FrancofoniaIt seems slightly off-kilter to term a film by Alexander Sokurov, everyone’s favorite Slavophile modernist, a “mash-up.” Yet Francofonia, which opened the Museum of the Moving Image’s fifth annual First Look festival, brings to mind an idiosyncratic synthesis of motifs derived from Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma and Volker Schlöndorff’s Diplomacy. With more than a passing resemblance to the ever-popular fiction/non-fiction hybrid film, Sokurov’s rambling meditation on the aesthetic imperatives of authoritarianism was an appropriate choice to open a festival that specializes in experimental hybridism. New work by such disparate filmmakers as Dominic Gagnon, Léa Rinaldi, and Louis Skorecki traverses generic boundaries—even though, for seasoned festival audiences, this sort of genre-bending is now more of a routine occurrence than a transgressive event. First Look’s desire to showcase subversive hybridity was evident in Quebecois filmmaker Dominic Gagnon’s double bill—Pieces and Love...
- 1/15/2016
- by Richard Porton
- MUBI
The fifth edition of First Look, "a festival for eye-opening and mind-expanding international cinema," opens tonight at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York with Alexander Sokurov's Francofonia and runs on through three consecutive weekends. We're gathering reviews and overviews, with the Village Voice on Jonathan Perel's Toponymy, "a disquieting glimpse at four eerily similar Argentinian towns established in the mid-1970s," Artforum on Dominic Gagnon’s controversial Of the North, and Reverse Shot on Manuel Mozos’s "elegiac essay-portrait" João Bénard da Costa: Others Will Love the Things I Have Loved, focusing on the legendary film scholar, programmer, and longtime head of Cinemateca Portuguesa. » - David Hudson...
- 1/8/2016
- Keyframe
The fifth edition of First Look, "a festival for eye-opening and mind-expanding international cinema," opens tonight at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York with Alexander Sokurov's Francofonia and runs on through three consecutive weekends. We're gathering reviews and overviews, with the Village Voice on Jonathan Perel's Toponymy, "a disquieting glimpse at four eerily similar Argentinian towns established in the mid-1970s," Artforum on Dominic Gagnon’s controversial Of the North, and Reverse Shot on Manuel Mozos’s "elegiac essay-portrait" João Bénard da Costa: Others Will Love the Things I Have Loved, focusing on the legendary film scholar, programmer, and longtime head of Cinemateca Portuguesa. » - David Hudson...
- 1/8/2016
- Fandor: Keyframe
At the halfway point of December, there are, to put it lightly, many end-of-year lists hitting the web, and few publications have round-ups as consistently excellent as Film Comment‘s. (“Consistently excellent” translates to “aligns with my specific taste,” of course.) Their 20-film selection represents the year rather nicely, from the widely seen and frequently listed (e.g. Mad Max: Fury Road and Inside Out) landing among some of our limited-release favorites, including Timbuktu, The Assassin, and Jauja. As editor Gavin Smith says, “That balance, which happens to be encapsulated in the top five in micro form, feels about right for the agenda of this magazine, which, since the very beginning, has been to champion the best in cinema wherever it hails from, all creatures great and small. Since we managed to run features on 11 of these and sung the praises of another five, it’s a pleasure to close...
- 12/14/2015
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
New York's Museum of the Moving Image has announced the lineup for the fifth edition of its annual First Look Festival, running from January 8 through 24 and featuring a slew of Us and NYC premieres. Opening with Aleksandr Sokurov’s Francofonia, highlights also include Manuel Mozos’s portrait of João Bénard da Costa, the late director of the Portuguese Film Museum; a playful autobiographical work by the French film critic and filmmaker Louis Skorecki; and a duo of intimate behind-the-scenes films about Jim Jarmusch. Plus films by Margaret Honda, Ken Jacobs, Bjoern Kammerer, and the late Andrew Noren; and formally innovative films such as Jonathan Perel’s structuralist study of oppressive Argentine architecture, and Dominic Gagnon's gonzo YouTube assemblages. » - David Hudson...
- 12/5/2015
- Keyframe
New York's Museum of the Moving Image has announced the lineup for the fifth edition of its annual First Look Festival, running from January 8 through 24 and featuring a slew of Us and NYC premieres. Opening with Aleksandr Sokurov’s Francofonia, highlights also include Manuel Mozos’s portrait of João Bénard da Costa, the late director of the Portuguese Film Museum; a playful autobiographical work by the French film critic and filmmaker Louis Skorecki; and a duo of intimate behind-the-scenes films about Jim Jarmusch. Plus films by Margaret Honda, Ken Jacobs, Bjoern Kammerer, and the late Andrew Noren; and formally innovative films such as Jonathan Perel’s structuralist study of oppressive Argentine architecture, and Dominic Gagnon's gonzo YouTube assemblages. » - David Hudson...
- 12/5/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Programme includes David Mackenzie’s Starred Up and Ti West’s The Sacrament.
