We are becoming part machine.
That is the startling observation of Emmy-winning filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, who has been thinking deeply about the ramifications of artificial intelligence for human culture. The director of Cameraperson and Dick Johnson Is Dead will deliver a keynote at the IDA’s Getting Real conference in Los Angeles this week, addressing what she sees as a fundamental truth about AI that sets it apart from human endeavors: AI “lacks a body,” and as such is disengaged from the fate of humanity.
Johnson joins the latest edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast to discuss her feelings about AI – its areas of promise, but also the way in which the emerging technology is going to fundamentally alter our experience. She notes that more people are already creating new images through generative AI prompts – e.g., “Make me a photo of a frog in a pinstripe suit balancing...
That is the startling observation of Emmy-winning filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, who has been thinking deeply about the ramifications of artificial intelligence for human culture. The director of Cameraperson and Dick Johnson Is Dead will deliver a keynote at the IDA’s Getting Real conference in Los Angeles this week, addressing what she sees as a fundamental truth about AI that sets it apart from human endeavors: AI “lacks a body,” and as such is disengaged from the fate of humanity.
Johnson joins the latest edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast to discuss her feelings about AI – its areas of promise, but also the way in which the emerging technology is going to fundamentally alter our experience. She notes that more people are already creating new images through generative AI prompts – e.g., “Make me a photo of a frog in a pinstripe suit balancing...
- 4/16/2024
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
Stars: Harold Torres, Tete Espinoza, Norma Reyna | Written by Luis Javier Henaine, Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes | Directed by Luis Javier Henaine
Photography converts the whole world into a cemetery. Photographers, connoisseurs of beauty, are also – wittingly or unwittingly – the recording-angels of death.
– Susan Sontag
Those words appear at the beginning of Disappear Completely (Desaparecer Por Completo), and seem perfectly appropriate as we see Santiago sitting in his car listening to the police radio. He’s a photographer, and he’s waiting to hear what he’ll be covering next. He doesn’t have long to wait before he’s busy shooting pictures of a cuffed suspect, sobbing victims in an ambulance, and, with the help of a bribe, a woman’s corpse.
Santiago works for a Mexican tabloid, one that very firmly believes the old adage, “If it bleeds, it leads”. And he’s excellent at capturing that bleeding on film, regardless of the cost.
Photography converts the whole world into a cemetery. Photographers, connoisseurs of beauty, are also – wittingly or unwittingly – the recording-angels of death.
– Susan Sontag
Those words appear at the beginning of Disappear Completely (Desaparecer Por Completo), and seem perfectly appropriate as we see Santiago sitting in his car listening to the police radio. He’s a photographer, and he’s waiting to hear what he’ll be covering next. He doesn’t have long to wait before he’s busy shooting pictures of a cuffed suspect, sobbing victims in an ambulance, and, with the help of a bribe, a woman’s corpse.
Santiago works for a Mexican tabloid, one that very firmly believes the old adage, “If it bleeds, it leads”. And he’s excellent at capturing that bleeding on film, regardless of the cost.
- 4/16/2024
- by Jim Morazzini
- Nerdly
An Odd Turn (Un movimiento extraño) thrums with a sense of classicism and mystery, yet feels plugged into the uncertainties of Argentina’s current reality: haunted by a failure to confront the violent past, high inflation rates and a devaluation of the peso. Concerning the travails of a security guard with a sixth sense whose romantic encounters are linked to her gamble on the currency market, Francisco Lezama’s film eschews conventional narrative plotting in favour of creating a peculiar yet beguiling vibe; born out of his unorthodox way of writing narratives through collecting contrasting ideas on cards, all the while working as a film history professor at Universidad del Cine and at the Museum of Moving Image Film Archive in Buenos Aires. After his Golden Bear win at this year’s Berlinale, we talked to Lezama about the twin inspirations of Balzac and Rohmer, creating a humanist working method...
- 3/29/2024
- by Redmond Bacon
- Directors Notes
Kristen Stewart became widely known after starring as Jodie Foster’s daughter in the 2002 thriller ‘Panic Room.’ But it was her role as Bella Swan in the ‘Twilight’ series, starting in 2008, that made her a global star. The success of ‘Twilight’ boosted her career and made her one of Hollywood’s highest-paid actresses.
Before ‘Twilight,’ Stewart appeared in indie films like ‘Speak’ and ‘Into the Wild,’ which shaped her career trajectory. While she’s been in various movie projects, including both big and small productions, she hasn’t been part of a superhero film, particularly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). This was something she talked about on the ‘Not Skinny but Not Fat Podcast.’
Kristen opened her commentary on making superhero movies with “sounds like a fucking nightmare, actually“
When host Amanda Hirsch proposed Kristen Stewart as a potential Mary Jane “Mj” Watson for the Spider-Man movie, Stewart expressed...
Before ‘Twilight,’ Stewart appeared in indie films like ‘Speak’ and ‘Into the Wild,’ which shaped her career trajectory. While she’s been in various movie projects, including both big and small productions, she hasn’t been part of a superhero film, particularly in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). This was something she talked about on the ‘Not Skinny but Not Fat Podcast.’
Kristen opened her commentary on making superhero movies with “sounds like a fucking nightmare, actually“
When host Amanda Hirsch proposed Kristen Stewart as a potential Mary Jane “Mj” Watson for the Spider-Man movie, Stewart expressed...
- 3/28/2024
- by Valentina Kraljik
- Fiction Horizon
Kristen Stewart gained widespread recognition for her role as Jodie Foster’s daughter in the 2002 thriller ‘Panic Room.’ However, it was her portrayal of Bella Swan in the ‘Twilight’ film series, starting in 2008, that catapulted her to international fame. The success of ‘Twilight’ made her one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood.
Even before ‘Twilight’ Stewart took part in several indie projects such as ‘Speak’ and ‘Into the Wild,’ it was these early roles that somehow determined the rest of her career. While we did see her in big and small productions, we’ve never seen Stewart in a superhero movie, especially MCU, and this is something she discussed on ‘Not Skinny but Not Fat Podcast’.
Kristen opened her commentary on making superhero movies with “sounds like a fucking nightmare, actually“
When host Amanda Hirsch suggested Kristen Stewart could play Mary Jane “Mj” Watson from the Spider-Man comic, Stewart...
Even before ‘Twilight’ Stewart took part in several indie projects such as ‘Speak’ and ‘Into the Wild,’ it was these early roles that somehow determined the rest of her career. While we did see her in big and small productions, we’ve never seen Stewart in a superhero movie, especially MCU, and this is something she discussed on ‘Not Skinny but Not Fat Podcast’.
Kristen opened her commentary on making superhero movies with “sounds like a fucking nightmare, actually“
When host Amanda Hirsch suggested Kristen Stewart could play Mary Jane “Mj” Watson from the Spider-Man comic, Stewart...
- 3/28/2024
- by Valentina Kraljik
- Comic Basics
Kristen Stewart has elaborated on the “unique format” of her upcoming Susan Sontag project, in which she is playing the US writer, philosopher and political activist.
“Sontag will be made over such a long period of time. It’s a hybrid documentary, research project, experiment, film-within-a-film type thing,” said the US actor. ”We started it last year at the festival. I don’t know when we’ll finish – it’s an open-ended process.”
US filmmaker Kirsten Johnson is directing project, which is being produced by UK-Australia outfit Brouhaha Entertainment, as first revealed by Screen ahead of last year’s Berlinale.
“Sontag will be made over such a long period of time. It’s a hybrid documentary, research project, experiment, film-within-a-film type thing,” said the US actor. ”We started it last year at the festival. I don’t know when we’ll finish – it’s an open-ended process.”
US filmmaker Kirsten Johnson is directing project, which is being produced by UK-Australia outfit Brouhaha Entertainment, as first revealed by Screen ahead of last year’s Berlinale.
- 2/18/2024
- ScreenDaily
Kristen Stewart has defended her risque’ photo shoot for the March Rolling Stone magazine cover that went viral and divided audiences on social media platforms.
“The existence of a female body thrusting any type of sexuality at you that’s not designed for exclusively straight males is something people are not super comfy with and so I’m really happy with it,” Stewart told a press conference on Sunday at the Berlin Film Festival for her latest movie, Love Lies Bleeding.
The photos feature a mullet-clad Stewart wearing jock straps and basketball shorts. The spread quickly went viral on social media, as fans marveled over the opportunity for a queer celebrity to get a hyper-sexualized photo shoot that isn’t catered toward the male gaze.
Stewart, who is bisexual, said she enjoyed breaking with traditional stereotypes about what it means to be feminine. “It’s Ok to take different pictures...
“The existence of a female body thrusting any type of sexuality at you that’s not designed for exclusively straight males is something people are not super comfy with and so I’m really happy with it,” Stewart told a press conference on Sunday at the Berlin Film Festival for her latest movie, Love Lies Bleeding.
The photos feature a mullet-clad Stewart wearing jock straps and basketball shorts. The spread quickly went viral on social media, as fans marveled over the opportunity for a queer celebrity to get a hyper-sexualized photo shoot that isn’t catered toward the male gaze.
Stewart, who is bisexual, said she enjoyed breaking with traditional stereotypes about what it means to be feminine. “It’s Ok to take different pictures...
