Dreams.Some of my favorite work at this year’s Berlinale engaged in some way with death or the afterlife. Lighten up, you say? Impossible. The most literal and beguiling of these was Lois Patiño’s Samsara, which ingeniously conjured the transitional passage between life and death, Buddhism’s intermediate state of bardo. There were the cinematic afterlives of lost films, excavated collections, and reimagined family albums; the archive’s perpetual reincarnation as a generative source for experimental and artists’ film. There were homages to artists from the past, whose legacies continue to inspire the present, including work by the recently deceased Michael Snow and Takahiko Iimura, and film tributes to avant-garde legends like Margaret Tait in Luke Fowler’s Being in a Place, and John Cage in Kevin Jerome Everson’s If You Don’t Watch the Way You Move. Then there was the teeming, unseen world of spirits...
- 3/20/2023
- MUBI
The Berlin Film Festival has revealed the 28 titles selected for its Forum strand and the 26 projects at the Forum Expanded platform.
In the Forum strand, documentaries stand alongside personal essay films, while the films and installations that make up the Forum Expanded program revolve around political and personal legacies.
The festival takes place Feb. 16-26.
Forum Titles
“Allensworth”
by James Benning
U.S.
“Anqa”
by Helin Çelik
Austria/Spain
“About Thirty”
by Martin Shanly | with Martin Shanly, Camila Dougall, Paul Dougall, Esmeralds Escalante, Maria Soldi
Argentina
“Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait”
by Luke Fowler | with Margaret Tait
U.K.
“The Bride”
by Myriam U. Birara | with Sandra Umulisa, Aline Amike, Daniel Gaga, Fabiola Mukasekuru, Beatrice Mukandayishimiye
Rwanda
“Cidade Rabat”
by Susana Nobre | with Raquel Castro, Paula Bárcia, Paula Só, Sara de Castro, Laura Afonso
Portugal/France
“De Facto”
by Selma Doborac | with Christoph Bach, Cornelius Obonya...
In the Forum strand, documentaries stand alongside personal essay films, while the films and installations that make up the Forum Expanded program revolve around political and personal legacies.
The festival takes place Feb. 16-26.
Forum Titles
“Allensworth”
by James Benning
U.S.
“Anqa”
by Helin Çelik
Austria/Spain
“About Thirty”
by Martin Shanly | with Martin Shanly, Camila Dougall, Paul Dougall, Esmeralds Escalante, Maria Soldi
Argentina
“Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait”
by Luke Fowler | with Margaret Tait
U.K.
“The Bride”
by Myriam U. Birara | with Sandra Umulisa, Aline Amike, Daniel Gaga, Fabiola Mukasekuru, Beatrice Mukandayishimiye
Rwanda
“Cidade Rabat”
by Susana Nobre | with Raquel Castro, Paula Bárcia, Paula Só, Sara de Castro, Laura Afonso
Portugal/France
“De Facto”
by Selma Doborac | with Christoph Bach, Cornelius Obonya...
- 1/16/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSKing Lear.Jean-Luc Godard, groundbreaking French-Swiss filmmaker across six decades, died last week at age 91. In the week since, a number of tributes have been shared: among them, Blair McClendon in n+1, J. Hoberman in The Nation, Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, and Richard Hell in Screen Slate. Alternatively, you can find a 2002 essay on Godard by filmmaker and theorist Peter Wollen on Verso's blog, watch a 1988 conversation between Godard and critic Serge Daney, or read this list Godard contributed to the British film journal Afterimage in 1970. Shadow and Act founder Tambay Obenson is fundraising to launch Akoroko, a new platform devoted to African film and television. The platform intends to combine film journalism with “consultation, cataloging, and curated film streaming.”Two posters (below) for the 61st New York Film Festival feature photographs taken by Nan Goldin.
- 9/20/2022
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSEnys Men (Mark Jenkin).The New York Film Festival announced its Main Slate. Highlights include new films from Park Chan-wook, Claire Denis, and Kelly Reichardt; a fiction feature from Frederick Wiseman; Mark Jenkin's Bait follow-up Enys Men; and much more.Hong Kong action director John Woo will reimagine his 1989 crime classic The Killer in a new remake due out in 2023. French actor Omar Sy (The Intouchables) will play the lead.Lars Von Trier has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, his production company Zoetrope has confirmed. The director is doing well, and is currently being treated for symptoms whilst continuing to work on The Kingdom Exodus.Artist and El Planeta filmmaker Amalia Ulman's visa is expiring, meaning she may have to leave the United States, where she is currently working on her next feature film.
