrocity? The most urgent and indelible examples of the form offer equally simple yet perfectly contradictory responses. Documentaries like “Shoah” and Alain Resnais’ “Night and Fog” suggest that you don’t, while historical epics like “Schindler’s List” insist that you must. If the latter argues that seeing is believing, the former maintains that seeing wouldn’t help — that some things are too unfathomable for the human eye to comprehend from a distance, and can only hope to be understood by their absence. A tsunami might not seem much bigger than...
Holocaust cinema has so implicitly existed in the shadow of a single question that it would no longer seem worth asking if not for the fact that it’s never been answered: How do you depict an atrocity? The most urgent and indelible examples of the form offer equally simple yet perfectly contradictory responses. Documentaries like “Shoah” and Alain Resnais’ “Night and Fog” suggest that you don’t, while historical epics like “Schindler’s List” insist that you must. If the latter argues that seeing is believing, the former maintains that seeing wouldn’t help — that some things are too unfathomable for the human eye to comprehend from a distance, and can only hope to be understood by their absence. A tsunami might not seem much bigger than...
- 5/19/2023
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
We walk among ghosts in cities, storied urban constructs with layers of misty memories one can sense in their distinct smells, and perceive in their dated cracks and imperfections. There are hundreds of thousands of such ghosts that haunt Steve McQueen’s audacious documentary essay “Occupied City,” a 2023 Cannes premiere that is as much a hypnotizing and cumulatively disquieting cinematic artifact about the Holocaust and World War II-era Amsterdam as it is a stubbornly single-minded historical art installation.
The simplest way to describe “Occupied City” would be calling it an extensive guided tour of Amsterdam’s past that uses Bianca Stigter’s book, “Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945)” as a compass. McQueen’s camera travels through 130 specific addresses in the present-day of his adopted town. Let’s call it near-present-day to be exact — “Occupied City” strolls through the Dutch capital mostly during the earliest days of the Covid lockdown,...
The simplest way to describe “Occupied City” would be calling it an extensive guided tour of Amsterdam’s past that uses Bianca Stigter’s book, “Atlas of an Occupied City (Amsterdam 1940-1945)” as a compass. McQueen’s camera travels through 130 specific addresses in the present-day of his adopted town. Let’s call it near-present-day to be exact — “Occupied City” strolls through the Dutch capital mostly during the earliest days of the Covid lockdown,...
- 5/17/2023
- by Tomris Laffly
- The Wrap
Over the past 15 years, Steve McQueen has become one of my favorite filmmakers. He’s made only a handful of features, but in almost every case he takes a subject of extraordinary magnitude and uses it to box open your heart and mind. And he does it all with a storytelling vibrance that’s at once heady and populist. So when it was announced that McQueen would be directing his first documentary feature, and that it would tackle the subject of the Holocaust, dealing with the victims of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam (the city where McQueen now lives), my anticipation took the form of thinking: How, with a director of McQueen’s skill and imagination and gravity, could this be less than fascinating?
But “Occupied City,” it’s my sad duty to report, is a good deal less than fascinating. I’ll be blunt: The film is a trial to sit through,...
But “Occupied City,” it’s my sad duty to report, is a good deal less than fascinating. I’ll be blunt: The film is a trial to sit through,...
- 5/17/2023
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
In cinematic form, how do you tell history without archive footage? Occupied City shows how it can be done, and to what effect.
Steve McQueen’s audacious documentary, which premiered at Cannes on Wednesday in the festival’s Special Screenings section, undertakes a portrait of Amsterdam during the Dutch city’s occupation by the Nazis from 1940-45. But it does so without making use of a single frame of film or stills from the era itself – no German tanks rumbling over the thoroughfares, no jackbooted troops on patrol, no black-and-white imagery of terrified civilians running for safety.
Director Steve McQueen
The remarkably bold approach, instead, uses only scenes of Amsterdam today while a narrator (Melanie Hyams) recounts in almost clinical fashion what took place virtually door to door and street to street during the Nazi occupation. For instance, at the opulent Concertgebouw we learn the invaders took a shine to...
Steve McQueen’s audacious documentary, which premiered at Cannes on Wednesday in the festival’s Special Screenings section, undertakes a portrait of Amsterdam during the Dutch city’s occupation by the Nazis from 1940-45. But it does so without making use of a single frame of film or stills from the era itself – no German tanks rumbling over the thoroughfares, no jackbooted troops on patrol, no black-and-white imagery of terrified civilians running for safety.
Director Steve McQueen
The remarkably bold approach, instead, uses only scenes of Amsterdam today while a narrator (Melanie Hyams) recounts in almost clinical fashion what took place virtually door to door and street to street during the Nazi occupation. For instance, at the opulent Concertgebouw we learn the invaders took a shine to...
- 5/17/2023
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
While we’ve known the results of Jeanne Dielman Tops Sight and Sound‘s 2022 Greatest Films of All-Time List”>Sight & Sound’s once-in-a-decade greatest films of all-time poll for a few months now, the recent release of the individual ballots has given data-crunching cinephiles a new opportunity to dive deeper. We have Letterboxd lists detailing all 4,400+ films that received at least one vote and another expanding the directors poll, spreadsheets calculating every entry, and now a list ranking how many votes individual directors received for their films.
Tabulated by Genjuro, the list of 35 directors, with two pairs, puts Alfred Hitchcock back on top, while Chantal Akerman is at number two. Elsewhere in the top ten are David Lynch, Francis Ford Coppola, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Orson Welles, Yasujirō Ozu, and Stanley Kubrick, and tied for the tenth spot is Wong Kar Wai and Ingmar Bergman.
Check out the list below,...
