Category archives: Art for Progress
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4 years ago
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This may be the craziest, most emotionally disruptive fall in recent history, but the annual DOC NYC film festival is right on schedule. Like many other events these days, the country’s largest all-documentary fest, now in its 11th year, is completely virtual, making it available nationwide for the first time. Running online from November 11 through 19, and accessible to viewers across the U.S., this year’s edition includes 107 feature-length documentaries among over 200 films and dozens of events. There’s an emphasis on diversity with 57 features (53% of the lineup) directed or co-directed by women and 36 by Black, indigenous and people of color (34% of the feature program).
As always, there’s a lot of docs to choose from, many of
which are world or U.S. premieres. Aside from the films themselves, there will
be conversations with filmmakers taking place daily in “DOC NYC Live” events,
and pre-recorded filmmaker Q&As after film screenings.
Among the festival’s many worthy entries:
Duty Free, directed by Sian-Pierre Regis (making his feature debut), a film about Rebecca Danigelis, Regis’s 70-something mother, who is fired from her hotel housekeeping job. When she is unable to land another position, her son raises money through Kickstarter to fund Rebecca’s bucket list, which includes desires both humble (milk a cow) and expansive (a visit to England to her sister’s grave and reunite with the daughter she gave up). Many themes are woven throughout, in[...]
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4 years ago
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Dark Star Pictures
Orçun Behram’s feature debut The Antenna will probably be most meaningful for those living in Turkey, the Istanbul-based filmmaker’s birthplace. His stylish horror movie portrays a dystopian world in which a broadcasting system installed in apartment complexes turns out to be a monstrous presence, a clear (sometimes too clear) metaphor for life under the current regime. Beautifully shot in sickly, muted tones, the action takes place in a bleak-looking neighborhood of drab high-rises and is experienced mainly through the eyes of the soulful put-upon building attendant Mehmed (Ihsan Önal).
We first learn about the new government initiative through cheerful news bulletins, followed by the arrival of a technician who sets up a satellite dish on the roof of Mehmet’s building. When the guy abruptly meets a bad end, Mehmet’s supervisor Cihan (Levent Ünsal), a classic mid-level bureaucrat, is suspiciously nonchalant about the whole business.
Things around the apartment complex soon become very weird and threatening, as an oozing black liquid begins seeping into every apartment and scene. We see how three different tenants (a single woman, a couple with a young son, and the family of Mehmet’s friend Yasemin) fare as something inexplicable takes over.
Dark Star Pictures
The Antenna starts out quietly, but its soundtrack gradually becomes ominous and intrusive, featuring the magnification of seemingly benign sounds. Visually, ther[...]
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4 years ago
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There will undoubtedly be many movies coming out in the near future about life during the pandemic, but I’m not sure any of them will top the beautiful, resonant short Sincerely, Erik, by filmmaker Naz Riahi. This charming work about a bookseller navigating isolation in NYC during Covid-19 (played by actual bookseller Erik DuRon) was shot on location in June. Check it out: https://vimeo.com/434705621
Now that we’ve hopefully weathered the worst of it (at least in New York) and we’re feeling somewhat less traumatized by the pandemic — if not by other current events — it might feel OK to watch dark films again?
Sibyl, courtesy of Music Box Films
Two new movies that fit that description, albeit in very different ways, are Justine Triet’s mostly French-language psychodrama Sibyl and Jon Stevenson’s horror-thriller Rent-a-Pal, out on Friday. Both films are darkly comic and they both build to pretty extreme endings, but the similarities end there.
Sibyl is Triet’s third feature, all of which center on complicated women trying to keep it together amid tricky relationships and difficult situations. As in 2016's In Bed with Victoria, the protagonist is played by the luminous Virginie Efira as the title character. Sibyl is a psychotherapist who is leaving the profession to write a novel — until she is pulled back in by a young woman desperate for her help.
That is Margot (a beguiling Adèle Exarchopoulos), an actress who is anxious about shooting her first major f[...]
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4 years ago
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Event performance celebrating the end of the summer program (2019).
Now in its third year, Art for
Progress’ summer program gives students the opportunity to learn about life as
a professional artist, while also learning new advanced skills to help them
achieve their goals.
Funded by the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation with additional support from the Sansom Foundation, the program is taught by professional teaching artists with a long history of working with Art for Progress (AFP) in NYC’s Public Schools and other important projects. Thanks to the generous support of our sponsors, the program will be funded through 2021, which gives AFP the opportunity to expand and grow the program even more.
