During the TIFF screening of Isiah Medina’s He Thought He Died, which was preceded by Blake Williams’ 3D short Laberint Sequences, nearly half the theater cleared during its one-hour duration. There was also a curious number of restless souls still sitting and some who just started talking during the film––not in whispers, to which Williams issued a shush. But I imagine Medina has experienced this kind of response before. It’s probably not unexpected for a public screening to feature many people who, despite TIFF commercializing them as the “world’s best audience,” are probably not used to watching much beyond Hollywood narrative cinema. Medina’s opening statement was that he believed “cinema is not a linguistic art.”
Whether “linguistic” should be taken literally or in terms of “visual language” is the kind of academic ambiguity Medina loves to play around with: he’s the guy who went...
Whether “linguistic” should be taken literally or in terms of “visual language” is the kind of academic ambiguity Medina loves to play around with: he’s the guy who went...
- 9/25/2023
- by Soham Gadre
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSGasoline Rainbow.London Film Festival have announced the films in their competitive sections, with new work by Zhang Mengqi, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, and Bill and Turner Ross included in the Official Competition, plus films by Ehsan Khoshbakht, Cyril Aris, and Chloe Abrahams up for the Documentary award.Meanwhile, the Alliance of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently returned to the bargaining table with the Writers Guild of America, with CEOs like Bob Iger, David Zaslav, and Ted Sarandos in tow. "On the 113th day of the strike—and while SAG-AFTRA is walking the picket lines by our side—we were met with a lecture about how good their single and only counteroffer was,” wrote the WGA in a statement circulated to members, followed two days later by a thorough explanation of why this proposal was inadequate.
- 9/11/2023
- MUBI
TIFF 2023 Adds Films by Jean-Luc Godard, Radu Jude, Pedro Costa, Eduardo Williams, Phạm Thiên & More
In one of their festival announcements, Toronto International Film Festival have unveiled some of the most exciting international offerings of the year with Wavelenghts. Featuring Jean-Luc Godard’s posthumous short Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars, Pedro Costa’s Daughters of Fire, Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, Bas Devos’ Here, Eduardo Williams’ The Human Surge 3, Phạm Thiên’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, Angela Schanelec’s Music, and much more, it’s quite an eclectic lineup.
“Wavelengths is a testament to the range of cinema celebrated at TIFF,” stated Anita Lee, Chief Programming Officer, TIFF. “It is also evidence that artist-driven experimental films are thriving and growing a new generation of cinephiles.”
“The increasing necessity to support artists willing to take risks, break rules, and challenge the status quo — especially in our over-saturated media landscape — bears repeating,...
“Wavelengths is a testament to the range of cinema celebrated at TIFF,” stated Anita Lee, Chief Programming Officer, TIFF. “It is also evidence that artist-driven experimental films are thriving and growing a new generation of cinephiles.”
“The increasing necessity to support artists willing to take risks, break rules, and challenge the status quo — especially in our over-saturated media landscape — bears repeating,...
- 8/11/2023
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
The Toronto Film Festival has unveiled its Wavelengths program for artist-driven experimental work that includes films by avant garde directors Denis Côté, Radu Jude, the late Chantal Akerman and Wang Bing.
There’s selections for Isiah Medina’s He Thought He Died, an experimental heist film; Angela Schanelec’s Music, a retelling of the Oedipus myth; and Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia, which stars Larissa Corriveau and will first bow at the Locarno Film Festival.
Wavelengths also booked fiction debuts with Rosine Mbakam’s Mambar Pierrette, a portrait of a Cameroonian seamstress; and Phạm Thiên Ân’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, the Vietnamese director’s hypnotic first feature about a man haunted by past memories when returning to his hometown that picked up the Caméra d’Or in Cannes.
“The increasing necessity to support artists willing to take risks, break rules and challenge the status quo — especially in our over-saturated media landscape — bears repeating,...
There’s selections for Isiah Medina’s He Thought He Died, an experimental heist film; Angela Schanelec’s Music, a retelling of the Oedipus myth; and Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia, which stars Larissa Corriveau and will first bow at the Locarno Film Festival.
Wavelengths also booked fiction debuts with Rosine Mbakam’s Mambar Pierrette, a portrait of a Cameroonian seamstress; and Phạm Thiên Ân’s Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell, the Vietnamese director’s hypnotic first feature about a man haunted by past memories when returning to his hometown that picked up the Caméra d’Or in Cannes.
“The increasing necessity to support artists willing to take risks, break rules and challenge the status quo — especially in our over-saturated media landscape — bears repeating,...
- 8/11/2023
- by Etan Vlessing
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
A 4K uncut restoration of Chen Kaige’s 1993 Palme d’Or winner “Farewell My Concubine” is a highlight of the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) Classics strand while Jean-Luc Godard’s last film will feature in Wavelengths.
