Cruise. Criterion. Just a matter of time, really, until the world’s premier movie star made his way into the collection. Smart money might not have been on Paul Brickman’s Risky Business, a great film mostly known for one or two sequences but which will now be seen in 4K when released this July, a month that brings 2,160-pixel releases for Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (featuring an essay from the great novelist Steve Erickson), Perfect Days, Farewell My Concubine, and the stunning-looking Le Samouraï restoration.
Don’t sleep, however, on maybe the best film to get a release in July: Glauber Rocha’s Cinema Novo masterpiece Black God, White Devil, which recently received a 4K restoration that looks so good I envy anybody who saw it for the first time like so.
Find artwork below and more details at Criterion:
The post The Criterion Collection’s July...
Don’t sleep, however, on maybe the best film to get a release in July: Glauber Rocha’s Cinema Novo masterpiece Black God, White Devil, which recently received a 4K restoration that looks so good I envy anybody who saw it for the first time like so.
Find artwork below and more details at Criterion:
The post The Criterion Collection’s July...
- 4/15/2024
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
NYC Weekend Watch: World Cinema Project, Peeping Tom, The Long Day Closes, the Before Trilogy & More
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Anthology Film Archives
The films of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project are screening, while a Jean Cocteau program runs in Essential Cinema.
Film Forum
Michael Powell’s career-killing masterwork Peeping Tom plays in a long-overdue restoration, while Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil continues; “Hitchcock’s ’50s” runs through arguably the director’s greatest decade; Kirikou and the Sorceress plays this Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
Reverse Shot celebrates its 20th anniversary with a months-long programming run, continuing this weekend with the Before trilogy on 35mm and Feast of the Epiphany; prints of They Live and Holiday show this weekend.
Roxy Cinema
The Josh Safdie-presented The Gods of Times Square plays on Sunday, while The Long Day Closes and Dogtooth show on 35mm; “City Dudes” returns on Saturday.
IFC Center
Distant Voices, Still Lives continues its run while Ocean’s Twelve,...
Anthology Film Archives
The films of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project are screening, while a Jean Cocteau program runs in Essential Cinema.
Film Forum
Michael Powell’s career-killing masterwork Peeping Tom plays in a long-overdue restoration, while Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil continues; “Hitchcock’s ’50s” runs through arguably the director’s greatest decade; Kirikou and the Sorceress plays this Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
Reverse Shot celebrates its 20th anniversary with a months-long programming run, continuing this weekend with the Before trilogy on 35mm and Feast of the Epiphany; prints of They Live and Holiday show this weekend.
Roxy Cinema
The Josh Safdie-presented The Gods of Times Square plays on Sunday, while The Long Day Closes and Dogtooth show on 35mm; “City Dudes” returns on Saturday.
IFC Center
Distant Voices, Still Lives continues its run while Ocean’s Twelve,...
- 11/24/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Taking a cue from the genre-melding impulse of the music at its heart, They Shot the Piano Player initially gives every appearance of being pure fiction. The plot of this animated film by Spanish directors Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba follows Jeff Harris (voiced by Jeff Goldblum), a journalist from New York City who’s been commissioned to write a book on bossa nova. Immersing himself in the music in preparation for a trip to Rio de Janeiro, he hears a solo by Brazilian jazz pianist Francisco Tenorio Jr. and gets sidetracked. The innovator of samba jazz, it turns out, disappeared under suspicious circumstances in Buenos Aires just before the 1976 military coup, and Jeff decides to fill in the blanks.
The setup, then, has all the trappings of a detective story, with an amateur sleuth in obsessive pursuit of an unsolved mystery. In Rio, Jeff’s friend João (Tony Ramos...
The setup, then, has all the trappings of a detective story, with an amateur sleuth in obsessive pursuit of an unsolved mystery. In Rio, Jeff’s friend João (Tony Ramos...
- 11/20/2023
- by William Repass
- Slant Magazine
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Film Forum
Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil begins playing in a 4K restoration; “Hitchcock’s ’50s” runs through arguably the director’s greatest decade. the Farewell My Concubine restoration continues while Summer Stock plays on 35mm this Sunday.
Anthology Film Archives
Paul Vecchiali’s classic-in-waiting The Strangler is playing in a new restoration, while the films of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project are screening.
Roxy Cinema
The Josh Safdie-presented The Gods of Times Square begins a run, while The Untouchables and The Mission show on 35mm.
IFC Center
Distant Voices, Still Lives begins a run while The Exorcist, Battle Royale, Desperado, and a print of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 play on 35mm; Oldboy screens in a new restoration.
Museum of the Moving Image
Reverse Shot celebrates its 20th anniversary with a months-long programming run,...
Film Forum
Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil begins playing in a 4K restoration; “Hitchcock’s ’50s” runs through arguably the director’s greatest decade. the Farewell My Concubine restoration continues while Summer Stock plays on 35mm this Sunday.
Anthology Film Archives
Paul Vecchiali’s classic-in-waiting The Strangler is playing in a new restoration, while the films of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project are screening.
Roxy Cinema
The Josh Safdie-presented The Gods of Times Square begins a run, while The Untouchables and The Mission show on 35mm.
IFC Center
Distant Voices, Still Lives begins a run while The Exorcist, Battle Royale, Desperado, and a print of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 play on 35mm; Oldboy screens in a new restoration.
Museum of the Moving Image
Reverse Shot celebrates its 20th anniversary with a months-long programming run,...
- 11/16/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
The first installment in a loose trilogy that includes 1967’s Entranced Earth and 1969’s Antonio das Mortes, Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil nonetheless stands alone as a benchmark for the difference between polemic and propaganda. If Rocha’s Italian contemporaries Sergio Corbucci and Damiano Damiani devised the Zapata western to turn the traditional western inside out—critiquing rather than valorizing imperialism—then Black God, White Devil might be called a Lampião western, after the folk hero of Brazilian social banditry who casts a long shadow over the film. More than allegorizing third-world revolutionary and decolonial struggles, Rocha stages a mythmaking intervention into Brazilian history.
As its English title suggests, Black God, White Devil is a film of two halves, each of which slots into a separate western subgenre, and could probably satisfy as a film in its own right. Taken as a whole, though, the film incites a...
As its English title suggests, Black God, White Devil is a film of two halves, each of which slots into a separate western subgenre, and could probably satisfy as a film in its own right. Taken as a whole, though, the film incites a...
- 11/13/2023
- by William Repass
- Slant Magazine
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Museum of the Moving Image
Reverse Shot celebrates its 20th anniversary with a months-long programming run, continuing this weekend with The Tree of Life, Everyone Else, and 35 Shots on Rum on 35mm, while A Hidden Life also screens; James and the Giant Peach plays in a Roald Dahl series with Matilda; a print of Bringing Up Baby shows on 35mm this Friday and Sunday.
Film Forum
“50 from the ’50s” continues with films by Welles, Kazan, Kubrick, and many more, while “Hitchcock’s ’50s” runs through arguably the director’s greatest decade.
Bam
“Cinema, Surrealism, Marxism” offers films from Buñuel, Glauber Rocha, Chris Marker, and more.
Anthology Film Archives
Yugoslav Black Wave icon Želimir Žilnik is subject of a new retrospective.
IFC Center
An extensive William Friedkin series continues, while The Holy Mountain, Gamer, and Exorcist III play late; Oldboy screens in a new restoration.
Museum of the Moving Image
Reverse Shot celebrates its 20th anniversary with a months-long programming run, continuing this weekend with The Tree of Life, Everyone Else, and 35 Shots on Rum on 35mm, while A Hidden Life also screens; James and the Giant Peach plays in a Roald Dahl series with Matilda; a print of Bringing Up Baby shows on 35mm this Friday and Sunday.
Film Forum
“50 from the ’50s” continues with films by Welles, Kazan, Kubrick, and many more, while “Hitchcock’s ’50s” runs through arguably the director’s greatest decade.
Bam
“Cinema, Surrealism, Marxism” offers films from Buñuel, Glauber Rocha, Chris Marker, and more.
Anthology Film Archives
Yugoslav Black Wave icon Želimir Žilnik is subject of a new retrospective.
IFC Center
An extensive William Friedkin series continues, while The Holy Mountain, Gamer, and Exorcist III play late; Oldboy screens in a new restoration.
- 11/9/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSStranger by the Lake.Production has begun on Alain Guiraudie’s next noir-esque feature, Miséricorde, with Dp Claire Mathon—their third collaboration after Stranger by the Lake (2013) and Staying Vertical (2016). The plot centers on a 30-year-old man named Jérémie who returns to a village in southern France, his prior home, for an old friend’s funeral, only to find himself at the center of a police investigation.Recommended VIEWINGJanus Films have shared a trailer for a new 4K restoration of Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil (1964). A virtuosic, formally experimental work of militant cinema, it tells the story of Manoel, a cowherd who, after murdering a ranch owner, flees to join a religious cult headed by a self-proclaimed saint, only to find himself back among violence. A landmark of Brazil’s Cinema Novo...
- 11/9/2023
- MUBI
"I'm condemned, but I have courage." Janus Films has revealed a new official trailer for the 4K restoration and re-release of this Brazilian "Cinema Novo" classic titled Black God, White Devil, made by Glauber Rocha. This originally opened in 1964, premiering at the Cannes Film Festival before playing in Brazil in the 60s. The film is an account of the adventures of hired gunman Antonio das Mortes (played by Maurício do Valle), set against the real life last days of rural banditism. He witnesses the descent of the rural worker Manuel (starring Geraldo Del Rey) drifting to a life of crime, joining the gang of Antonio's sworn enemy, Corisco the Blond Devil (Othon Bastos), leading to the Pedra Bonita Massacre. "Steeped in history, myth, religion, politics, and suffused with the feverish intensity of the blistering desert, Black God, White Devil is one of the Cinema Novo movement's most uncompromising statements on...