Tabulated by Genjuro, the list of 35 directors, with two pairs, puts Alfred Hitchcock back on top, while Chantal Akerman is at number two. Elsewhere in the top ten are David Lynch, Francis Ford Coppola, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Orson Welles, Yasujirō Ozu, and Stanley Kubrick, and tied for the tenth spot is Wong Kar Wai and Ingmar Bergman.
Check out the list below,...
- 3/5/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
One of my earliest cinematic memories came from watching the films of Jennifer Jason Leigh. The actress has given countless performances that are utterly stunning. I was utterly taken in by films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Hitcher, The Big Picture, Rush, Single White Female, and many others. And as of late, she has grown to be one of the most versatile and talented performers working today, with movies like The Hateful Eight and Possessor. Now, she performs stunningly in the second and final season of Hunters.
Speaking to someone who has long held a high spot in your list of favorite actors, it was a joy to take a moment with Jennifer. She opened up about taking on the role of Chava Apfelbaum and working with series creator David Weil. It may have been brief, but I chatted with the great Jennifer Jason Leigh. And, of course,...
Speaking to someone who has long held a high spot in your list of favorite actors, it was a joy to take a moment with Jennifer. She opened up about taking on the role of Chava Apfelbaum and working with series creator David Weil. It may have been brief, but I chatted with the great Jennifer Jason Leigh. And, of course,...
- 1/23/2023
- by JimmyO
- JoBlo.com
U.S. director-producer Laura Poitras, who won an Oscar and an Emmy with Edward Snowden film “Citizenfour,” and recently took the Golden Lion at Venice with opioid epidemic pic “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” will be the Guest of Honor at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The 35th edition of the festival takes place from Nov. 9 to 20.
Poitras will be honored at IDFA with the Retrospective and Top 10 programs, in which she curates 10 films. The Top 10 program includes reflections on political imprisonment (“Hunger” by Steve McQueen; “This Is Not a Film” by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb), incarceration and psychiatry (Frederick Wiseman’s “Titicut Follies”), and genocide (Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah”). As part of the Top 10, Poitras will be in conversation with several of her selected filmmakers during the festival’s public talks program.
In the Retrospective section, IDFA presents all seven films directed by Poitras from 2003 to today.
Poitras will be honored at IDFA with the Retrospective and Top 10 programs, in which she curates 10 films. The Top 10 program includes reflections on political imprisonment (“Hunger” by Steve McQueen; “This Is Not a Film” by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb), incarceration and psychiatry (Frederick Wiseman’s “Titicut Follies”), and genocide (Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah”). As part of the Top 10, Poitras will be in conversation with several of her selected filmmakers during the festival’s public talks program.
In the Retrospective section, IDFA presents all seven films directed by Poitras from 2003 to today.
- 9/20/2022
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Oscar-winning director Laura Poitras will be guest of honor at the 35th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), running from November 9 to 20.
Poitras is currently on a packed festival tour with All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, which won the Golden Lion in Venice and is now an awards season contender. After Venice, the title screened in Toronto and has dates set for New York and the BFI London Film Festival.
As guest of honor at IDFA, Poitras will be feted with a retrospective and has also been given carte blanche to curate 10 films that have influenced her work and shaped her view of the world.
Her Top 10 selections include Steve McQueen’s Hunger, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb’s This is Not A Film, Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah.
As part of the sidebar, Poitras will also conduct on-stage conversations with a number of the selected filmmakers.
Poitras is currently on a packed festival tour with All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, which won the Golden Lion in Venice and is now an awards season contender. After Venice, the title screened in Toronto and has dates set for New York and the BFI London Film Festival.
As guest of honor at IDFA, Poitras will be feted with a retrospective and has also been given carte blanche to curate 10 films that have influenced her work and shaped her view of the world.
Her Top 10 selections include Steve McQueen’s Hunger, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb’s This is Not A Film, Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah.
As part of the sidebar, Poitras will also conduct on-stage conversations with a number of the selected filmmakers.
- 9/20/2022
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Click here to read the full article.
Laura Poitras, the Oscar-winning director of Citizenfour, whose latest doc, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, won the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, will be this year’s guest of honor at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).
IDFA will host a retrospective of Poitras’ work, screening all 7 documentaries she has directed, from her 2003 feature debut Flag Wars, made in collaboration with artist Linda Goode Bryant, a cinéma vérité film on the gentrification of a working-class African American neighborhood by white gays and lesbians, to All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which follows the career of photographer and artist Nan Goldin and her campaign to hold Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family responsible for the opioid addiction crisis. Poitras is perhaps best known for her portraits of Edward Snowden (the Oscar-winning Citizenfour) and Julian Assange (2016’s Risk).
Poitras will also curate...
Laura Poitras, the Oscar-winning director of Citizenfour, whose latest doc, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, won the Golden Lion at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, will be this year’s guest of honor at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA).
IDFA will host a retrospective of Poitras’ work, screening all 7 documentaries she has directed, from her 2003 feature debut Flag Wars, made in collaboration with artist Linda Goode Bryant, a cinéma vérité film on the gentrification of a working-class African American neighborhood by white gays and lesbians, to All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which follows the career of photographer and artist Nan Goldin and her campaign to hold Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family responsible for the opioid addiction crisis. Poitras is perhaps best known for her portraits of Edward Snowden (the Oscar-winning Citizenfour) and Julian Assange (2016’s Risk).
Poitras will also curate...
- 9/20/2022
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Steven Spielberg's most highly acclaimed film, "Schindler's List," pivoted away from the summer blockbusters for which the director was known and into more serious territory, dealing head-on with the Holocaust. Though it won the Academy Award for Best Picture and the American Film Institute recognized it with a Top 10 spot on its list of the greatest movies of all time, Spielberg's dramatization of World War II genocide still faced criticism from some quarters, including fellow filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, known for his own sober, BFI-recognized Holocaust documentary, "Shoah." Spielberg, who comes from an Orthodox Jewish background, was therefore no stranger to hearing from detractors when he took on another project dealing with Jewish history in his...