The Classics strand also includes Canadian producer-director Brigitte Berman’s Oscar-winning feature documentary “Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got” (1985), portraying the life of the clarinettist and bandleader, and, after decades of oblivion Jacques Rivette’s New Wave classic “L’amour fou” (1969), whose original celluloid elements were damaged in a fire. A 50th anniversary screening of “Touki Bouki” (1973), from Sengal’s Djibril Diop Mambéty and Ousmane Sembène’s “Xala” (1975), presented in 4K, complete the program. Classics is curated by Robyn Citizen, director of programming and platform lead, with contributions from Andréa Picard.
The Wavelengths strand has 12 feature films and 19 shorts, as well as a suite of four restored early films by...
The Classics strand also includes Canadian producer-director Brigitte Berman’s Oscar-winning feature documentary “Artie Shaw: Time Is All You’ve Got” (1985), portraying the life of the clarinettist and bandleader, and, after decades of oblivion Jacques Rivette’s New Wave classic “L’amour fou” (1969), whose original celluloid elements were damaged in a fire. A 50th anniversary screening of “Touki Bouki” (1973), from Sengal’s Djibril Diop Mambéty and Ousmane Sembène’s “Xala” (1975), presented in 4K, complete the program. Classics is curated by Robyn Citizen, director of programming and platform lead, with contributions from Andréa Picard.
The Wavelengths strand has 12 feature films and 19 shorts, as well as a suite of four restored early films by...
- 8/11/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
The Toronto International Film Festival has announced this year’s Wavelengths and Classics sidebars, the former section known for its politically charged, geographically diverse fare with a wide range of work drawn from the worlds of documentary, contemporary art, and international art-house cinema.
Wavelengths this year counts 12 feature films and 19 shorts, as well as a suite of four restored early films by the singular Chantal Akerman.
Of note in the Wavelengths short section, North American audiences will finally get to see Jean-Luc Godard’s swan song short, Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars, which played Cannes this past spring.
Another highlight in the Classics sidebar is the 4K uncut restoration of Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, the only movie from China to win the Palme d’Or. The original film had 20 minutes cut by then Miramax Boss Harvey Weinstein much to the chagrin of jury...
Wavelengths this year counts 12 feature films and 19 shorts, as well as a suite of four restored early films by the singular Chantal Akerman.
Of note in the Wavelengths short section, North American audiences will finally get to see Jean-Luc Godard’s swan song short, Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars, which played Cannes this past spring.
Another highlight in the Classics sidebar is the 4K uncut restoration of Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine, the only movie from China to win the Palme d’Or. The original film had 20 minutes cut by then Miramax Boss Harvey Weinstein much to the chagrin of jury...
- 8/11/2023
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
Classics includes restored version of Jacques Rivette’s New Wave film L’amour Fou.
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has announced selections in the Wavelengths and Classics programmes ahead of the festival (September 7-17).
The expanded Wavelengths section offers 11 features and 19 shorts including the world premiere of Canadian artist and filmmaker Isiah Medina’s deconstructed heist tale He Thought He Died (pictured), Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia, and Angela Schanelec’s retelling of the Oedipus myth, Music.
“Wavelengths is a testament to the range of cinema celebrated at TIFF,” said Anita Lee, TIFF’s chief programming officer. “It is also evidence...
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has announced selections in the Wavelengths and Classics programmes ahead of the festival (September 7-17).
The expanded Wavelengths section offers 11 features and 19 shorts including the world premiere of Canadian artist and filmmaker Isiah Medina’s deconstructed heist tale He Thought He Died (pictured), Denis Côté’s Mademoiselle Kenopsia, and Angela Schanelec’s retelling of the Oedipus myth, Music.
“Wavelengths is a testament to the range of cinema celebrated at TIFF,” said Anita Lee, TIFF’s chief programming officer. “It is also evidence...
- 8/11/2023
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
The Toronto International Film Festival has added an additional 17 films to its 2023 lineup, with the new entries the work of a variety of bold international directors, from Radu Jude and Kleber Mendonca Filho to the late Jean-Luc Godard and Chantal Akerman.
The Wavelength section contains 12 features, two films paired in a single program and 19 shorts grouped in three separate programs. It is devoted to “artist-driven experimental films,” in the words of TIFF Chief Programming Officer Anita Lee. “Wavelengths continues to be a celebration of subversion, personal expression, and the vast, inexhaustible capabilities of cinema to enlighten, inspire, awe, resist, disrupt, and propose new ways of seeing and being in the world.”
Films in the section include “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World” from the fiery Romanian satirist Radu Jude, “Here” from Belgian director Bas Devos,” the “Oedipus” retelling “Music” from Angela Schanelec, Brazilian Kleber Mendonca...
The Wavelength section contains 12 features, two films paired in a single program and 19 shorts grouped in three separate programs. It is devoted to “artist-driven experimental films,” in the words of TIFF Chief Programming Officer Anita Lee. “Wavelengths continues to be a celebration of subversion, personal expression, and the vast, inexhaustible capabilities of cinema to enlighten, inspire, awe, resist, disrupt, and propose new ways of seeing and being in the world.”