- 10/31/2023
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
The tough thing about being an intrepid cinephile: you trawl and dig for lesser-known masterpieces of world cinema, watch them on subpar (sometimes sub-subpar) rips, and only five-or-so years later see them get a loving restoration. As is the case with their recent L’amour fou release and Ousmane Sembène retro, Janus are putting out Glauber Rocha’s Cinema Novo masterpiece Black God, White Devil in a 4K restoration that looks so good I can only envy anybody who sees it for the first time like so.
Ahead of its November 17 debut at Film Forum, a new trailer has arrived and, in terms often applicable to Glauber Rocha, “goes super-hard.” His brutal vision of Brazil, seen with the added clarity of Metropoles Productions’ restoration, suggests the ideal for these releases: elucidate a lost classic and herald a new entry in the canon. And if I can make suggestions: The Age of the Earth next,...
Ahead of its November 17 debut at Film Forum, a new trailer has arrived and, in terms often applicable to Glauber Rocha, “goes super-hard.” His brutal vision of Brazil, seen with the added clarity of Metropoles Productions’ restoration, suggests the ideal for these releases: elucidate a lost classic and herald a new entry in the canon. And if I can make suggestions: The Age of the Earth next,...
- 10/30/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
“Black God, White Devil” is so not what you’d expect from a director who’d write a manifesto titled “The Aesthetics of Hunger.” That treatise, published shortly after this film was released in 1964, was the 25-year-old Brazilian Glauber Rocha’s plea for a new type of filmmaking that the “Third World” should adopt to expose the exploitation of their countries by the global north. It’s a staple of film studies classes to this day.
“Black God, White Devil,” however, is far from homework. The Brazilian film is a pulsing, anarchic vision that makes it feel like a progenitor to the then-just-nascent Spaghetti Western movement in Italy. This is a different kind of manifesto, one that feels written in bullets, a shoot-’em-up that marries a propulsive plot and extremely memorable characters to its revolutionary politics.
Janus Films has given a 4K restoration to this masterwork, that’ll premiere...
“Black God, White Devil,” however, is far from homework. The Brazilian film is a pulsing, anarchic vision that makes it feel like a progenitor to the then-just-nascent Spaghetti Western movement in Italy. This is a different kind of manifesto, one that feels written in bullets, a shoot-’em-up that marries a propulsive plot and extremely memorable characters to its revolutionary politics.
Janus Films has given a 4K restoration to this masterwork, that’ll premiere...
- 10/30/2023
- by Christian Blauvelt
- Indiewire
With its white-robed preacher striding through Congo-Brazzaville, this denunciation of imperialism from Brazilian director Glauber Rocha is very much of its time
This 1970 film from Brazilian director Glauber Rocha is an avant-gardist adventurethat offers us a theatre of absurdity and a theatre of cruelty of an obviously Godardian sort, and Rocha arguably had quite as much sense of composition and camera movement as Godard.
The Lion Has Seven Heads is a denunciation of imperialism and an essay in revolutionary thinking that is very much of its time. Opinions may divide now about exactly how well this film has aged; certainly, there is bit of posturing, and the casual use of “Marlene” (Rada Rassimov) – a naked blond woman writhing around and being variously pawed, harangued and imprisoned – as a symbol of colonial desire shows how very male leftist political cinema could be.
This 1970 film from Brazilian director Glauber Rocha is an avant-gardist adventurethat offers us a theatre of absurdity and a theatre of cruelty of an obviously Godardian sort, and Rocha arguably had quite as much sense of composition and camera movement as Godard.
The Lion Has Seven Heads is a denunciation of imperialism and an essay in revolutionary thinking that is very much of its time. Opinions may divide now about exactly how well this film has aged; certainly, there is bit of posturing, and the casual use of “Marlene” (Rada Rassimov) – a naked blond woman writhing around and being variously pawed, harangued and imprisoned – as a symbol of colonial desire shows how very male leftist political cinema could be.
- 2/20/2023
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Lincoln Center
As the 60th New York Film Festival launches, so does Revivals—having a banner year with Canyon Passage, Drylongso, Le Damier, The Long Farewell, and (my most-anticipated) Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil.
Roxy Cinema
Mishima and Light Sleeper screen on 35mm throughout the weekend; a print of Godard’s King Lear continues, while 1 p.m. screens on 16mm this Sunday.
Bam
Wayne Wang’s Life is Cheap…But Toilet Paper is Expensive debuts a restored director’s cut. Along with seeing it this weekend, watch a clip below.
Museum of the Moving Image
A packed weekend for The Caan Film Festival is headlined by Thief and a print of Bottle Rocket.
Film Forum
The 4K restorations of Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series continue, as does Breathless on 35mm; Princess Mononoke screens this Sunday.
IFC Center
“World of Wong Kar-wai” returns; Videodrome,...
Lincoln Center
As the 60th New York Film Festival launches, so does Revivals—having a banner year with Canyon Passage, Drylongso, Le Damier, The Long Farewell, and (my most-anticipated) Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil.
Roxy Cinema
Mishima and Light Sleeper screen on 35mm throughout the weekend; a print of Godard’s King Lear continues, while 1 p.m. screens on 16mm this Sunday.
Bam
Wayne Wang’s Life is Cheap…But Toilet Paper is Expensive debuts a restored director’s cut. Along with seeing it this weekend, watch a clip below.
Museum of the Moving Image
A packed weekend for The Caan Film Festival is headlined by Thief and a print of Bottle Rocket.
Film Forum
The 4K restorations of Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series continue, as does Breathless on 35mm; Princess Mononoke screens this Sunday.
IFC Center
“World of Wong Kar-wai” returns; Videodrome,...
- 9/29/2022
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Film at Lincoln Center has announced the cinephile-favorite Revivals section for the 60th New York Film Festival, coming to NYC September 30 through October 16. The program showcases new restorations and preservations of important works from canonical filmmakers.
This year’s selection includes the hard-to-find “The Mother and the Whore” — which cameoed in the form of a poster featured in 2005’s “The Squid and the Whale” and brought the scandalous Jean Eustache some renewed attention. Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont, and Françoise Lebrun, the philosophical love triangle set against the sexual revolution divided Cannes audiences in 1973. Earlier this year, the Les Films du Losange restoration opened the Cannes Classics section. It makes its North American premiere at NYFF.
Many of the significant works featured in the lineup include the world premiere restoration of Claire Denis’ “No Fear No Die”; a new 4K restoration of Glauber Rocha’s incendiary, audience-provoking “Black God, White Devil...
This year’s selection includes the hard-to-find “The Mother and the Whore” — which cameoed in the form of a poster featured in 2005’s “The Squid and the Whale” and brought the scandalous Jean Eustache some renewed attention. Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont, and Françoise Lebrun, the philosophical love triangle set against the sexual revolution divided Cannes audiences in 1973. Earlier this year, the Les Films du Losange restoration opened the Cannes Classics section. It makes its North American premiere at NYFF.
Many of the significant works featured in the lineup include the world premiere restoration of Claire Denis’ “No Fear No Die”; a new 4K restoration of Glauber Rocha’s incendiary, audience-provoking “Black God, White Devil...
- 8/23/2022
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Following Main Slate, Spotlight, and Currents, the 60th New York Film Festival have now unveiled its final film-focused section with Revivals. Featuring brand-new restorations of works by Claire Denis, Pedro Costa, Edward Yang, Jean Eustache, Manoel de Oliveira, Cauleen Smith, Kira Muratova, and more, it’s quite a stellar lineup of lesser-known works by established auteurs as well as long-underseen films by directors deserving of more acclaim.
“The Revivals section continues to look beyond acknowledged and revered classics, and to challenge the conventions of the canon,” said Florence Almozini, Senior Director of Programming at Film at Lincoln Center. “This year’s lineup proves once again that even relatively recent decades are full of potential cinematic discoveries, by showcasing significant works from artists of diverse backgrounds and origins in striking new restorations.”
See the lineup below ahead of the festival, taking place September 30-October 16.
Beirut the Encounter
Borhane Alaouié, 1981, Lebanon, 97m
Arabic with English subtitles
U.
“The Revivals section continues to look beyond acknowledged and revered classics, and to challenge the conventions of the canon,” said Florence Almozini, Senior Director of Programming at Film at Lincoln Center. “This year’s lineup proves once again that even relatively recent decades are full of potential cinematic discoveries, by showcasing significant works from artists of diverse backgrounds and origins in striking new restorations.”
See the lineup below ahead of the festival, taking place September 30-October 16.
Beirut the Encounter
Borhane Alaouié, 1981, Lebanon, 97m
Arabic with English subtitles
U.
- 8/23/2022
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
The Cannes Film Festival has set its lineup for this year’s Cannes Classics program, which shines a spotlight on restorations of classic movies and features contemporary documentaries about film. Kicking off the sidebar is Jean Eustache’s controversial film The Mother and the Whore, the 1973 Cannes Grand Prize winner which incited riots at the time. Also included in the program are films by Vittorio de Sica (Sciuscià), Satyajit Ray (The Adversary), Orson Welles (The Trial) and Martin Scorsese (The Last Waltz), as well as a new 4K master of Singin’ in the Rain to mark the movie’s 70th anniversary.
Among the documentaries is Ethan Hawke’s study of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, The Last Movie Stars. Executive produced by Scorsese, it features Karen Allen, George Clooney, Oscar Isaac, Latanya Richardson Jackson, Zoe Kazan, Laura Linney and Sam Rockwell among others in an exploration of the iconic couple and American cinema.
Among the documentaries is Ethan Hawke’s study of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, The Last Movie Stars. Executive produced by Scorsese, it features Karen Allen, George Clooney, Oscar Isaac, Latanya Richardson Jackson, Zoe Kazan, Laura Linney and Sam Rockwell among others in an exploration of the iconic couple and American cinema.