- 8/9/2022
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSEl Conde (Pablo Larraín).Natalie Portman will star opposite Julianne Moore in Todd Haynes's next film, May December, which begins filming later this year. In the film, an actress (Portman) meets with the woman she is due to portray (Moore) in a film that dramatizes her tabloid scandal.After Spencer, Pablo Larraín's next project with Netflix will be El Conde, a pitch-black comedy that will portray Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire.Pedro Almodóvar has announced a new 30-minute Western, Strange Way of Life, which he will shoot in August. The short stars Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal as two gunslingers, long separated, who must cross the Spanish desert to reunite. Almodóvar's next feature—an adaptation of Lucia Berlin's A Manual for Cleaning Women led by Cate Blanchett—begins filming early next year.
- 6/30/2022
- MUBI
Celluloid film prints will now soon be coming back to a theater near you.
The Film Exhibition Fund, a new grants-giving 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the continued screening of celluloid film prints, has officially announced the first two recipients of grants. IndieWire can exclusively share that New York’s Anthology Film Archives and Microscope Gallery are the inaugural grantees.
The Anthology Film Archives are using the 2,500 grant for upcoming screenings of Andy Warhol’s “Sleep” (1963), “Empire” (1964), and “Chelsea Girls” (1966). The first two films run over five and eight hours long, respectively, while “Chelsea Girls” involves over three hours of dual-screen projection. The series is set to screen in August.
“Preserving the experience of theatrical projection — and especially the projection of 35mm, 16mm, and 8mm film prints — is at the core of Anthology’s mission,” Anthology Film Archives Film Programmer Jed Rapfogel said. “We’re motivated by the conviction...
The Film Exhibition Fund, a new grants-giving 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the continued screening of celluloid film prints, has officially announced the first two recipients of grants. IndieWire can exclusively share that New York’s Anthology Film Archives and Microscope Gallery are the inaugural grantees.
The Anthology Film Archives are using the 2,500 grant for upcoming screenings of Andy Warhol’s “Sleep” (1963), “Empire” (1964), and “Chelsea Girls” (1966). The first two films run over five and eight hours long, respectively, while “Chelsea Girls” involves over three hours of dual-screen projection. The series is set to screen in August.
“Preserving the experience of theatrical projection — and especially the projection of 35mm, 16mm, and 8mm film prints — is at the core of Anthology’s mission,” Anthology Film Archives Film Programmer Jed Rapfogel said. “We’re motivated by the conviction...
- 6/27/2022
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
“Anma” is a classic piece of Butoh dancing, by creator and legendary figure of the particular style, Tatsumi Hijikata, who performs along with a number of other dancers, including co-creator Kazuo Ohno, Yoshito Ohno and Akira Kasai, among others, under the experimental/noise music of Tomomi Adachi. The particularly film by Takahiko Iimura is an effort to capture the performance of “Anma” but at the same time, it is realized as cine-dance, essentially filming choreography and choreographing film at the same time, through a meta approach, that also has the director performing with his camera among the dancers on the stage and includes footage from the audience watching the whole endeavor.
“Anma” is screening at Japanese Avant-Garde and Experimental Film Festival
Multiple texts on black screen split the movie into various segments, while explaining where the dancers got their inspiration from, each time, in regard with the concept of anma,...
“Anma” is screening at Japanese Avant-Garde and Experimental Film Festival
Multiple texts on black screen split the movie into various segments, while explaining where the dancers got their inspiration from, each time, in regard with the concept of anma,...
- 9/18/2021
- by Panos Kotzathanasis
- AsianMoviePulse
Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival announces full programme for Jaeff 2021: Bodies in advance of ticket sales on 22 July. Jaeff 2021: Bodies will be held at The Barbican from 16-19th September, and online from 20th-30th September.
Jaeff 2021: Bodies explores how we interact with other beings, spaces around us, and how expressions of the unutterable become vital means of communication and connection.
This third edition of the Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival considers the body and sensation, and features work from directors Kon Ichikawa, Toshio Matsumoto, Susumu Hani, Chiaki Nagano, Takahiko Iimura, Tatsumi Kumashiro, Shuji Terayama and more.