The post Steven Spielberg Knew He Was Walking Into A 'Minefield' By Directing Munich appeared first on /Film.
The post Steven Spielberg Knew He Was Walking Into A 'Minefield' By Directing Munich appeared first on /Film.
- 8/1/2022
- by Joshua Meyer
- Slash Film
Isabella Rossellini in The Rabbit Hunters
Guy Maddin’s The Rabbit Hunters, co-directed with Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, stars Isabella Rossellini as a “merged version” of Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina. Marcello Mastroianni and a red scarf, David Niven in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A Matter Of Life And Death (aka Stairway To Heaven), commissions and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, Luis Buñuel and a line from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, Héctor Babenco’s widow Barbara Paz and her dance to Singin’ In The Rain, Ella Emhoff and knitted pants - all came up after Guy Maddin shared with me his memories of Bertrand Tavernier, who died in Paris at the age of 79 on March 25, 2021, the date of our conversation.
Guy Maddin with Anne-Katrin Titze: “Fellini and Giulietta Masina are merged together so often in Fellini’s dreams …”
“Last night I dreamt that I was alive again,” we...
Guy Maddin’s The Rabbit Hunters, co-directed with Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, stars Isabella Rossellini as a “merged version” of Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina. Marcello Mastroianni and a red scarf, David Niven in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s A Matter Of Life And Death (aka Stairway To Heaven), commissions and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, Luis Buñuel and a line from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca, Héctor Babenco’s widow Barbara Paz and her dance to Singin’ In The Rain, Ella Emhoff and knitted pants - all came up after Guy Maddin shared with me his memories of Bertrand Tavernier, who died in Paris at the age of 79 on March 25, 2021, the date of our conversation.
Guy Maddin with Anne-Katrin Titze: “Fellini and Giulietta Masina are merged together so often in Fellini’s dreams …”
“Last night I dreamt that I was alive again,” we...
- 4/11/2021
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah director Adam Benzine: “It’s really a film about how Shoah was the making of Claude Lanzmann.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
When Claude Lanzmann passed away in Paris on the morning of July 5, 2018, Arnaud Desplechin and Antonin Baudry sent tributes in honour of the man who directed the documentaries Shoah, The Last Of The Unjust, Napalm, Israel, Why, and Shoah: Four Sisters (Les Quatre Soeurs). Adam Benzine’s revealing Oscar-nominated Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah shows us the man who was behind the making of one of the most important films in the history of cinema.
Adam Benzine with Anne-Katrin Titze on Claude Lanzmann: “He fought in the resistance as a teenager, he was a lover of Simone de Beauvoir, he was in Algeria with Sartre and Nelson Algren.”
After Adam interviewed Albert Maysles, Robert Drew, Michael Apted, D A Pennebaker for a book on documentarians,...
When Claude Lanzmann passed away in Paris on the morning of July 5, 2018, Arnaud Desplechin and Antonin Baudry sent tributes in honour of the man who directed the documentaries Shoah, The Last Of The Unjust, Napalm, Israel, Why, and Shoah: Four Sisters (Les Quatre Soeurs). Adam Benzine’s revealing Oscar-nominated Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah shows us the man who was behind the making of one of the most important films in the history of cinema.
Adam Benzine with Anne-Katrin Titze on Claude Lanzmann: “He fought in the resistance as a teenager, he was a lover of Simone de Beauvoir, he was in Algeria with Sartre and Nelson Algren.”
After Adam interviewed Albert Maysles, Robert Drew, Michael Apted, D A Pennebaker for a book on documentarians,...
- 4/3/2021
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Oscar-nominated documentary “Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah” is the first Academy Award nominee to be released as an Nft (non-fungible token).
The film, which examines the life and work of the “Shoah” director, was a contender in the 2016 documentary short Oscar race and aired on HBO; however, it’s never been made available for public purchase, either physically or digitally.
Enter the Nft: the latest fad in digital commerce. The tokens effectively provide a method of authenticating a piece of digital content, based on blockchain technology, allowing anyone to trace it back to the original owner. In this way, it certifies and tracks the ownership of a unique digital asset.
The market for NFTs has skyrocketed in recent weeks, as some buyers have speculated that the value of their NFTs could appreciate in value. Last week, a piece of digital artwork by Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple,...
The film, which examines the life and work of the “Shoah” director, was a contender in the 2016 documentary short Oscar race and aired on HBO; however, it’s never been made available for public purchase, either physically or digitally.
Enter the Nft: the latest fad in digital commerce. The tokens effectively provide a method of authenticating a piece of digital content, based on blockchain technology, allowing anyone to trace it back to the original owner. In this way, it certifies and tracks the ownership of a unique digital asset.
The market for NFTs has skyrocketed in recent weeks, as some buyers have speculated that the value of their NFTs could appreciate in value. Last week, a piece of digital artwork by Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple,...
- 3/15/2021
- by Manori Ravindran
- Variety Film + TV
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Siân Heder's Coda (2021). The winners of this year's Sundance Film Festival have been announced, with Siân Heder's Coda and Questlove's Summer of Soul sweeping the top prizes. Chloé Zhao's Nomadland, David Fincher's Mank, and Jason Woliner's Borat Subsequent Moviefilm lead the Golden Globe film nominations, also announced today. See more hereThe international jury of the 71st Berlinale includes six previous winners of the Golden Bear: Mohammad Rasoulof, Nadav Lapid, Adina Pintilie, Ildikó Enyedi, Gianfranco Rosi and, finally, Jasmila Žbanić. The festival's industry event will be taking place March 1-5, with a "summer special" taking place in June. More information has emerged regarding Tilda Swinton and Joanna Hogg's next collaboration, The Eternal Daughter. Executive-produced by Martin Scorsese and filmed in Wales during lockdown, the film follows a middle-aged daughter and...
