Category archives: Visual Arts
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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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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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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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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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5 years ago
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In the Family LLC
Writer/director Patrick Wang’s A Bread Factory, available in two parts via VOD this Tuesday, is a sprawling, quirk-filled ensemble film that attains a kind of greatness by its conclusion. With its many interlocking characters and plot threads, lengthy monologues, and a generous dash of absurdity (especially in Part 2), the film can sometimes feel a little unwieldy. However, A Bread Factory (the title refers to a fictional small-town arts space) is full of droll wit and affection for both its characters and for theater in general, resulting in a highly watchable four hours. Filmed like a play, with static camera angles and no soundtrack, the film is as visually simple as it is narratively complex.
At the heart of the A Bread Factory are Dorothea (Tyne Daly) and Greta (Elizabeth Henry), a older couple who have devoted their lives to running Checkford’s humble arts space, housed in, yes, a former bread factory. The women and town are shaken and stirred by the recent arrival of May Ray, a ridiculously over-the-top performance-art couple (Janet Hsieh and George Young) who have opened their own slick space, Forum for the Exercise of Experience and Living (FEEL). Some townspeople are intrigued by May Ray's otherworldly, highly synchronized performances, while others are scornful. At stake is the arts budget allocation of the local school board, without which the Bread Factory could not operate.
In the Family LLC
Part 1: For th[...]
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5 years ago
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Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Though the phrase “cinematic experience” is somewhat overused and should generally be met with suspicion, Victor Kossakovsky’s Aquarela can hardly be called anything else. This startling documentary about the earth's most versatile element, water, is a mind- and eye-boggling trip, evoking both sadness and exhilaration, among other strong emotions. Shot at 96 frames per second, as opposed to the usual 24 (though theaters are only equipped to show it at 48 fps, at most), its rich visuals are so smooth they sometimes seem like CGI, but there is nothing artificial about this film.
Filmed in seven different countries, Aquarela opens on frozen Lake Baikal in Siberia, where several men are attempting to retrieve something from under the surface. Amid amplified sounds of cracking, groaning ice, it soon becomes apparent that a car has fallen into the lake. As dramatic as this seems, it’s not the last time it happens. We see two more cars speeding along the river as voices yell out “Stop, stop!” to no avail. Turns out that the lake is thawing early this year. This is our introduction to one of the film’s main themes, climate change, though it’s never discussed or openly addressed. It’s also the only scene in the movie with actual dialogue. Human beings, clearly at the mercy of the film’s subject, are not the main focus here. Adding to the strangeness of the scene is a wildly incongruous element of slapstick, as people keep falling thr[...]
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5 years ago
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Big World Pictures
“I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians.” So said Romanian military dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu to the Council of Ministers in 1941, in an infamous speech that kicked off a program of ethnic cleansing on the Eastern Front.
Romania’s role in the WWII holocaust is one that is often conveniently forgotten (or outright denied), but director Radu Jude wants to make sure that we remember, as does the main character in his audacious new film—which is titled “I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians,” complete with quotes.
The movie’s fictional stage director Mariana Marin (an electric and believable Ioana Iacob) is mounting a spectacular re-enactment of the 1941 Odessa massacre, in which Romanian soldiers allied with the Nazis to kill tens of thousands of Jews. She encounters resistance from a variety of people, including cast members, government officials, and her own boyfriend, many of whom think it’s either a bad idea to bring up old memories or simply anti-Romanian. She also has increasingly frustrating personal issues with her already-married partner. None of it stops her.
Big World Pictures
Because this is Radu Jude, however, the film’s themes are couched in scenes that are as playful and audacious as they are dark and disturbing. (The jokey tone is similar to his equally singular 2015 film Aferim!, about another shameful period in Romanian history.)
“I Do Not Care…” clocks in at a le[...]
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6 years ago
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Juno Films
An intriguing new entry in the still-alive zombie-apocalypse genre, the German-language Ever After (Endzeit), from Swedish director Carolina Hellsgård, goes deeper than most screen depictions of the undead. It's also gorgeous-looking, thanks to cinematographer Leah Striker, which adds to the film’s captivating quality.
A horror/road movie/eco-drama hybrid, Ever After focuses more on the relationship between its two main characters than on inventive portrayals of guts and decaying flesh, though there’s some of that too (but probably not enough to satisfy diehard gore fans).
At the heart of the film, which is based on the screenplay by Olivia Vieweg (who adapted it from her own graphic novel) is an unlikely alliance between two young women -- the fragile, weak-seeming Vivi (Gro Swantje Kohlhof) and badder-assed Eva (Maja Lehrer).
The setting is post-plague Germany, two years into the apocalypse, where there are human survivors in only two cities: Weimar, where the infected are killed immediately, and Jena, where people are researching a cure. Vivi and Eva meet as stowaways on a self-driving supply train from the former to the latter city. Though temperamentally and emotionally very different, they’re both searching for something lost in their former lives. It's a setup that could have led to a more conventional apocalypse survival story, but Ever After ultimately winds up veering into an entirely different direction.