- 5/2/2022
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
As exciting as the new films premiering at Cannes Film Festival is its Classics section, featuring new restorations as well as documentaries spotlighting film history. They’ve now unveiled their 2022 lineup which most notably includes the new, much-anticipated restoration of Jean Eustache’s masterpiece The Mother and the Whore, which it looks like Janus Films has picked up for a U.S. run later this year.
The lineup also includes new restorations of films by Satyajit Ray, Vittorio de Sica, Aravindan Govindan, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese, Glauber Rocha, Vera Chytilová, and more, alongside new documentaries on Romy Schneider, Jane Campion, Souleymane Cissé, and beyond. Check out the full list below.
The Mother and the Whore back in the theater!
La Maman et la putain (The Mother and the Whore)
Jean Eustache
1972, 3h40, France
4K digital restoration of The Mother and the Whore was done in 2022 by Les Films du Losange,...
The lineup also includes new restorations of films by Satyajit Ray, Vittorio de Sica, Aravindan Govindan, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese, Glauber Rocha, Vera Chytilová, and more, alongside new documentaries on Romy Schneider, Jane Campion, Souleymane Cissé, and beyond. Check out the full list below.
The Mother and the Whore back in the theater!
La Maman et la putain (The Mother and the Whore)
Jean Eustache
1972, 3h40, France
4K digital restoration of The Mother and the Whore was done in 2022 by Les Films du Losange,...
- 5/2/2022
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
This year’s line-up will also celebrate classics such as Singin’ In The Rain and Indian director Satyajit Ray’s 1970 work The Adversary.
Late French filmmaker Jean Eustache’s recently restored cult 1973 drama The Mother And The Whore will open Cannes Classics this year, the line-up for which was announced on Monday (May 2).
Other highlights include two episodes of the series The Last Movie Stars directed by Ethan Hawke about Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman; a screening of Singin’ In The Rain to coincide with the 70th anniversary of its release and a restored 4K version of Vittorio de Sica’s 1946 work Sciuscià.
Late French filmmaker Jean Eustache’s recently restored cult 1973 drama The Mother And The Whore will open Cannes Classics this year, the line-up for which was announced on Monday (May 2).
Other highlights include two episodes of the series The Last Movie Stars directed by Ethan Hawke about Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman; a screening of Singin’ In The Rain to coincide with the 70th anniversary of its release and a restored 4K version of Vittorio de Sica’s 1946 work Sciuscià.
- 5/2/2022
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
Violence — or, rather, the threat of violence — haunts every frame of João Paulo Miranda Maria’s debut feature film, “Memory House.” Set in an Austrian settlement in Southern Brazil, this discomfiting drama tells the story of a man so alienated by the world around him that the stench of death at work and the menacing environment outside it have hollowed him out. That is until his titular dwelling kicks off a transformation that turns Miranda Maria’s character study into a folk-infused fable for a country in crisis.
Cristovam spends his days listlessly working at a dairy factory. Displaced by the very company that now employs him, he’s resettled from the North and finds little in common with either his German-speaking employers or his fellow workers. At 81 years old, Pitanga is a towering presence on screen, bringing with him not just a wealth of cultural signifiers but his laconic...
Cristovam spends his days listlessly working at a dairy factory. Displaced by the very company that now employs him, he’s resettled from the North and finds little in common with either his German-speaking employers or his fellow workers. At 81 years old, Pitanga is a towering presence on screen, bringing with him not just a wealth of cultural signifiers but his laconic...
- 9/8/2021
- by Manuel Betancourt
- Variety Film + TV
New York Film Festival organizers have unveiled the slate for its Spotlight section, which includes Dune, C’mon C’mon, Red Rocket and other titles of note.
Spotlight is the venue where the festival’s presenting organization, Film at Lincoln Center, aims to showcase the fall season’s most anticipated films. The festival, which is returning to in-person screenings after a 2020 edition at drive-ins and online, runs September 24 to October 10.
A24 is distributing C’mon C’mon, which stars Joaquin Phoenix and is directed by Mike Mills. The company hasn’t divulged plans for its festival run, but Film at Lincoln Center is listing the film as a New York premiere. That’s a common designation for films debuting at Telluride, which falls a few weeks before NYFF but announces its lineup just prior to its first screenings. Dune is ticketed for Venice ahead of Warner Bros’ theatrical release in October. Sean Baker’s...
Spotlight is the venue where the festival’s presenting organization, Film at Lincoln Center, aims to showcase the fall season’s most anticipated films. The festival, which is returning to in-person screenings after a 2020 edition at drive-ins and online, runs September 24 to October 10.
A24 is distributing C’mon C’mon, which stars Joaquin Phoenix and is directed by Mike Mills. The company hasn’t divulged plans for its festival run, but Film at Lincoln Center is listing the film as a New York premiere. That’s a common designation for films debuting at Telluride, which falls a few weeks before NYFF but announces its lineup just prior to its first screenings. Dune is ticketed for Venice ahead of Warner Bros’ theatrical release in October. Sean Baker’s...
- 8/19/2021
- by Dade Hayes
- Deadline Film + TV
Film at Lincoln Center on Thursday revealed the lineup of the New York Film Festival’s Spotlight section, showcasing some of the season’s most significant films. They include Denis Villeneuve’s highly anticipated “Dune” adaptation, which will play NYFF after its Venice premiere earlier in September; the North American premiere of Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch;” Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut “The Lost Daughter,” starring Olivia Colman; and Mike Mills’ “C’mon C’mon,” starring Joaquin Phoenix, Gaby Hoffmann, and Jaboukie Young-White.
The buzzy titles are in addition to an already-announced main slate, which includes Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or winner “Titane,” festival opener “The Tragedy of Macbeth” from Joel Coen, and Pedro Almodóvar’s “Parallel Mothers,” the closing film.
Additionally, the festival announced Thursday a retrospective sidebar paying tribute to the centenary of late film programmer and festival co-founder Amos Vogel. Titles include films from Glauber Rocha, John Huston,...
The buzzy titles are in addition to an already-announced main slate, which includes Julia Ducournau’s Palme d’Or winner “Titane,” festival opener “The Tragedy of Macbeth” from Joel Coen, and Pedro Almodóvar’s “Parallel Mothers,” the closing film.
Additionally, the festival announced Thursday a retrospective sidebar paying tribute to the centenary of late film programmer and festival co-founder Amos Vogel. Titles include films from Glauber Rocha, John Huston,...
- 8/19/2021
- by Chris Lindahl
- Indiewire
The 59th New York Film Festival continues to expand its lineup, following Main Slate and Revivals announcements. The in-person event, which will take place from September 24 to October 10, has unveiled their Spotlight section, featuring a number of highly anticipated films—including Mike Mills’ Joaquin Phoenix-led C’mon C’mon (pictured above), Sean Baker’s Red Rocket, Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle, and docs by Charlotte Gainsbourg and Marco Bellocchio.
Equally exciting is their tribute to the centenary of late programmer and festival co-founder Amos Vogel, featuring films from Glauber Rocha, John Huston, and trailblazers of the Czech New Wave; a program from NYFF5 sidebar The Social Cinema in America, featuring Lebert Bethune’s Malcolm X: Struggle for Freedom, Santiago Álvarez’s dispatch from postrevolutionary Cuba, Now, and David Neuman and Ed Pincus’s snapshot of Civil Rights-era Mississippi,...
Equally exciting is their tribute to the centenary of late programmer and festival co-founder Amos Vogel, featuring films from Glauber Rocha, John Huston, and trailblazers of the Czech New Wave; a program from NYFF5 sidebar The Social Cinema in America, featuring Lebert Bethune’s Malcolm X: Struggle for Freedom, Santiago Álvarez’s dispatch from postrevolutionary Cuba, Now, and David Neuman and Ed Pincus’s snapshot of Civil Rights-era Mississippi,...
- 8/19/2021
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
NYFF59 to pay tribute to late film programmer, festival co-founder Amos Vogel.
Mike Mills’s upcoming Telluride world premiere C’mon C’mon starring Joaquin Phoenix, Denis Villeneuve’s imminent Venice world premiere Dune and North American premieres of Cannes selections The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson and Marx Can Wait from Marco Bellochio are among the Spotlight programme at the 59th New York Film Festival (NYFF59) that runs September 24-October 10.
C’mon C’mon from A24 stars Phoenix as a kind-hearted radio journalist who goes on a trip with his nephew. Mills previously played the festival with Beginners and 20th Century Women. Gabbie...
Mike Mills’s upcoming Telluride world premiere C’mon C’mon starring Joaquin Phoenix, Denis Villeneuve’s imminent Venice world premiere Dune and North American premieres of Cannes selections The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson and Marx Can Wait from Marco Bellochio are among the Spotlight programme at the 59th New York Film Festival (NYFF59) that runs September 24-October 10.
C’mon C’mon from A24 stars Phoenix as a kind-hearted radio journalist who goes on a trip with his nephew. Mills previously played the festival with Beginners and 20th Century Women. Gabbie...
- 8/19/2021
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
“Perhaps what is needed now is a cinema that is no longer Latin but something else,” said the Mexican director Pablo Escoto Luna in an interview for his short Ruinas Tu Reino, praising the late films of Glauber Rocha and Fernando Birri as “the delirious cinema of vibrancy and rapture that transcends historical narratives, in which any revolutionary movement is shown as one leading to decay and rubble.” Now, his radical, rhapsodic feature All the Light We Can See is a bracing and mostly successful embodiment of the 24-year-old director’s ambitious pronouncements and lyrical anti-historiographic approach. It conjures the ghosts of history, who flit through vignettes shot around the volcanoes Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl in the Valley of Mexico. Risking vagueness and grandiosity with its airily conceptual approach and engagement with history on the level of myth, All the Light We Can See is a New Directors/New Films title worth remembering.