- 2/18/2024
- by Etan Vlessing
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
At the Berlin Film Festival press conference for her new film “Love Lies Bleeding,” Kristen Stewart said she thinks the era of queer films “being so pointedly only that is done,” adding that it’s time for films to focus on “sidelined perspectives” while “not making it all about the reasons that they’re sidelined.”
“Love Lies Bleeding” stars Stewart as reclusive gym manager Lou, who “falls hard for Jackie (Katy O’Brian), an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Las Vegas in pursuit of her dream,” the film’s synopsis reads. “But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.”
When asked if filming the gory and twist-filled “Love Lies Bleeding” had changed her perspective on how queer stories are centered in cinema, Stewart sounded off on the topic.
“I think we can’t keep doing that thing where we tell everyone how...
“Love Lies Bleeding” stars Stewart as reclusive gym manager Lou, who “falls hard for Jackie (Katy O’Brian), an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Las Vegas in pursuit of her dream,” the film’s synopsis reads. “But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.”
When asked if filming the gory and twist-filled “Love Lies Bleeding” had changed her perspective on how queer stories are centered in cinema, Stewart sounded off on the topic.
“I think we can’t keep doing that thing where we tell everyone how...
- 2/18/2024
- by Ellise Shafer
- Variety Film + TV
Le chinoise.Most serious writing about Jean-Luc Godard tends to be both high-flown and forbidding, rather like the films it’s discussing. Translations from French to English or vice versa can make things even dicier. But according to the literary scholar Fredric Jameson, who contributes an enthusiastic preface and afterword, Reading with Jean-Luc Godard—a compendium of 109 three-page essays by 50 writers from a dozen countries, announced as the first in a series—launches “a new form” and “a new genre.”The brevity of each entry tends to confirm Jameson’s claim. The book can be described as an audience-friendly volume designed to occupy the same space between academia and journalism staked out by Notebook while proposing routes into Godard’s work provided by his eclectic reading—a batch of writers ranged alphabetically and intellectually from Louis Aragon, Robert Ardrey, Hannah Arendt, and Honoré de Balzac to François Truffaut, Paul Valéry,...
- 1/30/2024
- MUBI
Exclusive: Ben Whishaw will reunite with director Ira Sachs to shoot an “intimate” movie about photo artist Peter Hujar.
Until his death from AIDS in 1987, Hujar was a leading figure in the group of artists, musicians, writers, and performers at the forefront of Manhattan’s downtown cultural scene.
The untitled film follows Passages, the acclaimed picture Sachs shot in Paris with Whishaw and Franz Rogowski.
Passages has been enjoying awards season attention with Rogowski bagging the best actor prize from the New York Film Critics Circle — in fact I just saw him the other night at an event for the picture out here in Los Angeles.
Whishaw, Rogowski and the film are in contention for prizes at the Independent Spirit Awards. Whishaw’s also on the BAFTA Best Supporting actor longlist for Passages.
Ira Sachs, Adele Exarchopoulos, Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski of ‘Passages’ at the Deadline Studio
And he...
Until his death from AIDS in 1987, Hujar was a leading figure in the group of artists, musicians, writers, and performers at the forefront of Manhattan’s downtown cultural scene.
The untitled film follows Passages, the acclaimed picture Sachs shot in Paris with Whishaw and Franz Rogowski.
Passages has been enjoying awards season attention with Rogowski bagging the best actor prize from the New York Film Critics Circle — in fact I just saw him the other night at an event for the picture out here in Los Angeles.
Whishaw, Rogowski and the film are in contention for prizes at the Independent Spirit Awards. Whishaw’s also on the BAFTA Best Supporting actor longlist for Passages.
Ira Sachs, Adele Exarchopoulos, Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski of ‘Passages’ at the Deadline Studio
And he...
- 1/10/2024
- by Baz Bamigboye
- Deadline Film + TV
The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner has finally released a full autopsy report following the death of beloved actor Matthew Perry on October 28, 2023. Issued on December 15, the report "determined the cause of death for 54-year-old actor Matthew Langford Perry as the acute effects of ketamine." It also listed contributing factors such as coronary artery disease, effects of the medication buprenorphine (used to treat opioid use disorder), and drowning, as Perry was found unresponsive in his pool. Perry's death has officially been ruled an accident.
Perry was on a medically prescribed ketamine infusion plan, a not uncommon treatment for chronic addiction that has an increasingly robust scientific basis for efficacy. The medical examiner found no trace of alcohol, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or other narcotics in Perry's bloodstream. At the time of his death, Perry had been sober for 19 months. He had just released the memoir "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible...
Perry was on a medically prescribed ketamine infusion plan, a not uncommon treatment for chronic addiction that has an increasingly robust scientific basis for efficacy. The medical examiner found no trace of alcohol, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, or other narcotics in Perry's bloodstream. At the time of his death, Perry had been sober for 19 months. He had just released the memoir "Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible...
- 12/15/2023
- by SlashFilm Staff
- Slash Film
How To Come Alive With Norman Mailer director Jeff Zimbalist: “I lament that in some ways the film is a nostalgia piece for that bygone era. But never saying that Mailer himself is a role model.”
In the second instalment with Jeff Zimbalist on How To Come Alive With Norman Mailer (co-written with Victoria Marquette and a highlight of the 14th edition of Doc NYC) we discuss a bygone era where opposite sides were coming together in debates, such as the infamous 1971 Town Hall event in New York City: A Dialogue on Women’s Liberation with Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag, Jill Johnston, Diana Trilling, Cynthia Ozick, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Jacqueline Ceballos, where Mailer was taught a lesson or two (seen from Chris Hegedus and Da Pennebaker’s Town Bloody Hall documentary), and the Gore Vidal Norman Mailer showdown on The Dick Cavett Show.
Jeff Zimbalist on Norman Mailer: “He’s incredibly prophetic.
In the second instalment with Jeff Zimbalist on How To Come Alive With Norman Mailer (co-written with Victoria Marquette and a highlight of the 14th edition of Doc NYC) we discuss a bygone era where opposite sides were coming together in debates, such as the infamous 1971 Town Hall event in New York City: A Dialogue on Women’s Liberation with Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan, Susan Sontag, Jill Johnston, Diana Trilling, Cynthia Ozick, Elizabeth Hardwick, and Jacqueline Ceballos, where Mailer was taught a lesson or two (seen from Chris Hegedus and Da Pennebaker’s Town Bloody Hall documentary), and the Gore Vidal Norman Mailer showdown on The Dick Cavett Show.
Jeff Zimbalist on Norman Mailer: “He’s incredibly prophetic.
- 12/1/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Explore where to stream the best films of 2023.
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Drylongso (Cauleen Smith)
Writer-director Cauleen Smith made Drylongso when she was in college, 25 years ago, premiering at Sundance in 1998. She has gone on to create dozens of short films, art installations, and more experimental work, focused on similar themes of feminism, racial violence, and Black communities. The low-key hangout movie should have been a stepping stone for Smith, but, as with many other works by Black female filmmaking of the last half-century, it fell out of circulation. – Michael F. (full interview)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Fingernails (Christos Nikou)
Is love quantifiable? No, but that doesn’t stop Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou from exploring that question over two dull, excruciating hours in Fingernails,...
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
Drylongso (Cauleen Smith)
Writer-director Cauleen Smith made Drylongso when she was in college, 25 years ago, premiering at Sundance in 1998. She has gone on to create dozens of short films, art installations, and more experimental work, focused on similar themes of feminism, racial violence, and Black communities. The low-key hangout movie should have been a stepping stone for Smith, but, as with many other works by Black female filmmaking of the last half-century, it fell out of circulation. – Michael F. (full interview)
Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel
Fingernails (Christos Nikou)
Is love quantifiable? No, but that doesn’t stop Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou from exploring that question over two dull, excruciating hours in Fingernails,...
- 11/3/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Mubi has announced its lineup of streaming offerings for next month, including the exclusive streaming premiere of Lars von Trier’s The Idiots in a new 4K restoration, Céline Devaux’s anti-romcom Everybody Loves Jeanne, and Tyler Taormina’s Happer’s Comet.
Additional selections include three films by Wong Kar Wai, a Robert Altman double feature, four works by Jacques Rivette, plus shorts by Mia Hansen-Løve and Yorgos Lanthimos.
Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.
July 1 – Synecdoche, New York, directed by Charlie Kaufman
July 2 – 2046, directed by Wong Kar Wai | As Time Goes By: Three by Wong Kar Wai
July 3 – The Exiles, directed by Kent MacKenzie
July 4 – Ivansxtc, directed by Bernard Rose
July 5 – Un Pur Esprit, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve | Short Films Big Names
July 6 – Contemporary Color, directed by Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross | Turn It Up: Music on Film
July 7 – The Idiots, directed by Lars von Trier...
Additional selections include three films by Wong Kar Wai, a Robert Altman double feature, four works by Jacques Rivette, plus shorts by Mia Hansen-Løve and Yorgos Lanthimos.
Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.
July 1 – Synecdoche, New York, directed by Charlie Kaufman
July 2 – 2046, directed by Wong Kar Wai | As Time Goes By: Three by Wong Kar Wai
July 3 – The Exiles, directed by Kent MacKenzie
July 4 – Ivansxtc, directed by Bernard Rose
July 5 – Un Pur Esprit, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve | Short Films Big Names
July 6 – Contemporary Color, directed by Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross | Turn It Up: Music on Film
July 7 – The Idiots, directed by Lars von Trier...