- 2/3/2021
- MUBI
The late Luke Holland directed and produced film over 10 years.
Focus Features announced on International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27) it has picked up worldwide rights excluding Israel to Participant’s Holocaust documentary Final Account.
Directed and produced by the late Luke Holland over the course of 10 years, the film premiered in Venice last year.
The Final Account presents a portrait of the last living generation of people who participated in the Third Reich, and contains interviews with a range of subjects from members of the SS to civilians.
John Battsek and Riete Oord also serve as producers, while Participant’s...
Focus Features announced on International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27) it has picked up worldwide rights excluding Israel to Participant’s Holocaust documentary Final Account.
Directed and produced by the late Luke Holland over the course of 10 years, the film premiered in Venice last year.
The Final Account presents a portrait of the last living generation of people who participated in the Third Reich, and contains interviews with a range of subjects from members of the SS to civilians.
John Battsek and Riete Oord also serve as producers, while Participant’s...
- 1/27/2021
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
“I consider Shoah to be the greatest documentary about contemporary history ever made, bar none, and by far the greatest film I’ve ever seen about the Holocaust.”
– Marcel Ophuls
Ten years after IFC Films theatrically re-released the epic documentary, Shoah arrives on demand platforms in the United States & Canada in March 2021. Check out this new trailer:
Fc Films announced today that they will be digitally releasing Claude Lanzmann’s landmark Holocaust documentary Shoah on March 2, 2021, marking the first time that the film will be available to own digitally and for rent in the United States and Canada.
Twelve years in the making, Shoah is Lanzmann’s monumental epic on the Holocaust and features interviews with survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators in 14 countries. The film does not contain any historical footage but rather features interviews which seek to “reincarnate” the Jewish tragedy and also visits places where the crimes took place.
– Marcel Ophuls
Ten years after IFC Films theatrically re-released the epic documentary, Shoah arrives on demand platforms in the United States & Canada in March 2021. Check out this new trailer:
Fc Films announced today that they will be digitally releasing Claude Lanzmann’s landmark Holocaust documentary Shoah on March 2, 2021, marking the first time that the film will be available to own digitally and for rent in the United States and Canada.
Twelve years in the making, Shoah is Lanzmann’s monumental epic on the Holocaust and features interviews with survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators in 14 countries. The film does not contain any historical footage but rather features interviews which seek to “reincarnate” the Jewish tragedy and also visits places where the crimes took place.
- 1/27/2021
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Cambodia’s Rithy Panh Discusses the Ethical Quandaries of ‘Irradiated’ at the Sarajevo Film Festival
Cambodian director Rithy Panh survived the brutal Khmer Rouge regime that took the lives of many of his friends and family. His latest film “Irradiated,” which premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival, does not shy away from human horrors like those he experienced in his youth.
The film pieces together brutal black-and-white archival war footage spread across a tryptic of panels, juxtaposing footage of Hitler with the devastation of Hiroshima and a basket of decapitated heads, or executions and mass burials.
“Irradiated” is a difficult, visceral viewing experience — an artistic choice that Panh pondered seriously, he said in a recent masterclass at the Sarajevo Film Festival moderated by Variety.
“Of course there’s a moral question. Why do you want to show this body? It’s possible to show a body, or not to. It’s a difficult [decision]” in both the selection and editing process, Panh acknowledges.
The film pieces together brutal black-and-white archival war footage spread across a tryptic of panels, juxtaposing footage of Hitler with the devastation of Hiroshima and a basket of decapitated heads, or executions and mass burials.
“Irradiated” is a difficult, visceral viewing experience — an artistic choice that Panh pondered seriously, he said in a recent masterclass at the Sarajevo Film Festival moderated by Variety.
“Of course there’s a moral question. Why do you want to show this body? It’s possible to show a body, or not to. It’s a difficult [decision]” in both the selection and editing process, Panh acknowledges.
- 8/25/2020
- by Rebecca Davis
- Variety Film + TV
A new wave of jam bands on YouTube reminds this Deadhead of the film that launched a thousand grooves
Read all the What I’m really watching choicesThe best arts and entertainment during self-isolation
You know the old Twilight Zone episode, when Burgess Meredith plays a bibliophile survives an H-bomb attack only to shatter his glasses? Well, my current situation is hardly that dire – even living so worryingly close to New York City’s Covid-19 epicentre, Elmhurst hospital. But there is considerable irony that my social calendar has been erased just as my ability to concentrate for anything longer than a haiku is shot.
I have access to as much high-investment/high-reward cinema as I could ever stream. But let’s be real: it ain’t happening. The link to the recent Lav Diaz film shall remain unclicked, as will the one for An Elephant Sitting Still. Now isn’t...
Read all the What I’m really watching choicesThe best arts and entertainment during self-isolation
You know the old Twilight Zone episode, when Burgess Meredith plays a bibliophile survives an H-bomb attack only to shatter his glasses? Well, my current situation is hardly that dire – even living so worryingly close to New York City’s Covid-19 epicentre, Elmhurst hospital. But there is considerable irony that my social calendar has been erased just as my ability to concentrate for anything longer than a haiku is shot.
I have access to as much high-investment/high-reward cinema as I could ever stream. But let’s be real: it ain’t happening. The link to the recent Lav Diaz film shall remain unclicked, as will the one for An Elephant Sitting Still. Now isn’t...
