By Gary M. Kramer. América, directed by Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside, is a lovely, poignant meditation on eldercare. The filmmakers capture the rhythm of the life of Diego, a young man living in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, who is called back to Colima to care for his grandmother, América, who […]
Kitsch Shining Bright: Jeffrey Schwarz on The Fabulous Allan Carr
June 14, 2018
By Tom Ue. Emmy Award-winner Jeffrey Schwarz’s many documentaries include Tab Hunter Confidential (2015), about the 1950s heartthrob and movie idol, and Vito (2011), the gay activist, film scholar, and author Vito Russo. His latest project centres on Allan Carr, best known for his producing work in Grease (1978) and the […]
Omnibus of Unrest: On Ten Years Thailand
June 14, 2018
By Ali Moosavi. Many film aficionados’ first memory of Thailand dates back to the 1956 film The King and I in which Yul Brynner played the King of Siam (Thailand’s former name). After a bloodless revolution in 1932, Siam became a democratic constitutional monarchy and changed its official name to Thailand. Since […]
Uncovering the Katyn Massacre Cover-up: An Interview with Piotr Szkopiak on The Last Witness
By Sergey Toymentsev. Piotr Szkopiak’s The Last Witness offers a fictional rendition of a cold-blooded execution of 22,000 Polish officers and civilians by the Stalin’s secret police in 1940, a horrific slaughter known as the Katyn massacre, of which both the US and British governments were well aware yet deliberately […]
The Story Comes First: An Interview with François Ozon on Double Lover
June 1, 2018
By Alex Ramon. From the patriarchy-busting provocations of his debut feature Sitcom (1998) to the understated elegance of Frantz (2016), François Ozon has created a body of work that’s among the most diverse and confounding in contemporary French cinema. Pegged initially as an enfant terrible, Ozon announced himself as a distinctive […]
Portrait of Julia: Gustave Vinagre on I Remember the Crows
May 3, 2018
By Gary M. Kramer. Julia Katherine is a trans actress with insomnia. In I Remember the Crows, her director, Gustavo Vinagre, films her as she monologues about her childhood – suffering abuse at a young age when her great uncle initiated a relationship with her – as well as talking […]
Observing Adolescence: Daniel Patrick Carbone on Phantom Cowboys
April 26, 2018
By Gary M. Kramer. Daniel Patrick Carbone made a splash at the Tribeca Film Festival back in 2013 with his feature debut, Hide Your Smiling Faces, a largely improvised drama about two brothers growing up in rural New Jersey. The film depicted the characters’ coming-of-age, but the palpable mood and […]
Dating and Vulnerability: Sherren Lee and Jesse LaVercombe on The Things You Think I’m Thinking
April 26, 2018
By Tom Ue. Director Sherren Lee’s latest offering, the short film “The Things You Think I’m Thinking” follows a date between a burn survivor and amputee (Prince Amponsah) and a regularly-abled man (Jesse LaVercombe). It has earned the AWFJ EDA Award at the 2017 Whistler Film Festival, the Special Jury Award […]
Rediscovering the Cinema Culture of the Congo: An Interview with Cecilia A. Zoppelletto
April 26, 2018
Conscious life-activity directly distinguishes man from animal life-activity. It is just because of this that he is a species being. – Karl Marx, Estranged Labour For Marx, we humans as a ‘species being’ are defined by our engagement with our environment, which is shaped to meet our needs. Human ingenuity […]
A Little Bold, and a Little Lighter: Sharon Badal on 2018 Tribeca Shorts
By Gary M. Kramer. This year, the Tribeca Film Festival, unspooling April 18-29, features 10 competitive shorts programs curated by the masterful Sharon Badal. (An ESPN program of four sports shorts also screening at the fest is outsourced and out of festival competition.) The programs this year feature documentary, animated, […]