- 6/26/2023
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Seeing Kristen Stewart bounce between the acclaimed Princess Diana drama “Spencer,” which landed her a Best Actress Oscar nomination to David Cronenberg’s sci-fi thriller “Crimes of The Future” sure has been an interesting ride. However, it looks like the actress has found another promising project for her dance card and, oddly enough, will allow her to flex her comedic chops, harkening back to the days of 2009’s “Adventureland.”
Read More: Kristen Stewart Will Play Susan Sontag In Kirsten Johnson’s Upcoming Meta Documentary, Which Starts Filming At Berlin 2023
Deadline reports that Stewart is joining the cast of the road-trip comedy “Sacramento,” which will be directed and co-written by Michael Angarano.
Continue reading Kristen Stewart Joins Michael Angarano’s Road-Trip Comedy ‘Sacramento’ at The Playlist.
Read More: Kristen Stewart Will Play Susan Sontag In Kirsten Johnson’s Upcoming Meta Documentary, Which Starts Filming At Berlin 2023
Deadline reports that Stewart is joining the cast of the road-trip comedy “Sacramento,” which will be directed and co-written by Michael Angarano.
Continue reading Kristen Stewart Joins Michael Angarano’s Road-Trip Comedy ‘Sacramento’ at The Playlist.
- 4/13/2023
- by Christopher Marc
- The Playlist
Here’s something for Kristen Stewart fans as they await her latest films “Love Lies Bleeding” and “Love Me,” andher feature directorial debut, “The Chronology Of Water.” Stewart directs “Boygenius – The Film,” a visual companion to the female supergroups “The Album,” out today.
Read More: Kristen Stewart Will Play Susan Sontag In Kirsten Johnson’s Upcoming Meta Documentary, Which Stars Filming At Berlin 2023
The video serves as a triptych music video for three songs of the band’s new album, “$20,” “Emily I’m Sorry,” and “True Blue.” Each song/sequence stars one bandmate in particular.
Continue reading ‘Boygenius – The Film’: Kristen Stewart Directs A Visual Counterpart To The Bands’ ‘The Record,’ Out Today at The Playlist.
Read More: Kristen Stewart Will Play Susan Sontag In Kirsten Johnson’s Upcoming Meta Documentary, Which Stars Filming At Berlin 2023
The video serves as a triptych music video for three songs of the band’s new album, “$20,” “Emily I’m Sorry,” and “True Blue.” Each song/sequence stars one bandmate in particular.
Continue reading ‘Boygenius – The Film’: Kristen Stewart Directs A Visual Counterpart To The Bands’ ‘The Record,’ Out Today at The Playlist.
- 3/31/2023
- by Ned Booth
- The Playlist
Kristin Stewart said she was feeling the full weight of the responsibility of being jury president at the Berlin Film Festival at the opening press conference on Thursday.
“In full transparency, I’m kind of shaking. It’s not a weight that I don’t fully understand and feel… not buckling under, but I’m bolstered by a really beautiful, talented jury,” she said.
“I can’t wait to see who we all are at the end of this experience. It’s kind of what you want a festival to do cumulatively. I’m ready to be changed by all the films and changed by the people around us. I think that’s why we’re here.”
She was joined on stage by jury members Iranian-French actress Golshifteh Farahani, German director Valeska Grisebach, Romanian director Radu Jude, US casting director and producer Francine Maisler, Spanish director Carla Simón, and iconic...
“In full transparency, I’m kind of shaking. It’s not a weight that I don’t fully understand and feel… not buckling under, but I’m bolstered by a really beautiful, talented jury,” she said.
“I can’t wait to see who we all are at the end of this experience. It’s kind of what you want a festival to do cumulatively. I’m ready to be changed by all the films and changed by the people around us. I think that’s why we’re here.”
She was joined on stage by jury members Iranian-French actress Golshifteh Farahani, German director Valeska Grisebach, Romanian director Radu Jude, US casting director and producer Francine Maisler, Spanish director Carla Simón, and iconic...
- 2/16/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Christian Petzold is no stranger to the Berlin International Film Festival. Three of his last four films debuted at that prestigious event. And he’s about to unveil yet another feature in Berlin, with the world premiere of “Afire.”
Read More: Kristen Stewart Will Play Susan Sontag In Kirsten Johnson’s Upcoming Meta Documentary, Which Starts Filming At Berlin 2023
As seen in the trailer for “Afire,” the film follows the story of two friends who go on a holiday on the Baltic coast.
Continue reading ‘Afire’ Trailer: Christian Petzold Returns To Berlin With A New Romantic Drama at The Playlist.
Read More: Kristen Stewart Will Play Susan Sontag In Kirsten Johnson’s Upcoming Meta Documentary, Which Starts Filming At Berlin 2023
As seen in the trailer for “Afire,” the film follows the story of two friends who go on a holiday on the Baltic coast.
Continue reading ‘Afire’ Trailer: Christian Petzold Returns To Berlin With A New Romantic Drama at The Playlist.
- 2/14/2023
- by Charles Barfield
- The Playlist
US theatrical release set for March 3.
Blue Fox has come on board to sell worldwide rights on the crime thriller What We Do Next starring Corey Stoll and will launch sales talks at EFM this week.
Stephen Belber (Match starring Patrick Stewart) wrote and directed the completed feature, which also stars Karen Pittman (The Morning Show) and Michelle Veintimilla (Gotham) and gets a US theatrical release on March 3 via Small Batch Studio Entertainment.
What We Do Next centres on a New York City politician (Pittman) climbing the political ladder who is forced to navigate her complicated past with a young...
Blue Fox has come on board to sell worldwide rights on the crime thriller What We Do Next starring Corey Stoll and will launch sales talks at EFM this week.
Stephen Belber (Match starring Patrick Stewart) wrote and directed the completed feature, which also stars Karen Pittman (The Morning Show) and Michelle Veintimilla (Gotham) and gets a US theatrical release on March 3 via Small Batch Studio Entertainment.
What We Do Next centres on a New York City politician (Pittman) climbing the political ladder who is forced to navigate her complicated past with a young...
- 2/13/2023
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
The Great Italian Films of the 1970sThere was a certain type of great art film which was being made from 1968 through the 1970s which can never be approximated. Active and engaged filmmakers were consciously wakening out of the post-war amnesia and taking a perversely erotically charged political stand against the hypocrisy of the previous generation.
Italy was the hotbed of this examination of fascism coming out of World War II. Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Even the American musical, via Bob Fosse’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, Cabaret (1972) hinted at what the Italians went after with their full force of creative muscle.
Take Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974), set in Vienna in 1957, the film centers on the sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi concentration camp officer (Dirk Bogarde) and one of his inmates (Charlotte Rampling). Their sadomasochistic love is their only happiness and it paralyzes the former Nazis who have been reintegrated into polite society.
Universally reviled by U.S.’s top critics, Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called it “as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering”. Vincent Canby, prominent critic for The New York Times, called it “romantic pornography” and “a piece of junk”. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, “Many of us can’t take more than a few hard-core porno movies, because the absence of any human esteem makes them depressing rather than sexy; The Night Porteroffers the same dehumanized view and is brazen enough to use the Second World War as an excuse.”
Susan Sontag’s essay Fascinating Facism for New York Review of Books (February 6, 1975) stated, “If the message of fascism has been neutralized by an aesthetic view of life, its trappings have been sexualized. This eroticization of fascism can be remarked in such enthralling and devout manifestations as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask and Sun and Steel, and in films like Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and, more recently and far less interestingly, in Visconti’s The Damned and Cavani’s The Night Porter.”
However, its value was recognized by the executive producer Joseph E. Levine who quoted them on the posters of the U.S. theatrical release through his company Avco Embassy.
In a brilliant essay of the film by Kat Ellinger I quote:
Filmmakers were suddenly touching the untouchable, and it made certain people incredibly uncomfortable.”
Unlike Naziploitation, The Night Porter does nothing to cartoonise the Nazi officers that dominate the narrative. It isn’t a case of good versus evil, or that sadism is presented as a form of lasivious softcore pornography. Neither is the film a deliberate political treatise like the art films of Bertolucci, Visconti, or Pasolini. Its biggest transgression is that it humanises one of its main characters, Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former Nazi officer with a penchant for sadism, when he finds his ‘little girl’ again in the postwar period; a former concentration camp inmate Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) with whom he undertook a sadistic affair while she was incarcerated. On reuniting it is clear that their loved never died, so they continue, even though they know it will eventually contribute to their downfall and consequent death. Love in this realm is desperately profane, disgusting, something that should never be. And because of this it remains infinitely fascinating and uniquely humanistic.
Related in spirit was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), using sex to express the death of love and male causality, its own furor when it hit American cinemas still continues to court controversy; and Luchino Visconti’s The Innocent (1976), based upon the novel by the decadent writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, expressing the same but in a totally antithetical environment of the aristocracy. Bertolluci’s The Conformist(1970) twisted the repressed homosexual of its title into a sadomasochistic fascist.
