Asif Kapadia, the Oscar-winning guest curator for 2022’s Sheffield DocFest, has unveiled his program A Documentary Journey with Asif Kapadia.
Kapadia, who is best known for his documentaries ‘Amy,’ about Amy Winehouse, and ‘Senna’ about Brazilian motor-racing champion Ayrton Senna, opened the last in-person iteration of Sheffield DocFest in 2019 with his feature about legendary Argentine footballer Diego Maradona.
The festival, now in its 29th year, was digital only in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.
Featuring “films that have had significant impact for him, inspiring his own style and creative choices as a filmmaker,” Kapadia has selected eight documentaries for the series, including “When We Were Kings” about Muhammad Ali (pictured above).
“Without this film, there would be no ‘Amy.’ There would be no ‘Senna.’ There would be no ‘Diego Maradona,’” said Kapadia of the Ali feature.
“This selection is personal to me, as someone who grew up in Hackney in the 1970s and 1980s,...
Kapadia, who is best known for his documentaries ‘Amy,’ about Amy Winehouse, and ‘Senna’ about Brazilian motor-racing champion Ayrton Senna, opened the last in-person iteration of Sheffield DocFest in 2019 with his feature about legendary Argentine footballer Diego Maradona.
The festival, now in its 29th year, was digital only in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.
Featuring “films that have had significant impact for him, inspiring his own style and creative choices as a filmmaker,” Kapadia has selected eight documentaries for the series, including “When We Were Kings” about Muhammad Ali (pictured above).
“Without this film, there would be no ‘Amy.’ There would be no ‘Senna.’ There would be no ‘Diego Maradona,’” said Kapadia of the Ali feature.
“This selection is personal to me, as someone who grew up in Hackney in the 1970s and 1980s,...
- 5/9/2022
- by K.J. Yossman
- Variety Film + TV
Czech-born Milos Stehlik, an award-winning film critic and commentator for National Public Radio station Wbez and the film curator, founder and artistic director of the pioneering media arts center Facets Multimedia in Chicago, died Saturday of cancer.
Stehlik founded Facets in 1975, screening hard-to-find international and independent films in a Chicago Lutheran church. When the non-profit organization found a permanent home on Fullerton Avenue in 1977, Stehlik branched into video distribution, eventually offering thousands of otherwise unobtainable titles for sale and rental, both over the counter and by mail. As viewing formats changed, so did the Facets catalogue, moving into dvds and streaming.
Titles that Facets first made available in the U.S. or released on its private label included Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Decalogue,” Bela Tarr’s “Satantango,” Milos Forman’s “Black Peter,” Forough Farrokhzad’s “The House Is Black,” Frantisek Vlácil’s “Adelheid,” and collections of experimentalists such as the American James Broughton,...
Stehlik founded Facets in 1975, screening hard-to-find international and independent films in a Chicago Lutheran church. When the non-profit organization found a permanent home on Fullerton Avenue in 1977, Stehlik branched into video distribution, eventually offering thousands of otherwise unobtainable titles for sale and rental, both over the counter and by mail. As viewing formats changed, so did the Facets catalogue, moving into dvds and streaming.
Titles that Facets first made available in the U.S. or released on its private label included Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Decalogue,” Bela Tarr’s “Satantango,” Milos Forman’s “Black Peter,” Forough Farrokhzad’s “The House Is Black,” Frantisek Vlácil’s “Adelheid,” and collections of experimentalists such as the American James Broughton,...
- 7/8/2019
- by Alissa Simon
- Variety Film + TV
Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy’s intellectually stimulating movie – part essay, documentary and quirky drama – is in a class of its own
Following on from their superb but sadly little-seen dramatic features, Helen and Mister John, Irish co-directors Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy take their unique approach to cinema to the next level with Further Beyond. An aptly titled work in every sense, this sui generis piece is by turns an essay film in the tradition of Chris Marker (San Soleil) and Patrick Keiller (London), a documentary, and a quirky drama about loss and exile. There’s moving footage of Lawlor’s late mother whose life is sketched here, riffs on ideas about photography and representation found in Susan Sontag and Walter Benjamin, and a series of cinematic “notes” or tests towards a biopic about the 18th-century Irish adventurer Ambrose O’Higgins (played by Jose Miguel Jimenez) that Lawlor and...
Following on from their superb but sadly little-seen dramatic features, Helen and Mister John, Irish co-directors Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy take their unique approach to cinema to the next level with Further Beyond. An aptly titled work in every sense, this sui generis piece is by turns an essay film in the tradition of Chris Marker (San Soleil) and Patrick Keiller (London), a documentary, and a quirky drama about loss and exile. There’s moving footage of Lawlor’s late mother whose life is sketched here, riffs on ideas about photography and representation found in Susan Sontag and Walter Benjamin, and a series of cinematic “notes” or tests towards a biopic about the 18th-century Irish adventurer Ambrose O’Higgins (played by Jose Miguel Jimenez) that Lawlor and...
- 10/27/2016
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Guardian - Film News
I’ve been making 16mm durational urban landscape voiceover films, slowly but surely, since the late ‘90s. My short film Blue Diary premiered at the Berlinale in 1998. My two features, The Joy of Life (2005) and The Royal Road (2015) both premiered in the prestigious New Frontiers section at the Sundance Film Festival and have been as wildly successful as experimental films can be. Which is to say, they remain fairly obscure. My small but enthusiastic fan-base frequently asks me for recommendations of films that are similar to my own in terms of incorporating durational landscapes and voiceover and a meditative pace. While it is certainly one of the smallest subgenres in the realm of filmmaking, here are a handful of excellent landscape cinema examples by the practitioners I know best. I confess that my expertise here is limited and hope that the learned Mubi community will chime in with additions in the comments field below.
- 10/11/2016
- MUBI
It’s one of the oldest rules in the book, or at least the most resilient since the early ’90s: if Christopher Doyle was involved in a film, said film will look beautiful at every moment. Whether or not Mark Cousins‘ newest documentary, I Am Belfast, stands out for any other reason remains to be seen, but the first trailer is nevertheless a solid showcase for the Australian-Chinese cinematographer’s skill for clarity, depth, shape, and light. Considering the experiential angle being aimed for, that’s as decent a start as any.
Described in every known listing as “a city symphony,” it finds Belfast’s unique properties through aesthetic appreciation and a bit of fidgeting with concepts of what does and doesn’t “fit” within documentary cinema. That’s all well and good as is, and if the picture does, as early reviews have suggested, prove the first to fully...
Described in every known listing as “a city symphony,” it finds Belfast’s unique properties through aesthetic appreciation and a bit of fidgeting with concepts of what does and doesn’t “fit” within documentary cinema. That’s all well and good as is, and if the picture does, as early reviews have suggested, prove the first to fully...
- 2/29/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
British film-maker Grant Gee has got together with Turkey’s Nobel prize-winning novelist, and the result is a mesmerising, original meditation on love and the city
Having cut his teeth on music videos (and then graduated to the cerebral Joy Division documentary, on which he collaborated with Jon Savage), Grant Gee has reinvented himself as a formidable force in the microgenre of literary travelogues, a space hitherto largely occupied by Patrick Keiller, Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair. Gee headed for Suffolk for Patience (After Sebald), a reconstruction and reinvestigation of Wg Sebald’s Rings of Saturn; now he has cast his net much further afield, to Istanbul, and a creative meeting of mind’s with Turkey’s Nobel-prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk.
As with his Sebald film, Gee has here carefully assembled a collage of textual fragments, painterly visuals and mysterious voiceovers. The major difference of course, is that Pamuk is...
Having cut his teeth on music videos (and then graduated to the cerebral Joy Division documentary, on which he collaborated with Jon Savage), Grant Gee has reinvented himself as a formidable force in the microgenre of literary travelogues, a space hitherto largely occupied by Patrick Keiller, Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair. Gee headed for Suffolk for Patience (After Sebald), a reconstruction and reinvestigation of Wg Sebald’s Rings of Saturn; now he has cast his net much further afield, to Istanbul, and a creative meeting of mind’s with Turkey’s Nobel-prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk.
As with his Sebald film, Gee has here carefully assembled a collage of textual fragments, painterly visuals and mysterious voiceovers. The major difference of course, is that Pamuk is...
- 9/10/2015
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names
Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.
Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.
—Seamus Heaney, The Tollund Man
It ended, like all journeys do, in Solitude, a long way from any cinema. Solitude—or rather Zolitūde, in Latvian—is a suburb of Riga, four miles as the crow flies from the fancy Scandi-Gothic-Art Nouveau city centre; six miles on foot if the pedestrian avoids diversions. But by the time I reached Solitude on that cold December Saturday afternoon, however, my inadvertent divagations must have pushed the total to the ten-mile mark. I'd looked at maps prior to departing from my hotel, of course but deliberately didn't bring one along (not a fan); I don't...