- 5/3/2021
- by Mark Asch
- The Film Stage
Not that time stopped, of course. Nor is there interest in a kind of grand-standing disrespect towards whatever worthwhile cinema fit into the narrow 12-month window that just passed (gentle reminder: this is how I make a living) when I say my sense of the landscape has flattened: those well-honed patterns part and parcel of a cinematic year—festival announcements, festival reviews, acquisition news, established release dates, after-work press screenings preceded by shitty midtown food, preferred theaters, weekend subway trips—vanished, the few standing traditions (if “bugging publicists for links” meets the definition) oddly extraneous. A combination of streaming services, downloading out-of-print holy grails, Plex—an app that streams files from computer to TV as simply as if watching Netflix, leaving cumbersome Hdmi plug-ins a thing of the past—and finding myself freed from sundry exhaustions of the old world are the best thing that’ve happened to my cinephilia in years.
- 1/7/2021
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Just One Film is a series that recommends individual films from festivals around the world—the movies you otherwise might have missed that deserve to be discovered.“In the backlands, we speak the language of Goethe, of Dostoevsky, of Flaubert, because the backlands are the land of eternity, of solitude,” says the narrator in Geraldo Sarno’s documentary short, I Carry the Backlands in Me, quoting the great Brazilian modernist writer Guimarães Rosa. Born in Bahia, in 1938, the Brazilian director has built a prominent filmography, mostly documentaries, from the 1960s to the present. At the core of Sarno’s oeuvre lies the affirmation of sertão’s primacy in Brazilian psyche. This notion—that what appears peripheral is in fact central, at the root of authentic popular zeitgeist—played a key role in developing Brazil’s national cinema. We can appreciate its enduring power, watching contemporary Brazilian films such as the wildly popular thriller,...
- 12/22/2020
- MUBI
Documentary explores life and legacy of legendary Brazilian director Glauber Rocher.
Paris-based sales agent Wide Management has acquired world sales rights to César Meneghetti’s bio-documentary Glauber, Claro ahead of its world premiere at the Rome Film Festival this weekend.
The film explores the life and legacy of late legendary Brazilian director Glauber Rocha through the prism of the time he spent in Italy in the 1970s, focusing in particular on the shoot of his 1975 Rome-set feature Claro, which was inspired by in his own life as an exile in the city.
Italian-Brazilian filmmaker Meneghetti has returned to the locations where Rocha shot Claro,...
Paris-based sales agent Wide Management has acquired world sales rights to César Meneghetti’s bio-documentary Glauber, Claro ahead of its world premiere at the Rome Film Festival this weekend.
The film explores the life and legacy of late legendary Brazilian director Glauber Rocha through the prism of the time he spent in Italy in the 1970s, focusing in particular on the shoot of his 1975 Rome-set feature Claro, which was inspired by in his own life as an exile in the city.
Italian-Brazilian filmmaker Meneghetti has returned to the locations where Rocha shot Claro,...
- 10/16/2020
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
Creative Artists Agency (CAA) has signed João Paulo Miranda Maria, writer-director of “Memory House,” the only Latin American feature chosen for this year’s Cannes Official Selection.
In further news, Miranda Maria is preparing two new feature films, one his English-language debut, with Rodrigo Teixeira’s Sao Paulo-based Rt Features, producer of Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name,” James Gray’s “Ad Astra” and Karim Aïnouz’s “The Invisible Life.”
Both announcements come as Miranda Maria readies the bow today at San Sebastian of “Memory House,” his first feature, which is sold by Celluloid Dreams and produced by Brazil’s Be Bossa Entertainment and France’s Maneki Films. “Memory House” screened at Toronto Film Festival as part of its Discovery program.
Miranda Maria’s signing by CAA continues the agency’s energetic push into international, driven in part by the conviction that some of the most profitable movies...
In further news, Miranda Maria is preparing two new feature films, one his English-language debut, with Rodrigo Teixeira’s Sao Paulo-based Rt Features, producer of Luca Guadagnino’s “Call Me By Your Name,” James Gray’s “Ad Astra” and Karim Aïnouz’s “The Invisible Life.”
Both announcements come as Miranda Maria readies the bow today at San Sebastian of “Memory House,” his first feature, which is sold by Celluloid Dreams and produced by Brazil’s Be Bossa Entertainment and France’s Maneki Films. “Memory House” screened at Toronto Film Festival as part of its Discovery program.
Miranda Maria’s signing by CAA continues the agency’s energetic push into international, driven in part by the conviction that some of the most profitable movies...
- 9/24/2020
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
João Paulo Miranda Maria’s debut feature “Memory House” – a nuanced look at systemic racism in modern Brazil – is about to make its third appearance on this year’s festival circuit.
The only Latin American film to be selected for the Cannes Label this year, “Memory House” has also premiered at Toronto and will run in San Sebastian’s New Director’s Line Up later this week.
Miranda Maria uses richly composed scenes and minimal dialogue to tell the story of Cristovam, an indigenous Black man from the rural north of Brazil who migrates to a conservative Austrian community in the south to work at a dairy.
Steeped in imagery from indigenous Brazilian folklore, the film is a study of what happens to an oppressed minority as decades of abuse chip away at his humanity.
The protagonist undergoes a metamorphosis inspired by the “caboclo boiadeiro” figures of the bull and cowboy,...
The only Latin American film to be selected for the Cannes Label this year, “Memory House” has also premiered at Toronto and will run in San Sebastian’s New Director’s Line Up later this week.
Miranda Maria uses richly composed scenes and minimal dialogue to tell the story of Cristovam, an indigenous Black man from the rural north of Brazil who migrates to a conservative Austrian community in the south to work at a dairy.
Steeped in imagery from indigenous Brazilian folklore, the film is a study of what happens to an oppressed minority as decades of abuse chip away at his humanity.
The protagonist undergoes a metamorphosis inspired by the “caboclo boiadeiro” figures of the bull and cowboy,...
- 9/21/2020
- by Ann-Marie Corvin
- Variety Film + TV
A fervid supporter of new directors, Paris-based sales house Celluloid Dreams has dropped two clips and the poster of Brazilian João Paulo Miranda Maria’s “Memory House” (“La Casa de Antiguedades”), a first feature, but also the only Latin American title to be included in this year’s Cannes Official Selection.
“Memory House” will now world premiere in early September as one of 50 features at a slimmed-down Toronto. It was also confirmed on Tuesday for San Sebastian’s New Directors lineup, an influential new talent showcase.
Written by Miranda Maria, “Memory House” adds to Brazil’s fast-burgeoning canon of movies examining its urgent racial and social issues.
A first sequence catches Cristovam as he trudges down a lane taunted by local teens. An aged but still stout Black worker from Brazil’s often still dirt-poor rural North, Cristovam has relocated to Brazil’s rich South to work at a milk...
“Memory House” will now world premiere in early September as one of 50 features at a slimmed-down Toronto. It was also confirmed on Tuesday for San Sebastian’s New Directors lineup, an influential new talent showcase.
Written by Miranda Maria, “Memory House” adds to Brazil’s fast-burgeoning canon of movies examining its urgent racial and social issues.
A first sequence catches Cristovam as he trudges down a lane taunted by local teens. An aged but still stout Black worker from Brazil’s often still dirt-poor rural North, Cristovam has relocated to Brazil’s rich South to work at a milk...
- 8/5/2020
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Like most film festivals this year, Locarno Film Festival will not be moving ahead as usual. However, they’ve found inventive ways to both celebrate filmmakers they’ve long admired and present films physically and digitally. After announcing a new initiative to support new films by Lucrecia Martel, Lisandro Alonso, Lav Diaz, Wang Bing, Miguel Gomes, and more, they’ve asked this class of talented directors to select their favorite films in Locarno history.
A Journey in the Festival’s History is devoted to Locarno’s 73-year history of showing the best in international cinema. Made up of twenty films, a selection will screen online for those in Switzerland as well as Mubi internationally. On August 5-15, they will also screen in person at Locarno’s theaters.
Lili Hinstin, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival, said, “It would be an impossible task to present a review of the history...
A Journey in the Festival’s History is devoted to Locarno’s 73-year history of showing the best in international cinema. Made up of twenty films, a selection will screen online for those in Switzerland as well as Mubi internationally. On August 5-15, they will also screen in person at Locarno’s theaters.
Lili Hinstin, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival, said, “It would be an impossible task to present a review of the history...
- 7/21/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Films by Roberto Rossellini, Chantel Akerman and Marguerite Duras feature in selection.
The Locarno Film Festival has unveiled the selection of 20 classic film titles that will be showcased in its A Journey In The Festival’s History sidebar as part of its special hybrid edition running August 5 to 15.
The line-up is part of the festival’s ’Locarno 2020 – For the Future of Films’ edition which was created after it was forced to cancel its 73rd edition due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The titles have been selected by the directors taking part in its festival’s exceptional The Films After Tomorrow initiative...
The Locarno Film Festival has unveiled the selection of 20 classic film titles that will be showcased in its A Journey In The Festival’s History sidebar as part of its special hybrid edition running August 5 to 15.
The line-up is part of the festival’s ’Locarno 2020 – For the Future of Films’ edition which was created after it was forced to cancel its 73rd edition due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The titles have been selected by the directors taking part in its festival’s exceptional The Films After Tomorrow initiative...
- 7/20/2020
- by 1100388¦Melanie Goodfellow¦69¦
- ScreenDaily
High-profile filmmakers including Lucrecia Martel and Lav Diaz have contributed to a retrospective program for the Locarno Film Festival (August 5-15), selecting 20 titles from the event’s 74-year history that will have online and physical screenings next month.
Due to ongoing pandemic disruption Locarno shifted the majority of its festival online this year, though ten of the below list of titles will still have physical screenings in Switzerland. The entire program will be shown online for free in Switzerland by the fest, while it is partnering with streamer Mubi to stream the films outside of the country.
Ranging from 1948 (Locarno’s third edition) to 2018 (its 71st), the titles offer a broad insight into the fest’s history and are directed by filmmakers such as Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Haneke, and Whit Stillman. The selectees are all participating in Locarno’s ‘The Films After Tomorrow’ initiative this year,...