Over the years, the program has invited Grammy nominated musicians, prominent visual artists and high-level fashion designers as its guest speakers. It has been a valuable and exciting part of the program for students and highly rewarding for the artists. There’s no cost for students to attend.
Though the program for this summer will be hosted online, it will be one of the best yet, due in large part to Art for Progress’ newly developed online learning platform: https://learn.artforprogress.org, which was created to optimize the experience for both our teachers and students. The new website includes many valuable features which will enhance learning and promote better communication. This summer’s program is planned over four weekends beginning July 25th and ending [...]
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5 years ago
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Laverne Cox, courtesy of Netflix
There’s a scene in Neil Jordan’s 1992 film The Crying Game in which Stephen Rea’s character vomits copiously after discovering that his love interest is not exactly the woman he thought she was. You might not recall that exact moment, but transgender people sure do. There’s a kind of homage to that scene in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in which Jim Carrey goes way beyond vomit in response to a similar discovery. The latter is so over the top it could almost be a satire of stereotypical film reactions to transgender reveals, but it’s not quite.
Filmmaker Sam Feder has assembled those scenes and many others for the new Netflix documentary Disclosure, which charts the historical representation of transgender and non-binary characters in film and TV. Executive-produced by actress Laverne Cox (who is also interviewed in the film), Disclosure is entertaining, hard-hitting and often cringe-inducing. These often problematic screen depictions shaped not only general views of trans people, but how trans people feel about themselves.
There's commentary from various entertainment figures including Chas Bono, Candis Cayne, Jen Richards, Yance Ford, Brian Michael Smith and Lilly Wachowski, who describe their own reactions to scenes such as the above-mentioned. Like any marginalized group, trans people always looked for themselves on screen, especially while growing up. According to several Disclosure interviewees, they embraced the few relatable cha[...]
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5 years ago
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Milkwater
Like many events these days, the 23rd edition of the Brooklyn Film Festival is going virtual. New York City’s longest-running international competition film fest, which runs this year from Friday, May 29, through Sunday, June 7, is offering a full lineup of over 140 films for free. (Viewers need only register.)
Planned many months ago, the theme of this year’s event is “Turning Point,” which takes on a whole new significance given the implications of the current pandemic. In addition to 15 narrative features and 10 documentary features, there are narrative and documentary shorts, experimental films and animation. The festival’s long-running rules: Participating films cannot be older than two years, films are selected from submissions only, all the selected films participate in the competition, and the smallest film can win the top festival award: The Grand Chameleon. In each of the six film categories, a panel of judges will select the Best Film, while the festival will select the Spirit Award, and the audience the Audience Award winners. There are also awards given for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Composer, Best Style, Best Editor, Best Cinematographer, Best Screenwriting, Best Producer, Best New Director, and Best Brooklyn Project. The festival's full slate of films can be found here.
A few highlights:
The Black Emperor of Broadway, directed by Arthur Egeli and written by Ian Bowater, is part of their Provincetown Trilogy collaboration, three narr[...]
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5 years ago
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Zeitgeist Films
We may not be able to see movies in actual theaters these days and the release dates of many films have been pushed back, but some distributors are working around our current COVID-19 lockdown.
Arthouse and international film distributor Kino Lorber has recently expanded its virtual theatrical exhibition program Kino Marquee into 150 theaters nationwide. This streaming initiative enables local movie theaters shuttered by the coronavirus outbreak to continue serving their audiences while generating some revenue. Film lovers are able watch spring releases while supporting their favorite theater.
Opening on Friday through the websites of various theaters across the country is Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint, Halina Dyrschka’s documentary about the revolutionary Swedish artist. What a great time to immerse oneself in the fantastical world and stunning visuals of af Klint’s work. On the other hand, it’s unfortunate that the film isn’t get the big-screen release it deserves. (Hopefully in the future?)
Beyond the Visible is foremost a depiction of af Klint's unusual life, but it's framed by the bigger issue of her undervaluation and near-anonymity until recently. Though Vasily Kandinsky has generally been credited as the first abstract artist, the film makes clear that af Klint was creating abstract works years earlier. Yet, many in the U.S. had never heard of her until a retrospective was mounted in 2018 at the Guggenheim, an amazing show that [...]
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5 years ago
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New York City based non profit Art for Progress has launched an online music resource for NYC students and anyone who's interested in learning how to produce music, play an instrument or vocal instruction.
In response to the school closures and what seems like the
inevitable end of the school year, Art for Progress is taking a progressive
approach to providing instruction for our students in both our elective music
classes, after school programs and our BREC campus wide after school music
program.
