By Tom Ue. With more than 900K followers on Instagram alone, writer and director Max Emerson uses his social media presence to promote awareness of problems facing the LGBTQ community. His latest project, the film Hooked had its world premiere at the Toronto Inside Out Festival, and it partners with […]
Bob Farkas on Going Crazy Famous
July 6, 2018
By Tom Ue. Bob Farkas took the biggest gamble of his life when he became, at the age of 53, a first-time filmmaker. He founded Farkas Features, a low-budget, niche-oriented, feature film development and production company that focuses on creating movies with bold and timely subject matter. He wrote, produced, and […]
Weird Science: Three Identical Strangers
July 3, 2018
By Elias Savada. I’ve been told, at rare moments throughout my life, that I look just like someone else, other than my dad or a close cousin, of course. Usually, if shown a photograph of the other person, I would not see a resemblance at all. For Robert Shafran, Edward Galland, […]
John Waters, Respectably Vile Again: Female Trouble (Criterion Collection)
July 2, 2018
By Gary M. Kramer. John Waters has achieved respectability (again). After 2016’s successful Criterion Collection release of Multiple Maniacs, the premier film snob’s publisher of classics on Blu-ray/DVD has now issued a new 4K digital restoration of his 16mm masterpiece, Female Trouble, from 1974. The original film’s grainy quality gains […]
The Paradox of Vivienne Westwood – Westwood: Punk, Activist, Icon
June 30, 2018
By Elizabeth Toohey. Is the designer Vivienne Westwood anti-establishment or is she the establishment? Is she iconoclast or icon? More to the point, has her fashion been subversive, a form of resistance to English politics and culture, or has it been merely a commodification of the youthful punk rebellion of […]
A Surge in the Classroom: Serge Bozon on Mrs. Hyde
By Tom Ue. Serge Bozon’s latest film Mrs. Hyde follows the plight of a science teacher at a technical school (Isabelle Huppert). Despite 35 years of committed service, Mrs. Géquil is largely unsuccessful in communicating with either her students or her colleagues; and she is supported by a well-meaning, but […]
Perfectly Partial: Víctor Erice’s El Sur (Criterion Collection)
By Jeremy Carr. Writer-director Víctor Erice can be forgiven if he speaks of El Sur (newly released by the Criterion Collection) with more than a tinge of regret. This 1983 feature, only his second from 1973 to today (his sparse filmography largely consists of shorts and documentaries), wasn’t just released in […]
Glory of the Silents Reborn: the 23rd San Francisco Silent Film Festival
By Janine Gericke. I’ve been going to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (SFSFF) for ten years. My first introduction to the festival and the Castro Theatre was Buster Keaton’s 1923 film Our Hospitality. It was the first time I had ever seen a silent film with live musical accompaniment. […]
Observation and Immersion: 2018 AFI Docs
By Gary M. Kramer. The 2018 AFI Docs Film Festival screened over 90 features and shorts in Washington, DC and Silver Spring, MD. The films tackled topical issues such as the plight of refugees to more comical themes, such as the increasing popularity of “industrial musicals.” Many films took an […]
New Directions Emerging: Orson Welles in Focus, Edited by James R. Gilmore and Sidney Gottlieb
A Book Review by Tony Williams. During and since the time of Welles’s Centenary, many fine books and articles have appeared re-evaluating the work of a director once popularly regarded as a failure since making Citizen Kane, for one reason or another. Over the past few decades a dedicated group […]