Films in the section include “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World” from the fiery Romanian satirist Radu Jude, “Here” from Belgian director Bas Devos,” the “Oedipus” retelling “Music” from Angela Schanelec, Brazilian Kleber Mendonca...
- 8/11/2023
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
Drama and documentary projects hail from Korea, France, Canada, China and Chile.
Gangsters, a Chinese dissident and a female truck driver are among the subjects of eight upcoming features that were pitched at the Jeonju International Film Festival in South Korea on Monday (May 2).
Eight titles were pitched in-person to an international jury as part of the Jeonju Cinema Project: Next Edition programme, which supports the production of innovative and independent films. The winners will receive up to KW100m to complete their film in time for a world premiere at the next edition of Jeonju.
Evenly split between Korean and international projects,...
Gangsters, a Chinese dissident and a female truck driver are among the subjects of eight upcoming features that were pitched at the Jeonju International Film Festival in South Korea on Monday (May 2).
Eight titles were pitched in-person to an international jury as part of the Jeonju Cinema Project: Next Edition programme, which supports the production of innovative and independent films. The winners will receive up to KW100m to complete their film in time for a world premiere at the next edition of Jeonju.
Evenly split between Korean and international projects,...
- 5/2/2022
- by Michael Rosser
- ScreenDaily
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe official poster for the the 54th Directors' Fortnight is by multidisciplinary artist Cecilia Paredes. In a statement, the festival points out that Paredes' photo-performance is "both visible and invisible, the artist blends into the image she creates, much like filmmakers do in their films." Following the release of Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth, Ethan Coen is setting out to make his own solo directorial debut with a still-untitled "lesbian road trip project that Coen and [his wife, Tricia Cooke] initially wrote in the mid-2000s." Gus Van Sant is set to direct the second season of Ryan Murphy's anthology series Feud, which will be based on Laurence Leamer's book Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era. Playing one such woman will be Naomi Watts,...
- 4/6/2022
- MUBI
The 23rd Jeonju International Film Festival announced the Jeonju lab selection and the projects of the Jeonju Cinema Project: Next Edition (hereinafter Next Edition). The Jeonju lab is to provide the participants with an opportunity to receive a mentoring program at the development stage for their film and video projects, while the Next Edition is a pitching program to support domestic and international feature projects.
For 60 days from November 15, 2021, to January 13, 2022, the Jeonju Iff received 41 submissions (17 domestic and 24 international projects) from 23 countries of 6 continents for the Jeonju Cinema Project: Next Edition. Jeonju Cinema Project is a representative industry program of Jeonju Iff for brilliant feature film and documentary projects to support their production. It aims to discover and support creative challenging feature projects from home and abroad. In case of international projects, Jeonju Iff will take charge of the investment and distribution of the film in Korea.
The Jeonju Cinema...
For 60 days from November 15, 2021, to January 13, 2022, the Jeonju Iff received 41 submissions (17 domestic and 24 international projects) from 23 countries of 6 continents for the Jeonju Cinema Project: Next Edition. Jeonju Cinema Project is a representative industry program of Jeonju Iff for brilliant feature film and documentary projects to support their production. It aims to discover and support creative challenging feature projects from home and abroad. In case of international projects, Jeonju Iff will take charge of the investment and distribution of the film in Korea.
The Jeonju Cinema...
- 2/26/2022
- by Grace Han
- AsianMoviePulse
Selection includes projects from Korea, France, Canada and China among others.
South Korea’s Jeonju International Film Festival has revealed the selection for this year’s Jeonju Cinema Project pitching programme, including new titles from Fighter director Jero Yun and Canadian filmmaker Isiah Medina.
Jeonju Cinema Project: Next Edition has increased this year’s selection from six to eight – four in the international and four in the domestic project categories – following a reported increase in submissions.
This year’s Korean projects are Tae Jun-sik’s 1997, Lim Sun-ae’s Fixed Love, Fixed Girl, Jero Yun’s Breath and Lee Sangcheol’s My Dear.
South Korea’s Jeonju International Film Festival has revealed the selection for this year’s Jeonju Cinema Project pitching programme, including new titles from Fighter director Jero Yun and Canadian filmmaker Isiah Medina.
Jeonju Cinema Project: Next Edition has increased this year’s selection from six to eight – four in the international and four in the domestic project categories – following a reported increase in submissions.
This year’s Korean projects are Tae Jun-sik’s 1997, Lim Sun-ae’s Fixed Love, Fixed Girl, Jero Yun’s Breath and Lee Sangcheol’s My Dear.
- 2/23/2022
- by Jean Noh
- ScreenDaily
Selection includes projects from Korea, France, Canada and China among others.