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names
Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.
Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.
—Seamus Heaney, The Tollund Man
It ended, like all journeys do, in Solitude, a long way from any cinema. Solitude—or rather Zolitūde, in Latvian—is a suburb of Riga, four miles as the crow flies from the fancy Scandi-Gothic-Art Nouveau city centre; six miles on foot if the pedestrian avoids diversions. But by the time I reached Solitude on that cold December Saturday afternoon, however, my inadvertent divagations must have pushed the total to the ten-mile mark. I'd looked at maps prior to departing from my hotel, of course but deliberately didn't bring one along (not a fan); I don't...
- 1/4/2015
- by Neil Young
- MUBI
The new issue of the bilingual film quarterly desistfilm features interviews with Peter von Bagh and Jeanne Liotta and articles on Vertical Cinema, Patrick Keiller, Paul Morrissey's Mixed Blood (1985) and George Miller's Mad Max (1979). Also in today's roundup of news and views: James Sibley Watson's Tomatos Another Day (1930), a sober Lars von Trier, David Thomson on Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Christoph Huber on John Ford's The Searchers (1956), early rounds of best-of-2014 films and books lists and more. » - David Hudson...
- 11/30/2014
- Keyframe
The new issue of the bilingual film quarterly desistfilm features interviews with Peter von Bagh and Jeanne Liotta and articles on Vertical Cinema, Patrick Keiller, Paul Morrissey's Mixed Blood (1985) and George Miller's Mad Max (1979). Also in today's roundup of news and views: James Sibley Watson's Tomatos Another Day (1930), a sober Lars von Trier, David Thomson on Alain Resnais's Hiroshima mon amour (1959), Christoph Huber on John Ford's The Searchers (1956), early rounds of best-of-2014 films and books lists and more. » - David Hudson...
- 11/30/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
Ben Gibson, the departing Director of the London Film School, has been appointed to a new senior role at Aftrs, the Australian Film Television & Radio School, as Director, Degree Programs. He will start work in Sydney in September.
Gibson will play a key leadership role in ensuring the successful delivery and development of a new three-year Aftrs Bachelor of Arts (Screen) degree and Aftrs Screen and Screen Business Masters degrees, which are being restructured and relaunched for 2015.
“Ben is eminently qualified for this pivotal new role at Aftrs, and I’m thrilled that he could be persuaded to bring his considerable skills, experience and academic rigor to Australia. His 14 years as Director of the very successful London Film School are notable for his work in building up the school’s reputation in the UK and abroad and expanding and accrediting its prestigious postgraduate degrees. Ben has also been a very successful and original independent producer and production executive, and has previously worked in distribution and exhibition, so he comes with a deep knowledge of the international screen industry at all levels,” said Sandra Levy, CEO of the Aftrs.
Prior to joining the London Film School in 2001, Gibson worked as a film distributor and independent producer, and as Head of Production at the British Film Institute from 1988 to 1998. His production and executive production credits include Terence Davies' " The Long Day Closes," Derek Jarman's "Wittgenstein," John Maybury's "Love is the Devil," Carine Adler's "Under the Skin"and Jasmin Dizdar's "Beautiful People," as well as 20 other low budget features and many shorts by UK directors including Patrick Keiller, Gurinder Chadha, Lynne Ramsay, Richard Kwietniowski and Andrew Kotting. As a partner in distributors The Other Cinema/Metro Pictures he acquired and promoted films by Pedro Almodovar, Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman and Jean-Luc Godard as well as opening the West End’s Metro Cinema in 1986. He has also been a theater director, a repertory film programmer and a film critic and journalist. He leaves Lfs at the end of July.
Ben Gibson said: “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to Sandra Levy’s vision of Aftrs as a complete screen school -- and to get the chance to work in the Australian film industry, one I’ve hugely admired and followed -- so far from a great distance. Aftrs offers a special combination of good things: self-confidence, an extraordinary heritage, great creative ambition, exceptional resources, a wide educational scope and a central mission in a dynamic and productive screen industry. It’s rightly considered to be one of the great film schools of the world. I can’t wait to join the team and get started there.”
Gibson’s final year at Lfs has been attended by great creative success. The school won 35 festival prizes and mentions in 2013-14, including a BAFTA nomination. Ms Levy pointed out that this year’s Palme d'Or for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival was won by Leidi, the Lfs graduation film of Simón Mesa Soto. Also at Cannes, amongst seven graduates featured in the 2014 selection, "The Salt of the Earth," co-directed by Lfs graduate Juliano Ribeiro Salgado with Wim Wenders, was awarded the Un Certain Regard’s Special Jury Prize.
Director Mike Leigh, Chair of Governors at the London Film School, in announcing Ben’s departure earlier this year, said: “Ben Gibson has led Lfs from strength to strength over his fourteen years of outstanding service, and we will be sad to see him go.”
Aftrs is Australia’s national screen arts and broadcasting school and has been named as one of the Top 20 film schools in the world by industry journal, The Hollywood Reporter. As an elite specialist institution, Aftrs provides excellence in education through its practice based model, and aspires to deliver a dynamic educational offering that prepares the most talented and creative students – novice, experienced, fully fledged professional specialists – to be platform agnostic, creative and resilient in an industry subject to constant changes in knowledge and technology. The new BA Screen is a 3-year program offering a strong base in the understanding of story and screen history alongside a comprehensive introduction to the skills of screen production.
Gibson will play a key leadership role in ensuring the successful delivery and development of a new three-year Aftrs Bachelor of Arts (Screen) degree and Aftrs Screen and Screen Business Masters degrees, which are being restructured and relaunched for 2015.
“Ben is eminently qualified for this pivotal new role at Aftrs, and I’m thrilled that he could be persuaded to bring his considerable skills, experience and academic rigor to Australia. His 14 years as Director of the very successful London Film School are notable for his work in building up the school’s reputation in the UK and abroad and expanding and accrediting its prestigious postgraduate degrees. Ben has also been a very successful and original independent producer and production executive, and has previously worked in distribution and exhibition, so he comes with a deep knowledge of the international screen industry at all levels,” said Sandra Levy, CEO of the Aftrs.
Prior to joining the London Film School in 2001, Gibson worked as a film distributor and independent producer, and as Head of Production at the British Film Institute from 1988 to 1998. His production and executive production credits include Terence Davies' " The Long Day Closes," Derek Jarman's "Wittgenstein," John Maybury's "Love is the Devil," Carine Adler's "Under the Skin"and Jasmin Dizdar's "Beautiful People," as well as 20 other low budget features and many shorts by UK directors including Patrick Keiller, Gurinder Chadha, Lynne Ramsay, Richard Kwietniowski and Andrew Kotting. As a partner in distributors The Other Cinema/Metro Pictures he acquired and promoted films by Pedro Almodovar, Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman and Jean-Luc Godard as well as opening the West End’s Metro Cinema in 1986. He has also been a theater director, a repertory film programmer and a film critic and journalist. He leaves Lfs at the end of July.
Ben Gibson said: “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to Sandra Levy’s vision of Aftrs as a complete screen school -- and to get the chance to work in the Australian film industry, one I’ve hugely admired and followed -- so far from a great distance. Aftrs offers a special combination of good things: self-confidence, an extraordinary heritage, great creative ambition, exceptional resources, a wide educational scope and a central mission in a dynamic and productive screen industry. It’s rightly considered to be one of the great film schools of the world. I can’t wait to join the team and get started there.”
Gibson’s final year at Lfs has been attended by great creative success. The school won 35 festival prizes and mentions in 2013-14, including a BAFTA nomination. Ms Levy pointed out that this year’s Palme d'Or for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival was won by Leidi, the Lfs graduation film of Simón Mesa Soto. Also at Cannes, amongst seven graduates featured in the 2014 selection, "The Salt of the Earth," co-directed by Lfs graduate Juliano Ribeiro Salgado with Wim Wenders, was awarded the Un Certain Regard’s Special Jury Prize.
Director Mike Leigh, Chair of Governors at the London Film School, in announcing Ben’s departure earlier this year, said: “Ben Gibson has led Lfs from strength to strength over his fourteen years of outstanding service, and we will be sad to see him go.”
Aftrs is Australia’s national screen arts and broadcasting school and has been named as one of the Top 20 film schools in the world by industry journal, The Hollywood Reporter. As an elite specialist institution, Aftrs provides excellence in education through its practice based model, and aspires to deliver a dynamic educational offering that prepares the most talented and creative students – novice, experienced, fully fledged professional specialists – to be platform agnostic, creative and resilient in an industry subject to constant changes in knowledge and technology. The new BA Screen is a 3-year program offering a strong base in the understanding of story and screen history alongside a comprehensive introduction to the skills of screen production.
- 7/15/2014
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Outgoing director of the London Film School to join Australian Film School.