Due to ongoing pandemic disruption Locarno shifted the majority of its festival online this year, though ten of the below list of titles will still have physical screenings in Switzerland. The entire program will be shown online for free in Switzerland by the fest, while it is partnering with streamer Mubi to stream the films outside of the country.
Ranging from 1948 (Locarno’s third edition) to 2018 (its 71st), the titles offer a broad insight into the fest’s history and are directed by filmmakers such as Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Haneke, and Whit Stillman. The selectees are all participating in Locarno’s ‘The Films After Tomorrow’ initiative this year,...
- 7/20/2020
- by Tom Grater
- Deadline Film + TV
One of the most interesting sections of Cannes Film Festival each year is their Classics section, which is made up of new restorations and filmmaking-related documentaries. The lineup often gives a look ahead at what classic and overlooked films may be getting new Blu-ray editions, as well as digital debuts, and theatrical re-releases. Following the reveal of Cannes-selected premieres this year, they’ve now unveiled their Classics lineup.
This year’s slate, made up of 25 features and 7 documentaries, will screen at the Lumière festival in Lyon and by the Rencontres Cinématographiques de Cannes. Leading the pack, and announced a few months ago, is the new 20th anniversary restoration of In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai. Also in the lineup is 60th anniversary restorations of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, while a selection of Federico Fellini classics have been restored for this 100th birthday.
Peter Wollen’s Friendship’s Death,...
This year’s slate, made up of 25 features and 7 documentaries, will screen at the Lumière festival in Lyon and by the Rencontres Cinématographiques de Cannes. Leading the pack, and announced a few months ago, is the new 20th anniversary restoration of In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai. Also in the lineup is 60th anniversary restorations of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, while a selection of Federico Fellini classics have been restored for this 100th birthday.
Peter Wollen’s Friendship’s Death,...
- 7/15/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSPaul Thomas Anderson on set of Punch-Drunk LovePaul Thomas Anderson is set to return to his hometown of San Fernando Valley—last seen in his 2002 Punch-Drunk Love—with a 1970s-set high school movie, which will follow a student who is also a successful child actor. Recommended VIEWINGCult director Richard Stanley returns from his 25-year hiatus from directing narrative films with this his Nicolas Cage-led H.P. Lovecraft adaptation Color Out of Space, which now has a rapturous trailer. Stanley is also currently in the early stages of developing an adaptation of Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror. We are very fond of Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe’s oneiric cinema, thus we are completely taken by the trailer for his forthcoming Fire Will Come, which premiered in Cannes. An entirely engrossing trailer for Blumhouse’s reinvention of H.G. Wells The Invisible Man,...
- 11/13/2019
- MUBI
Yann Gonzalez, rated as one of France’s most gifted young directors after his heartfelt Giallo homage “Knife + Heart” played in 2018’s Cannes competition, has boarded “Brasília! Brasília!” from Brazil’s Bernardo Zanotta who last year won Locarno’s Pardino d’Argento for best short film with “Heart of Hunger.”
Gonzalez served as president of the Pardino d’Argento award, saw in Zanotta a kindred subversive spirit in an increasingly conformist landscape and when Zanotta sent him an early treatment of Brasília!Brasília!” wanted to form part of the project.
Introduced to the market at Locarno’s Match Me! Forum by André Mielnik, “Brasília Brasília!”, which is another’s feature debut, is being co-developed by Gustavo Beck and Mielnik at their Rio de Janeiro-based If You Hold a Stone and Gonzalez and partner Flavien Giorda at their upcoming French production company.
Written by Zanotta and Larissa Lewandowski, “Brasília!Brasília!” embodies...
Gonzalez served as president of the Pardino d’Argento award, saw in Zanotta a kindred subversive spirit in an increasingly conformist landscape and when Zanotta sent him an early treatment of Brasília!Brasília!” wanted to form part of the project.
Introduced to the market at Locarno’s Match Me! Forum by André Mielnik, “Brasília Brasília!”, which is another’s feature debut, is being co-developed by Gustavo Beck and Mielnik at their Rio de Janeiro-based If You Hold a Stone and Gonzalez and partner Flavien Giorda at their upcoming French production company.
Written by Zanotta and Larissa Lewandowski, “Brasília!Brasília!” embodies...
- 8/10/2019
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
In the past decade, Hong Kong has seen a growing number of first-time or emerging filmmakers. To help young filmmakers build a long-term sustainable career and to meet the needs of an increasingly diversified audience culture and film industry, the Hong Kong Arts Centre (Hkac) sees a pertinent need to assist filmmakers to expand their professional and personal horizons, enrich their crafts, network and get recognised on local and international levels.
In 2019, coinciding with the 50th Anniversary of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, one of the world’s most prestigious and influential breeding grounds for accomplished filmmakers, the Hkac presents New Waves, New Shores: Cannes Directors’ Fortnight 50 Meets Hong Kong Cinema. Hong Kong-based film critic, journalist and curator, Clarence Tsui, is the Hkac’s guest curator of the film screening series and will conduct discussion panels and workshops under this programme.
Venue: Louis Koo Cinema, Hong Kong Arts Centre
Date: 06.06.2019 – 23.06.2019
Schedule...
In 2019, coinciding with the 50th Anniversary of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, one of the world’s most prestigious and influential breeding grounds for accomplished filmmakers, the Hkac presents New Waves, New Shores: Cannes Directors’ Fortnight 50 Meets Hong Kong Cinema. Hong Kong-based film critic, journalist and curator, Clarence Tsui, is the Hkac’s guest curator of the film screening series and will conduct discussion panels and workshops under this programme.
Venue: Louis Koo Cinema, Hong Kong Arts Centre
Date: 06.06.2019 – 23.06.2019
Schedule...
- 6/2/2019
- by Adriana Rosati
- AsianMoviePulse
Nadine Labaki’s jury honours The Climb, A Brother’s Love, Beanpole, Fire Will Come, among others.
Karim Aïnouz’s The Invisible Life Of Eurídice Gusmão has won the top prize of Un Certain Regard in Cannes and earned the first major award for a Brazilian film in official selection in 50 years.
The Un Certain Regard Jury led by Nadine Labaki announced Aïnouz’s seventh film as the winner on Friday evening (24). It chronicles the efforts of two sisters to define themselves in the machista culture of 1950s Brazil.
Glauber Rocha was the last Brazilian award-winner in Cannes when he...
Karim Aïnouz’s The Invisible Life Of Eurídice Gusmão has won the top prize of Un Certain Regard in Cannes and earned the first major award for a Brazilian film in official selection in 50 years.
The Un Certain Regard Jury led by Nadine Labaki announced Aïnouz’s seventh film as the winner on Friday evening (24). It chronicles the efforts of two sisters to define themselves in the machista culture of 1950s Brazil.
Glauber Rocha was the last Brazilian award-winner in Cannes when he...
- 5/24/2019
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
The Cannes Competition line-up of 50 years ago was an extraordinary one; a who’s who of iconic filmmakers. Among the 26 competing for the Palme d’Or were Sidney Lumet, Louis Malle, Andrzej Wajda, Pierre Étaix, Lindsay Anderson, Volker Schlöndorff, Costa-Gavras, Éric Rohmer, Glauber Rocha, Ronald Neame and Dennis Hopper.
While it wouldn’t have seemed unusual at the time, today the maleness of that line-up really stands out. Festival selections hold a mirror up to those who select them as well as the society and culture within which they exist.
50 years on, a zero count of women filmmakers in Competition has haltingly increased to four—a joint-record for the festival, which has still only once awarded its main prize to a woman. Just 86 women directors have played in Competition compared to more than 1,600 men. And it’s not only in Competition that Cannes struggles. Of 24 films in Directors’ Fortnight this year,...
While it wouldn’t have seemed unusual at the time, today the maleness of that line-up really stands out. Festival selections hold a mirror up to those who select them as well as the society and culture within which they exist.
50 years on, a zero count of women filmmakers in Competition has haltingly increased to four—a joint-record for the festival, which has still only once awarded its main prize to a woman. Just 86 women directors have played in Competition compared to more than 1,600 men. And it’s not only in Competition that Cannes struggles. Of 24 films in Directors’ Fortnight this year,...
- 5/16/2019
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
IndieWire reached out to the cinematographers whose feature films are premiering at the Cannes Film Festival to find out which cameras and lenses they used and, more importantly, why these were the right tools to create the visual language of their films.
Page 1: Competition (Palme d’Or Contenders)
Page 2: Out of Competition & Special Screenings
Page 3: Un Certain Regard & Critics’ Week
Page 4: Directors’ Fortnight
(Films are in alphabetical order by title.)
Competition
“Atlantics”
Dir: Mati Diop, DoP: Claire Mathon
Format: Digital, 1.66 aspect ratio, post production was done in 2K
Camera: Red Epic 5K and Panasonic Varicam35 4K
Lens: Angenieux 45/120 and 25/250, and Zeiss lenses T1.3
Mathon: We chose the Red Epic to shoot daytime, to give romance to images that were captured in a documentary way, and to enhance the sun-drenched sets. We wanted to make a film that was visually arresting but remained very grounded in reality...
Page 1: Competition (Palme d’Or Contenders)
Page 2: Out of Competition & Special Screenings
Page 3: Un Certain Regard & Critics’ Week
Page 4: Directors’ Fortnight
(Films are in alphabetical order by title.)
Competition
“Atlantics”
Dir: Mati Diop, DoP: Claire Mathon
Format: Digital, 1.66 aspect ratio, post production was done in 2K
Camera: Red Epic 5K and Panasonic Varicam35 4K
Lens: Angenieux 45/120 and 25/250, and Zeiss lenses T1.3
Mathon: We chose the Red Epic to shoot daytime, to give romance to images that were captured in a documentary way, and to enhance the sun-drenched sets. We wanted to make a film that was visually arresting but remained very grounded in reality...