South Korea’s Jeonju International Film Festival has revealed the selection for this year’s Jeonju Cinema Project pitching programme, including new titles from Fighter director Jero Yun and Canadian filmmaker Isiah Medina.
Jeonju Cinema Project: Next Edition has increased this year’s selection from six to eight – four in the international and four in the domestic project categories – following a reported increase in submissions.
This year’s Korean projects are Tae Jun-sik’s 1997, Lim Sun-ae’s Fixed Love, Fixed Girl, Jero Yun’s Breath and Lee Sangcheol’s My Dear.
South Korea’s Jeonju International Film Festival has revealed the selection for this year’s Jeonju Cinema Project pitching programme, including new titles from Fighter director Jero Yun and Canadian filmmaker Isiah Medina.
Jeonju Cinema Project: Next Edition has increased this year’s selection from six to eight – four in the international and four in the domestic project categories – following a reported increase in submissions.
This year’s Korean projects are Tae Jun-sik’s 1997, Lim Sun-ae’s Fixed Love, Fixed Girl, Jero Yun’s Breath and Lee Sangcheol’s My Dear.
- 2/23/2022
- by Jean Noh
- ScreenDaily
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWerner Herzog is set to publish his first novel, a semi-fictional retelling of the story of Hiroo Onda. A friend of Herzog, Onda is a former Japanese soldier known for spending 29 years in the jungle on an island in the Philippines, refusing to surrender at the end of World War II. Penguin Random House states that the novel is written in "an inimitable, hypnotic style—part documentary, part poem, and part dream." Following his erotic nunsploitation film Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven is making the erotic political thriller Young Sinner. The film, according to Verhoeven and RoboCop co-writer Edward Neumeier, will take place in Washington DC and focus on a young staffer "drawn into a web of international intrigue and danger." As this is a Verhoeven film, Neumeir promises that there will be "also be a little sex.
- 12/13/2021
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Julia Ducournau at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. (Photo by Stephane Cardinale / Getty Images)Cannes has come to a close with the Palme d'Or win of Titane, making Julia Ducournau only the second woman to win the prize in the festival's history. Check out the rest of this year's winners here. Following Cannes, we're looking ahead to fall festival season: San Sebastian's lineup includes the latest by Lucile Hadzihalilovic and Terence Davies; and Locarno has added films by Charlotte Colbert and Russian Gleb Panfilov to its now-complete roster. The Museum of the Moving Image's First Look Fest has also announced its full program, which will showcase films by Claire Simon, Lina Rodriguez, James Benning, and more, as well as the world premiere of Ken Jacob's 3D film, Double Wow. The much-anticipated lineup for this...
- 7/21/2021
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: The Cinerama Dome in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Decurion has announced that it won't be reopening its Arclight Cinemas and Pacific Theatres locations. The theater chain's most famous location is its Hollywood Arclight multiplex on Sunset Boulevard, home to the Cinerama Dome. Arte France Cinéma will be co-producing three new features: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi's Les amandiers (starring Louis Garrel), Arnaud Desplechin's Brother and Sister (which stars Marion Cotillard and Melvil Poupaud), and Pietro Marcello's L'envol (the filmmaker's first feature in France). The Workers of the Cinemateca Brasileira have released a manifesto calling attention to the many risks facing the Cinemateca's unattended collection, equipment, and facilities due to its "current state of abandonment" by the Ministry of Tourism. Backed by TCM, documentarian Josh Grossberg and his...
- 4/14/2021
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe poster for Hong Sang-soo's latest, Introduction, which will compete at this year's Berlinale. The competition slate for the 71st Berlin International Film Festival features a wide range of heavy hitters, from Hong and Radu Jude to Aleksandre Koberidze and Céline Sciamma. The competing titles, as well as the rest of the lineup, can be found here.The lineup for this year's SXSW Film Festival has been announced. The roster includes the directorial debut of House of Psychotic Women author Kier-La Janisse, a documentary on musician William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops, and a restoration of Les Blank's I Went to the Dance. Recommended VIEWINGFrom February 17 to February 23, the National Gallery of Art is screening the series "The Voice and Vision of Billy Woodberry." The series includes Woodberry's Bless Their Little Hearts, a landmark work of the L.
- 2/19/2021
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Nobuhiko Obayashi in his "humble workspace." (Photograph by Aiko Masubichi for Mubi.) We're devastated by the loss of three great titans within the last week, each totally singular and significant to the history of movies: Bruce Baillie, avant-garde filmmaker and founder of Canyon Cinema and the San Francisco Cinematheque, the prolific pacifist and green-screen master Nobuhiko Obayashi (whose penultimate film Hanagatami was featured on Mubi in January of 2019), and Pan-African cinema pioneer Sarah Maldoror, known for her portraits of women's role in African liberation struggles. The Cannes Film Festival, which earlier announced plans to postpone the festival until the end of June to early July, has confirmed that this will no longer be possible, and that the festivities can no longer take place in their "original form." Recommended VIEWINGThis Long Century, a digital...