One could say, as did Gabriel Jenkinson, “the dynamics of conformity present in the modern consumerist capitalist system result in repression, which in turn manifests as violent sadomasochism — and …if one does not actively rebel against this system, one is complicit in its proliferation.”
Parenthetically on the other side of the earth, in Japan, In the Realm of the Senses (1976) by Nagisa Ôshima about a woman whose affair with her master leads to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship also came out of Oshima’s early involvement with the student protest movement in Kyoto in ‘68 and out of his concern with the contradictions and tensions of postwar Japanese society in which he exposed contemporary Japanese materialism, while also examining what it means to be Japanese in the face of rapid industrialization and Westernization.
In 2020 Vincent Canby might have revisited The Night Porter and seen it in a different light. His 2020 review of Visconti’s last film, L’innocente (The Innocent), completed in 1976 shortly before his death was “among the most beautiful and severely disciplined films he has ever made.” It was also brazenly sadistic and sexy to a point that today would be labeled pornographic, and today could not be conceived of, much less made, diving, as it does, into sex, abortion, male domination and violence.
According to The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, a co-production of Prx and Wgbh, in 2012:
British scientists have finally confirmed what women worldwide have been suspecting for centuries. It’s not religious principles that start wars. It’s not even civilization’s thirst for oil. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the penis.
According to a study published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society publication, the male sex drive is the cause of most conflicts in the world, from soccer hooliganism to religious wars, not to mention family disputes over the toilet seat being left up.
According to this story in The Telegraph, the scientists call it the “male warrior instinct” and claim men are programmed to be aggressive toward outsiders. It apparently used to be a handy instinct, back when you had to kill other suitors in order to gain more access to mates, but nowadays, this only works in some countries and a few US cities. For the rest of us, this unreformed sex drive only means ever-increasing defense budgets.
The magnitude of this discovery is so great, it’s difficult to estimate the potential ramifications.
At only eight inches on average (or that’s what we have been told), it’s smaller in size than most other controversial discoveries, yet — just like the atom — it has catastrophic consequences if in the hands of the wrong people.
And so these filmmakers show us the pathological drive of the unleashed male libido.
But times are different in the 21st century. These films could never be approximated by our Tik Tok generation where porn has created a quick witty and essentially violent vibrato of sexuality. These films of the late ‘60s and ‘70s took the libido at its rawest and showed its drive as an expression of political evil in very different types of stories.
And it might be worth noting that of all these films, the most reviled was written and directed by a woman and in most of the films, it is, in fact, a woman who proves the stronger of the two sexes and disarms the man. What remains viscerally true to this day is that that missile shaped 8 inch organ needs to be beaten into a plowshare.
SexFascismMoviesItalyInternational Film...
Italy was the hotbed of this examination of fascism coming out of World War II. Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Even the American musical, via Bob Fosse’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, Cabaret (1972) hinted at what the Italians went after with their full force of creative muscle.
Take Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974), set in Vienna in 1957, the film centers on the sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi concentration camp officer (Dirk Bogarde) and one of his inmates (Charlotte Rampling). Their sadomasochistic love is their only happiness and it paralyzes the former Nazis who have been reintegrated into polite society.
Universally reviled by U.S.’s top critics, Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called it “as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering”. Vincent Canby, prominent critic for The New York Times, called it “romantic pornography” and “a piece of junk”. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, “Many of us can’t take more than a few hard-core porno movies, because the absence of any human esteem makes them depressing rather than sexy; The Night Porteroffers the same dehumanized view and is brazen enough to use the Second World War as an excuse.”
Susan Sontag’s essay Fascinating Facism for New York Review of Books (February 6, 1975) stated, “If the message of fascism has been neutralized by an aesthetic view of life, its trappings have been sexualized. This eroticization of fascism can be remarked in such enthralling and devout manifestations as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask and Sun and Steel, and in films like Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and, more recently and far less interestingly, in Visconti’s The Damned and Cavani’s The Night Porter.”
However, its value was recognized by the executive producer Joseph E. Levine who quoted them on the posters of the U.S. theatrical release through his company Avco Embassy.
In a brilliant essay of the film by Kat Ellinger I quote:
Filmmakers were suddenly touching the untouchable, and it made certain people incredibly uncomfortable.”
Unlike Naziploitation, The Night Porter does nothing to cartoonise the Nazi officers that dominate the narrative. It isn’t a case of good versus evil, or that sadism is presented as a form of lasivious softcore pornography. Neither is the film a deliberate political treatise like the art films of Bertolucci, Visconti, or Pasolini. Its biggest transgression is that it humanises one of its main characters, Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former Nazi officer with a penchant for sadism, when he finds his ‘little girl’ again in the postwar period; a former concentration camp inmate Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) with whom he undertook a sadistic affair while she was incarcerated. On reuniting it is clear that their loved never died, so they continue, even though they know it will eventually contribute to their downfall and consequent death. Love in this realm is desperately profane, disgusting, something that should never be. And because of this it remains infinitely fascinating and uniquely humanistic.
Related in spirit was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), using sex to express the death of love and male causality, its own furor when it hit American cinemas still continues to court controversy; and Luchino Visconti’s The Innocent (1976), based upon the novel by the decadent writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, expressing the same but in a totally antithetical environment of the aristocracy. Bertolluci’s The Conformist(1970) twisted the repressed homosexual of its title into a sadomasochistic fascist.
One could say, as did Gabriel Jenkinson, “the dynamics of conformity present in the modern consumerist capitalist system result in repression, which in turn manifests as violent sadomasochism — and …if one does not actively rebel against this system, one is complicit in its proliferation.”
Parenthetically on the other side of the earth, in Japan, In the Realm of the Senses (1976) by Nagisa Ôshima about a woman whose affair with her master leads to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship also came out of Oshima’s early involvement with the student protest movement in Kyoto in ‘68 and out of his concern with the contradictions and tensions of postwar Japanese society in which he exposed contemporary Japanese materialism, while also examining what it means to be Japanese in the face of rapid industrialization and Westernization.
In 2020 Vincent Canby might have revisited The Night Porter and seen it in a different light. His 2020 review of Visconti’s last film, L’innocente (The Innocent), completed in 1976 shortly before his death was “among the most beautiful and severely disciplined films he has ever made.” It was also brazenly sadistic and sexy to a point that today would be labeled pornographic, and today could not be conceived of, much less made, diving, as it does, into sex, abortion, male domination and violence.
According to The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, a co-production of Prx and Wgbh, in 2012:
British scientists have finally confirmed what women worldwide have been suspecting for centuries. It’s not religious principles that start wars. It’s not even civilization’s thirst for oil. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the penis.
According to a study published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society publication, the male sex drive is the cause of most conflicts in the world, from soccer hooliganism to religious wars, not to mention family disputes over the toilet seat being left up.
According to this story in The Telegraph, the scientists call it the “male warrior instinct” and claim men are programmed to be aggressive toward outsiders. It apparently used to be a handy instinct, back when you had to kill other suitors in order to gain more access to mates, but nowadays, this only works in some countries and a few US cities. For the rest of us, this unreformed sex drive only means ever-increasing defense budgets.
The magnitude of this discovery is so great, it’s difficult to estimate the potential ramifications.
At only eight inches on average (or that’s what we have been told), it’s smaller in size than most other controversial discoveries, yet — just like the atom — it has catastrophic consequences if in the hands of the wrong people.
And so these filmmakers show us the pathological drive of the unleashed male libido.
But times are different in the 21st century. These films could never be approximated by our Tik Tok generation where porn has created a quick witty and essentially violent vibrato of sexuality. These films of the late ‘60s and ‘70s took the libido at its rawest and showed its drive as an expression of political evil in very different types of stories.
And it might be worth noting that of all these films, the most reviled was written and directed by a woman and in most of the films, it is, in fact, a woman who proves the stronger of the two sexes and disarms the man. What remains viscerally true to this day is that that missile shaped 8 inch organ needs to be beaten into a plowshare.
SexFascismMoviesItalyInternational Film...
- 2/11/2023
- by Sydney
- Sydney's Buzz
Kristen Stewart is continuing her streak of portraying celebrities in her new film.
Screen Daily reports the actress will be playing writer Susan Sontag in a new biopic from director Kirsten Johnson, via Variety.
Read More: Rita Ora’s Star-Studded Single ‘You Only love Me’ Includes Sharon Stone, Kristen Stewart And Others
The new project will be based on the biography “Sontag: Her Life” by Ben Moser with a script from Johnson and Lisa Kron. UK-Australia-based Brouhaha Entertainment is set to produce the movie which begins filming at the Berlin Film Festival.
“We’re using Berlin as a moment to kick off the project and do documentary footage of Kristen as the head of the jury and talking to her about how she’s going to become Sontag,” said Gabrielle Tana, Brouhaha Entertainment co-founder. “It will be a drama, but with a documentary aspect to it. Kirsten has a wonderful approach to storytelling,...
Screen Daily reports the actress will be playing writer Susan Sontag in a new biopic from director Kirsten Johnson, via Variety.
Read More: Rita Ora’s Star-Studded Single ‘You Only love Me’ Includes Sharon Stone, Kristen Stewart And Others
The new project will be based on the biography “Sontag: Her Life” by Ben Moser with a script from Johnson and Lisa Kron. UK-Australia-based Brouhaha Entertainment is set to produce the movie which begins filming at the Berlin Film Festival.