- 5/21/2020
- by Jordan Hoffman
- The Guardian - Film News
“I do think as you get older, it’s inevitable that you repeat yourself,” says Rob Brydon. “This is the fourth time we’ve been on one of these jaunts.” His dining companion Steve Coogan, who’s been digging lustily into a plate of braised lamb, shakes his head. “Originality is overrated. Everything’s derivative.” Just look at The Aenid — it’s “the greatest poem of the Roman Empire, and that was a rip-off.” By the time these two comedians are served dessert, they’re bickering over Coogan’s level...
- 5/20/2020
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
Director Agnieszka Holland pulls off a difficult task — her true-life Holocaust tale neither trivializes the horror nor glamorizes individualized victims at the expense of the big picture. Marco Hofschneider is the inexperienced German teenager who by strange quirks of fate becomes a staunch Stalinist in a Communist school, then a Nazi war hero and candidate for Hitler Youth honors and adoption by a Nazi officer… if he can avoid being uncovered as a Jew in hiding. It sounds tasteless but it’s not — the true story of Solomon Perel reveals the ‘fluidity’ of ideology when survival is on the line. Our young hero must keep ‘becoming’ what he pretends to be. With André Wilms, René Hofschneider and Julie Delpy as a rabid Hitlerite.
Europa Europa
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 985
1990 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 112 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 9, 2019 / 39.95
Starring: Marco Hofschneider, André Wilms, René Hofschneider, Julie Delpy,...
Europa Europa
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 985
1990 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 112 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 9, 2019 / 39.95
Starring: Marco Hofschneider, André Wilms, René Hofschneider, Julie Delpy,...
- 4/25/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
A stark contrast from triumphalist Allied narratives of World War II, Elem Klimov’s spellbinding Belarus-set masterpiece Come and See–now playing in a beautiful new restoration from Janus Films–tells a harrowing story of the Eastern Front from the perspective of those for whom victory against the Nazis came at far too steep a price.
Based on Ales Adamovich’s painstakingly researched historical novel I Am from the Fiery Village (the author also co-wrote the screenplay with Klimov), Come and See follows Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko), a young boy from rural Belarus seeking to enlist with the Soviet Partisans, eager for martial glory even as he ignores warnings of impending doom. Once war breaks out, Flyora’s reality begins to warp and fold in on itself as he bears harrowing witness to the Nazis’ war crimes and the existential horror of total war.
Klimov’s technique, and thus the film...
Based on Ales Adamovich’s painstakingly researched historical novel I Am from the Fiery Village (the author also co-wrote the screenplay with Klimov), Come and See follows Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko), a young boy from rural Belarus seeking to enlist with the Soviet Partisans, eager for martial glory even as he ignores warnings of impending doom. Once war breaks out, Flyora’s reality begins to warp and fold in on itself as he bears harrowing witness to the Nazis’ war crimes and the existential horror of total war.
Klimov’s technique, and thus the film...
- 2/24/2020
- by Eli Friedberg
- The Film Stage
In “Schindler’s List,” most of the actors spoke English, using accents to indicate their characters’ origins. In “Son of Saul,” the cast struggles to communicate in a mish-mosh of languages, as Jews of different nationalities were thrown together in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Stories about the Holocaust — so vital in trying to reconcile the horrors of the past century — must at some point take a philosophical stand on how to deal with how their characters express themselves.
And then there is “Persian Lessons,” a most peculiar anomaly among tales of the Shoah: It tells of a Belgian Jew who invented a language in order to survive World War II. The film claims to be “inspired by a true story” but is really a parable in the tradition of “The Reader,” wherein a terrified prisoner (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) agrees to teach Farsi — a language he does not know and is therefore obliged to...
And then there is “Persian Lessons,” a most peculiar anomaly among tales of the Shoah: It tells of a Belgian Jew who invented a language in order to survive World War II. The film claims to be “inspired by a true story” but is really a parable in the tradition of “The Reader,” wherein a terrified prisoner (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) agrees to teach Farsi — a language he does not know and is therefore obliged to...
- 2/23/2020
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Screening of Claude Lanzmann’s 9.5-Hour Holocaust Documentary Presented by the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, in Cooperation with the Museum of Tolerance and the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival on Holocaust Remembrance Day
Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin calls individuals and institutions around the globe to participate in a worldwide collective screening of Lanzmann’s epic documentary to commemorate 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eight Goethe-Instituts across North America are participating in the worldwide screenings.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day — January 27, 2020, also the 75-year anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp — the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, in cooperation with the Museum of Tolerance and the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival present a screening of Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 documentary Shoah. This is a rare opportunity to see the 9.5-hour film, which chronicles oral histories of the Holocaust, in its entirety, on a big screen.
The screening will take place on Monday, January 27, from...
Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin calls individuals and institutions around the globe to participate in a worldwide collective screening of Lanzmann’s epic documentary to commemorate 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eight Goethe-Instituts across North America are participating in the worldwide screenings.
On International Holocaust Remembrance Day — January 27, 2020, also the 75-year anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp — the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, in cooperation with the Museum of Tolerance and the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival present a screening of Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 documentary Shoah. This is a rare opportunity to see the 9.5-hour film, which chronicles oral histories of the Holocaust, in its entirety, on a big screen.
The screening will take place on Monday, January 27, from...
- 1/23/2020
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
It’s the final month of the year and there’s no shortage of cinematic gifts. From long-awaited features from some of our favorite directors to genre-tinged delights to massive blockbusters, December is overflowing with films to see. We should note that Portrait of a Lady on Fire is an essential watch, but it’s only getting a one-week awards-qualifying run in NY/La, so we’ll wait to feature it when it opens wide this February. Check out our monthly picks below.