- 4/15/2020
- MUBI
Last week, Isiah Medina made Inventing The Future, the follow-up to his debut feature 88:88, available to stream through his personal website, free of charge. It’s a towering film: a radical piece of intellectual montage, a utopian political tract, and an exploration of the ontology of digital image-making. Using the book of the same name by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams as its basis, Inventing The Future outlines a vision of a “post-capitalist” society in which most labor is automated, a universal basic income is established, industry is nationalized and the economy is decarbonized. These societal transformations, Medina argues, will reduce tedious labor, eliminate financial pressures, and provide citizens with an increased amount of free time which may be devoted to leisure activities, pursuing creative endeavors, and engaging in other rewarding ventures.Before delving into these ideas for the future of Leftist politics, Medina reflects on the failures of the past.
- 4/15/2020
- MUBI
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.
Bad Boys For Life (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)
Much has been made in retrospect how quaint the original ‘95 Bad Boys plays in comparison to its ‘03 follow-up. It rode on the rapport of its leads through only a handful of gunfights and fisticuffs, culminating in an airport climax Bay had to front his own money to finish. The second installment contains not one but two extended car chases with trucks emptying obstacles onto our heroes, and an entire slum being obliterated by a Hummer with little regard for human life–all across a gratuitous two and a half hours. In short, eight years apart, the...
Bad Boys For Life (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)
Much has been made in retrospect how quaint the original ‘95 Bad Boys plays in comparison to its ‘03 follow-up. It rode on the rapport of its leads through only a handful of gunfights and fisticuffs, culminating in an airport climax Bay had to front his own money to finish. The second installment contains not one but two extended car chases with trucks emptying obstacles onto our heroes, and an entire slum being obliterated by a Hummer with little regard for human life–all across a gratuitous two and a half hours. In short, eight years apart, the...
- 4/3/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
At least once a decade since, I don't know, the 1960s, someone has declared the End of Cinema, sometimes with an air of triumph, occasionally a sense of relief, but usually a general tone of defeat. As we should have learned by now, cinema is resilient, not unlike the flu. It mutates, but it doesn't ever really go away. And as a specific subset of Cinema writ large, experimental film (and video? Do we still need to stipulate that?) has had its basic DNA rewritten dozens of times since the supposed heyday of the genre, the sixties-into-seventies sweet spot where autobiographical expressionism evolved into formalist rigor. The avant-garde, with its battered but still pulsating community ethos, and its inherent since of opposition (be it latent / aesthetic or blatant / political), has managed to keep on keeping on, even through the dim years of 1985–1993. Someone's always cooking up something good.Reviewing a...
- 12/16/2019
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSCitizen Kane.After an extended sojourn from filmmaking with canceled productions and the Netflix show Mindhunter, David Fincher has finally locked his next film. Derived from a screenplay written by his father (!), it concerns Citizen Kane's co-writer Herman Mankiewicz, to be played by Gary Oldman and photographed in black and white (!!!).Greta Gerwig will be co-writing a live-action Barbie—yes, the Barbie—movie with Noah Baumbach. The film will star Margot Robbie as the titular doll. Recommended VIEWINGThe long-awaited trailer for Inventing the Future, by Isiah Medina—whose films Semi-Auto Colours, 88:88, and Idizwadidiz previously screened on Mubi. The film is an adaptation of Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams.The Museum of Modern Art launches its first "online film exhibition highlighting NYC shorts from...
- 7/17/2019
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended VIEWINGFinally, it’s here: Netflix’s trailer for their restoration and reconstruction of Orson Welles' final and previously unfinished The Other Side of the Wind, starring John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich.A dreamy, sun-bathed trailer for Carlos Reygadas's Our Time, about a Mexican family that raises fighting bulls, and a young horse trainer who enters and disrupts their lives. The Venice-bound film is Reygadas's first since his 2012 Post Tenebras Lux. Behold, the official trailer for Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria, cut with an erratic rhythm that blurs the line between violent bodily contortions and interpretive dance. The film has been acquired by Mubi to show in UK cinemas on November 16.The trailer for Rialto Pictures's new 4K restoration of Jean-Pierre Melville's little-seen When You Read This Letter (1953). The film, which...
- 8/29/2018
- MUBI
Isiah Medina's idizwadidiz (2017) is exclusively showing August 29 – September 28, 2018 on Mubi in most countries in the world as part of the series Canada's Next Generation.The rose is red.The rose is not red.The rose is not an elephant.The rose is a rose.It is what it is.Is it?Let's try again: the law is…the law. We know when one says that the law is the law, there is perhaps a violent excess implied. For example, there is a murder by the police. The phrase ‘the law is the law’ can have the effect of an essential violence or unfairness in the law itself.A woman is…a woman. This declaration of identity is itself destabilized as 'woman' on either end can re-determine, via a list of qualities, what is explicated or abbreviated as ‘woman.’ Even without a list of qualities, the "..." itself presents what is...