“We’re using Berlin as a moment to kick off the project and do documentary footage of Kristen as the head of the jury and talking to her about how she’s going to become Sontag,” said Gabrielle Tana, Brouhaha Entertainment co-founder. “It will be a drama, but with a documentary aspect to it. Kirsten has a wonderful approach to storytelling,...
- 2/10/2023
- by Anita Tai
- ET Canada
Kristen Stewart is no stranger to biopics, with “Seberg” in 2019 and “Spencer” in 2021. Now she has another to add to her upcoming projects, but this one has a meta twist. Variety reports (via Screen Daily) that Stewart will star as the writer and intellectual Susan Sontag in Kirsten Johnson‘s next film, the director’s follow-up to 2016’s “Cameraperson‘ and 2020’s “Dick Johnson Is Dead.”
Read More: ‘The Chronology Of Water’: Kristen Stewart’s Feature Directorial Debut Is A Swimming Memoir With Imogen Poots Set To Star
Johnson will base “Sontag” off Ben Moser‘s 2019 biography “Sontag: Her Life,” with Johnson co-writing a script with Lisa Kron.
Continue reading Kristen Stewart Will Play Susan Sontag In Kirsten Johnson’s Upcoming Meta Documentary, Which Starts Filming At Berlin 2023 at The Playlist.
Read More: ‘The Chronology Of Water’: Kristen Stewart’s Feature Directorial Debut Is A Swimming Memoir With Imogen Poots Set To Star
Johnson will base “Sontag” off Ben Moser‘s 2019 biography “Sontag: Her Life,” with Johnson co-writing a script with Lisa Kron.
Continue reading Kristen Stewart Will Play Susan Sontag In Kirsten Johnson’s Upcoming Meta Documentary, Which Starts Filming At Berlin 2023 at The Playlist.
- 2/10/2023
- by Ned Booth
- The Playlist
Kristen Stewart’s next role continues her trend of portraying influential real life women, although this project will feature a meta twist.
The actor is set to portray Susan Sontag in “Sontag,” which will be directed by Kirsten Johnson. Screen Daily first reported the project. The feature is based on the biography “Sontag: Her Life” by Ben Moser, and will be written for the screen by Johnson and Lisa Kron. UK-Australia-based Brouhaha Entertainment will produce the project, which is set to start filming at the Berlin Film Festival, where Stewart is the jury president.
“We’re using Berlin as a moment to kick off the project and do documentary footage of Kristen as the head of the jury and talking to her about how she’s going to become Sontag,” said Gabrielle Tana, who co-founded Brouhaha Entertainment and is producer on the project. “It will be a drama, but with a documentary aspect to it.
The actor is set to portray Susan Sontag in “Sontag,” which will be directed by Kirsten Johnson. Screen Daily first reported the project. The feature is based on the biography “Sontag: Her Life” by Ben Moser, and will be written for the screen by Johnson and Lisa Kron. UK-Australia-based Brouhaha Entertainment will produce the project, which is set to start filming at the Berlin Film Festival, where Stewart is the jury president.
“We’re using Berlin as a moment to kick off the project and do documentary footage of Kristen as the head of the jury and talking to her about how she’s going to become Sontag,” said Gabrielle Tana, who co-founded Brouhaha Entertainment and is producer on the project. “It will be a drama, but with a documentary aspect to it.
- 2/10/2023
- by William Earl
- Variety Film + TV
On the heels of collaborating with David Cronenberg and Olivier Assayas last year, Kristen Stewart has found a new project. It’s quite an enticing amalgamation of talent: Cameraperson and Dick Johnson is Dead director Kirsten Johnson will direct Stewart in the tentatively titled Sontag, in which the actress will play the legendary Susan Sontag.
Screen Daily has the first details on the project, which will actually begin shooting at the Berlin International Film Festival this month, where Stewart is president of the international jury. As one might expect from Johnson, the project will not take the form of a standard biopic, rather capturing four chapters in the writer, philosopher, and activist’s life. Based on Ben Moser’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Sontag: Her Life and co-written by Johnson and Lisa Kron, the film is backed by Brouhaha Entertainment.
“We’re using Berlin as a moment to kick off the...
Screen Daily has the first details on the project, which will actually begin shooting at the Berlin International Film Festival this month, where Stewart is president of the international jury. As one might expect from Johnson, the project will not take the form of a standard biopic, rather capturing four chapters in the writer, philosopher, and activist’s life. Based on Ben Moser’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Sontag: Her Life and co-written by Johnson and Lisa Kron, the film is backed by Brouhaha Entertainment.
“We’re using Berlin as a moment to kick off the...
- 2/10/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
US documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson will direct, with filming commencing at the Berlinale.
Kristen Stewart is to play US writer, philosopher and political activist Susan Sontag in an upcoming feature for UK-Australia production outfit Brouhaha Entertainment, with US filmmaker Kirsten Johnson to direct.
Four chapters in the tumultuous life of the celebrated and controversial 20th century intellectual will be depicted in the drama, which is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Sontag: Her Life by Ben Moser. The feature has the working title of Sontag.
New Yorker Sontag, who passed away in 2004, is known for her widely influential critical works such as Against Interpretation,...
Kristen Stewart is to play US writer, philosopher and political activist Susan Sontag in an upcoming feature for UK-Australia production outfit Brouhaha Entertainment, with US filmmaker Kirsten Johnson to direct.
Four chapters in the tumultuous life of the celebrated and controversial 20th century intellectual will be depicted in the drama, which is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Sontag: Her Life by Ben Moser. The feature has the working title of Sontag.
New Yorker Sontag, who passed away in 2004, is known for her widely influential critical works such as Against Interpretation,...
- 2/10/2023
- by Mona Tabbara
- ScreenDaily
Armageddon Time director on James Gray on what he said to cinematographer Darius Khondji about Susan Sontag’s collection of essays On Photography: “I said to him, and I quoted from it many times, it’s so brilliant …” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
James Gray’s Armageddon Time, starring Anthony Hopkins, Banks Repeta, Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, and Jaylin Webb was the Main Slate special 60th anniversary screening event at the New York Film Festival. Gray gives thanks to Cate Blanchett (who stars in Todd Field’s Main Slate highlight TÁR with Nina Hoss and Sophie Kauer) and Robert De Niro and a very special thanks to his longtime editor John Axelrad in the end credits.
Dennis Lim with James Gray and Armageddon Time stars Anne Hathaway, Banks Repeta, Jaylin Webb and Jeremy Strong Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In Armageddon Time, James Gray revisits ghosts of his childhood in 1980 Queens, NY. Central is...
James Gray’s Armageddon Time, starring Anthony Hopkins, Banks Repeta, Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, and Jaylin Webb was the Main Slate special 60th anniversary screening event at the New York Film Festival. Gray gives thanks to Cate Blanchett (who stars in Todd Field’s Main Slate highlight TÁR with Nina Hoss and Sophie Kauer) and Robert De Niro and a very special thanks to his longtime editor John Axelrad in the end credits.
Dennis Lim with James Gray and Armageddon Time stars Anne Hathaway, Banks Repeta, Jaylin Webb and Jeremy Strong Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
In Armageddon Time, James Gray revisits ghosts of his childhood in 1980 Queens, NY. Central is...
- 10/23/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Click here to read the full article.
The setting and subject of Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s second film couldn’t be more different from those of her first. But the contemporary drama The Mustang and the director’s interpretation of D.H. Lawrence’s century-old novel share a sensuous physicality, an appreciation for skin and muscle — how bodies move, how they spar, how they intertwine. In the 2019 film, the beautiful bodies belong to Matthias Schoenaerts and a wild horse; in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell steam up the screen as kindred spirits ignited by carnal passion.
Lawrence was dismissed as a pornographer by many, and his oft-adapted 1928 novel, his last, was for years banned as obscene in several countries. Then it became part of the English-lit canon. Eventually it would be dissed by Susan Sontag as reactionary. Even in this telling, where the intelligence of Corrin’s character...
The setting and subject of Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s second film couldn’t be more different from those of her first. But the contemporary drama The Mustang and the director’s interpretation of D.H. Lawrence’s century-old novel share a sensuous physicality, an appreciation for skin and muscle — how bodies move, how they spar, how they intertwine. In the 2019 film, the beautiful bodies belong to Matthias Schoenaerts and a wild horse; in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell steam up the screen as kindred spirits ignited by carnal passion.
Lawrence was dismissed as a pornographer by many, and his oft-adapted 1928 novel, his last, was for years banned as obscene in several countries. Then it became part of the English-lit canon. Eventually it would be dissed by Susan Sontag as reactionary. Even in this telling, where the intelligence of Corrin’s character...
- 9/8/2022
- by Sheri Linden
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
by Levan Tskhovrebadze
Emerging Vietnamese director Le Bao deploys eccentric and phantasmagorical images with austere tones and somber visuals in his debut feature “Taste”. With a stoically constructed atmosphere, he creates a monumental cinematic mood, much like the Portuguese iconic auteur Pedro Costa depicting physically distorted bodies of working-class people.