Ben Gibson, the departing director of the London Film School, has been appointed to a new senior role at Aftrs, the Australian Film Television & Radio School, as director, degree programs. He will start work in Sydney in September.
Gibson will play a key leadership role in ensuring the successful delivery and development of a new three-year Aftrs Bachelor of Arts (Screen) degree and Aftrs Screen and Screen Business Masters degrees, which are being restructured and relaunched for 2015.
Prior to joining the Lfs in 2001, Gibson worked as a film distributor and independent producer, and as head of production at the British Film Institute (BFI) from 1988 to 1998.
His production and executive production credits include Terence Davies’ The Long Day Closes, Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein, John Maybury’s Love is the Devil, Carine Adler’s Under the Skin and Jasmin Dizdar’s Beautiful People, as well as...
Ben Gibson, the departing director of the London Film School, has been appointed to a new senior role at Aftrs, the Australian Film Television & Radio School, as director, degree programs. He will start work in Sydney in September.
Gibson will play a key leadership role in ensuring the successful delivery and development of a new three-year Aftrs Bachelor of Arts (Screen) degree and Aftrs Screen and Screen Business Masters degrees, which are being restructured and relaunched for 2015.
Prior to joining the Lfs in 2001, Gibson worked as a film distributor and independent producer, and as head of production at the British Film Institute (BFI) from 1988 to 1998.
His production and executive production credits include Terence Davies’ The Long Day Closes, Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein, John Maybury’s Love is the Devil, Carine Adler’s Under the Skin and Jasmin Dizdar’s Beautiful People, as well as...
- 7/3/2014
- by michael.rosser@screendaily.com (Michael Rosser)
- ScreenDaily
For those readers of The View From the Train , the new book of writings by Patrick Keiller, already familiar with the author’s films, it will come as little surprise to discover many of the essays herein are playfully dense. As evinced by Keiller’s Robinson Trilogy (1994-2010), the British architect, writer and filmmaker is something of a specialist when it comes to the digestible and often amusing presentation and juxtaposition of historical facts, industrial statistics, literary references and all those other curious nuggets that comprise a cultural landscape.
As Keiller noted in typically throwaway—if far from insincere—fashion during a talk at London’s Tate Britain in May 2012, “everything is connected.” And although how one thing relates to another is not always immediately evident, Britain’s most consistently cogent film-essayist subscribes to the notion that the way in which we merely look at things can and often does...
As Keiller noted in typically throwaway—if far from insincere—fashion during a talk at London’s Tate Britain in May 2012, “everything is connected.” And although how one thing relates to another is not always immediately evident, Britain’s most consistently cogent film-essayist subscribes to the notion that the way in which we merely look at things can and often does...
- 1/10/2014
- by Michael Pattison
- MUBI
Bath Film Festival | Nordic Film Festival | Assemble: A Survey Of Recent Artists' Film And Video In Britain 2008-2013 | Utopia
Bath Film Festival
As well as funding this festival, IMDb (the world's biggest movie site) is sponsoring some new awards, all of which hopefully means punters get a great selection of films. Sneak previews include Ralph Fiennes's Dickens movie The Invisible Woman, Robert Redford's All Is Lost and Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom. Plus a striking pair of religious screenings: The Last Temptation Of Christ in Wells Cathedral, and The Passion Of Joan Of Arc in Bath Abbey, with a live score by Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp).
Various venues, Mon to 8 Dec
Nordic Film Festival, London, Edinburgh & Glasgow
Our Scandinavian neighbours are probably scratching their heads at our seemingly never-ending obsession with their TV detective shows. Why aren't we as fascinated with their movies as well?...
Bath Film Festival
As well as funding this festival, IMDb (the world's biggest movie site) is sponsoring some new awards, all of which hopefully means punters get a great selection of films. Sneak previews include Ralph Fiennes's Dickens movie The Invisible Woman, Robert Redford's All Is Lost and Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom. Plus a striking pair of religious screenings: The Last Temptation Of Christ in Wells Cathedral, and The Passion Of Joan Of Arc in Bath Abbey, with a live score by Adrian Utley (Portishead) and Will Gregory (Goldfrapp).
Various venues, Mon to 8 Dec
Nordic Film Festival, London, Edinburgh & Glasgow
Our Scandinavian neighbours are probably scratching their heads at our seemingly never-ending obsession with their TV detective shows. Why aren't we as fascinated with their movies as well?...
- 11/23/2013
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Barbican, London
A season of films about London reveals how fog, rain and gloom of all kinds add to the mystique of the capital
I've been told that London's reputation for fog is not only due to the fact that it used to be foggy. It was also because cash-strapped postwar film-makers found it convenient to shroud their scenes in mist because they wouldn't have to build so much of the set – just one or two house fronts instead of a street. If this story is an urban myth, no matter, as it tells a truth about London on film. The city's greatest gift to the movie camera is its atmospherics, its fog, rain and darkness.
In ordinary daylight it is obstinately factual. If cinema likes to make cities into dream versions of themselves, London doesn't join in. The brick terraces, the railings, pavements, bollards and postboxes remain themselves. They...
A season of films about London reveals how fog, rain and gloom of all kinds add to the mystique of the capital
I've been told that London's reputation for fog is not only due to the fact that it used to be foggy. It was also because cash-strapped postwar film-makers found it convenient to shroud their scenes in mist because they wouldn't have to build so much of the set – just one or two house fronts instead of a street. If this story is an urban myth, no matter, as it tells a truth about London on film. The city's greatest gift to the movie camera is its atmospherics, its fog, rain and darkness.
In ordinary daylight it is obstinately factual. If cinema likes to make cities into dream versions of themselves, London doesn't join in. The brick terraces, the railings, pavements, bollards and postboxes remain themselves. They...
- 9/14/2013
- by Rowan Moore
- The Guardian - Film News
For years the essay film has been a neglected form, but now its unorthodox approach to constructing reality is winning over a younger, tech-savvy crowd
For a brief, almost unreal couple of hours last July, in amid the kittens and One Direction-mania trending on Twitter, there appeared a very surprising name – that of semi-reclusive French film-maker Chris Marker, whose innovative short feature La Jetée (1962) was remade in 1995 as Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam. A few months earlier, art journal e-flux staged The Desperate Edge of Now, a retrospective of Adam Curtis's TV films, to large audiences on New York's Lower East Side. The previous summer, Handsworth Songs (1986), an experimental feature by the Black Audio Film Collective Salman Rushdie had once attacked as obscurantist and politically irrelevant, attracted a huge crowd at Tate Modern when it was screened shortly after the London riots.
Marker, Curtis, Black Audio: all have...
For a brief, almost unreal couple of hours last July, in amid the kittens and One Direction-mania trending on Twitter, there appeared a very surprising name – that of semi-reclusive French film-maker Chris Marker, whose innovative short feature La Jetée (1962) was remade in 1995 as Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam. A few months earlier, art journal e-flux staged The Desperate Edge of Now, a retrospective of Adam Curtis's TV films, to large audiences on New York's Lower East Side. The previous summer, Handsworth Songs (1986), an experimental feature by the Black Audio Film Collective Salman Rushdie had once attacked as obscurantist and politically irrelevant, attracted a huge crowd at Tate Modern when it was screened shortly after the London riots.
Marker, Curtis, Black Audio: all have...
- 8/3/2013
- by Sukhdev Sandhu
- The Guardian - Film News
The writer and king of London psychogeography is curating a season of 70 classic and unusual films throughout his 70th birthday year, presented in cinemas and quirky venues across the capital. Here he explains the project's genesis
Approaching a birthday I had no particular desire to record or commemorate, I was seduced by an enticing offer: the opportunity to nominate 70 films, one for each year survived. The man floating this folly across the table of the Little Georgia restaurant on Hackney's Goldsmith's Row was Paul Smith, underground impresario and secret magus of King Mob, Blast First, Disobey, and other shortlived but potent cultural manifestations. We had some previous, through a series of spoken-word CDs involving Ken Kesey, Charles Bukowski, the Black Panthers, Stewart Home. The CDs existed and I had copies to prove it, but they never really made the transit from warehouse to retail counter. I had performed, under Paul's promotion,...
Approaching a birthday I had no particular desire to record or commemorate, I was seduced by an enticing offer: the opportunity to nominate 70 films, one for each year survived. The man floating this folly across the table of the Little Georgia restaurant on Hackney's Goldsmith's Row was Paul Smith, underground impresario and secret magus of King Mob, Blast First, Disobey, and other shortlived but potent cultural manifestations. We had some previous, through a series of spoken-word CDs involving Ken Kesey, Charles Bukowski, the Black Panthers, Stewart Home. The CDs existed and I had copies to prove it, but they never really made the transit from warehouse to retail counter. I had performed, under Paul's promotion,...
