By Michael Miller. The 15th Tribeca Film Festival unspooled April 13 – 24, 2016 in New York presenting nearly 200 features and shorts from around the globe. Here are six noteworthy titles that screened at the fest. Several non-fiction and a feature films probed the nature and process of art […]
The 2016 AFI Docs Festival
June 20, 2016
By Gary M. Kramer. This year at the AFI Docs festival, June 22-26, there are several features and shorts depicting unique individuals working in odd jobs and hobbies. From sewage diving to train surfing, chicken showing and crime photography, this year’s non-fiction filmmakers found some fascinating subjects and stories. Here […]
Robert Lang’s New Tunisian Cinema: Allegories of Resistance
June 8, 2016
A Book Review by Matthew Fullerton. New Tunisian Cinema is a timely book, released three years after the revolution that toppled Ben Ali, the dictator under whom the directors featured in Robert Lang’s study worked for much of their careers. It focuses on eight oeuvres from New Tunisian Cinema, a generation […]
The 35th Istanbul Film Festival
June 2, 2016
By Rob Lewis. Tickets? Check. Popcorn? Check. Bottle of water? Check. Notebook? Check. Festival Guide? Check. It’s 107 minutes long. That means if I leave before the credits and take a taxi, I can reach the Feriye in time for the 7 p.m. showing. Isn’t that my old teacher/classmate/someone I once chatted […]
The Paranoid Political Thriller Three Days of the Condor
June 2, 2016
By Chris Neilan. They may never have matched the creative successes of Scorsese & De Niro, the genre-defining feats of John Wayne & John Ford, or earned the cinephile kudos of Allen & Keaton, but as director-star partnerships go it’s hard to beat Sidney Pollack and Robert Redford for longevity […]
Too Short on Criticism?
By Paul Risker. “The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” – Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987) Desire is both a life sustaining and a destructive force, from which derives the human sin of greed. While desire is an emotional experience […]
Looking Back at The Graduate
May 24, 2016
By Jeremy Carr. Ben Braddock, Dustin Hoffman’s titular character from Mike Nichols’ 1967 film, The Graduate, is first seen staring straight ahead aboard an airplane. He looks off in a trance-like gaze that will be repeated throughout the film. This type of far-away expression is the perfect physical pose— and […]
Paolo Genovese and Perfect Strangers: A Tribeca Interview
May 4, 2016
By Gary M. Kramer. Paolo Genovese’s cheeky comedy-drama Perfect Strangers operates on the simplest—and perhaps riskiest—of principles: if our phones are all “black boxes of information” about us, is there anything in them that could possibly embarrass us in front of our spouses and dearest friends who know us so […]
The 2016 Tribeca Festival Report
April 29, 2016
By Gary M. Kramer. The 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, April 13-24, showcased more than 100 features and nearly 75 shorts from 42 countries. The documentaries and foreign films were strongest. Here are reviews of six films—three features, and three documentaries—that were among the more interesting and ambitious films to play […]
Curating the 2016 Tribeca Shorts – A Conversation with Sharon Badal
April 9, 2016
By Gary M. Kramer. It’s Tribeca Film Festival time again, which means my annual conversation with Sharon Badal, curator of the festival’s shorts programs. This year’s fantastic line up offer some new programs: California Dreaming, which features stories from the other coast; Warped Speed, a first-ever Sci-Fi program (in honor […]