If there is such a definition as Kafkaesque, we should also refer to Costa-esque, as the world of the Portuguese director is exceptionally autonomous. In Kafka’s literary orbit, you encounter powerless human beings in absurdist labyrinths of bureaucratic machines while with Costa, spectators examine the existence of weakened individuals in the monstrous web of everyday life. The Vietnamese director manifests a Costa-esque style, but in more stylized, ambiguous and surreal manner.
Nigerian football player Bassley (Olegunleko Ezekiel Gbenga) is neglected by his Vietnamese team and moves in with four local, working-class women in the city slums. From the beginning,...
Emerging Vietnamese director Le Bao deploys eccentric and phantasmagorical images with austere tones and somber visuals in his debut feature “Taste”. With a stoically constructed atmosphere, he creates a monumental cinematic mood, much like the Portuguese iconic auteur Pedro Costa depicting physically distorted bodies of working-class people.
If there is such a definition as Kafkaesque, we should also refer to Costa-esque, as the world of the Portuguese director is exceptionally autonomous. In Kafka’s literary orbit, you encounter powerless human beings in absurdist labyrinths of bureaucratic machines while with Costa, spectators examine the existence of weakened individuals in the monstrous web of everyday life. The Vietnamese director manifests a Costa-esque style, but in more stylized, ambiguous and surreal manner.
Nigerian football player Bassley (Olegunleko Ezekiel Gbenga) is neglected by his Vietnamese team and moves in with four local, working-class women in the city slums. From the beginning,...
- 8/29/2022
- by Guest Writer
- AsianMoviePulse
Opening her masterclass at doc film festival Visions du Réel in Switzerland, cinematographer and filmmaker Kirsten Johnson – an Emmy and Sundance award winner for “Dick Johnson Is Dead” – started by naming each and every member of the technical crew on set.
“What I often find upsetting with cinema is that we forget to acknowledge all the people it takes to make these moments together. I learnt that through being a cameraperson, and I’m interested in understanding why we want to reduce it to just one person, because there’s something beautiful about the fact that all of these humans, collectively, help us be here today,” she said, employing her favorite word to describe her work, “Cameraperson,” which is also the title of second feature film.
Over three decades, Johnson has worked on some 60 films as a cinematographer, for the likes of Michael Moore and Laura Poitras, made a couple...
“What I often find upsetting with cinema is that we forget to acknowledge all the people it takes to make these moments together. I learnt that through being a cameraperson, and I’m interested in understanding why we want to reduce it to just one person, because there’s something beautiful about the fact that all of these humans, collectively, help us be here today,” she said, employing her favorite word to describe her work, “Cameraperson,” which is also the title of second feature film.
Over three decades, Johnson has worked on some 60 films as a cinematographer, for the likes of Michael Moore and Laura Poitras, made a couple...
- 4/16/2022
- by Lise Pedersen
- Variety Film + TV
Director Martin Scorsese appeared at the annual New York Film Critics Circle dinner in Manhattan on Wednesday night to honor Jane Campion, who was announced in December as the winner of the group’s Best Director award.
Campion, the Oscar frontrunner for her enigmatic drama “The Power of the Dog,” was twice choked up by emotion during her speech before the members of the 86-year-old critics organization.
Scorsese’s remarks, which can be seen in their entirety in the video above, took the form of a perceptive, film-class analysis of Campion’s choices behind the camera. He blended his unique professorial style with his characteristic enthusiasm and a heartfelt expression of respect for his filmmaking peer. Watch the speech in full below.
“It’s a precious thing to have an artistic voice as powerful as Jane’s, developing over time,” Scorsese said. “It’s like a great ongoing conversation and...
Campion, the Oscar frontrunner for her enigmatic drama “The Power of the Dog,” was twice choked up by emotion during her speech before the members of the 86-year-old critics organization.
Scorsese’s remarks, which can be seen in their entirety in the video above, took the form of a perceptive, film-class analysis of Campion’s choices behind the camera. He blended his unique professorial style with his characteristic enthusiasm and a heartfelt expression of respect for his filmmaking peer. Watch the speech in full below.
“It’s a precious thing to have an artistic voice as powerful as Jane’s, developing over time,” Scorsese said. “It’s like a great ongoing conversation and...
- 3/17/2022
- by Joe McGovern
- The Wrap
The Alert!The experimental cinema of the Romanian avant-garde of the 1970s and 1980s, made under the radar of the totalitarian regime, was ultimately aimed at the liberation of both the possibilities of the cinematic medium and the position of the cinematic spectator. This search into how far cinema could be pushed to capture movement and rhythm, and to encapsulate and fragment the human body, was presented in the retrospective “Conference Fascinations” at the celebratory 25th edition of the Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, a section specially dedicated to the presentation of experimental and underground cinema created in the Eastern bloc during the communist era. Curated by Andrea Slováková, this year its focus was on Romania, presenting the work of groups such as Kinema Ikon and the Sigma group as well the work of individual artists such as Mircea Săucan and Ion Grigorescu. Overall, the program highlighted the curiosity of...
- 1/3/2022
- MUBI
It’s August at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival and Radu Jude can’t get on the Wi-Fi. Six months on from his shock Golden Bear win for Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, a triumph as unlikely as it was overdue, the Romanian filmmaker appears as irreverent as ever. One of the younger guns of the Romanian New Wave, Jude has always stood apart for leaning away from the solemnity of some peers, regardless of the subject matter’s seriousness. And as the world is forced to wait years for a new Mungiu, Jude only grows more prolific as the years go by—a near-permanent presence on the festival circuit, with documentaries and shorts filling the gaps between his acclaimed features.
“You can just, uh, use the public one,” I offer, “doesn’t need a password.” He shoots a disarming smile. A friendly press agent hands me a pint...
“You can just, uh, use the public one,” I offer, “doesn’t need a password.” He shoots a disarming smile. A friendly press agent hands me a pint...
- 11/18/2021
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
The film side of TikTok has plenty of spoofs. But our writer prefers the critics, the metal-jawed burger-biting machine – and the effects experts revealing how to make a camera crew vanish into thin air
Film TikTok is giving film an explosion of energy, a performative and democratised version of cinephilia that celebrates, imitates, teases, lip-syncs, mashes up and mocks – but all the time rubs up against – the movies. Susan Sontag, in Against Interpretation, called for a rich, intuitive kind of criticism that celebrates and reproduces the sensuous effect of art, instead of imposing a coldly pedagogic analysis. I think she’d have loved Film TikTok. And it’s happened over just a few years, propelled by people under the age of 25.
Apart from everything else, Film TikTok may be undermining one of the most fundamental tenets of cinema: that the screen has to be “landscape” style, since anything else looks amateurish and inauthentic.
Film TikTok is giving film an explosion of energy, a performative and democratised version of cinephilia that celebrates, imitates, teases, lip-syncs, mashes up and mocks – but all the time rubs up against – the movies. Susan Sontag, in Against Interpretation, called for a rich, intuitive kind of criticism that celebrates and reproduces the sensuous effect of art, instead of imposing a coldly pedagogic analysis. I think she’d have loved Film TikTok. And it’s happened over just a few years, propelled by people under the age of 25.
Apart from everything else, Film TikTok may be undermining one of the most fundamental tenets of cinema: that the screen has to be “landscape” style, since anything else looks amateurish and inauthentic.
- 11/10/2021
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
American essayist, director, human rights advocate and feminist icon Susan Sontag might have been surprised to know the size of her following in the Czech Republic.
But, says David Cenek, who has curated work for the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival for over a decade, “Most of Sontag’s books, including her novel, have been translated into Czech – which I think is due to the interest of Czech intellectuals in her work. Her book on photography is a worldwide reference work.”
This year’s Ji.hlava retrospective, “Susan Sontag: Filmmaking Is a Privilege,” is screening – likely for the first time anywhere in Central Europe – six of Sontag’s films, ranging from shorts to features, made from 1969 to 1993 and the collection shows a remarkable range of creative approaches.
As Ji.hlava fest programmers put it, “Her universal activities remain an impressive characteristic of this Renaissance woman of modern history” as...
But, says David Cenek, who has curated work for the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival for over a decade, “Most of Sontag’s books, including her novel, have been translated into Czech – which I think is due to the interest of Czech intellectuals in her work. Her book on photography is a worldwide reference work.”
This year’s Ji.hlava retrospective, “Susan Sontag: Filmmaking Is a Privilege,” is screening – likely for the first time anywhere in Central Europe – six of Sontag’s films, ranging from shorts to features, made from 1969 to 1993 and the collection shows a remarkable range of creative approaches.
As Ji.hlava fest programmers put it, “Her universal activities remain an impressive characteristic of this Renaissance woman of modern history” as...
- 10/29/2021
- by Will Tizard
- Variety Film + TV
Marking its 25th edition later this month, the Czech Republic’s Ji.hlava Intl. Documentary Film Festival will celebrate its silver anniversary with an expanded slate, a streamlined number of sections and pointed focus on renewal and wellbeing. As it runs from Oct. 26-31, this year’s in-person edition will screen 300 films, including 54 world premieres spread out across five competitive sections.
“Over the 25 years of its existence, [Ji.hlava] has confirmed its position of the leading European documentary festival, known for its trailblazing approach and innovative program,” said festival director Marek Hovorka. “Therefore, we have upgraded the competitions as well as the structure of the awards in order to highlight the complexity of documentary cinema.”