- 7/16/2013
- by Iain Sinclair
- The Guardian - Film News
Underworld's Karl Hyde has made a feature-length documentary about his travels through Essex – here's the first glimpse of the film's trailer
Here's something you don't see every day: Karl Hyde, he of shouty techno act Underworld, has gone off and made a rather moving, artful documentary essay about the Essex borderlands, following the route of the river Roding down to the docks on the Thames estuary. Naturally, the film developed from a record project: Hyde has a solo album, Edgeland, due out next month.
Hyde has got together with director Kieran Evans, who is best known as the co-director of another music-inspired documentary, the Saint-Etienne-scored Finisterre from 2002. (Evans hus just completed his fiction-feature debut, Kelly+ Victor, due out later this year.) They have taken their cue very much from the urban travelogue school of Patrick Keiller and his Robinson films; The Outer Edges is a finely balanced mix of interview,...
Here's something you don't see every day: Karl Hyde, he of shouty techno act Underworld, has gone off and made a rather moving, artful documentary essay about the Essex borderlands, following the route of the river Roding down to the docks on the Thames estuary. Naturally, the film developed from a record project: Hyde has a solo album, Edgeland, due out next month.
Hyde has got together with director Kieran Evans, who is best known as the co-director of another music-inspired documentary, the Saint-Etienne-scored Finisterre from 2002. (Evans hus just completed his fiction-feature debut, Kelly+ Victor, due out later this year.) They have taken their cue very much from the urban travelogue school of Patrick Keiller and his Robinson films; The Outer Edges is a finely balanced mix of interview,...
- 4/2/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
Feature Michael Leader 19 Mar 2013 - 07:00
Michael revisits the 1996 incarnation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, a magical BBC series that was ahead of its time...
Spoiler warning: While this article is about a 17-year old TV programme, it inevitably discusses plot points that are also present in the currently-broadcasting radio drama remake.
“Let me tell you a story. No, wait, one’s not enough. I’ll begin again...”
So reads the back-cover blurb of Neil Gaiman’s 2006 short story anthology Fragile Things, but it’s as apt a beginning as any for an expedition back through the knotted overgrowths of time to the author’s 1996 foray into television: the six-part miniseries Neverwhere.
Now, let’s get this out of the way first: there is no single, true ‘Neverwhere’. Like its signature setting, a semi-mythological, hidden version of London that exists below the streets of Britain’s capital, Neverwhere is a...
Michael revisits the 1996 incarnation of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, a magical BBC series that was ahead of its time...
Spoiler warning: While this article is about a 17-year old TV programme, it inevitably discusses plot points that are also present in the currently-broadcasting radio drama remake.
“Let me tell you a story. No, wait, one’s not enough. I’ll begin again...”
So reads the back-cover blurb of Neil Gaiman’s 2006 short story anthology Fragile Things, but it’s as apt a beginning as any for an expedition back through the knotted overgrowths of time to the author’s 1996 foray into television: the six-part miniseries Neverwhere.
Now, let’s get this out of the way first: there is no single, true ‘Neverwhere’. Like its signature setting, a semi-mythological, hidden version of London that exists below the streets of Britain’s capital, Neverwhere is a...
- 3/18/2013
- by louisamellor
- Den of Geek
It's been called the 'dustbin of London' and the 'armpit of the world' – but there are efforts afoot, on TV and in the country's art galleries, to redeem Essex's reputation
We need to talk about Essex. Surely no county has been so systematically defined and reduced. Simon Heffer's now-infamous Daily Telegraph editorial published in 1990 named the vomiting Thatcherites he encountered at Liverpool Street station as examples of "Essex Man". At around the same time, Chigwell provided the setting for the upwardly mobile prison widows in Birds of a Feather. More recently, of course, there has been Buckhurst Hill and Brentwood's "structured reality" pantomime, The Only Way is Essex. And while Channel 4's Educating Essex, filmed in Harlow, was funny and sensitive, its title seemed to imply that to teach an Essex kid anything was a novel idea.
The fact that Essex is maligned is hardly news. "It has...
We need to talk about Essex. Surely no county has been so systematically defined and reduced. Simon Heffer's now-infamous Daily Telegraph editorial published in 1990 named the vomiting Thatcherites he encountered at Liverpool Street station as examples of "Essex Man". At around the same time, Chigwell provided the setting for the upwardly mobile prison widows in Birds of a Feather. More recently, of course, there has been Buckhurst Hill and Brentwood's "structured reality" pantomime, The Only Way is Essex. And while Channel 4's Educating Essex, filmed in Harlow, was funny and sensitive, its title seemed to imply that to teach an Essex kid anything was a novel idea.
The fact that Essex is maligned is hardly news. "It has...
- 1/24/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
The final offering in our season of British cult classics are two films that take us far into the dark heart of England
The fourth and last of our British cult classics double bills offers two very different, virtually unclassifiable films: Patrick Keiller's London, from 1993, and Christopher Petit's Radio On, released in 1979. Keiller's film, a melancholy homage to the UK capital, resembles a string of animated still photographs, while Petit's is a gloomy, mannered black-and-white road movie that, as its director suggests, is something of a journey into the past as well as across England. Despite their surface dissimilarities, the two films share a dynamic intelligence towards the environment and landscape that surrounds them; both are cinematic pilgrimages through England.
London is perhaps the slightly better known: written and filmed by Keiller, who rather obviously spent considerable amounts of time traipsing around the city with a locked-off camera...
The fourth and last of our British cult classics double bills offers two very different, virtually unclassifiable films: Patrick Keiller's London, from 1993, and Christopher Petit's Radio On, released in 1979. Keiller's film, a melancholy homage to the UK capital, resembles a string of animated still photographs, while Petit's is a gloomy, mannered black-and-white road movie that, as its director suggests, is something of a journey into the past as well as across England. Despite their surface dissimilarities, the two films share a dynamic intelligence towards the environment and landscape that surrounds them; both are cinematic pilgrimages through England.
London is perhaps the slightly better known: written and filmed by Keiller, who rather obviously spent considerable amounts of time traipsing around the city with a locked-off camera...
- 11/30/2012
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
Intrigued by the surrealists' idea of changing a city just by altering the way we look at it, Patrick Keiller turned the camera on London (originally published 31 May 1994)
"Do you know that Zola once lived in Crystal Palace, Rimbaud off Tottenham Court Road?" asks Patrick Keiller , assigning parts of London to dead writers, like a cabbie versed in French Literature. Keiller is the writer/director of a beguiling new film on the capital, called, economically enough, London. Not your bacon rolls and Woodbines fare, his film is rather more concerned with tracing the city's cultural past, especially its French Connection. If this makes the film's brow seem forbiddingly high, don't worry: it soon slips.
This is London seen through the eyes of "an arty Dave Spart", in Keiller's words, a certain Robinson, who drifts through Tesco's distracted by thoughts of Baudelaire. According to the conceit which shapes this film -...
"Do you know that Zola once lived in Crystal Palace, Rimbaud off Tottenham Court Road?" asks Patrick Keiller , assigning parts of London to dead writers, like a cabbie versed in French Literature. Keiller is the writer/director of a beguiling new film on the capital, called, economically enough, London. Not your bacon rolls and Woodbines fare, his film is rather more concerned with tracing the city's cultural past, especially its French Connection. If this makes the film's brow seem forbiddingly high, don't worry: it soon slips.
This is London seen through the eyes of "an arty Dave Spart", in Keiller's words, a certain Robinson, who drifts through Tesco's distracted by thoughts of Baudelaire. According to the conceit which shapes this film -...
- 11/30/2012
- by Robert Yates
- The Guardian - Film News
The avant-garde director's new film is a woozy homage to Homer and gangster movies. He explains his vision
Even with a new film to sell, Guy Maddin is not your standard-issue eager-to-please director. "So many people are baffled," he says, with well-practised irony. "The movie will be crystal-clear upon your third viewing." This is Keyhole, Maddin's ninth full-length film since 1988; and against all the odds it's secured a theatrical release in the UK. Most of Maddin's work simply doesn't get to Britain, so resolutely has he followed his own path.
If you know him at all, it is probably for his ballet film Dracula: Pages from a Virgin Diary, or just possibly My Winnipeg, his heartfelt docu-essay tribute to his Canadian hometown. More energetic cineastes may remember 2003's The Saddest Music in the World, Maddin's most determined shot at the mainstream, an elaborate parody musical starring Isabella Rossellini. The...
Even with a new film to sell, Guy Maddin is not your standard-issue eager-to-please director. "So many people are baffled," he says, with well-practised irony. "The movie will be crystal-clear upon your third viewing." This is Keyhole, Maddin's ninth full-length film since 1988; and against all the odds it's secured a theatrical release in the UK. Most of Maddin's work simply doesn't get to Britain, so resolutely has he followed his own path.