- 5/14/2019
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
The Kinoki Film Festival is a yearly celebration hosted by the Universidad Iberoamericana (Ibero), one of the most recognized universities in Mexico. From March 28 to April 5, the 14th edition of Kinoki will have Brazil as the spotlight country, with a trio of films from different periods: Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil (aka Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol), Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund’s City of God and Eryk Rocha’s Cinema Novo. Both actor Jesús Ochoa, better known in the United States for such movies as Man on Fire and Quantum of Solace, and director Alonso Ruizpalacios, will he honored by the festival, each hosting a master class. Kinoki will also offer some special presentations of recent Mexican films,...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...
- 3/13/2019
- Screen Anarchy
Brazil’s Carlos (Cacá) Diegues, whose poem-inspired drama “The Great Mystical Circus” vies for a foreign-language Oscar next year, is in pre-production on “The Dame” starring Betty Faria (“Bye Bye Brazil”) and his daughter Flora Diegues, who stars in “…Mystical Circus.”
Diegues and Faria are both in Miami for the 22nd Brazilian Film Festival of Miami (Braff) (Sept. 14-23), which is paying tribute to Diegues.
The director describes “The Dame,” which he has been writing and developing for nearly three years, as a political thriller about a group of individuals who were once involved in the armed struggle against Brazil’s dictatorship in the 1970s. One day, they receive a mysterious invitation to celebrate New Years’ Eve at one of the grand mansions on the island of Paqueta, situated in the far west of Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro. Faria plays the lady of the house.
Filming on Paqueta island...
Diegues and Faria are both in Miami for the 22nd Brazilian Film Festival of Miami (Braff) (Sept. 14-23), which is paying tribute to Diegues.
The director describes “The Dame,” which he has been writing and developing for nearly three years, as a political thriller about a group of individuals who were once involved in the armed struggle against Brazil’s dictatorship in the 1970s. One day, they receive a mysterious invitation to celebrate New Years’ Eve at one of the grand mansions on the island of Paqueta, situated in the far west of Guanabara Bay, Rio de Janeiro. Faria plays the lady of the house.
Filming on Paqueta island...
- 9/24/2018
- by Anna Marie de la Fuente
- Variety Film + TV
Cannes, France — Carlos (Cacá) Diegues presented his latest directorial feature at a Special Screening in Cannes. A celebration of magic, entertainment and cinema,”The Great Mystical Circus” is inspired by a poem from Brazilian poet Jorge de Lima. It follows a family of circus entertainers through five generations, told in a series of intertwining tales, all set to a soundtrack by Chico Buarque, who originally adapted the poem for the stage in the 1980s.
Starring Vincent Cassel, Jesuíta Barbosa, Bruna Linzmeyer and Mariana Ximenes, the film is produced by Brazil’s Luz Magica Produçoes and Globo Filmes, Portugal’s Fado Filmes and France’s Milonga Productions. Spain’s Latido Films is selling international sales rights.
Though still very much a filmmaking force, director-producer Diegues’ career spans more than fifty years; his first feature film involvement coming in 1962 when he directed part of the groundbreaking neo-realist “Cinco Vezes Favela.” He was...
Starring Vincent Cassel, Jesuíta Barbosa, Bruna Linzmeyer and Mariana Ximenes, the film is produced by Brazil’s Luz Magica Produçoes and Globo Filmes, Portugal’s Fado Filmes and France’s Milonga Productions. Spain’s Latido Films is selling international sales rights.
Though still very much a filmmaking force, director-producer Diegues’ career spans more than fifty years; his first feature film involvement coming in 1962 when he directed part of the groundbreaking neo-realist “Cinco Vezes Favela.” He was...
- 5/14/2018
- by Emilio Mayorga
- Variety Film + TV
Cannes — Carlos Diegues’ “The Great Mystical Circus,” which unspools in a special screenings slot at Cannes, has been acquired by Madrid-based sales agent Latido Films, which will introduce it to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival.
“The Great Mystical Circus,” co-starring Vincent Cassel, traces the adventures, loves and shows of five generations of Knieps, a Brazilian circus owner dynasty, beginning in 1910. The saga is narrated by Celavi, a freed slave and the Circus’ never-aging master of ceremonies. Cassel plays Jean-Paul, an unscrupulous spendthrift who tries to sell the circus.
“‘The Great Mystical Circus’ is a summation of everything I’ve made before in my films, maybe the result of what I think about movie making,” Diegues said.
The Brazilian filmmaker’s 1962 directorial debut, “Cinco Veces Favela,” turned him into a Cinema Novo star. Determined to make a cinema which had a large impact in Brazil and beyond, he went on...
“The Great Mystical Circus,” co-starring Vincent Cassel, traces the adventures, loves and shows of five generations of Knieps, a Brazilian circus owner dynasty, beginning in 1910. The saga is narrated by Celavi, a freed slave and the Circus’ never-aging master of ceremonies. Cassel plays Jean-Paul, an unscrupulous spendthrift who tries to sell the circus.
“‘The Great Mystical Circus’ is a summation of everything I’ve made before in my films, maybe the result of what I think about movie making,” Diegues said.
The Brazilian filmmaker’s 1962 directorial debut, “Cinco Veces Favela,” turned him into a Cinema Novo star. Determined to make a cinema which had a large impact in Brazil and beyond, he went on...
- 5/7/2018
- by John Hopewell
- Variety Film + TV
Film director who was regarded as ‘the father of Brazilian cinema’
Before the late 1950s Brazilian cinema had caused hardly a ripple worldwide. Then Nelson Pereira dos Santos, who has died aged 89, joined Ruy Guerra and Glauber Rocha to form the Cinema Novo co-operative, initiating exciting developments in Brazilian cinema that inspired political film-makers all over Latin America.
At the time Pereira, the oldest of the three film directors and always considered “the father of new Brazilian cinema”, was also the most experienced. He had already practised what Cinema Novo preached. Adopting Italian neo-realist principles of documentary-style location and shooting with non-professional actors, in 1955 Pereira had made Rio, 40 Degrees, which set the standard for independent cinema in Brazil.
Before the late 1950s Brazilian cinema had caused hardly a ripple worldwide. Then Nelson Pereira dos Santos, who has died aged 89, joined Ruy Guerra and Glauber Rocha to form the Cinema Novo co-operative, initiating exciting developments in Brazilian cinema that inspired political film-makers all over Latin America.
At the time Pereira, the oldest of the three film directors and always considered “the father of new Brazilian cinema”, was also the most experienced. He had already practised what Cinema Novo preached. Adopting Italian neo-realist principles of documentary-style location and shooting with non-professional actors, in 1955 Pereira had made Rio, 40 Degrees, which set the standard for independent cinema in Brazil.
- 5/3/2018
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Pedro Almodóvar has been making movies for nearly 30 years, and for much of that time, he’s been seen as one of the world’s greatest living filmmakers. In the meantime, he’s also occasionally helped other directors realize their visions, most recently as a producer of Argentina’s Lucrecia Martel on her new period drama “Zama.” IndieWire recently spoke to Almodóvar about “Zama,” which is currently in contention for the foreign language Oscar, but the director also mused on the way the filmmaking process has evolved since he first got into the game.
“I feel as passionate as when I directed my first movie,” he wrote in an email. “To write and to direct a film are still the most important experiences in my life. Everything else has changed though, particularly the way films are shown nowadays, the very many different ways someone can actually see something.”
Read More:How...
“I feel as passionate as when I directed my first movie,” he wrote in an email. “To write and to direct a film are still the most important experiences in my life. Everything else has changed though, particularly the way films are shown nowadays, the very many different ways someone can actually see something.”
Read More:How...
- 11/22/2017
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.—Flannery O’Connor The mist uncovers Japanese soldiers as well as the grim sight of severed heads by the side of the hot springs where Catholic priests are being tortured. A priest kneels down in horror, almost catatonic, unable to bring himself to believe in the evilness of these men, the men of the Inquisitor. Why are these priests, who came to this “swamp of Japan” to spread the Word of the Lord, suffering so immensely on the hands of these soldiers?To the modern, secular audience, the theme of Silence (2016) is of great irony: the all-powerful Catholic Church, the institution that spread terror across Europe for 700 years with her bonfires and witch hunts and enforcing an almost maddening outlook at faith and personal behavior, comes to an unconquerable land where...
- 3/28/2017
- MUBI
The Film Society of Lincoln Center
and Cinema Tropical announce
Neighboring Scenes: New Latin American CinemaJanuary 26–31: The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces the second annual Neighboring Scenes, a showcase of contemporary Latin American cinema, co-presented with Cinema Tropical
Exhibiting the breadth of styles, techniques, and approaches employed by Latin American filmmakers today, the festival highlights impressive recent productions from across the region. Featuring titles from Paraguay, Peru, and the Dominican Republic for the first time, as well as films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, Neighboring Scenes celebrates the expanding range of contemporary Latin American filmmaking in its second edition.
“This year, we are pleased to highlight several emerging filmmakers, with many fantastic debut and second films in a range of styles — from political thriller and bleak comedy to observational documentary,” said Film Society of Lincoln Center Programmer at Large Rachael Rakes. “Furthermore, half of the works...
and Cinema Tropical announce
Neighboring Scenes: New Latin American CinemaJanuary 26–31: The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces the second annual Neighboring Scenes, a showcase of contemporary Latin American cinema, co-presented with Cinema Tropical
Exhibiting the breadth of styles, techniques, and approaches employed by Latin American filmmakers today, the festival highlights impressive recent productions from across the region. Featuring titles from Paraguay, Peru, and the Dominican Republic for the first time, as well as films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, Neighboring Scenes celebrates the expanding range of contemporary Latin American filmmaking in its second edition.