Alongside the 19 local productions screening in the Czech Joy competition, 10 out of the 15 titles selected for the Opus Bonum section – the festival’s competitive category for international projects – will be world premieres. Among them are Rikun Zhu...
“Over the 25 years of its existence, [Ji.hlava] has confirmed its position of the leading European documentary festival, known for its trailblazing approach and innovative program,” said festival director Marek Hovorka. “Therefore, we have upgraded the competitions as well as the structure of the awards in order to highlight the complexity of documentary cinema.”
Alongside the 19 local productions screening in the Czech Joy competition, 10 out of the 15 titles selected for the Opus Bonum section – the festival’s competitive category for international projects – will be world premieres. Among them are Rikun Zhu...
- 10/15/2021
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
Image of Parker Bright protesting Dana Schutz painting at the 78th Whitney Biennale“I was taught in American history books that Africa had no history, and neither did I. That I was a savage about whom the less said, the better.” —James Baldwin At the 78th Whitney Biennale, American artist Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket conjured up controversy within the art world. The piece abstractly depicted the mangled body of fourteen year old Emmit Till after he had been tortured and lynched by two white men. Black non-binary activist and artist Parker Bright served as the catalyst for some of the important commentary in response to the work. Adorning a shirt with the words “Black Death Spectacle” scrawled across its back, they stood in front of Schutz’s painting blocking it from view. This act of protest sent waves across the art world and forced onlookers to evaluate what...
- 9/3/2021
- MUBI
Aspiring fashionista Cruella is out for her boss’s skin in a riotous 101 Dalmatians origin-myth set in 70s London, starring Emmas Stone and Thompson in dynamic form
Kindly step back and make way for a sensational couple of Emmas: Stone and Thompson. Together, they are the highly strung dysfunctional double-act that post-lockdown cinema didn’t know it needed.
There’s an unexpectedly huge amount of old-fashioned fun to be had in Disney’s spectacular new origin-myth story from screenwriters Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel and Steve Zissis, prebooting Cruella de Vil, the wicked dognapper from One Hundred and One Dalmatians. She is now an icily supercool supervillain, and Stone gives it everything she’s got – which is a considerable amount – as Estella, a young orphan girl with a genetic quirk of black-and-white hair. I was hoping for some Susan Sontag gags, but you can’t have everything. She grows up...
Kindly step back and make way for a sensational couple of Emmas: Stone and Thompson. Together, they are the highly strung dysfunctional double-act that post-lockdown cinema didn’t know it needed.
There’s an unexpectedly huge amount of old-fashioned fun to be had in Disney’s spectacular new origin-myth story from screenwriters Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel and Steve Zissis, prebooting Cruella de Vil, the wicked dognapper from One Hundred and One Dalmatians. She is now an icily supercool supervillain, and Stone gives it everything she’s got – which is a considerable amount – as Estella, a young orphan girl with a genetic quirk of black-and-white hair. I was hoping for some Susan Sontag gags, but you can’t have everything. She grows up...
- 5/26/2021
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
In her 2007 essay “The world as India”, American writer Susan Sontag highlighted how English, the “language of the conqueror”, still shapes Indian society, especially with regard to the world of work. One of her examples to prove her thesis deals with the nature of call centers where Indian employees have taken over an American identity along with English spoken in a distinct American accent in order to disguise their “Indianness”. The idea of pretended familiarity for the mostly American callers has had a somewhat disturbing influence on the workers in these call centers, some of which state they much rather would be this “Nancy” or “George” character they are playing when they take a call. In his short film “Coffee Shop Names” writer and director Deepak Sethi also explores these ideas of identity and culture using a similar modern setting, albeit with a rather comedic approach.
“Coffee Shop Names” is...
“Coffee Shop Names” is...
- 5/18/2021
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
In her 1965 essay “The Imagination of Disaster,” Susan Sontag wrote that the allure of “exotic dangerous situations” came down to the way they “normalize what is psychologically unbearable.” It would have been intriguing to get Sontag’s take on “The Unthinkable,” , and doesn’t so much delight in world-ending events as it recognizes that surviving them never ensures a happy ending. Getting through the ordeal is only half the battle.
But what a battle: In this fast-paced adventure from Swedish director Victor Danell, an unsuspecting public contends with toxic rain that renders its victims into puddles of dementia who slam their cars into epic pileups as a mystery international threat invades from the skies. Like Jeremy Saulnier’s “Green Room,” the movie oscillates from stark survival drama to outright war movie and back again, speeding through taut, claustrophobic shootouts and exploding helicopters even as it shoehorns the spectacle into a...
But what a battle: In this fast-paced adventure from Swedish director Victor Danell, an unsuspecting public contends with toxic rain that renders its victims into puddles of dementia who slam their cars into epic pileups as a mystery international threat invades from the skies. Like Jeremy Saulnier’s “Green Room,” the movie oscillates from stark survival drama to outright war movie and back again, speeding through taut, claustrophobic shootouts and exploding helicopters even as it shoehorns the spectacle into a...
- 5/7/2021
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
This Japanese docudrama is an excellent primer on the scary near- meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011. After the earthquake, a tsunami triggered a ‘major nuclear event.’ A group of dedicated engineers struggle against odds to regain control. It’s another 21st Century disaster writ large — we applaud the camaraderie and commitment of the response teams while bureaucratic and political Bs threatens to doom half of Japan. As with last week’s Spacewalker I’m betting that most negative reviews were written by people who saw the English language dub job … in the original Japanese, star Ken Watanabe’s performance is terrific.
Fukushima 50
Blu-ray
Capelight
2020 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 121 min. / Street Date April 13, 2021 / Available from Amazon / 29.98
Starring: Ken Watanabe, Takumi Saitoh, Kôichi Satô, Tomorô Taguchi, Mark Chinnery, Yuri Nakamura, Justin Leeper, Yasuko Tomita, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Riho Yoshioka, Masane Tsukayama, Masato Hagiwara, Shirô Sano.
Cinematography: Shoji Ehara
Visual Effects...
Fukushima 50
Blu-ray
Capelight
2020 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 121 min. / Street Date April 13, 2021 / Available from Amazon / 29.98
Starring: Ken Watanabe, Takumi Saitoh, Kôichi Satô, Tomorô Taguchi, Mark Chinnery, Yuri Nakamura, Justin Leeper, Yasuko Tomita, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Riho Yoshioka, Masane Tsukayama, Masato Hagiwara, Shirô Sano.
Cinematography: Shoji Ehara
Visual Effects...
- 4/24/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Since the 1980s, the Israeli director Avi Mograbi has been making films about Israel’s occupation of Palestine. His latest documentary, The First 54 Years – An Abbreviated Manual for A Military Occupation (2021), his most incisive film to date, alternates between three types of telling. The first consists of the footage gathered by the organization Breaking the Silence, in which former Israeli soldiers detail the many forms of land and home ex-appropriation, intimidation, torture and killing of Palestinian civilians. In addition, Mograbi himself speaks extensively on camera, in direct address, as “your guide for this abbreviated manual for military occupation,” with Israel as a “paradigmatic case.” Mograbi gets help from another narrator in voiceover who, from time to time, injects a historical timeline: the start of the occupation, in 1967, the growth of settlements, the First and Second Intifada, Oslo Accords, the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, to present day. These threads are...
- 3/16/2021
- MUBI
“Feast,” the directorial debut of visual artist, photographer and filmmaker Tim Leyendekker, centers on a case that rocked Holland in the mid 2000s, when three men were accused of drugging others and injecting them with HIV-infected blood.
The film/documentary/essay hybrid unfolds over 84-minutes in seven vignettes, offering the audience different points of view from the victims, perpetrators, police and even, via a microbiologist, the virus itself.
A national buzz about the film, running in International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Tiger competition, is such that the director claims to be block-booked with newspaper, TV and radio interviews in his native Holland.
The IFFR meanwhile has guaranteed “Feast” a second play at its planned physical festival in June, ahead of the film’s local release, regardless of whether it wins in its category.
Woute Jansen’s new sales outfit Square Eyes is handling worldwide sales while the Dutch distributor is Windmill Film.
The film/documentary/essay hybrid unfolds over 84-minutes in seven vignettes, offering the audience different points of view from the victims, perpetrators, police and even, via a microbiologist, the virus itself.
A national buzz about the film, running in International Film Festival Rotterdam’s Tiger competition, is such that the director claims to be block-booked with newspaper, TV and radio interviews in his native Holland.
The IFFR meanwhile has guaranteed “Feast” a second play at its planned physical festival in June, ahead of the film’s local release, regardless of whether it wins in its category.
Woute Jansen’s new sales outfit Square Eyes is handling worldwide sales while the Dutch distributor is Windmill Film.
- 2/3/2021
- by Ann-Marie Corvin
- Variety Film + TV
There’s a certain aura that some people who’ve lived a lively, eventful life possess––a rare shimmer of self-belief and authority. Errol Morris’ new documentary feature My Psychedelic Love Story allows us to gaze on one of these unique individuals: the celebrity socialite Joanna Harcourt-Smith, who rubbed shoulders with the counter-culture glitterati of the late 1960s, and seemed to know everyone worth knowing. Harcourt-Smith’s brief, passionate liaison with psychedelics advocate Timothy Leary forms the basis of this pacy, engaging narrative, where the subject’s unique point-of-view finds another angle on this much-recounted era. It even throws in Pynchonesque notions of grand conspiracy, but Morris helps us remain objective amidst the cross-arguments and suggestions being proffered.