- 8/29/2018
- MUBI
2018 is nearing the halfway mark, so it’s time to take a look back at the first six months and round up our favorite titles thus far. While the end of this year will bring personal favorites from all of our writers, think of the below 30 entries as a comprehensive rundown of what should be seen before heading into a promising back half ot the year.
Do note that this feature is based solely on U.S. theatrical releases from 2018, with many currently widely available on streaming platforms or theatrically. Check them out below, as organized alphabetically, followed by honorable mentions and films to keep on your radar for the remaining summer months.
24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami)
As a swan song, there aren’t many as beautifully somber as Abbas Kiarostami’s. At first glance simplistically structured, 24 Frames reveals itself to be a complex cinematic survey of time and artifice in filmmaking.
Do note that this feature is based solely on U.S. theatrical releases from 2018, with many currently widely available on streaming platforms or theatrically. Check them out below, as organized alphabetically, followed by honorable mentions and films to keep on your radar for the remaining summer months.
24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami)
As a swan song, there aren’t many as beautifully somber as Abbas Kiarostami’s. At first glance simplistically structured, 24 Frames reveals itself to be a complex cinematic survey of time and artifice in filmmaking.
- 6/20/2018
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Star Wars Dialogue is a 5-part dialog between Mike Thorn, Isiah Medina, Chelsea Phillips-Carr, Isaac Goes, and Neil Bahadur about George Lucas's first six films in the Star Wars franchise.Mike Thorn: I’ve taken to the idea of assessing these six films on their individual terms from time to time, but there’s also a lot to be gained from putting them into conversation with one another. What is gained by looking at Star Wars as a single work, spanning four decades and multiple entries?Further, I’d like to hear your thoughts about Lucas’s obsession with retroactive revision—not only did he drastically adjust his original trilogy for a 1997 theatrical re-release (the original “Special Editions”), but he has also made emendations to all six films in every one of their successive releases on digital formats and home video. Personally, I see this as a radical gesture...
- 1/18/2018
- MUBI
Star Wars Dialogue is a 5-part dialog between Mike Thorn, Isiah Medina, Chelsea Phillips-Carr, Isaac Goes, and Neil Bahadur about George Lucas's first six films in the Star Wars franchise.Mike Thorn: Considering the influence of silent cinema on the Star Wars films, how might we read Lucas’s series as it relates to D.W. Griffith’s work? I’m thinking very broadly here about some of the formal echoes between the climatic finale of The Birth of a Nation (1915) and that of A New Hope. Isiah Medina: In principle, there is nothing that cannot be reversed, there is no cinematic tactic or strategy that cannot be re-appropriated. Or, as Lucas would have it, there’s nothing that cannot be revised for and with future technological breaks. Okay, let’s say we have a Birth of a Nation ending mixed in with a Triumph of the Will (1935) award ceremony in A New Hope.
- 1/17/2018
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended VIEWINGWe found Kiyoshi Kurosawa's semi-serious, semi-tongue-in-cheek sci-fi film Before We Vanish one of the best premieres of last year. The trailer for the American release plays it straight, but captures the wry verve of the film. Highly recommended.We adore the output of Poverty Row studio Republic (Driftwood, The Inside Story, I've Always Loved You), but rarely have had the chance to see the movies on celluloid and looking good. So we'll be front row, center for the Museum of Modern Art's "Republic Rediscovered" series, curated by Martin Scorsese. But just as good as any of those 1940s classics is the trailer for the retrospective, cut by filmmaker Gina Telaroli.The first look at Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, Gus Van Sant's new film, set to premiere at Sundance.
- 1/17/2018
- MUBI
Star Wars Dialogue is a 5-part dialog between Mike Thorn, Isiah Medina, Chelsea Phillips-Carr, Isaac Goes, and Neil Bahadur about George Lucas's first six films in the Star Wars franchise.Mike Thorn: In her chapter of Glittering Images (2012) on Revenge of the Sith, Camille Paglia argues that, more than any other artist, George Lucas closes the gap between art and technology. How do you feel about this idea? In what ways are art and technology interacting with each other in these films, and how is Lucas cultivating that interaction? How has his innovation in this regard affected cinema since?Isiah Medina: Lucas claims that all art is, is technology. So the claim only works if we assume a gap to begin with. But more precisely, he says that one has an artistic problem, and then one invents a technology to solve it. In Heidegger’s Ponderings X he claims...