If you know him at all, it is probably for his ballet film Dracula: Pages from a Virgin Diary, or just possibly My Winnipeg, his heartfelt docu-essay tribute to his Canadian hometown. More energetic cineastes may remember 2003's The Saddest Music in the World, Maddin's most determined shot at the mainstream, an elaborate parody musical starring Isabella Rossellini. The...
- 8/30/2012
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
One+One Filmmakers Journal has just released their eighth electronic issue, which is available to download in Pdf format from their website. And, speaking of their website, they’ve also relaunched that with a brand new blog section that will showcase new articles not found in the journal.
(Speaking from the heart here for a second, it pleases Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film to no end to see a quality resource like One+One keep expanding so nicely over such a short period of time.)
Issue #8 of the British electronic zine One+One is somewhat of a response to the recent Diamond Jubilee celebration in England. Instead of honoring the Queen, One+One honors one of the most important films of the British avant-garde: Derek Jarman’s 1978 masterpiece Jubilee.
Contributors James Marcus Tucker, Bradley Tuck and Diarmuid Hester all contribute essays on Jubilee and its impact on cinema.
(Speaking from the heart here for a second, it pleases Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film to no end to see a quality resource like One+One keep expanding so nicely over such a short period of time.)
Issue #8 of the British electronic zine One+One is somewhat of a response to the recent Diamond Jubilee celebration in England. Instead of honoring the Queen, One+One honors one of the most important films of the British avant-garde: Derek Jarman’s 1978 masterpiece Jubilee.
Contributors James Marcus Tucker, Bradley Tuck and Diarmuid Hester all contribute essays on Jubilee and its impact on cinema.
- 8/7/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Cocking a snook at the Olympic torch procession two men have plotted their own epic journey – along the waterways from Hastings to east London in a giant fibreglass swan
'Ahoy there!" shouts film-maker Andrew Kötting to a dredging vessel on the Lee Navigation canal, just outside London's Olympic Park. The man on the boat gives us a grudging wave. Kötting explains that the same man wouldn't let him pass any further up the canal yesterday. Nor would the Gurkhas who guard the Olympic site.
This could have something to do with our mode of transport. I am sitting beside Kötting in a two-person fibreglass pedalo in the shape of a giant swan. Or it could have something to do with my co-pilot: Kötting is wearing mirrored shades and a shabby, dark blue suit on top of a cardigan embroidered with swans. He hasn't washed the suit for the past month,...
'Ahoy there!" shouts film-maker Andrew Kötting to a dredging vessel on the Lee Navigation canal, just outside London's Olympic Park. The man on the boat gives us a grudging wave. Kötting explains that the same man wouldn't let him pass any further up the canal yesterday. Nor would the Gurkhas who guard the Olympic site.
This could have something to do with our mode of transport. I am sitting beside Kötting in a two-person fibreglass pedalo in the shape of a giant swan. Or it could have something to do with my co-pilot: Kötting is wearing mirrored shades and a shabby, dark blue suit on top of a cardigan embroidered with swans. He hasn't washed the suit for the past month,...
- 7/20/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
From Catherine Anyango's graphic novel adaptation
of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
"Heart of Darkness was meant to have been Orson Welles's first film," writes Tim Robey in the Telegraph, "a monumentally ambitious, technically innovative adaptation with which he hoped to shake up the industry. Hollywood took one look at it — and baulked. Written in the late Thirties, Welles's 174-page reimagining of Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella was considered too expensive, too challenging, and the theme of lust for power made the moguls uneasy. So he abandoned the project and embarked on Plan B, a little film called Citizen Kane." This afternoon, "a one-off production is being staged by the Turner Prize nominated artist Fiona Banner and live-streamed around the world from the most apt setting imaginable: a riverboat installation modelled on the Roi des Belges, the vessel Conrad captained on his journey up the Congo in 1890. Scottish actor...
of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
"Heart of Darkness was meant to have been Orson Welles's first film," writes Tim Robey in the Telegraph, "a monumentally ambitious, technically innovative adaptation with which he hoped to shake up the industry. Hollywood took one look at it — and baulked. Written in the late Thirties, Welles's 174-page reimagining of Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella was considered too expensive, too challenging, and the theme of lust for power made the moguls uneasy. So he abandoned the project and embarked on Plan B, a little film called Citizen Kane." This afternoon, "a one-off production is being staged by the Turner Prize nominated artist Fiona Banner and live-streamed around the world from the most apt setting imaginable: a riverboat installation modelled on the Roi des Belges, the vessel Conrad captained on his journey up the Congo in 1890. Scottish actor...
- 3/31/2012
- MUBI
If the Costa Concordia, which ran aground off the west coast of Italy last night, looks familiar to you, it's likely that it's because it's the cruise ship that's the setting for the first movement of Jean-Luc Godard's Film socialisme ("It's less a tourist cruise than an international summit of bastards," wrote David Phelps in June). The accident, which cost the lives of three people and injured many more (and around 40 of the 4000 passengers are still missing), occurred on the same evening that a rogue vigilante group going by the name of Standard and Poor's downgraded the credit ratings of nine eurozone countries.
Which brings us to our first set of DVDs. A Forum topic on Artificial Eye's release of its Theo Angelopoulos Collection has been rumbling along for half a year now and, with the third volume coming out next month, David Jenkins has a good long...
Which brings us to our first set of DVDs. A Forum topic on Artificial Eye's release of its Theo Angelopoulos Collection has been rumbling along for half a year now and, with the third volume coming out next month, David Jenkins has a good long...
- 1/14/2012
- MUBI
On the eve of the release of his most personal film to date, This Our Still Life, the avant garde director talks to Sukhdev Sandhu
"Central heating is my biggest enemy," declares the film-maker Andrew Kötting. "I'm not a big fan of double glazing. Or the Shopping Channel. Or sweet-smelling perfumes. Vanilla living is always something that makes me physically sick." He pauses for thought. "Actually, the biggest enemy is often myself. I get angry with the voices in my head: I want to shut them up."
Coming from any other director, these words could easily sound abrasive or disturbing. From Kötting, they're absolutely normal, almost reassuring. In 2001, he issued a Dogme 95-inspired manifesto entitled eArthouse Declaration of Spurious Intent that not only urged "All film-makers to have spent time with their arms or feet inside another sentient being, alive or dead", but also that "The film should show signs...
"Central heating is my biggest enemy," declares the film-maker Andrew Kötting. "I'm not a big fan of double glazing. Or the Shopping Channel. Or sweet-smelling perfumes. Vanilla living is always something that makes me physically sick." He pauses for thought. "Actually, the biggest enemy is often myself. I get angry with the voices in my head: I want to shut them up."
Coming from any other director, these words could easily sound abrasive or disturbing. From Kötting, they're absolutely normal, almost reassuring. In 2001, he issued a Dogme 95-inspired manifesto entitled eArthouse Declaration of Spurious Intent that not only urged "All film-makers to have spent time with their arms or feet inside another sentient being, alive or dead", but also that "The film should show signs...
- 11/19/2011
- by Sukhdev Sandhu
- The Guardian - Film News
Few in the UK film industry want to shout about it but the evidence is clear. We are enjoying a renaissance in domestic cinema. Andrew Pulver reports on how audiences developed a taste for homegrown movies
Compared to theatre, cinema is an entirely portable medium – think what our view of film would be like if all we saw were British movies, with occasional touring productions of foreign work. No Hollywood blockbusters, no Korean ultra-violence, no Iranian minimalism. Nothing old, either – no Italian neorealism, or Czech new wave, or French poetic realism. Imagine what life for the British filmgoer would have been like, say, in 1978 – the highlight of your year would probably have been Death on the Nile, or Watership Down. And let's not forget the dark days of 1999 and 2000, when this paper felt compelled to trash the jaw-dropping wave of terrible British films in the wake of the lottery-fund bonanza.
Compared to theatre, cinema is an entirely portable medium – think what our view of film would be like if all we saw were British movies, with occasional touring productions of foreign work. No Hollywood blockbusters, no Korean ultra-violence, no Iranian minimalism. Nothing old, either – no Italian neorealism, or Czech new wave, or French poetic realism. Imagine what life for the British filmgoer would have been like, say, in 1978 – the highlight of your year would probably have been Death on the Nile, or Watership Down. And let's not forget the dark days of 1999 and 2000, when this paper felt compelled to trash the jaw-dropping wave of terrible British films in the wake of the lottery-fund bonanza.
- 10/14/2011
- by Andrew Pulver
- The Guardian - Film News
Patrick Keiller's video at Tate Britain is hardly a surprise – he's an arty director. But where are all the mainstream film-makers?
Patrick Keiller, poetical and meandering independent director of such films as London and Robinson in Space, is to create an installation at Tate Britain. He joins an elite of cinematic auteurs, including Peter Greenaway and Atom Egoyan, who have crossed the line from showing in cinemas to showing in museums – in Egoyan's case in London's abandoned Museum of Mankind several years before it became the Haunch of Venison gallery.