To address this challenge, we will be providing weekly educational videos that will align with what was being taught in the classrooms prior to the school closures- instrument instruction, vocal instruction and music production. New content will be posted along with a narrative for each video, and our teachers will be available to take questions, arrange chats and for follow up meetings.
We expect to launch the online program on Monday, March 23rd and as we come up with more creative ideas we will continue to add more to the program. At this point, we will provide as many resources as possible to be sure that this is the best experience we can provide outside of the classroom.
We’re excited to do this for our students and for anyone who wants to learn through this new resource. For any inquiries, please contact admin@artforprogress.org.
Please subscribe to the channel and follow us here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbEUTEdVVFNtY49A7D01-ZA
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5 years ago
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Courtesy of Zeitgeist Films in Association with Kino Lorber
Ken Loach, Britain’s filmmaker laureate of socially conscious movies, often depicting working-class families, has created an emotionally wrenching, beautifully realized drama with Sorry We Missed You. What better times than this trying era for Loach, whose clear-eyed focus on the underclasses has driven his work since 1967’s Poor Cow.
He takes on the exploitation and false promises of the gig economy in his latest film, which opens with Ricky (Kris Hitchen), an unemployed father of two from Newcastle, interviewing for a van driver position with a company that's an unholy cross between Amazon and Uber. As a franchisee he’ll receive no wages, no contract, and no regular hours. “Like everything around here, it’s your choice,” says Ricky’s future boss, Maloney (Ross Brewster), regarding the decision to buy a van or rent one from the company. Ricky opts to own, even though he and his wife Abbie (Debbie Honeywood) are already in debt. There’s the dangling carrot of major money to be made, but we can already see that the couple are on a hellishly slippery slope, and not just because this is a Ken Loach movie.
Courtesy of Zeitgeist Films in Association with Kino Lorber
For her part, good-natured Abbie works tirelessly as a home health aide, visiting clients who need to be fed, cleaned and otherwise taken care of. Though the work can be frustrating, grueling and downright disgusting, Loach is careful to show t[...]
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5 years ago
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Artists and people in general should always be very careful when hiring companies from overseas for services online. It's particularly important when you're looking for help with costly projects such as building websites.
There's been much written about the challenges of hiring companies in India for website and software development. Some of the common problems include:
Lack of Quality Control: When companies pay developers around $1 per hour and they work 10-12 hours a day, the quality of the work goes out the window. The challenge is finding a company with senior programmers and project managers to oversea the quality aspect. Unfortunately, great Indian web development companies are few and far between, as remote work has resulted in many scam artists with no repercussions when your projects fall through."Yes" Culture: Indian companies will say "yes" to any project even if they really mean "maybe" or "I don't know." They'll agree to the job even though they're not capable of doing it.Difficulty Meeting Deadlines and Taking Responsibility: In the U.S. deadlines are strictly followed, but in India they are just guidelines and never really followed. They'll give you many excuses as to why they didn't meet the deadline, and they'll never take responsibility for it.
Other commons problems include: bait and switch, frequent disruptions and inability to make decisions.
One other important point- don't be fooled by the positive reviews you see for these companies. T[...]
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5 years ago
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Kino Lorber
Beanpole, the second feature from acclaimed, young Russian director Kantemir Balagov, is incredibly intense and bleak, almost unbearably so at times. Though its painfully drawn out scenes are sometimes hard to watch, Beanpole is nevertheless a compelling and emotionally crushing film for most of its 130-minute runtime.
The film revisits a particularly rough time in Russian history—the immediate aftermath of World War II, when soldiers have returned from the front missing body parts and worse. Though this period has certainly been covered before, Balagov’s approach is novel, focusing on two young female machine gunners who became close during the war and reunite in Leningrad. Their fraught, almost animalistic relationship embodies the suffering each has been through; their peculiar bond is demonstrated in several scenes by long stretches in which they seem to communicate by staring wordlessly into each other’s eyes.
Iya (Viktoria Miroshnichenko), the tall, pale "beanpole" of the film's title, is first shown having a kind of seizure, during which she emits short gasps and seems paralyzed. This state is almost casually referred to as “frozen” by the people who work with her in a hospital tending to war injuries. She lives with her young son, Pashka, in a communal living space that is rundown and faded, but (thanks to cinematographer Ksenia Sereda) full of eye-catching bright greens and scarlets, colors that show up in worn but colorful clothes, in addi[...]
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