- 1/17/2018
- MUBI
Star Wars Dialogue is a 5-part dialog between Mike Thorn, Isiah Medina, Chelsea Phillips-Carr, Isaac Goes, and Neil Bahadur about George Lucas's first six films in the Star Wars franchise.Mike Thorn: Of particular interest in the Star Wars franchise is the relationship between Lucas’s avant-garde roots, and the way his experimental tendencies work with (and/or against) classicism. Do any of you think these films should be read more intently in terms of either one formal category or another (classical or avant-garde)? That is, do you think they’re “more” avant-garde than classical, or vice versa? Would your answer differ from film to film?Isiah Medina: Continuing the theme of revision, what is avant-garde can be revised as well, but I don’t think there is value in calling Star Wars avant-garde other than a provocation. It’s classical through and through. In terms of artistic movements within moviemaking,...
- 1/15/2018
- MUBI
Star Wars Dialogue is a 5-part dialog between Mike Thorn, Isiah Medina, Chelsea Phillips-Carr, Isaac Goes, and Neil Bahadur about George Lucas's first six films in the Star Wars franchise.Mike Thorn: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and writing about George Lucas’s work, especially his Star Wars films; I hold this six-part series in extremely high regard, especially the prequel trilogy. In my Bright Lights Film Journal article “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith: George Lucas’s Greatest Artistic Statement?”, I discuss the breadth of Lucas’s extratextual reference and his brazenly unique sensibility. In “George Lucas’s Wildest Vision: Retrofuturist Auteurism in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002),” I pay serious mind to Lucas’s interest in cinematic form and his avant-garde background, unpacking the ways in which his early experimental projects inform his later work. For the purpose of...
- 1/14/2018
- MUBI
Is it possible to make a documentary about the future? Following a widely-praised festival run that included screenings at Locarno, Tiff, and Nyff, Isiah Medina’s debut feature 88:88 was recently made available on YouTube. Since then, I’ve encountered questions asking whether or not 88:88 is a collapse or amalgamation of modern technology, and the seemingly contradictory nature of such inquiries emphasizes only a portion of the blurring of distinctions Medina’s cinema orchestrates. The Head of Programming at Locarno, Mark Peranson, called Medina the “most adventurous and contemporary practitioner of the avant-garde of his generation.” Perhaps the most contemporary avant-garde filmmaker is the most suited to draw the cinematic contours of our collective future. Medina is now in the process of adapting Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams’s Inventing the Future, a manifesto that insists on the emancipatory role of technology as we push towards the full automation of labor.
- 4/21/2017
- MUBI
The latest installment in the filmmaker's series of journal-films combining iPhone footage and sounds and images from movies. A diary penned with cinema.Journal (6.6.16 - 1.10.17)feat. additional footage from Masha Tupitsyn and Isiah MedinaMy journal-film series (of which this is the third installment) came to be as a means of resolving the points of convergence and departure amongst the environments I occupy and those which I encounter in cinema. I like to view these films as a method of managing the images that take up my thoughts and memories into a new continuity, one in which the distinction between images seen on-screen and those personally experienced is no longer absolute. In dissolving this partition, these films provide a vector for the animation conceptual concerns through cinema - montage fulfilling that which language can only formally describe and vice versa. The following essay outlines some of the concerns this film attempts...
- 3/20/2017
- MUBI
Last year the The Globe & Mail released an article entitled "What is Wrong with the Canadian Film Industry?" that outlined the problems facing our country’s cinema: low box-office numbers, a crisis of English-Canadian identity, an inability to compete with Hollywood entertainments etc., etc. Focused entirely on the industry, the piece fails to mention the resurgence that had been taking root for quite some time. 2015 was an important year for Canadian cinema, but while Room, Hyena Road and Wet Bum ate up the article’s word count, three of the year’s great Canadian films by emerging directors went unnoticed: Isiah Medina’s 88:88, Kurt Walker’s Hit 2 Pass, and Kazik Radwanski’s How Heavy This Hammer. Equating cinema with ‘content,’ a product to be bought and sold, the article is as much a reflection of the problems with Canadian cinema as an exposition of it. But this insidious...
- 11/29/2016
- MUBI
NEWSFilm scholar V.F. Perkins, author of the essential book Film As Film (1972), has died at the age of 80.The BFI in London has announced Black Star, the UK's largest celebration of black screen actors, to run October 17 - December 31, 2016.Consummate Hollywood director Garry Marshall, best known for Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride and such television productions as Happy Days and Mork & Mindy, has died at 81.Filmmaker and Mubi team member Kurt Walker and filmmaker Isaac Goes are launching online film exhibition space Kinet, "catered to the dissemination of new and boundary pushing avant-garde cinema." Kinet's first program, which begins next week, includes Masha Tupitsyn's epic Love Sounds.Recommended VIEWINGThe feature debut of Canadian director Isiah Medina, 88:88, which received its global online premiere on Mubi last spring, is now streaming for free.An English-subtitled, behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Johnnie To's excellent thriller, Three.The teaser trailer for...