Keiller makes complete sense for such a commission. But does he, in fact, make too much sense in this context? Like Greenaway, who has found it natural to translate his deconstructive interest in images into installations that interpret great paintings such as The Last Supper, Keiller is – well, he's arty. His meditations are not far from video art and have surely influenced it.
Patrick Keiller, poetical and meandering independent director of such films as London and Robinson in Space, is to create an installation at Tate Britain. He joins an elite of cinematic auteurs, including Peter Greenaway and Atom Egoyan, who have crossed the line from showing in cinemas to showing in museums – in Egoyan's case in London's abandoned Museum of Mankind several years before it became the Haunch of Venison gallery.
Keiller makes complete sense for such a commission. But does he, in fact, make too much sense in this context? Like Greenaway, who has found it natural to translate his deconstructive interest in images into installations that interpret great paintings such as The Last Supper, Keiller is – well, he's arty. His meditations are not far from video art and have surely influenced it.
- 7/29/2011
- by Jonathan Jones
- The Guardian - Film News
Avant garde artist and film-maker chosen to fill central space in Duveen galleries during Olympic year
Patrick Keiller, the avant garde artist and film-maker best known for his three Robinson films, has been chosen to fill the central space of Tate Britain during Olympic year.
Keiller will create an installation for the grand, neoclassical Duveen galleries in what is now an annual commission. Previous artists to fill the space include Fiona Banner last year with her decommissioned fighter planes and Martin Creed in 2008 with his runners.
Keiller's third Robinson film, Robinson in Ruins, with Vanessa Redgrave as the narrator, premiered at the Venice film festival last year.
Keiller has something of a devoted following for his films, which examine the state of Britain and feature the eccentric aesthete Robinson wandering around England looking at everything from the banking crisis to Lidl.
Tate Britain director, Penelope Curtis, said: "Patrick Keiller's...
Patrick Keiller, the avant garde artist and film-maker best known for his three Robinson films, has been chosen to fill the central space of Tate Britain during Olympic year.
Keiller will create an installation for the grand, neoclassical Duveen galleries in what is now an annual commission. Previous artists to fill the space include Fiona Banner last year with her decommissioned fighter planes and Martin Creed in 2008 with his runners.
Keiller's third Robinson film, Robinson in Ruins, with Vanessa Redgrave as the narrator, premiered at the Venice film festival last year.
Keiller has something of a devoted following for his films, which examine the state of Britain and feature the eccentric aesthete Robinson wandering around England looking at everything from the banking crisis to Lidl.
Tate Britain director, Penelope Curtis, said: "Patrick Keiller's...
- 7/28/2011
- by Mark Brown
- The Guardian - Film News
Iain Sinclair and Chris Petit's film installation, Flying Down to Rio, takes the viewer on a journey via a wall-to-wall simulated drive
An installation taking up four walls and 16 frames, simulating a car driving north from Dalston Junction, with cameras mounted left, right, fore and aft, Flying Down to Rio itself marks the convergence of two paths, reuniting Iain Sinclair and Chris Petit. Petit's fascination with the view from the dashboard dates back to the 1970s. "Music and speed, combined with the ratio of the windscreen, made for an experience that was often more cinematic than the films I had to review for Time Out," he has said; and his debut film Radio On (1979) contained a cherished driving sequence shot on the Westway, in tribute to Jg Ballard's Crash and Concrete Island, and soundtracked by David Bowie.
Over the decades, through London Orbital (2002), also made with Sinclair, and Content (2009), the windscreen shots have proliferated,...
An installation taking up four walls and 16 frames, simulating a car driving north from Dalston Junction, with cameras mounted left, right, fore and aft, Flying Down to Rio itself marks the convergence of two paths, reuniting Iain Sinclair and Chris Petit. Petit's fascination with the view from the dashboard dates back to the 1970s. "Music and speed, combined with the ratio of the windscreen, made for an experience that was often more cinematic than the films I had to review for Time Out," he has said; and his debut film Radio On (1979) contained a cherished driving sequence shot on the Westway, in tribute to Jg Ballard's Crash and Concrete Island, and soundtracked by David Bowie.
Over the decades, through London Orbital (2002), also made with Sinclair, and Content (2009), the windscreen shots have proliferated,...
- 7/20/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
Similar to the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes, or the Visions and Vanguard programmes at Tiff, Venice has their own special sidebar for the more experimental folk on the cinema stage, called Orizzonti (Horizons). Last year saw some pretty heavy titles in this section, including Catherine Breillat's dream fable Sleeping Beauty, José Luis Guerín's local colour doc Guest, Hong Sang-soo's quadrant-structured Oki's Movie, and Patrick Keiller's continuation of his heady essay films with Robinson in Ruins. The full announcement for this year's edition will be dropping in the coming weeks, but today saw the unveiling of the jury, as well as their opening film, which will be Iranian filmmaker Amir Nedari's Cut. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose masterful and lethargic Syndromes and Century played in the 2006 main competition, had already been crowned jury prez some four weeks ago, but has been forced to drop out for unspecified reasons (let's hope...
- 7/13/2011
- IONCINEMA.com
This week’s Must Read: While I’m not familiar with the films of Winnipeg director Winston Moxam, he sadly passed away very young back in April. Cineflyer has a round-up of articles and reviews about Moxam’s last feature film, Billy, which just opened in the filmmaker’s hometown. Plus, Randall King of the Winnipeg Free Press gave the film a glowing review.Battle for Brooklyn opened in NYC this week, so the New York Times published a semi-positive review by Neil Genzlinger. On the one hand Neil had some good things to say and the paper made the film a Critics Pick for the week, but way too brief reviews of very powerful movies like this always make me sad.Australia’s Beat magazine profiled Richard Wolstencroft about his latest venture, the just ended genre film festival Bloodfest Fantastique.Filmmaker Nathan Wrann has started a new Tumblr blog...
- 6/19/2011
- 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
<p><img align="middle" src="http://i249.photobucket.com/albums/gg220/donpayasos/Kobayashi/vlcsnap-825451.png" alt="l" width="500" /></p> <p>In the dying years of the last century, Patrick Keiller was Britain's leading cinematic psychogeographer, mapping the unconscious impulses of the English cityscape in two remarkable feature films, <i>London</i> (1994) and <i>Robinson in Space</i> (1997). Both films were supported by the British Film Institute, before it stopped supporting the production of actual films. As state support for the arts dwindled in Britain, becoming more and more driven by the desire to pursue commercial success at the expense of artistic creativity (as if the two should always be considered polar opposites), Keiller seemed to fall silent, like that other great BFI beneficiary, Terence Davies.</p> <p>But now, rather astonishingly, he's back! <i>Robinson in Ruins</i> (2010) will continue the peregrinations of the fictitious lecturer and flaneur, although with the passing of Sir Paul Scofield, the film's narrator has undergone a change of identity and will now be embodied, or rather disembodied, by Vanessa Redgrave.</p> <p>Such a...
- 12/2/2010
- MUBI
In the week in which Harry Potter broke five UK box office records, we bring you all the stats, and any other film-related news we can, as relief from wall-to-wall wizardry
The big story
The trouble with Harry is that he's just everywhere. The seventh instalment in the boy wizard's adventures, the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, finally hit cinemas last Friday. By Monday it was clear writers the world over were going to have to dust off that "audiences have fallen under his spell" cliche yet again. So, let's keep this brief: it broke five records this side of the pond, another couple in the States. For more details, try Charles Gant's UK box office analysis and Jeremy Kay's Hollywood report. And if you want to discuss whether or not it revives the sequel as a format, check out David Cox's blog. Last Friday, too, James Russell wrote a...
The big story
The trouble with Harry is that he's just everywhere. The seventh instalment in the boy wizard's adventures, the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, finally hit cinemas last Friday. By Monday it was clear writers the world over were going to have to dust off that "audiences have fallen under his spell" cliche yet again. So, let's keep this brief: it broke five records this side of the pond, another couple in the States. For more details, try Charles Gant's UK box office analysis and Jeremy Kay's Hollywood report. And if you want to discuss whether or not it revives the sequel as a format, check out David Cox's blog. Last Friday, too, James Russell wrote a...
- 11/26/2010
- The Guardian - Film News
In the mid-90s the architect Patrick Keiller established himself as one of Britain's best independent film-makers with two uniquely personal films, London and Robinson in Space. Their narrator, Paul Scofield, purported to have travelled around London and other parts of the UK with his friend Robinson, a gay, leftwing academic, commenting upon the seen world and what lies beneath. Orwell, Baudrillard, Bill Bryson, Stuart Hall, Ian Nairn and Iain Sinclair come to mind as comparably acute social observers. Keiller's welcome new film rediscovers Robinson, or rather a notebook and some cans of film that he had left in his suburban Oxford squat after having emerged from a spell in jail for unspecified anarchic activities in early 2008. They record his suave, erudite, epigrammatic peregrinations around Oxfordshire and Berkshire as the world economic collapse of that year took place around him.