“This year, we are pleased to highlight several emerging filmmakers, with many fantastic debut and second films in a range of styles — from political thriller and bleak comedy to observational documentary,” said Film Society of Lincoln Center Programmer at Large Rachael Rakes. “Furthermore, half of the works...
- 1/9/2017
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Now that most of the Cannes Film Festival 2016 line-up has been settled when it comes to new premieres, their Cannes Classics sidebar of restored films is not only a treat for those attending, but a hint at what we can expect to arrive at repertory theaters and labels like Criterion in the coming years.
Today they’ve unveiled their line-up, which is toplined by Bertrand Tavernier‘s new 3-hour and 15-minute documentary about French cinema, Voyage à travers le cinéma français. They will also be screening William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer following his masterclass. Along with various documentaries, both classics in the genre and ones about films, they will also premiere new restorations of Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Solaris, Jean-Luc Godard‘s Masculin féminin, two episodes of Krzysztof Kieślowski‘s The Decalogue, as well as films from Kenji Mizoguchi, Marlon Brando, Jacques Becker, Mario Bava, and more.
Check out the line-up below.
Today they’ve unveiled their line-up, which is toplined by Bertrand Tavernier‘s new 3-hour and 15-minute documentary about French cinema, Voyage à travers le cinéma français. They will also be screening William Friedkin‘s Sorcerer following his masterclass. Along with various documentaries, both classics in the genre and ones about films, they will also premiere new restorations of Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Solaris, Jean-Luc Godard‘s Masculin féminin, two episodes of Krzysztof Kieślowski‘s The Decalogue, as well as films from Kenji Mizoguchi, Marlon Brando, Jacques Becker, Mario Bava, and more.
Check out the line-up below.
- 4/20/2016
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
I have been visiting Cuba since 2000 when I went there to perfect my Spanish. My Spanish is still far from perfect but I have grown to love Cuba. Since I went there to learn and happened upon the Havana Film Festival which is held this year December 3rd to 13th, I have returned to the Festival every year and have found a world of great talent which increasingly is raring to get out into the world.
Ivan Giroud is a part of that Festival world and actually is now its most important part (aside from the films and filmmakers that is). Starting from zero, he is now considered one of the most qualified specialists in Latin American Cinema.
Read on to see who he is and how he sees Cuban and Latin American Cinema.
How did you get into film?
I was born in Havana in 1957.
I have loved cinema since I was very young. However I did not study film as there was no cinema school in Cuba until 1986.
I had a general education and graduated in Civil
Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Havana in 1981.
I am self-taught in film – what’s that called?
You are an autodidact.
Yes, an autodidact.
In the 70s, Cuba had the best cinema in the world and the best posters as well. These posters remained the finest posters in the world throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Yes, they are silk-screened and on display and for sale. I myself treasure the poster of one o my favorite fims, “Suite Habana” by Fernando Pérez .
In my last year working as a civil engineer I contacted Icaic seeking employment. In 1981 friends in film, like Daisy Granados, the star of “Cecilia” gave me work on her film. I met her husband, Pastor Vega, a filmmaker who was also the first Director of the Festival from 1979 to 1990, a post he took after finishing “Portrait of Teresa” Pastor said ‘Come work with me’ and so in 1988 I entered the industry at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (Icaic), as a senior specialist and organizer of Cuban and Latin American cinema destined for Europe and North America. The job was like a programming job.
The International Festival of the New Latin American Film in Havana (aka Havana Film Festival) had sections for auteurs, socialist countries, American films and docs. It had the best films, was the preeminent film festival for Latin American cinema and was the only market where all of Latin America gathered to consider the films. It still remains a gathering place for the cineastes throughout Latin America and includes a well-respected coterie of the pioneers of Latin American cinema who created the films that best defined Latin America Cinema in the 60s and then were silenced by the dictatorships which prevailed until the 90s….like Raúl Ruiz, Aldo Francia, Patricio Guzmán and Miguel Littin from Chile, Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira dos Santos from Brazil Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino from Argentina.
At the time of the Soviet collapse in 1991 (known in Cuba as “The Special Period”), I entered the Directorate of the Festival and Vega left and returned to filmmaking. There were other Directors, and in 1994 I became the Director. Alfredo Guevera, the public face of the festival for many years came back to Cuba and became President; we worked together from 1994 to 2010, my first term as the Festival Director.
The Special Period was very, very difficult, the worst of times for everyone and for all Latin American cinema. Brazilian cinema nearly disappeared. The state film organization Embrafilme had been producing 800 films a year and that disappeared for a long time.
Argentina declined in the 90s. Mexico remained active but also declined in the quality of its films. When I began as Director, Cuba was very poor, both economically and creatively. But there was also a generational change and I learned that every decline gives birth to a new generation and new creativity, and so it was.
Schools of films began training new talent. Eictv, the International Film School, funded by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Nobel Prize money opened its doors in 1987. New schools opened in Argentina and Brazil as well. The Havana Film Festival stood as a testimony to this growing generation as it showed the first works and shorts of the likes of Trapero and others in whom you could see new Latam talent developing.
The Havana Film Festival catalogs are a history of cinema as it was the biggest programmer of films. It still gives the best view of Latam cinema today. It is still important as it gives a full picture of Latam cinema and the people in Latam cinema. Eictv is producing the most interesting film makers in the world. For 37 years the Festival was the best, though today there are not many Latam fests. This one was different. You could get to know the whole cineaste community. It never lost a generation; the older members still make movies and the festival helps them to be seen and known.
In 2010 I went to Madrid where I spent five years. In 2002 I began working on a Dictionary of Iberoamerican Cinema. This 1,000 page book was finished in 2008. From 2008 to 2010 I was the director of the festival from Spain. I also ran an arthouse theater in Madrid, the Sala Berlanga, named after a very important Spanish director a little younger than Bunuel.
In 2012 I wanted to return to Cuba where I worked on the Cuban Dictionary of Film. In April Guevera died and Icaic pulled me back to be President and Director.
Since May 2013 I have been Director of the Casa del Festival and President of the International Festival of New Cinema in Havana.
What about the filmmaker Pavel Giroud? Is he your brother?
No, he’s my nephew. He came into the business a different way, through design. He began producing music clips and then went to Eictv. From a painter he evolved into a moviemaker. He has made three films. His newest, “El Acompañante” (“The Companion”) won the best project award at San Sebastian’s 2nd Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum in 2013.
This is Giroud’s third solo film after “The Silly Age” and “Omerta”. The producers: Luis Pacheco’s Jaguar Films is Panama’s best-known production/services company. The Cuban producer is Lia Rodriguez who also runs the industry section of the Havana Film Festival. It is also produced by the Cuba/ Panama-based Arete Audiovisual, Panama’s Jaguar Films, Venezuela’s Trampolin Impulso Creativo and France’s Tu Vas Voir (Edgard Tenembaum) who produced Walter Salles’ “The Motorcycle Diaries”.
Set in 1988 Cuba, “The Companion” is about a friendship between a disgraced boxer forced to serve as a warden – in Cuban government jingo-speak, a “companion” – for an HIV victim.
What is different about the current state of your festival?
Now there are many Latin American Film Festivals, but ours was and still is different because it allows you to know the whole cineaste community. We never lost a generation. The older generation still is making movies and the younger generation is very present. The Festival helps make them known.
What about the new developments between USA and Cuba?
That is the most asked question today.
We have always had U.S. films and U.S. citizens have always visited in cultural exchanges. We’ve had Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon in the earliest years. We’ve invited Arthur Penn, Sean Penn, John Sayles, the Coen Brothers. Danny Glover and Benecio del Toro are frequent visitors. Annette Benning and Koch Hawk of the Academy were guests. We were always well connected to the U.S. independents so that is nothing new.
The change is that It will be easier for Americans to visit and to learn.
When I went to Cuba the first time, I was actually surprised to see so many Afro-Cubans. For some reason I assumed USA was the only nation with former slaves. I should have realized the Spanish also traded in slaves but only when I was in Cuba did I “get” it. Now I see the world so differently.
In Cuba black and white races mixed and the mixture (the mulatto) is what is a Cuban today. U.S. has segregation by and large. Latinos live together, Asian, African-Americans are all separated and that creates a totally different mentality.
I am very interested in African Diaspora films and Cuba has a lot. I have always enjoyed the documentaries. You can’t see them anywhere else.
This year there is a great documentary, “They are We" (“Ellos son nosotros”). It is anthropological about the Cuban town Matanza. Matanza has some of the best music in Cuba. It investigates their African roots in Sierra Leone and identifies ancestors and where they were from. Determined to find the exact origin of songs coming from there, the Australian filmmaker - researcher spent two years showing images throughout the region in Sierra Leonie until he confirmed that the Cubans were singing songs similar to the language of an ethnic group made extinct because of the slave trade.
I’ll send you the BBC article. (Read it here)
Thank you Ivan for this hour of your time. I am so happy to have finally connected with you after seeing you for so many years in Havana and in Toronto (where you stay with Helga Stephenson, the subject of an earlier post: Read it here )
More on Ivan:
Ivan has provided advice to other Latin American film festivals and has collaborated on research projects and screenplays, as well as in the production of theater and classical music. In 2008 he was invited to speak at the seminar Contributions of Latin American cinema to world cinema in the first American Film Congress held in Mexico City in the Congress book stories presented in common 40 years / 50 movies of Latin American cinema, of which he is one of its editors.
He was a visiting professor of the Master in Management of the Film Industry Carlos III University courses in 2010, 2011 and 2012. He is one of four directors of the Dictionary of Latin American Cinema; with Carlos F. Heredero, Eduardo Rodríguez Merchán, Benard da Costa and João project Sgae of Spain, consisting of 10 volumes and 16 thousand entries. Between 2008 and 2012 he was Director of audiovisual programming and Berlanga Room Buñuel Institute Foundation Author of Spain, a period in which he was international adviser Icaic.