15. Little Joe (Jessica Hausner; Dec. 6)
After landing on our radar with the formally thrilling, adventurous Amour Fou, Jessica Hausner finally returned with Little Joe. Starring Emily Beecham, Ben Whishaw, and Kerry Fox, the Cannes winner is set in the near-future where a plant is invented that begins to psychologically alter those who come in contact with it. This plays out in the story of a mother who...
15. Little Joe (Jessica Hausner; Dec. 6)
After landing on our radar with the formally thrilling, adventurous Amour Fou, Jessica Hausner finally returned with Little Joe. Starring Emily Beecham, Ben Whishaw, and Kerry Fox, the Cannes winner is set in the near-future where a plant is invented that begins to psychologically alter those who come in contact with it. This plays out in the story of a mother who...
- 12/2/2019
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
What would legendary film critic Pauline Kael think about Rob Garver’s documentary about her own life and career? She might have loved the fawning introductions by both filmmakers and fellow critics alike or they might have repulsed her, but she certainly would have enjoyed the inherent weirdness of making a movie about someone who spent so much of her life watching movies. “What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael” looks at Kael’s career from its earliest stages, illuminating parts of her work that might be unfamiliar (from the free radio show to a gig working in advertising to a misbegotten attempt at playwriting), though it’s understandably more beefy when looking at the stuff people normally associate with her work.
There’s a look at her zeitgeist-shifting “Bonnie and Clyde” review, the adoration for the work of then-rising auteurs like Martin Scorsese and Brian DePalma, and Kael...
There’s a look at her zeitgeist-shifting “Bonnie and Clyde” review, the adoration for the work of then-rising auteurs like Martin Scorsese and Brian DePalma, and Kael...
- 9/30/2019
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
“Jojo Rabbit” has the best intentions and a very confused way of showing them. Taika Waititi’s sunny fairytale focuses on ostracized Hitler Youth Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) and the buffoonish Fuhrer (Waititi in an off-kilter mustache) who serves as the boy’s imaginary friend, which is a calculated risk regardless of the execution. An upbeat challenge to the resurgence of hate groups around the world, the studio production might be the sweetest provocation in film history, and it’s certainly an ambitious juggling act worthy of admiration.
But the filmmaker’s light touch never settles in. Waititi’s ability to veer in such an audacious direction after his “Thor: Ragnarok” success catapulted him to Hollywood A-list stature coulud further cement his modern folk hero status, but .
Stuffing WWII horrors into the traditional beats of a coming-of-age tale, Waititi merges the bittersweet deadpan comedies of his earlier career with the...
But the filmmaker’s light touch never settles in. Waititi’s ability to veer in such an audacious direction after his “Thor: Ragnarok” success catapulted him to Hollywood A-list stature coulud further cement his modern folk hero status, but .
Stuffing WWII horrors into the traditional beats of a coming-of-age tale, Waititi merges the bittersweet deadpan comedies of his earlier career with the...
- 9/9/2019
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Eager as ever to attend Tiff, a festival I have missed only once in the last 29 years, because a cat bite sent me to the hospital, I am looking forward to discoveries and have booked my calendar tight with films!
I am lucky to have seen three films already, two in Cannes, both wonderful, memorable funny and absurd films, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, So. Korea’s submission for Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, and a likely winner, as well as So. Korea’s first-ever Palm d’Or winner in Cannes this year; and Elia Suleiman’s This Must Be Heaven, sweetly surreal, as funny as a Jacques Tati film, wryly observing our human race and with a funny little cameo with Gael Garcia Bernal introducing Suleiman to his agent. The third, Synonyms, won this year’s Berlinale Golden Bear. A coproduction of France, Israel and Germany, it...
I am lucky to have seen three films already, two in Cannes, both wonderful, memorable funny and absurd films, Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, So. Korea’s submission for Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, and a likely winner, as well as So. Korea’s first-ever Palm d’Or winner in Cannes this year; and Elia Suleiman’s This Must Be Heaven, sweetly surreal, as funny as a Jacques Tati film, wryly observing our human race and with a funny little cameo with Gael Garcia Bernal introducing Suleiman to his agent. The third, Synonyms, won this year’s Berlinale Golden Bear. A coproduction of France, Israel and Germany, it...
- 9/3/2019
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Joining the rarified pantheon of expansive cinematic storytelling occupied by the likes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, Jacques Rivette’s Out 1, Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, Wang Bing’s West of the Tracks, and any number of Lav Diaz films comes Mariano Llinás’ 14-hour epic La Flor. Following a festival tour including Locarno, New York, and Toronto, Grasshopper Film will now unleash the cinematic event of the year starting next week in New York City and we’re pleased to premiere the trailer.
A decade in the making and shot across three continents, the film stars Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa, Pilar Gamboa, and Laura Paredes across six episodes, each bringing a different genre to the table, from a bonkers B-movie about mummies to a musical to a spy thriller to a Renoir remake and beyond. Llinás, who burst onto the international filmmaking scene with 2008’s four-hour Extraordinary Stories,...
A decade in the making and shot across three continents, the film stars Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa, Pilar Gamboa, and Laura Paredes across six episodes, each bringing a different genre to the table, from a bonkers B-movie about mummies to a musical to a spy thriller to a Renoir remake and beyond. Llinás, who burst onto the international filmmaking scene with 2008’s four-hour Extraordinary Stories,...
- 7/25/2019
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Artur Brauner, the Polish-born Holocaust survivor who became one of Germany's most successful and acclaimed movie moguls, has died. He was 100.