He visits ghost towns, deserted Us bases, the place were Dr David Kelly committed suicide,...
He visits ghost towns, deserted Us bases, the place were Dr David Kelly committed suicide,...
- 11/21/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (12A)
(Apitchatpong Weerasethakul, 2010, Thai/UK/Fra/Spa/Ger/Neth) Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee. 113 mins
Not for nothing was this dubbed "Uncle bong hit" when it took the top prize at Cannes this year. With its non-linear plot and fantastical elements – ghosts, ape-men, talking catfish, etc – woven into a story of a dying farmer in modern-day Thailand, it sounds like a far-out 1960s head-trip. But in reality (if that's the right word), it's a calm, sensual, captivating daydream of a movie that wears its weirdness without affectation. It makes the world feel like a rich and mysterious place. More of a natural high, then.
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part I (12A)
(David Yates, 2010, UK/Us) Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint. 146 mins
Given the choice between giving their audience a treat and milking them as much as possible,...
(Apitchatpong Weerasethakul, 2010, Thai/UK/Fra/Spa/Ger/Neth) Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee. 113 mins
Not for nothing was this dubbed "Uncle bong hit" when it took the top prize at Cannes this year. With its non-linear plot and fantastical elements – ghosts, ape-men, talking catfish, etc – woven into a story of a dying farmer in modern-day Thailand, it sounds like a far-out 1960s head-trip. But in reality (if that's the right word), it's a calm, sensual, captivating daydream of a movie that wears its weirdness without affectation. It makes the world feel like a rich and mysterious place. More of a natural high, then.
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part I (12A)
(David Yates, 2010, UK/Us) Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint. 146 mins
Given the choice between giving their audience a treat and milking them as much as possible,...
- 11/20/2010
- by The guide
- The Guardian - Film News
Zipangu Fest, London
When it comes to off-the-scale weirdness, Japan comes out on top. And as the name suggests, it's that side of the nation's cinema this inaugural festival celebrates, with a menu of cult/indie/exploitation film, animation, and outsider documentary and other oddities. Where else will you find naked hippies on motorbikes (music doc Rock Tanjo: The Movement 70s); cartoons about lecherous carnival freaks (Midori: The Girl In The Freakshow); a transgender performer dressed as a giant bouquet of flowers (documentary Pyuupiru 2001-2008); and a kick-ass squad of mutant girls (er, Mutant Girl Squad). Indie movement leader Tetsuaki Matsue, meanwhile, introduces his amazing one-take street music documentary, Live Tape.
Various venues, Tue to 28 Nov
ID Fest, Derby
What makes a person English? What makes a person a person? Are English people people? These and other questions might be answered at this new festival exploring identity (exclusively English identity...
When it comes to off-the-scale weirdness, Japan comes out on top. And as the name suggests, it's that side of the nation's cinema this inaugural festival celebrates, with a menu of cult/indie/exploitation film, animation, and outsider documentary and other oddities. Where else will you find naked hippies on motorbikes (music doc Rock Tanjo: The Movement 70s); cartoons about lecherous carnival freaks (Midori: The Girl In The Freakshow); a transgender performer dressed as a giant bouquet of flowers (documentary Pyuupiru 2001-2008); and a kick-ass squad of mutant girls (er, Mutant Girl Squad). Indie movement leader Tetsuaki Matsue, meanwhile, introduces his amazing one-take street music documentary, Live Tape.
Various venues, Tue to 28 Nov
ID Fest, Derby
What makes a person English? What makes a person a person? Are English people people? These and other questions might be answered at this new festival exploring identity (exclusively English identity...
- 11/20/2010
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Brian Dillon hails the return of Patrick Keiller's Robinson in a film about the conundrum of the countryside
The opening sentence of Patrick Keiller's new film, voiced with laconic precision and italic irony by Vanessa Redgrave, is calculated to quicken the hearts of admirers of Keiller's enigmatic oeuvre: "When a man named Robinson was released from Edgecote open prison, he made his way to the nearest city and looked for somewhere to haunt." Robinson in Ruins is the third of Keiller's feature-length essay-fictions to deposit his eccentric protagonist among the relics of millennial England, where he functions once more as the comically half-deluded conduit for the director's own brand of visionary scholarship. As a fictional invention, the autodidact aesthete Robinson, whom we only ever encounter via the films' narrators' vexed relations with him, is an absurd sort of wraith, tricked up from reminders of Defoe and Céline, but...
The opening sentence of Patrick Keiller's new film, voiced with laconic precision and italic irony by Vanessa Redgrave, is calculated to quicken the hearts of admirers of Keiller's enigmatic oeuvre: "When a man named Robinson was released from Edgecote open prison, he made his way to the nearest city and looked for somewhere to haunt." Robinson in Ruins is the third of Keiller's feature-length essay-fictions to deposit his eccentric protagonist among the relics of millennial England, where he functions once more as the comically half-deluded conduit for the director's own brand of visionary scholarship. As a fictional invention, the autodidact aesthete Robinson, whom we only ever encounter via the films' narrators' vexed relations with him, is an absurd sort of wraith, tricked up from reminders of Defoe and Céline, but...
- 11/20/2010
- by Brian Dillon
- The Guardian - Film News
Vanessa Redgrave narrates Patrick Keiller's latest state-of-the nation documentary
Patrick Keiller's calm cine-essay imagines occult traces of human dissent discernible in the English landscape where uprisings occurred decades or centuries before. It has the appearance of psycho-geography – a now rather familiar literary mannerism – but without any florid showiness. Its overt fiction is the notion that this piece was filmed by Keiller's alter-ego, "Robinson" – a mysterious, itinerant observer from the social margins – and that the movie which we are watching has been reconstructed from 19 cans of film and a notebook recovered from a burnt-out caravan. That is a rather affected conceit, given the pin-sharp, super-high quality of the images, which have been professionally composed and shot with such care. Vanessa Redgrave narrates, and Keiller's commentary takes us across the countryside of Berkshire and Oxfordshire, ruminating upon topics as diverse, and yet politically and geographically related, as the Greenham Common missile sites,...
Patrick Keiller's calm cine-essay imagines occult traces of human dissent discernible in the English landscape where uprisings occurred decades or centuries before. It has the appearance of psycho-geography – a now rather familiar literary mannerism – but without any florid showiness. Its overt fiction is the notion that this piece was filmed by Keiller's alter-ego, "Robinson" – a mysterious, itinerant observer from the social margins – and that the movie which we are watching has been reconstructed from 19 cans of film and a notebook recovered from a burnt-out caravan. That is a rather affected conceit, given the pin-sharp, super-high quality of the images, which have been professionally composed and shot with such care. Vanessa Redgrave narrates, and Keiller's commentary takes us across the countryside of Berkshire and Oxfordshire, ruminating upon topics as diverse, and yet politically and geographically related, as the Greenham Common missile sites,...
- 11/18/2010
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Welcome to the third Guardian film newsletter. This week we've been mad about the boys: Harry Potter, Peeping Tom and Uncle Boonmee
The big story
It was all about Harry Potter this week; from the UK premiere to the first official review. Even David Cameron went a little Potty, urging UK film-makers to try and emulate the boy wizard's lucractive formula (if they wanted to benefit from state funding). Many of you were appalled by the Prime Minister's statement on Wednesday that British films should aim to make money and lure tourists to our country; others thought he had a point; a few were amused. Earlier today, Stuart Heritage imagined a world in which Cameron's vision had come to fruition (readers with a Danny Dyer allergy shouldn't click this link). In other Harry Potter-related news this week; studios on both sides of the pond dealt with the consequences of being...
The big story
It was all about Harry Potter this week; from the UK premiere to the first official review. Even David Cameron went a little Potty, urging UK film-makers to try and emulate the boy wizard's lucractive formula (if they wanted to benefit from state funding). Many of you were appalled by the Prime Minister's statement on Wednesday that British films should aim to make money and lure tourists to our country; others thought he had a point; a few were amused. Earlier today, Stuart Heritage imagined a world in which Cameron's vision had come to fruition (readers with a Danny Dyer allergy shouldn't click this link). In other Harry Potter-related news this week; studios on both sides of the pond dealt with the consequences of being...
- 11/18/2010
- The Guardian - Film News
We Are What We Are (15)
(Jorge Michel Grau, 2010, Mexico) Francisco Barreiro, Alan Chávez, Paulina Gaitán, Carmen Beato. 90 mins
Vampires are so last season, so bring on the cannibals! Why get a shake when you can have a whole Happy Meal? The cannibal lifestyle is by no means glamourised here, but if there is a revival, this could be its Let The Right One In - a downbeat, realist horror in which a father's death forces his flesh-eating family to fend for themselves. We're in for nasty gore and a grimy wallow in Mexico's underclass, but despite a frustrating lack of detail, the setting is ripe for socio-political metaphors and inappropriate comedy.
brilliantlove (18)
(Ashley Horner, 2009, UK) 97 mins
You can tell by that lower-case title how envolope-pushingly edgy this wants to be. And sure enough there's strong sex and hipster protagonists named Manchester and Noon. At heart, though, it's a natural, unashamed...