Ivan Giroud is a part of that Festival world and actually is now its most important part (aside from the films and filmmakers that is). Starting from zero, he is now considered one of the most qualified specialists in Latin American Cinema.
Read on to see who he is and how he sees Cuban and Latin American Cinema.
How did you get into film?
I was born in Havana in 1957.
I have loved cinema since I was very young. However I did not study film as there was no cinema school in Cuba until 1986.
I had a general education and graduated in Civil
Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Havana in 1981.
I am self-taught in film – what’s that called?
You are an autodidact.
Yes, an autodidact.
In the 70s, Cuba had the best cinema in the world and the best posters as well. These posters remained the finest posters in the world throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Yes, they are silk-screened and on display and for sale. I myself treasure the poster of one o my favorite fims, “Suite Habana” by Fernando Pérez .
In my last year working as a civil engineer I contacted Icaic seeking employment. In 1981 friends in film, like Daisy Granados, the star of “Cecilia” gave me work on her film. I met her husband, Pastor Vega, a filmmaker who was also the first Director of the Festival from 1979 to 1990, a post he took after finishing “Portrait of Teresa” Pastor said ‘Come work with me’ and so in 1988 I entered the industry at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (Icaic), as a senior specialist and organizer of Cuban and Latin American cinema destined for Europe and North America. The job was like a programming job.
The International Festival of the New Latin American Film in Havana (aka Havana Film Festival) had sections for auteurs, socialist countries, American films and docs. It had the best films, was the preeminent film festival for Latin American cinema and was the only market where all of Latin America gathered to consider the films. It still remains a gathering place for the cineastes throughout Latin America and includes a well-respected coterie of the pioneers of Latin American cinema who created the films that best defined Latin America Cinema in the 60s and then were silenced by the dictatorships which prevailed until the 90s….like Raúl Ruiz, Aldo Francia, Patricio Guzmán and Miguel Littin from Chile, Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira dos Santos from Brazil Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino from Argentina.
At the time of the Soviet collapse in 1991 (known in Cuba as “The Special Period”), I entered the Directorate of the Festival and Vega left and returned to filmmaking. There were other Directors, and in 1994 I became the Director. Alfredo Guevera, the public face of the festival for many years came back to Cuba and became President; we worked together from 1994 to 2010, my first term as the Festival Director.
The Special Period was very, very difficult, the worst of times for everyone and for all Latin American cinema. Brazilian cinema nearly disappeared. The state film organization Embrafilme had been producing 800 films a year and that disappeared for a long time.
Argentina declined in the 90s. Mexico remained active but also declined in the quality of its films. When I began as Director, Cuba was very poor, both economically and creatively. But there was also a generational change and I learned that every decline gives birth to a new generation and new creativity, and so it was.
Schools of films began training new talent. Eictv, the International Film School, funded by Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Nobel Prize money opened its doors in 1987. New schools opened in Argentina and Brazil as well. The Havana Film Festival stood as a testimony to this growing generation as it showed the first works and shorts of the likes of Trapero and others in whom you could see new Latam talent developing.
The Havana Film Festival catalogs are a history of cinema as it was the biggest programmer of films. It still gives the best view of Latam cinema today. It is still important as it gives a full picture of Latam cinema and the people in Latam cinema. Eictv is producing the most interesting film makers in the world. For 37 years the Festival was the best, though today there are not many Latam fests. This one was different. You could get to know the whole cineaste community. It never lost a generation; the older members still make movies and the festival helps them to be seen and known.
In 2010 I went to Madrid where I spent five years. In 2002 I began working on a Dictionary of Iberoamerican Cinema. This 1,000 page book was finished in 2008. From 2008 to 2010 I was the director of the festival from Spain. I also ran an arthouse theater in Madrid, the Sala Berlanga, named after a very important Spanish director a little younger than Bunuel.
In 2012 I wanted to return to Cuba where I worked on the Cuban Dictionary of Film. In April Guevera died and Icaic pulled me back to be President and Director.
Since May 2013 I have been Director of the Casa del Festival and President of the International Festival of New Cinema in Havana.
What about the filmmaker Pavel Giroud? Is he your brother?
No, he’s my nephew. He came into the business a different way, through design. He began producing music clips and then went to Eictv. From a painter he evolved into a moviemaker. He has made three films. His newest, “El Acompañante” (“The Companion”) won the best project award at San Sebastian’s 2nd Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum in 2013.
This is Giroud’s third solo film after “The Silly Age” and “Omerta”. The producers: Luis Pacheco’s Jaguar Films is Panama’s best-known production/services company. The Cuban producer is Lia Rodriguez who also runs the industry section of the Havana Film Festival. It is also produced by the Cuba/ Panama-based Arete Audiovisual, Panama’s Jaguar Films, Venezuela’s Trampolin Impulso Creativo and France’s Tu Vas Voir (Edgard Tenembaum) who produced Walter Salles’ “The Motorcycle Diaries”.
Set in 1988 Cuba, “The Companion” is about a friendship between a disgraced boxer forced to serve as a warden – in Cuban government jingo-speak, a “companion” – for an HIV victim.
What is different about the current state of your festival?
Now there are many Latin American Film Festivals, but ours was and still is different because it allows you to know the whole cineaste community. We never lost a generation. The older generation still is making movies and the younger generation is very present. The Festival helps make them known.
What about the new developments between USA and Cuba?
That is the most asked question today.
We have always had U.S. films and U.S. citizens have always visited in cultural exchanges. We’ve had Gregory Peck, Jack Lemmon in the earliest years. We’ve invited Arthur Penn, Sean Penn, John Sayles, the Coen Brothers. Danny Glover and Benecio del Toro are frequent visitors. Annette Benning and Koch Hawk of the Academy were guests. We were always well connected to the U.S. independents so that is nothing new.
The change is that It will be easier for Americans to visit and to learn.
When I went to Cuba the first time, I was actually surprised to see so many Afro-Cubans. For some reason I assumed USA was the only nation with former slaves. I should have realized the Spanish also traded in slaves but only when I was in Cuba did I “get” it. Now I see the world so differently.
In Cuba black and white races mixed and the mixture (the mulatto) is what is a Cuban today. U.S. has segregation by and large. Latinos live together, Asian, African-Americans are all separated and that creates a totally different mentality.
I am very interested in African Diaspora films and Cuba has a lot. I have always enjoyed the documentaries. You can’t see them anywhere else.
This year there is a great documentary, “They are We" (“Ellos son nosotros”). It is anthropological about the Cuban town Matanza. Matanza has some of the best music in Cuba. It investigates their African roots in Sierra Leone and identifies ancestors and where they were from. Determined to find the exact origin of songs coming from there, the Australian filmmaker - researcher spent two years showing images throughout the region in Sierra Leonie until he confirmed that the Cubans were singing songs similar to the language of an ethnic group made extinct because of the slave trade.
I’ll send you the BBC article. (Read it here)
Thank you Ivan for this hour of your time. I am so happy to have finally connected with you after seeing you for so many years in Havana and in Toronto (where you stay with Helga Stephenson, the subject of an earlier post: Read it here )
More on Ivan:
Ivan has provided advice to other Latin American film festivals and has collaborated on research projects and screenplays, as well as in the production of theater and classical music. In 2008 he was invited to speak at the seminar Contributions of Latin American cinema to world cinema in the first American Film Congress held in Mexico City in the Congress book stories presented in common 40 years / 50 movies of Latin American cinema, of which he is one of its editors.
He was a visiting professor of the Master in Management of the Film Industry Carlos III University courses in 2010, 2011 and 2012. He is one of four directors of the Dictionary of Latin American Cinema; with Carlos F. Heredero, Eduardo Rodríguez Merchán, Benard da Costa and João project Sgae of Spain, consisting of 10 volumes and 16 thousand entries. Between 2008 and 2012 he was Director of audiovisual programming and Berlanga Room Buñuel Institute Foundation Author of Spain, a period in which he was international adviser Icaic.
- 11/19/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Philippe Ramos’ Mad Love was awarded the top prize at the Montreal World Film Festival.
The Montreal World Film Festival (Aug 27 - Sept 7) has revealed the award winners for its 2015 edition.
Philippe Ramos’ Mad Love took the top prize, the grand prize of the Americas, while the best director prize was shared between Mikko Kuparinen for 2 Nights Till Morning and Georgi Balabanov for The Petrov File.
Alongside its main awards, the festival presented British producer Lord Puttname with a special grand prize of the Americas for his “exceptional contribution to the world of cinema”.
Full list:
Competition awards:
Grand Prize of the Americas: Mad Love, dir. Philippe Ramos (France)Special Grand Jury Award: Misafir (The Visitor/La Visiteuse), dir. Mehmet Eryilmaz (Turkey)Best director: 2 nights til morning, dir. Mikko Kuparinen (Finland / Luthania) and The Petrov File (Le Dossier Petrov), dir. Georgi Balabanov (Bulgaria / Germany)Best Actress: Malin Buska for The Girl King, dir. [link...
The Montreal World Film Festival (Aug 27 - Sept 7) has revealed the award winners for its 2015 edition.
Philippe Ramos’ Mad Love took the top prize, the grand prize of the Americas, while the best director prize was shared between Mikko Kuparinen for 2 Nights Till Morning and Georgi Balabanov for The Petrov File.
Alongside its main awards, the festival presented British producer Lord Puttname with a special grand prize of the Americas for his “exceptional contribution to the world of cinema”.
Full list:
Competition awards:
Grand Prize of the Americas: Mad Love, dir. Philippe Ramos (France)Special Grand Jury Award: Misafir (The Visitor/La Visiteuse), dir. Mehmet Eryilmaz (Turkey)Best director: 2 nights til morning, dir. Mikko Kuparinen (Finland / Luthania) and The Petrov File (Le Dossier Petrov), dir. Georgi Balabanov (Bulgaria / Germany)Best Actress: Malin Buska for The Girl King, dir. [link...
- 9/9/2015
- ScreenDaily
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