Brauner was a producer who made box office hits — the Winnetou Western franchise and soft-core comedies with titles such as Vampire Lesbians and Sex Olympics — to finance serious movies about the Nazi dictatorship and the Shoah, including The White Rose (1982), Babij Jar (2003) and Europa Europa (1990), which won a Golden Globe and was an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film.
Brauner died early Sunday morning in Berlin following a short illness, his family confirmed to German ...
Brauner was a producer who made box office hits — the Winnetou Western franchise and soft-core comedies with titles such as Vampire Lesbians and Sex Olympics — to finance serious movies about the Nazi dictatorship and the Shoah, including The White Rose (1982), Babij Jar (2003) and Europa Europa (1990), which won a Golden Globe and was an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film.
Brauner died early Sunday morning in Berlin following a short illness, his family confirmed to German ...
Artur Brauner, the Polish-born Holocaust survivor who became one of Germany's most successful and acclaimed movie moguls, has died. He was 100.
Brauner was a producer who made box office hits — the Winnetou Western franchise and soft-core comedies with titles such as Vampire Lesbians and Sex Olympics — to finance serious movies about the Nazi dictatorship and the Shoah, including The White Rose (1982), Babij Jar (2003) and Europa Europa (1990), which won a Golden Globe and was an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film.
Brauner died early Sunday morning in Berlin following a short illness, his family confirmed to German ...
Brauner was a producer who made box office hits — the Winnetou Western franchise and soft-core comedies with titles such as Vampire Lesbians and Sex Olympics — to finance serious movies about the Nazi dictatorship and the Shoah, including The White Rose (1982), Babij Jar (2003) and Europa Europa (1990), which won a Golden Globe and was an Oscar nominee for best foreign-language film.
Brauner died early Sunday morning in Berlin following a short illness, his family confirmed to German ...
“Why did you feel it’s so urgent?”
“It’s because the dead couldn’t talk.”
When we think of the history of our home countries, we think of various sources and records telling present and future generations the facts about the past. In order to be able to progress a society, this is one of the basic believes when it comes to keeping those stories, files and tapes alive by making them available to the public. Since we have arrived in an age which has coined the phrase “fake news” to label those untrustworthy reporting the facts or which put an event or a statement in a historcial context as a warning, this awareness of the truth is perhaps more important than it has ever been.
“Spark” is available from Icarus Films
However, keeping track of the past is challenging in many ways. Especially if ideology and backwardness interfere...
“It’s because the dead couldn’t talk.”
When we think of the history of our home countries, we think of various sources and records telling present and future generations the facts about the past. In order to be able to progress a society, this is one of the basic believes when it comes to keeping those stories, files and tapes alive by making them available to the public. Since we have arrived in an age which has coined the phrase “fake news” to label those untrustworthy reporting the facts or which put an event or a statement in a historcial context as a warning, this awareness of the truth is perhaps more important than it has ever been.
“Spark” is available from Icarus Films
However, keeping track of the past is challenging in many ways. Especially if ideology and backwardness interfere...
- 5/12/2019
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
The well-crafted What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael is a fascinating tribute to a maverick film critic who celebrated high and low art indiscriminately, and was also quick to point out in her reviews–even to the point of controversy–what she viewed as extreme pretensions. It’s no doubt that Kael influenced Roger Ebert’s primary rule of film criticism when she panned Claude Lanzmann’s universally acclaimed nine-hour Holocaust documentary Shoah, in which she received blowback for her scathing but not unfair words about the picture.
Kael’s far-reaching influence extended into the mainstreams of cinema and film criticism even as she continued to rally against the “sugar-coated lie” at the core of popular films that were consumer products of the era like The Sound of Music. The influential New Yorker critic typically held back, waiting for a consensus to build before launching her attack or support.
Kael’s far-reaching influence extended into the mainstreams of cinema and film criticism even as she continued to rally against the “sugar-coated lie” at the core of popular films that were consumer products of the era like The Sound of Music. The influential New Yorker critic typically held back, waiting for a consensus to build before launching her attack or support.
- 5/9/2019
- by John Fink
- The Film Stage
By Glenn Dunks
We sometimes get so carried away with Oscar and all things award season adjacent that we forget there are very real movies being released in those first couple of months of the year. After last week's very topical Leaving Neverland review, we're going to back back into January and February and pluck out a few titles we have seen: Fyre, The Image Book, and The Gospel According to Eureka.
Fyre
It's not very often that Shoah comes up in conversation at a party, but there we were when somebody asked me about Fyre, the new documentary from the director of American Movie, Chris Smith. I had said I would rather watch all nine and a half hours of Holocaust testimonials than I would watch another 90 minutes of Fyre (including the adjacent Hulu documentary Fyre Fraud that I have no endured). I may have been several margaritas down...
We sometimes get so carried away with Oscar and all things award season adjacent that we forget there are very real movies being released in those first couple of months of the year. After last week's very topical Leaving Neverland review, we're going to back back into January and February and pluck out a few titles we have seen: Fyre, The Image Book, and The Gospel According to Eureka.
Fyre
It's not very often that Shoah comes up in conversation at a party, but there we were when somebody asked me about Fyre, the new documentary from the director of American Movie, Chris Smith. I had said I would rather watch all nine and a half hours of Holocaust testimonials than I would watch another 90 minutes of Fyre (including the adjacent Hulu documentary Fyre Fraud that I have no endured). I may have been several margaritas down...
- 3/13/2019
- by Glenn Dunks
- FilmExperience
Berlinale 2019: ‘What She Said — The Art Of Pauline Kael’Review by Peter BelsitoThis review is also a reminiscence. I knew Pauline at an interesting time, in the late 1960s in Los Angeles.
Firstly the film.