(Jorge Michel Grau, 2010, Mexico) Francisco Barreiro, Alan Chávez, Paulina Gaitán, Carmen Beato. 90 mins
Vampires are so last season, so bring on the cannibals! Why get a shake when you can have a whole Happy Meal? The cannibal lifestyle is by no means glamourised here, but if there is a revival, this could be its Let The Right One In - a downbeat, realist horror in which a father's death forces his flesh-eating family to fend for themselves. We're in for nasty gore and a grimy wallow in Mexico's underclass, but despite a frustrating lack of detail, the setting is ripe for socio-political metaphors and inappropriate comedy.
brilliantlove (18)
(Ashley Horner, 2009, UK) 97 mins
You can tell by that lower-case title how envolope-pushingly edgy this wants to be. And sure enough there's strong sex and hipster protagonists named Manchester and Noon. At heart, though, it's a natural, unashamed...
- 11/13/2010
- by The guide
- The Guardian - Film News
After a 13-year silence, the film-maker is back with Robinson in Ruins, the latest in a subversive series about British society
Patrick Keiller has perfect timing. Like an expert ghost carrying out a particularly good haunting, it seems only fitting that the maker of some of British cinema's most wryly subversive documentaries would re-emerge now, at one of the more interesting junctures of modern history. The vehicle is Robinson in Ruins, the third film in a loosely-bound series of glorious square pegs, made over a period of almost 20 years. The films are united by their role as dense, free associative wanderings through the stuff of British life and by their protagonist, Robinson, perhaps the only hero in film to be neither heard nor seen in any of his movies.
A new film from Keiller would mean a celebration round my way at any time. But there is a special pleasure in remaking his acquaintance now.
Patrick Keiller has perfect timing. Like an expert ghost carrying out a particularly good haunting, it seems only fitting that the maker of some of British cinema's most wryly subversive documentaries would re-emerge now, at one of the more interesting junctures of modern history. The vehicle is Robinson in Ruins, the third film in a loosely-bound series of glorious square pegs, made over a period of almost 20 years. The films are united by their role as dense, free associative wanderings through the stuff of British life and by their protagonist, Robinson, perhaps the only hero in film to be neither heard nor seen in any of his movies.
A new film from Keiller would mean a celebration round my way at any time. But there is a special pleasure in remaking his acquaintance now.
- 11/5/2010
- by Danny Leigh
- The Guardian - Film News
Welcome to the second Guardian film newsletter. This week, Mike Leigh was in the house, and he wasn't taking any prisoners
Taking dictation from Mike Leigh, against the clock and on an unfamiliar keyboard, is not for the faint hearted. The director came in on Wednesday to answer questions you'd posted on the blog the day before. After cheese sandwiches and black tea, he read out his responses calmly, requesting precisely how many question or exclamation marks he wanted (though spelling and grammar was left to us … not always the best idea).
So, how did he go down? Well, some of you found his approach refreshingly rebarbative. Others thought it belied an over-sensitivity to criticism. I thought he was terrific, and especially liked his thoughts on the crop circles of Wiltshire.
In the news
• Who you gonna call back? Ghostbusters 3 has been greenlit
• The Asa has banned a rather...
Taking dictation from Mike Leigh, against the clock and on an unfamiliar keyboard, is not for the faint hearted. The director came in on Wednesday to answer questions you'd posted on the blog the day before. After cheese sandwiches and black tea, he read out his responses calmly, requesting precisely how many question or exclamation marks he wanted (though spelling and grammar was left to us … not always the best idea).
So, how did he go down? Well, some of you found his approach refreshingly rebarbative. Others thought it belied an over-sensitivity to criticism. I thought he was terrific, and especially liked his thoughts on the crop circles of Wiltshire.
In the news
• Who you gonna call back? Ghostbusters 3 has been greenlit
• The Asa has banned a rather...
- 11/4/2010
- The Guardian - Film News
Robinson In Ruins
Narrated by Vanessa Redgrave | Written and Directed by Patrick Keiller
‘Cinema essayist’ Patrick Keiller (pictured above) returns with Robinson in Ruins, which claims to be a found-footage film made by the titular scholar Robinson and narrated by Vanessa Redgraves in which our hero, to quote the Lff programme, ‘…believing he can communicate with a network of non-human intelligence, and wanting to investigate the possibility of ‘life’s survival on the planet’, … travels to sites of scientific and historical interest, exploring the development of capitalism since the 16th century, and moments and movements of resistance’. Keiller looks to such topics as literature, politics, the financial crisis, mass extinction and philosophy in his essay, which is narrated over images of the English countryside.
Frankly, it’s a total mess. For an essay, there is no distinct hypothesis (what does he mean exactly by ‘life’s survival on the planet...
Narrated by Vanessa Redgrave | Written and Directed by Patrick Keiller
‘Cinema essayist’ Patrick Keiller (pictured above) returns with Robinson in Ruins, which claims to be a found-footage film made by the titular scholar Robinson and narrated by Vanessa Redgraves in which our hero, to quote the Lff programme, ‘…believing he can communicate with a network of non-human intelligence, and wanting to investigate the possibility of ‘life’s survival on the planet’, … travels to sites of scientific and historical interest, exploring the development of capitalism since the 16th century, and moments and movements of resistance’. Keiller looks to such topics as literature, politics, the financial crisis, mass extinction and philosophy in his essay, which is narrated over images of the English countryside.
Frankly, it’s a total mess. For an essay, there is no distinct hypothesis (what does he mean exactly by ‘life’s survival on the planet...
- 10/17/2010
- by Jack Kirby
- Nerdly
A combination of poem and polemic. An obituary of a society that never had it better. Director Patrick Keiller.s latest installment by the mysterious urban hermit Robinson is a wolf in sheep.s clothing. It meanders throughout a variety of left over infrastructures that all point to various aspects of a failed 20th century global society. The narrator (Vanessa Redgrave) describes the accidental discovery of a diary and a couple dozen reels of film by the prolific Robinson who maintained them in the course of his vigil in the southern English countryside. She and the audience review the contents and attempt to come to some conclusion about the message contained therein. The film starts with the mystery of the abandoned...
- 10/8/2010
- by Ron Wilkinson
- Monsters and Critics
"Robinson in Ruins, the latest essay film/experimental landscape study/cinematic state-of-the-union address from the great British avant-gardist Patrick Keiller, is many things," begins Michael Sicinski in Cinema Scope. "It's the conclusion to a trilogy that even most hardcore cinephiles may not have known was in progress. It's the articulation of a failed politics of 'dwelling' and landscape use in the United Kingdom, presented with a detailed historicization that, on first viewing, is nothing short of intimidating. It's a plangent near-elegy (but not without a glimmer of utopian hope) for a spark of unconventional intellectual inquiry, quashed by the technocrats of New Labour and soon to be wiped off the map by Cameron's Big Society. But above all, this is the death knell, or so it seems, for a man called Robinson."...
- 10/5/2010
- MUBI
• In Hong Sang-soo’s Oki’s Movie you always know the temperature outside because of the clothing people are wearing. It’s so cold that no one takes off their parkas and scarves inside; in fact, everyone seems to wear the same clothing inside and out—it's that damn cold. A real mark, too, to the warmth felt in the unusually chaste (for Hong) sex scene between Lee Sun-kyun (who plays a promising young filmmaker) and Jung Yumi (who plays the titular Oki, in one of the best female performances in a Hong film), a simple little close up of two bodies cradling one another in bed. The “warmth” is not one of tone but of temperature: the previous shot was of a freezing Lee having spent the night outside Jung's apartment (in his parka of course). Jump cut to them nude in bed under the covers and you’ll feel warm too.
- 9/30/2010
- MUBI
Robinson in Ruins is the third in a trilogy of landscape essays from Patrick Keiller, the previous two being London (1994) and Robinson in Space (1997). They all feature a first person camera and narration with a false history, and stories about a fictional character named Robinson. Keiller had no intention of creating a series, but just kept wanting to revisit the experience. The best part of these films is the cinematography—which is beautiful. Everything is static, and the compositions are all like paintings. Some are landscapes, some are close-up studies of, in the case of one particular highlight of Ruins, a bee gathering honey. Keiller discussed his process afterwards, explaining that he works with a “recipe” or “itinerary” more than a script per se. The first two films had very specific “recipes,” with this one being looser, “less ground in more detail.” The camera subjects are identified beforehand, then they go out and shoot.
- 9/30/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
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