Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.Extra! Extra!A new Notebook publication has been released into the world! Our limited-edition, print-only Notebook Cannes Special is exclusively available at the Cannes Film Festival. It includes interviews with Souleymane Cissé and Alice Rohrwacher, an insider’s guide to the festival, a crossword, a comic, and much more. The publication is pictured above, but the bright red Pantone color must be seen on the page to be truly appreciated! (As an online preview: Yasmina Price's interview with Souleymane Cissé is available online.)NEWSIn production news, writer Durga Chew-Bose will make her directorial debut with an adaptation of Françoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse, starring Chloë Sevigny and Claes Bang (The Square). Filming began last week in the south of France.Noémie Merlant (of...
- 5/17/2023
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Joan Micklin Silver on the set of Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979). Trailblazing filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver, best known for films Hester Street (1975) and Crossing Delancey (1988), has died. In an interview with Film Comment in 2017, Silver described the will she possessed as a woman filmmaker who wished to spotlight stories about female relationships and women's labor: "I didn’t want to feel like the woman director. I wanted to feel like one of many women directors."The 71st edition of the Berlin Film Festival will be replacing this year's physical event with a virtual European Film Market in March, and a "mini-festival with a series of onsite world premieres" in June.The International Film Festival Rotterdam has also announced the lineup for this year's hybrid multi-part 50th edition, to be presented between February 1-...
- 1/6/2021
- MUBI
In 1976, a crudely published fanzine devoted to the experimental film scene made its debut. It was called Idiolects and the first issue offered a definition of its name: “An idiolect is the language of an individual at a particular time.” That definition certainly could be applied to both the filmmakers covered in the zine and to the writers who contributed articles.
Although not an official publication of New York City’s Collective for Living Cinema screening society, Idiolects was closely tied to the organization, offering a “temporary” publication address of 52 White Street, New York, 10013 in the indicia. That was the Collective’s then permanent screening space in 1976 after having bopped around Manhattan for several years prior.
In addition, the Living Cinema was formed in the early 1970s by students who had studied filmmaking at Binghamton University in upstate New York and then moved to New York City. While Idiolects #1 gives no clear main editorial voice,...
Although not an official publication of New York City’s Collective for Living Cinema screening society, Idiolects was closely tied to the organization, offering a “temporary” publication address of 52 White Street, New York, 10013 in the indicia. That was the Collective’s then permanent screening space in 1976 after having bopped around Manhattan for several years prior.
In addition, the Living Cinema was formed in the early 1970s by students who had studied filmmaking at Binghamton University in upstate New York and then moved to New York City. While Idiolects #1 gives no clear main editorial voice,...
- 3/19/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
It’s been an interesting run-up to the Toronto International Film Festival, and in terms of the survival of the species, the good ol’ U.S.A. has been something of a race to the bottom. What would do us in first: violent neo-Nazis whose activities are almost explicitly condoned by the Klansman In Chief? Or a 1,000-year weather event on the Gulf Coast whose magnitude surely owes something to global climate change, and whose aftermath of collapsing dams and exploding chemical factories has everything to do with systematic neglect?Given the state of things down here, who wouldn’t want to repair to Canada for some challenging cinema? As always, the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) is the place to be in September, and Wavelengths once again features the best of the fest. This is because the films selected for Wavelengths are the opposite of escapism. Whether they tackle...
- 9/7/2017
- MUBI
Dani Leventhal's PlatonicThis review, I think, might best be understood as an example of “slow criticism.” This is a term coined by Filmkrant editor Dana Linssen to describe “wayward articles,” ones that have a personal or political element that is somehow not timely. We can imagine that the reverse of this is “fast criticism,” the up-to-the-minute report from a film festival, the 140-character response tweeted out the minute the first press screening is over. These thoughts are not timely. The Whitney Biennial closed on June 11th, and the film program screened its final program on May 21st. So although I expect many of these films to have a life long after their appearance at the Whitney, I am not providing any kind of late-breaking news flash from the film or art world by writing about these works in this forum.But in a way, that is the point. Even...
- 8/1/2017
- MUBI
This was a busy year at Tiff, where I was a juror for Fipresci, helping to award a prize for best premiere in the Discovery section. Not only did this mean that some other films had to take a back burner—sadly, I did not see Eduardo Williams’ The Human Surge—but my writing time was a bit compromised as well. Better late than never? That is for you, Gentle Reader, to decide.Austerlitz (Sergei Loznitsa, Germany)So basic in the telling—a record of several days’ worth of visitors mostly to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienberg, Germany—Austerlitz is a film that in many ways exemplifies the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. What is the net effect for humanity when, faced with the drive to remember the unfathomable, we employ the grossly inadequate tools at our disposal?Austerlitz takes its name from W. G. Sebald’s final novel.