What She Said — The Art Of Pauline Kael does not really go deeply into her mind or her critical and often abrasive personality. It tracks her career path and her rise to New Yorker mag film critic — about as high as you could go then for someone who did what she did.
The fact that she was female and outspoken and abrasive to the vast consensus of her readers was very important to us film nuts then. Because she had an edge to what she wrote, she was often attacked for it. In the ‘60s we all wanted that then. That is, if the L.A. Times or the ‘trades’ — Variety, Hollywood Reporter etc.
Firstly the film.
What She Said — The Art Of Pauline Kael does not really go deeply into her mind or her critical and often abrasive personality. It tracks her career path and her rise to New Yorker mag film critic — about as high as you could go then for someone who did what she did.
The fact that she was female and outspoken and abrasive to the vast consensus of her readers was very important to us film nuts then. Because she had an edge to what she wrote, she was often attacked for it. In the ‘60s we all wanted that then. That is, if the L.A. Times or the ‘trades’ — Variety, Hollywood Reporter etc.
- 2/19/2019
- by Peter Belsito
- Sydney's Buzz
In 1943, Joseph Goebbels proudly declared Berlin “free of Jews.” Though he did come markedly close to his goal, around 1,700 Jews managed to endure in secret through the war. “The Invisibles” tells the stories of a few of these survivors, bringing their astonishing histories to life in straightforward but consistently compelling fashion.
Director Claus Räfle interviews four Jews who are now in their 90s, all of whom eloquently share their experiences as teenagers in Berlin. Interspersed with their memories are dramatic re-enactments, a risky approach handled with enough skill to add to the film’s depth.
Hanni Weissenberg was an orphan when she was forced, at 17, into a terrifying homelessness. As played in flashback by Alice Dwyer, she dyes her hair blonde and spends her days seeking refuge in movie theaters. Every soldier who flirts with her brings untold danger, but one winds up offering crucial salvation.
Also Read: Claude Lanzmann,...
Director Claus Räfle interviews four Jews who are now in their 90s, all of whom eloquently share their experiences as teenagers in Berlin. Interspersed with their memories are dramatic re-enactments, a risky approach handled with enough skill to add to the film’s depth.
Hanni Weissenberg was an orphan when she was forced, at 17, into a terrifying homelessness. As played in flashback by Alice Dwyer, she dyes her hair blonde and spends her days seeking refuge in movie theaters. Every soldier who flirts with her brings untold danger, but one winds up offering crucial salvation.
Also Read: Claude Lanzmann,...
- 1/23/2019
- by Elizabeth Weitzman
- The Wrap
For our most comprehensive year-end feature, we’re providing a cumulative look at The Film Stage’s favorite films of 2018. We’ve asked our contributors to compile ten-best lists with five honorable mentions–those personal lists will be shared in the coming days–and, after tallying the votes, a top 50 has been assembled.
It should be noted that, unlike our previous year-end features, we placed no requirement on a selection being a U.S theatrical release, so you may see some repeats from last year and a few we’ll certainly be discussing more during the next twelve months. So, without further ado, check out our rundown of 2018 below, our ongoing year-end coverage here (including where to stream many of the below picks), and return in the coming weeks as we look towards 2019.
50. Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)
For over two decades the filmmaker Jia Zhangke has, through his movies,...
It should be noted that, unlike our previous year-end features, we placed no requirement on a selection being a U.S theatrical release, so you may see some repeats from last year and a few we’ll certainly be discussing more during the next twelve months. So, without further ado, check out our rundown of 2018 below, our ongoing year-end coverage here (including where to stream many of the below picks), and return in the coming weeks as we look towards 2019.
50. Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)
For over two decades the filmmaker Jia Zhangke has, through his movies,...
- 12/21/2018
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Less than half a year after Claude Lanzmann’s passing this past summer, the Quad Cinema in Manhattan has this week premiered the late documentarian’s Shoah: Four Sisters, a compilation of four short features described as “satellites” of his 1985 Holocaust magnum opus. Comprised of selections from the staggering private archive of interview footage compiled by Lanzmann during Shoah’s 11-year research and filming process in the 1970s, the four segments respectively consist of four extended one-on-one interviews with Jewish women who survived the Nazi death camps across Eastern Europe, each one sharing her harrowing personal story of atrocities witnessed and, at times, horrifying compromises made.
The four women speak different languages, hail from different cities, and lived very different lives before and after the war, but in labeling them as “sisters,” Lanzmann draws attention to the identity formed by shared trauma and collective witness to history. Indeed, all of...
The four women speak different languages, hail from different cities, and lived very different lives before and after the war, but in labeling them as “sisters,” Lanzmann draws attention to the identity formed by shared trauma and collective witness to history. Indeed, all of...
- 11/18/2018
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Film critic Pauline Kael might have hated the first eight minutes or so of Rob Garver’s “What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael,” a fawning introduction to the life and times of the author and cultural icon. Or, she might have adored it. Halfway through Garver’s film, one of Kael’s own contemporaries laments that sometimes the former New Yorker critic would sit down for a film that seemed tailor-made for her sensibilities, only to lambast it later.
No matter how Kael might have felt about the doc’s opening minutes, she would have at least stuck around to see the whole thing through, and other audiences will benefit from the same. Despite that iffy start, Garver’s film blossoms into something more comprehensive than complimentary, a film that doesn’t balk at the trickier aspects of Kael’s career, even as it never fully engages with the tensions that informed her.
No matter how Kael might have felt about the doc’s opening minutes, she would have at least stuck around to see the whole thing through, and other audiences will benefit from the same. Despite that iffy start, Garver’s film blossoms into something more comprehensive than complimentary, a film that doesn’t balk at the trickier aspects of Kael’s career, even as it never fully engages with the tensions that informed her.
- 11/16/2018
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
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