The International Film Festival Rotterdam (Jan 22 - Feb 2) has added a programme of films focusing on “contemporary survival” to its thematic Signals section.
How to Survive… will feature 12 independent films from around the world range from Spanish survival horror La cueva (In Darkness We Fall) by Alfredo Montero to Jang Cheol-soo’s Korean spy thriller Secretly Greatly, and from Canadian internet found footage documentary Hoax_canular by Dominic Gagnon to Iranian apocalyptic visions in From Tehran to Heaven by Abolfazl Saffary.
It will also feature David Mackenzie’s British prison drama Starred Up, Us director Ti West’s found footage horror The Sacrament, and White Bear, an episode from Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror series that aired in the UK.
In the How to Survive… Clinics, experts will teach visitors forgotten survival skills. In a workshop by Rotterdam-based Wild Vleesch, visitors can learn...
The International Film Festival Rotterdam (Jan 22 - Feb 2) has added a programme of films focusing on “contemporary survival” to its thematic Signals section.
How to Survive… will feature 12 independent films from around the world range from Spanish survival horror La cueva (In Darkness We Fall) by Alfredo Montero to Jang Cheol-soo’s Korean spy thriller Secretly Greatly, and from Canadian internet found footage documentary Hoax_canular by Dominic Gagnon to Iranian apocalyptic visions in From Tehran to Heaven by Abolfazl Saffary.
It will also feature David Mackenzie’s British prison drama Starred Up, Us director Ti West’s found footage horror The Sacrament, and White Bear, an episode from Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror series that aired in the UK.
In the How to Survive… Clinics, experts will teach visitors forgotten survival skills. In a workshop by Rotterdam-based Wild Vleesch, visitors can learn...
- 1/15/2014
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
"When I wrote 120 Malay Movies I tried to watch all of the 34 movies that P Ramlee directed. I almost succeeded." Amir Muhammad (The Last Communist, Malaysian Gods) would eventually see 33; Sitora Harimau Jadian (1964) seems to have been lost. He tells us the story of how he came upon what amounts to P Ramlee's own novelization of Sitora Harimau Jadian, "describing what happens in his movie, scene by scene. The book is slim, only 124 pages, and I'm glad it was also fleshed out with pictures from the movie (which might be the only chance we will ever get to 'see' it)." He gives us a sample and then announces that he's republishing the book, which will be out next month and already has a fan page.
Another book. Today's review of Geoff Dyer's Zona comes from Nathan Rogers-Hancock at Cinespect.
Reading. Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel) once managed a...
Another book. Today's review of Geoff Dyer's Zona comes from Nathan Rogers-Hancock at Cinespect.
Reading. Alex Ross Perry (The Color Wheel) once managed a...
- 3/30/2012
- MUBI
This Week’s Must Look At: The artist book Don’t Kill the Weatherman by Martha Colburn has an online photograph preview and it looks stunning! I love Martha’s animation, but it always moves so quickly that it’s tough to savor the actual art. But, now I can! The above borrowed image is from frames from the film Spiders in Love: An Arachnogasmic Musical, the first Colburn film I ever saw way back in 2000. (If you go to the photo set, you can find details on how to purchase this limited edition.)Craig Baldwin has published issue #22 of Otherzine. You can read the whole thing here. But, two highlights are: An interview with Dominic Gagnon, who is seeking to save “censored” online videos; and curator Brenda Contreras reviews Sylvia Schedelbauer’s found footage film, Sounding Glass.This one’s for Canyon Cinema members only: But if you are one,...
- 3/4/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The 39th annual Festival du Nouveau Cinema is set to run in Montreal on Oct 13-24. But, within the overall, massive festival is the Fnc Lab, the avant-garde and experimental section that will be having screenings and live film performances every night on Oct. 14-22.
This year, the Fnc Lab is showcasing two retrospectives; plus, a short film program of strictly 16mm films, films from the Korean Jeonju Digital Project, four feature-length projects and several special one-of-a-kind performances.
The retrospectives are of two key American women experimental filmmakers. First, in conjunction with the Double Negative Collective, the fest presents a career overview of Chick Strand, the eminent ethnographic filmmaker who sadly passed away last year at the age of 77.
Then, there’s also a retrospective of playful avant-garde filmmaker Marie Losier, who is well known for her collaborations with and film portraits of key underground figures like George Kuchar, Tony Conrad and Genesis P-Orridge.
This year, the Fnc Lab is showcasing two retrospectives; plus, a short film program of strictly 16mm films, films from the Korean Jeonju Digital Project, four feature-length projects and several special one-of-a-kind performances.
The retrospectives are of two key American women experimental filmmakers. First, in conjunction with the Double Negative Collective, the fest presents a career overview of Chick Strand, the eminent ethnographic filmmaker who sadly passed away last year at the age of 77.
Then, there’s also a retrospective of playful avant-garde filmmaker Marie Losier, who is well known for her collaborations with and film portraits of key underground figures like George Kuchar, Tony Conrad and Genesis P-Orridge.
- 10/6/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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