- 9/20/2016
- MUBI
As year-end rituals go, remembering those we've lost over the past twelve months is the solemn twin of list-making, though it's often no less an act of celebration. In the new issue of the Brooklyn Rail, Charles Bernstein and Susan Bee look back on the life of George Kuchar, "one of the most creative, original, and influential filmmakers of our time, straddling two generations of North American iconoclasts, from Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, Rudy Burckhardt, Kenneth Anger, and Michael Snow to Warren Sonbert, Ernie Gehr, Abigail Child, and Henry Hills. Often collaborating with his twin brother, Mike, George Kuchar started making films as a Bronx teenager, and the brothers' early films already show the ingenuity, exuberance, and do-it-yourself charm that would pervade scores of their subsequent films."
More from Clara Pais in the freely downloadable December issue of One + One, which also features Diamuid Hester on Jacques Tati, Donna K on Brent Green,...
More from Clara Pais in the freely downloadable December issue of One + One, which also features Diamuid Hester on Jacques Tati, Donna K on Brent Green,...
- 12/11/2011
- MUBI
As has been noted many times before, by me and others, the Wavelengths series of the Toronto International Film Festival is like a festival unto itself. So far removed from the red carpet nonsense, the deal-making, and the me-firstism of web journalists hoping to hit the Web with their initial impressions of some new Bryce Dallas Howard vehicle, Wavelengths affords breathing room to cinema and video at its most formally adventurous and, yes, uncommercial. We come here to look and listen, not to look “at” or listen “to,” and if that sounds hopelessly pretentious, come on down to the Jackman Hall and see for yourself. It’s actually quite cleansing, often funny, and a guaranteed good time, at least in part. (Short films are like the weather in my hometown of Houston, Texas. Don’t like it? Wait a moment. It’ll change.)
Sadly, Wavelengths 2011 will be the final year for series curator Andréa Picard.
Sadly, Wavelengths 2011 will be the final year for series curator Andréa Picard.
- 9/8/2011
- MUBI
Experimental filmmaker Warren Sonbert was born today, June 26, in 1947. Sadly, he passed away in 1995 from complications due to AIDS.
Sonbert began making films as a teenager in 1966. While his first films were loosely-structured narratives, he later became known for making movies out of his extensive worldly travels. He would plan a trip, arrange screenings in the cities he would be visiting and shoot footage for new films while abroad.
For a good review of Sonbert’s work, Gary Morris penned a great article for Bright Lights Film Journal in 2000.
Below is a home movie fragment shot by Jeff Scher of Sonbert writing in a cafe.
Read More:Who Was Underground In ’67?Underground Yearbook: 1978Underground Yearbook: 1976Underground Yearbook: 1972...
Sonbert began making films as a teenager in 1966. While his first films were loosely-structured narratives, he later became known for making movies out of his extensive worldly travels. He would plan a trip, arrange screenings in the cities he would be visiting and shoot footage for new films while abroad.
For a good review of Sonbert’s work, Gary Morris penned a great article for Bright Lights Film Journal in 2000.
Below is a home movie fragment shot by Jeff Scher of Sonbert writing in a cafe.
Read More:Who Was Underground In ’67?Underground Yearbook: 1978Underground Yearbook: 1976Underground Yearbook: 1972...
- 6/26/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
With 2010 only a week over, it already feels like best-of and top-ten lists have been pouring in for months, and we’re already tired of them: the ranking, the exclusions (and inclusions), the rules and the qualifiers. Some people got to see films at festivals, others only catch movies on video; and the ability for us, or any publication, to come up with a system to fairly determine who saw what when and what they thought was the best seems an impossible feat. That doesn’t stop most people from doing it, but we liked the fantasy double features we did last year and for our 3rd Writers Poll we thought we'd do it again.
I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.
I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.
- 1/10/2011
- MUBI
So, I’m currently working on a big research project, the results of which won’t be seen unless you happen to be poring through Bad Lit’s sister site the Underground Film Guide — and the way that site is woefully under-updated, why would you?
The Ufg, as I like to call it, is a database project of underground filmmakers and films. Recently I decided to halt adding new entries and to make the old filmmaker entries I previously uploaded more comprehensive. One way I’m doing that is going through books on underground film and, if a filmmaker is written up in each book, I’ll add that book’s info to the filmmaker’s profile. If you’re interested and want an idea of what I’m talking about, go look at John Waters’ entry and scroll down to the book section.
One book that is a tremendous...
The Ufg, as I like to call it, is a database project of underground filmmakers and films. Recently I decided to halt adding new entries and to make the old filmmaker entries I previously uploaded more comprehensive. One way I’m doing that is going through books on underground film and, if a filmmaker is written up in each book, I’ll add that book’s info to the filmmaker’s profile. If you’re interested and want an idea of what I’m talking about, go look at John Waters’ entry and scroll down to the book section.
One book that is a tremendous...
- 4/17/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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