In a time where words, facts and logic are increasingly ineffectual, powerless and absurd, this year’s programme attempts to make sense of the nonsensical. Finding that sometimes, the most powerful form of expression is often what we feel, rather than what we can say, write, or even think.
Jaeff 2021: Bodies explores how we interact with other beings, spaces around us, and how expressions of the unutterable become vital means of communication and connection.
This third edition of the Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival considers the body and sensation, and features work from directors Kon Ichikawa, Toshio Matsumoto, Susumu Hani, Chiaki Nagano, Takahiko Iimura, Tatsumi Kumashiro, Shuji Terayama and more.
In a time where words, facts and logic are increasingly ineffectual, powerless and absurd, this year’s programme attempts to make sense of the nonsensical. Finding that sometimes, the most powerful form of expression is often what we feel, rather than what we can say, write, or even think.
- 7/19/2021
- by Rouven Linnarz
- AsianMoviePulse
Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival are very excited to announce their full programme for Jaeff 2021: Bodies. Curated alongside the delayed 2020 Olympics, this year’s festival aims to explore the human body – in motion, at rest, in agony and in ecstasy.
Tickets go on sale to Barbican Members on 21 July, and to the general public on the 22nd. Stay tuned to our socials for further info (and links!).
Jaeff look forward to seeing you this Autumn!
Thursday 16/9
18:00 – Nanami: The Inferno of First Love + A.I. Mama
Friday 17/9
18:00 Portrait of Mr O + Anma + Rose Color Dance + In Passing
20:30 – Lovers are Wet
Saturday 18/9
Navel and a Bomb
17:50 – Boxer + Transparent, the world is.
Sunday 19/9
11:00 – Japan’s Cinematic Body (Panel Discussion)
13:20 Nippon Express Carries the Olympics to Tokyo + Tokyo Story
16:00 – Tokyo Olympiad...
Tickets go on sale to Barbican Members on 21 July, and to the general public on the 22nd. Stay tuned to our socials for further info (and links!).
Jaeff look forward to seeing you this Autumn!
Thursday 16/9
18:00 – Nanami: The Inferno of First Love + A.I. Mama
Friday 17/9
18:00 Portrait of Mr O + Anma + Rose Color Dance + In Passing
20:30 – Lovers are Wet
Saturday 18/9
Navel and a Bomb
17:50 – Boxer + Transparent, the world is.
Sunday 19/9
11:00 – Japan’s Cinematic Body (Panel Discussion)
13:20 Nippon Express Carries the Olympics to Tokyo + Tokyo Story
16:00 – Tokyo Olympiad...
- 7/18/2021
- by Rhythm Zaveri
- AsianMoviePulse
1963 was a pivotal year in the history of avant-garde film in the United States. In Visionary Film, P. Adams Sitney calls it “the high point of the mythopoeic development within the American avant-garde.” He explains:
[Stan] Brakhage had finished and was exhibiting the first two sections of Dog Star Man by then; Jack Smith was still exhibiting the year-old Flaming Creatures; [Kenneth Anger‘s] Scorpio Rising appeared almost simultaneously with [Gregory Markopoulos‘s] Twice a Man. The shift from an interest in dreams and the erotic quest for the self to mythopoeia, and a wider interest in the collective unconscious occurred in the films of a number of major and independent artists.
(An inclusive list of American avant-garde films made/released in 1963 can be found here.)
On Christmas Day of 1963 began the weeklong third edition of Exprmntl, a competition of worldwide avant-garde films held in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium. The two previous Exprmntl competitions took place in 1949 and 1958. Exprmntl...
[Stan] Brakhage had finished and was exhibiting the first two sections of Dog Star Man by then; Jack Smith was still exhibiting the year-old Flaming Creatures; [Kenneth Anger‘s] Scorpio Rising appeared almost simultaneously with [Gregory Markopoulos‘s] Twice a Man. The shift from an interest in dreams and the erotic quest for the self to mythopoeia, and a wider interest in the collective unconscious occurred in the films of a number of major and independent artists.
(An inclusive list of American avant-garde films made/released in 1963 can be found here.)
On Christmas Day of 1963 began the weeklong third edition of Exprmntl, a competition of worldwide avant-garde films held in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium. The two previous Exprmntl competitions took place in 1949 and 1958. Exprmntl...
