By Tony Williams. Following the release of several new remastered DVDs after the 2015 Orson Welles Centenary and the expected completion of his last unedited feature The Other Side of the Wind sometime in the future, this year sees two more additions continuing Welles’s legacy. Rather than “Orpheus Descending,” it […]
Documenting in Defense of Art: An Interview with Hila Peleg
By Yun-hua Chen. The Israel-born Hila Peleg is a curator and filmmaker based in Berlin. She is the founder and artistic director of the Berlin Documentary Forum, a biennial event (2010, 2012, 2014) which was devoted to the production and presentation of contemporary and historical documentary practices in an interdisciplinary […]
The Paris Opera: A Rhapsodic Story
By Cecilia A. Zoppelletto. The sophisticated style of The Paris Opera, whilst weaving stories of mundane occupations with the artistic highlights of this world, turns the documentary itself into an opera. The story, which follows the classic formula of the backstage picture by taking place in a theatrical setting where […]
Alaskan Neo-Noir: Sweet Virginia
By Elias Savada. As the latest shadowy slant on the malevolent small town subterfuge melodrama – following a few weeks after George Clooney’s Coen Brothers-inspired Suburbicon, which takes the neo-noir thriller sub-genre to totally outlandish levels – Sweet Virginia is a more personal, low-key affair that follows the aftermath of […]
Trauma and Courage: Barbara Kopple’s A Murder in Mansfield (DOC NYC)
By Kate Hearst. Barbara Kopple’s latest documentary revisits a high profile domestic murder case in Mansfield, Ohio in 1989, and reveals how this tragedy continues to haunt. In vérité style, Kopple follows thirty-eight-year-old Collier Landry as he returns to his hometown, where at age eleven, he witnessed the murder of […]
The Saga Doesn’t Begin – The Osiris Child: Science Fiction Volume One
November 12, 2017
By Elias Savada. If you create a film and title it to suggest it’s the beginning of a series, you better hope that your audience will arrive in quantity and that your product will offer up quality. Tossing in some originality would help, too, rather than using the beg-borrow-and-steal approach for […]
Truth and Consequences: Conversations with Buñuel by Max Aub, translated and edited by Julie Jones
A Book Review Essay by Jeremy Carr. “Even today, I’ve no idea what the truth is, or what I did with it.” – Luis Buñuel, My Last Sigh Compiling biographical information about Luis Buñuel is no easy task, and the contrived predisposition of the iconoclastic filmmaker doesn’t usually help. Fond […]
Lancing a Bourgeois Boil: The Square
November 6, 2017
By Elias Savada. Auteur provocateur Ruben Östlund loves to pick at society’s scabs – and make you laugh and writhe at any unsettling pus that oozes out. As with the squirm-inducing Force Majeure (2014), the Swedish writer-director’s funny-sad journey into middleclass smugness, The Square, his latest bourgeois boil being lanced, viewers […]
Starting the Revolution: Robin Campillo on BPM (Beats Per Minute)
November 6, 2017
By Tom Ue. Robin Campillo’s latest film BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017) is set in Paris, in the early 1990s, and it focuses on members of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), a group of activists who battle for those suffering from HIV/AIDS and who holds accountable different government agencies […]
Documenting the Final Days: Waiting for Kiarostami
November 6, 2017
By Ali Moosavi. Abbas Kiarostami’s passing in 2016 deprived the lovers of the 7th art of his unique blend of documentary and fiction, real and imaginary and left a very large void in Iranian and world cinema. Waiting for Kiarostami is the second tribute to the late master made after his death. […]