Morris, entering his sixth decade of regular documentary filmmaking, remains potent in his craft––a more spontaneous and flexible style, to be sure, but far harder than it looks. He allows a...
Morris, entering his sixth decade of regular documentary filmmaking, remains potent in his craft––a more spontaneous and flexible style, to be sure, but far harder than it looks. He allows a...
- 11/28/2020
- by David Katz
- The Film Stage
Director Gero von Boehm’s fascinating film includes the famed fashion photographer’s muses but also asks questions about his misogynist images
The intelligence and even-handedness of this documentary about the provocative fashion photographer Helmut Newton makes a change from the fawning tone you get in a lot of fashion films. It’s a flattering “authorised” portrait, featuring interviews with famous Newton muses Charlotte Rampling, Grace Jones and Claudia Schiffer. But director Gero von Boehm deserves points for not ignoring the “porno chic” controversy surrounding his more extreme fetishistic images of naked women. There’s a brilliant clip of Newton appearing as a guest on French TV alongside Susan Sontag, who accuses him to his face of being a misogynist.
The film benefits from terrific behind-the-scenes footage of Newton on the set of his shoots. “Don’t look poverty stricken. Look incredible!” he instructs a model. Newton himself looks as...
The intelligence and even-handedness of this documentary about the provocative fashion photographer Helmut Newton makes a change from the fawning tone you get in a lot of fashion films. It’s a flattering “authorised” portrait, featuring interviews with famous Newton muses Charlotte Rampling, Grace Jones and Claudia Schiffer. But director Gero von Boehm deserves points for not ignoring the “porno chic” controversy surrounding his more extreme fetishistic images of naked women. There’s a brilliant clip of Newton appearing as a guest on French TV alongside Susan Sontag, who accuses him to his face of being a misogynist.
The film benefits from terrific behind-the-scenes footage of Newton on the set of his shoots. “Don’t look poverty stricken. Look incredible!” he instructs a model. Newton himself looks as...
- 10/23/2020
- by Cath Clarke
- The Guardian - Film News
Have we enough evidence to name Michael Almereyda the American cinema’s greatest biographer? It’s a narrow range and hardly the highest bar to clear, yet his oeuvre yields both biopics (delightful whatsit Experimenter) and documentaries that show the largely unloved, oft-uncinematic concentration for everything it’s capable.
This week sees the addition of Tesla, Almereyda’s formally playful examination of Nikola Tesla’s life, work, legacy, and (because nothing is as it seems) vocal skills; he’s here reunited, some 20 years after their fantastic Hamlet, with Ethan Hawke in the title role and Kyle MacLachlan as Thomas Edison, while Eve Hewson, playing Anne Morgan, is our guide through this film’s puzzle. Praised since Sundance—where we said it marks “a testament to the independent spirit”—it arrives Friday via IFC.
Almereyda and I spoke over email about his decades-long quest to chronicle Tesla’s life.
The Film...
This week sees the addition of Tesla, Almereyda’s formally playful examination of Nikola Tesla’s life, work, legacy, and (because nothing is as it seems) vocal skills; he’s here reunited, some 20 years after their fantastic Hamlet, with Ethan Hawke in the title role and Kyle MacLachlan as Thomas Edison, while Eve Hewson, playing Anne Morgan, is our guide through this film’s puzzle. Praised since Sundance—where we said it marks “a testament to the independent spirit”—it arrives Friday via IFC.
Almereyda and I spoke over email about his decades-long quest to chronicle Tesla’s life.
The Film...
- 8/18/2020
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Todd Haynes is making his documentary feature debut with the upcoming “The Velvet Underground,” a dive into the makings of the 1960s band led by Lou Reed and the cultural landscape that surrounded them. Haynes recently teased the film, currently in post-production, during an extended conversation hosted by the Museum of Modern Art, embedded below.
The Oscar-nominated “Far From Heaven” and “Carol” filmmaker said he completed all the interviews for the film, which were shot by his trusted cinematographer Ed Lachman, in 2018 before heading into shooting “Dark Waters.” His editors on the film are Affonso Gonçalves, who has cut many of Haynes’ films, and Adam Kurnitz.
“It’s such an archive-based film that when I got to turn my attentions to it fully, it was right at the end of last year and the beginning of this year,” he said. “I was staying at a place in Venice and I was editing in Venice,...
The Oscar-nominated “Far From Heaven” and “Carol” filmmaker said he completed all the interviews for the film, which were shot by his trusted cinematographer Ed Lachman, in 2018 before heading into shooting “Dark Waters.” His editors on the film are Affonso Gonçalves, who has cut many of Haynes’ films, and Adam Kurnitz.
“It’s such an archive-based film that when I got to turn my attentions to it fully, it was right at the end of last year and the beginning of this year,” he said. “I was staying at a place in Venice and I was editing in Venice,...
- 8/15/2020
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Perverse, erotic, debasing, and powerful, fashion photographer Helmut Newton’s photographs throughout the 20th century displayed a worship of women similar to a domineering male director and his female star. Fittingly, Newton is most famous in cinephile circles for a 1988 photograph he took in Los Angeles of David Lynch and his muse Isabella Rossellini, at the height of their “Blue Velvet” fame. In the black-and-white photo, the filmmaker fondles Rossellini’s face, looking into her soul not as a human being, but as a vessel for an idea. He’s a puppeteer, and she his puppet.
That’s very much how the German-Australian Newton perceived his mainly female subjects, and Gero von Boehm’s new documentary “Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful” spends the majority of its short, yet encompassing running time talking to those women, whom Newton clearly idolized. It’s a striking lineup of talking heads: Rossellini herself,...
That’s very much how the German-Australian Newton perceived his mainly female subjects, and Gero von Boehm’s new documentary “Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful” spends the majority of its short, yet encompassing running time talking to those women, whom Newton clearly idolized. It’s a striking lineup of talking heads: Rossellini herself,...
- 7/23/2020
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
When you look at the photographs of Helmut Newton, with their spectacularly cold and severe Amazon-women-on-the-moon erotic shock value, and you try to imagine the man behind the camera (it’s sort of hard not to), you tend to picture him as a figure every bit as kinky and forbidding as the outrageous things he’s photographing. There’s a famous shot of Newton: the clowning-around photograph of him wearing high heels (pictured above), which only enhanced his image as a Eurotrash decadent who turned his fantasies into flesh.
But in “Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful,” , Newton emerges as friendlier and more “normal” than you’d expect — though he does have a mischievous twinkle that suggests a lot.
The documentary was shot when Newton was in his early 80s, and he’s disarmingly ageless, with floppy thick hair and circular glasses setting off a face that grins...
But in “Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful,” , Newton emerges as friendlier and more “normal” than you’d expect — though he does have a mischievous twinkle that suggests a lot.
The documentary was shot when Newton was in his early 80s, and he’s disarmingly ageless, with floppy thick hair and circular glasses setting off a face that grins...
- 7/22/2020
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
One of the great photographers of the 20th century, even if you have yet to hear the name Helmut Newton, you have certainly seen one of his photos. After fleeing Nazi-occupied Germany when he was a teenager and finding photographer work in Singapore, his career would take him across the world, eventually working for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Playboy, and much more. The German-Australian photographer’s life and work is now the subject of a new documentary.
Directed by Gero von Boehm and featuring interviews with Grace Jones, Isabella Rossellini, Anna Wintour, Charlotte Rampling, Marianne Faithfull, Claudia Schiffer, Nadja Auermann, and more, the first trailer has now landed ahead of a Kino Marquee release beginning next week. As one can see in the Nsfw preview (not that you are actually at work right now), the artist was best known for capturing women in starkly beautiful black-and-white photos.
See the trailer below.
Directed by Gero von Boehm and featuring interviews with Grace Jones, Isabella Rossellini, Anna Wintour, Charlotte Rampling, Marianne Faithfull, Claudia Schiffer, Nadja Auermann, and more, the first trailer has now landed ahead of a Kino Marquee release beginning next week. As one can see in the Nsfw preview (not that you are actually at work right now), the artist was best known for capturing women in starkly beautiful black-and-white photos.
See the trailer below.
- 7/17/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
"I love women. There is nothing I love more." Kino Lorber has released an official trailer for a photography documentary titled Helmut Newton: The Bad and the Beautiful, profiling the controversial and iconic German photographer and his work over so many years. This first premiered at the (virtual) Tribeca Film Festival earlier in the year. This "wildly entertaining new documentary on the legendary, controversial and influential photographer" is being released this summer to celebrate his 100th birthday. The film includes candid interviews with many of his subjects: Grace Jones, Charlotte Rampling, Isabella Rossellini, Marianne Faithfull and Hanna Schygulla; fashion icons Anna Wintour, Claudia Schiffer, Nadja Auermann; as well as his wife and creative partner June Newton (known as Alice Springs from her photography). Susan Sontag, in a pointed exchange with Newtown, broadcast on French television, raises the question of the photographer's alleged misogyny. Looks like a very provocative film about an acclaimed,...
- 7/15/2020
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
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