- 10/1/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Western authority on the culture of Japan, his adopted homeland
Donald Richie, who has died aged 88, wrote extensively on Japan, his adopted homeland after his arrival in 1947 with the Us occupation forces. He was best known for his books on cinema, including The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (1959), the first major English-language study of the subject, co-written with Joseph L Anderson; The Films of Akira Kurosawa (1965); Ozu: His Life and Films (1974); and A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (2001). Richie played a pivotal role in introducing the director Yasujiro Ozu to foreign audiences and curated, in 1963, the first international Ozu retrospective, at the Berlin film festival. In 1983, he received the first Kawakita award, for individuals or organisations that have contributed to Japanese film culture.
Though recognised as the most important figure in introducing Japanese cinema to the west, Richie saw himself as a writer foremost and a film critic secondarily. His...
Donald Richie, who has died aged 88, wrote extensively on Japan, his adopted homeland after his arrival in 1947 with the Us occupation forces. He was best known for his books on cinema, including The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (1959), the first major English-language study of the subject, co-written with Joseph L Anderson; The Films of Akira Kurosawa (1965); Ozu: His Life and Films (1974); and A Hundred Years of Japanese Film (2001). Richie played a pivotal role in introducing the director Yasujiro Ozu to foreign audiences and curated, in 1963, the first international Ozu retrospective, at the Berlin film festival. In 1983, he received the first Kawakita award, for individuals or organisations that have contributed to Japanese film culture.
Though recognised as the most important figure in introducing Japanese cinema to the west, Richie saw himself as a writer foremost and a film critic secondarily. His...
- 2/21/2013
- by Jasper Sharp
- The Guardian - Film News
Feb. 11
5:00 p.m.
Microscope Gallery
4 Charles Place
Brooklyn, NY 11221
Hosted by: Microscope Gallery
Throughout the month of February, Brooklyn’s Microscope Gallery will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of NYC’s Film-makers’ Cooperative, the oldest and largest artist-run coop in the world. While the opening reception for this special exhibit will be at 7:00 p.m. on Feb. 11, at 5:00 p.m. will be a special screening of rare 16mm films by the legendary Jack Smith.
Ironically, Smith would probably be furious about this special event if he were still alive, thanks to his severe falling out with the Coop’s founder Jonas Mekas. But, with several new 16mm prints of many of his “lost” films, this event promises to be one of the premiere avant-garde screenings of 2012. So, screw Jack. The films that will be screening are: Respectable Creatures, Song for Rent, Hot Air Specialists, Overstimulated, Scotch Tape,...
5:00 p.m.
Microscope Gallery
4 Charles Place
Brooklyn, NY 11221
Hosted by: Microscope Gallery
Throughout the month of February, Brooklyn’s Microscope Gallery will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of NYC’s Film-makers’ Cooperative, the oldest and largest artist-run coop in the world. While the opening reception for this special exhibit will be at 7:00 p.m. on Feb. 11, at 5:00 p.m. will be a special screening of rare 16mm films by the legendary Jack Smith.
Ironically, Smith would probably be furious about this special event if he were still alive, thanks to his severe falling out with the Coop’s founder Jonas Mekas. But, with several new 16mm prints of many of his “lost” films, this event promises to be one of the premiere avant-garde screenings of 2012. So, screw Jack. The films that will be screening are: Respectable Creatures, Song for Rent, Hot Air Specialists, Overstimulated, Scotch Tape,...
- 2/7/2012
- by screenings
- Underground Film Journal
First, my apologies. I’m starting out with a completely self-serving internal link: I created an Underground Film Resource Center page with links to all the different resources I have for underground filmmakers and fans alike on Bad Lit: Film festivals, films, filmmakers, theaters, distributors, websites, the timeline, and more. I have a few ideas of more resources to launch in the future, too. Distributor Channel Midnight has announced that Nathan Wrann’s Burning Inside is now available as an app for the iPhone, iPad and iTouch. I’m not posting this link so much as to promote this particular film — although I highly recommend it — but because I don’t see announcements like this very much. How much underground content is available on iTunes? When I look: Nothing. Well, now there’s this. I want to read more announcements like this in the future. The Rome News-Tribune has an...
- 7/11/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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