Juno Films
Forced to ditc[...]
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6 years ago
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Art for Progress Summer Arts Program 2018
Art for Progress (AFP) is pleased to announce The Pierre & Tana Matisse Foundation has awarded the organization a three year grant in support of its Summer Arts Program. After a highly successful launch of the program in 2018, the foundation requested a multi year proposal to support the program which was recently granted in May.
Art for Progress will receive $52,500 to fund the program through 2021. The program was developed with the purpose of providing instruction in both music and visual arts over the summer months for students and young adults who are interested in careers in art and music. Although the focus is to provide instruction, knowledge and insight for career oriented students, the program is open to anyone interested (ages 13-24). Some of the key objectives of the program include:
providing a challenging curriculum while giving students the opportunity to choose and learn skills they desirepresenting professional, engaging artists to speak to attendees about the challenges of choosing a career in artssharing information and knowledge that's typically not offered in formal school programs such as "Key Tenets for the Professional Artist."providing teaching opportunities for students who are interested in education careers
The workshops will take place on four consecutive Sundays beginning July 14th (July 21st, July 28th, August 4th) from 10:30am-4:30pm. There is no cost for students and lunch wil[...]
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6 years ago
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Mademoiselle Paradis
The 11th edition of the Panorama Europe film festival, co-presented by Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) and the members of European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), will take place from Friday, May 3, through Sunday, May 19.
The 17 films screening this year, programmed by David Schwartz, MoMI curator-at-large, represent some of the continent’s most intriguing emerging directors, nine of them women. Included are both documentaries and fiction, many of them set in contemporary Europe, reflecting its current state of flux. Though the films tackle weighty subjects such as politics, history, labor, and feminism, their stories focus on the lives of individuals.
In addition to films from cinematically prolific countries such as Germany, Spain and France, there are entries from Malta, Slovakia, and Croatia, among other places that are not as widely represented on screen, providing welcome glimpses into those cultures.
Screenings will take place at the Museum of the Moving Image (36-01 35th Avenue, Astoria) and Bohemian National Hall (321 East 73rd Street, Manhattan).
The festival opens with the U.S. premiere of Mademoiselle Paradis, Barbara Albert’s excellent period drama, starring Romanian actress Maria Dragus as blind, 18th-century pianist Maria-Theresia Paradis. Though visually lush and authentic to its time, this mildly satirical film is also feminist in its depiction of a determined young [...]
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6 years ago
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A truly original work from Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson, Woman at War is a whimsical action film about a middle-aged eco-terrorist fighting local industrialization. Starring the wonderful Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir as Halla, an upbeat choir director who secretly dismantles power lines in her spare time, Woman at War is also a musical of sorts, with both an Icelandic combo and a Ukrainian vocal trio punctuating the action. It’s doubtful that the issue of environmental conservation has ever been handled in such a delightful manner.
Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
When we first meet Halla, she’s busily cutting down power lines that mar the gorgeous, almost otherworldly-seeming Icelandic countryside, as musicians playing percussive tuba, organ and drums look on. When she tries to escape a surveillance helicopter, Halla comes upon a gruff but sympathetic local farmer (Jóhann Sigurðarson), who agrees to help her. Apparently this is not the first time she’s sabotaged the power project.
Later, when Halla shows up for choir practice, one of its members takes her aside and begs her to stop her activities. Baldvin (Jörundur Ragnarsson), the only one who knows her secret mission, is a government minister who initially supported her, but now thinks she’s gone too far. Not only has China gotten cold feet about doing business in Iceland, but, the U.S. has launched a satellite to monitor the area. Meanwhile a young Spanish-speaking foreigner (Juan Camillo Roman Estrada) is t[...]
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6 years ago
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Since 1998, the Animation Show of Shows has selected the best animated shorts from around the world. According to founder and curator Ron Diamond, the 15 films chosen for the 20th annual edition “really illuminate human strengths and foibles, and the bonds that unite us across cultures and generations.” Though these films and their animators come from various backgrounds and countries, the themes represented are truly relatable across the board.
Ranging from 70 seconds to 15 minutes, the works range from darkly funny to deeply moving, representing an impressive array of visual styles and moods. Running a little over an hour and a half, the entire program is a treat from start to finish.
Some highlights include:
Grands Canons, from French multimedia artist Alain Biet, is a dizzying visual presentation of thousands of hand-dawn everyday objects, presented at various speeds and in myriad permutations, accompanied by jaunty, propulsive music. Clearly a labor of love, it ultimately becomes mesmerizing.
Barry, from filmmaker and Cal Arts animation student Anchi Shen, is a humorous, simply drawn story about a goat with a Harvard degree applying for an oncologist position at a hospital. He's first relegated to custodial work until he saves the day in the OR. Though his fellow physicians cheer him on, he’s fired from the staff because “Goats are never doctors.” A clever take on stereotyping.
The visually intriguing Love Me, Fear Me from Romanian filmmaker Veronica S[...]
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