- 7/20/2016
- MUBI
Through all of last year, we posted few reviews that were as positive as the one for 88:88, an experimental feature from young Canadian filmmaker Isiah Medina that considers the weight of economic inequality, anxiety, depression, and how philosophy can shape one’s perception of the world around them — in 65 minutes, and with more cuts than most films twice that length. That sounds overwhelming, yes, but Medina’s film — even if I didn’t necessarily find it to be of equal interest from minute to minute — often flows at the speed of human thought, which is to say: let 88:88 take over, and you’ll find something to latch onto. As we said, “[The] associations it creates between every image isn’t often totally clear, partly because the film doesn’t necessarily give you the time to create the link, but also because each one feels so personal. Yet this isn...
- 7/18/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Craig Keller and Uncas Blythe continue our series of film dialogues. Isiah Medina's 88:88 is having its exclusive online premiere at Mubi, playing through April 17, 2016.Craig Keller: We're going to talk about Isiah Medina's 66-minute film from 2015, 88:88. It's a challenging movie: polyphonic, polypictorial, but not confrontational, in fact pretty chilled-out; if it were featured on Top Gear the hosts might praise its speed, dynamic facility, and stability of suspension. 88:88 presents Medina himself and a group of friends or characters from university in and around the neighborhoods of Winnipeg.Now I'll refrain from synopsizing any more. I had a hard time with the film, but like any complicated work revisitations in whole and in part yield stronger comprehension; accordingly, new insights rise to the surface. Going back through it again the other day I started by watching only the first ten minutes, which provide an overture,...
- 4/5/2016
- by Craig Keller
- MUBI
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit the interwebs. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
88:88 (Isiah Medina)
What has set cinema back — both from the perspective of those who make, and those who write about it — are the binaries chosen to be created and propagated, be it taste, modes of production, or genre, essentially what forms “correct” cinema, in terms either classical or experimental. So there’s more and more hope that a film can come along that hopefully defies the tradition of quality,...
88:88 (Isiah Medina)
What has set cinema back — both from the perspective of those who make, and those who write about it — are the binaries chosen to be created and propagated, be it taste, modes of production, or genre, essentially what forms “correct” cinema, in terms either classical or experimental. So there’s more and more hope that a film can come along that hopefully defies the tradition of quality,...
- 3/18/2016
- by TFS Staff
- The Film Stage
Mubi is presenting the exclusive online premiere of Isiah Medina's 88:88 on March 18, 2016. The great Filipino director Raya Martin (La última película, Independencia) has generously offered an introduction to the film. Click here for more information in 88:88, including interviews and a director's statement.There was a time when a virtual flight simulator was rare enough that a minor forgotten program on the early Windows platform became a treasured obsession. It was nothing like your best-selling games today, nor was it some viral experience. The simulator went around through everyone’s mails in Eudora, in an era when executable programs weren’t promptly perceived as destructive. The flight simulator was simple: you are looking out directly from a generic cockpit, navigating through a three-dimensional barren landscape that was neither Mars nor Morocco. In my fragile memory bank, the light-colored hues alternated between aquamarine and pink. There was nothing else...
- 3/18/2016
- by Raya Martin
- MUBI
Mubi is proud to present the exclusive online premiere of Isiah Medina's debut feature film, 88:88. A densely layered montage that is both formally rigorous and emotionally raw, Medina's film explores with ideas about time, love, knowledge, poverty, and poetry. "Where does one start on Isiah Medina’s multiversal debut feature 88:88?," asks Filipino director Raya Martin (La última película, Independencia) in an introduction to the film for the Notebook. "Possibly with darkness, or the birth of an image, or the initial perception of it, or even with the history of cinema quickly rupturing into parts of music, literature, philosophy."Upon its debut at the Locarno Film Festival, where we discovered it ("a kaleidoscopic combination of self-portrait, documentary of Medina's local subculture and friends, and a radical attempt to create an actively thinking film, a film forming thought through the evolution of its imagery and cutting"), festival programming director Mark Peranson wrote:"Preternaturally talented,...
- 3/18/2016
- by Notebook
- MUBI
Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.
All The President’s Men will opens the 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival. See more films here.
Watch Yorgos Lanthimos and Ariane Labed discuss the making of The Lobster:
Little White Lies‘ Katherine McLaughlin on how Anomalisa echoes the existential blues of Chantal Akerman’s Je, Tu, Il, Elle:
What is it be human? What is it to ache? What is it to be alive?” asks customer service expert Michael Stone in Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s stop-motion masterpiece Anomalisa. These are the same questions that the late Belgium filmmaker Chantal Akerman posed over 30 years ago in her black-and-white debut feature Je, Tu, Il, Elle.
Watch a...
All The President’s Men will opens the 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival. See more films here.
Watch Yorgos Lanthimos and Ariane Labed discuss the making of The Lobster:
Little White Lies‘ Katherine McLaughlin on how Anomalisa echoes the existential blues of Chantal Akerman’s Je, Tu, Il, Elle:
What is it be human? What is it to ache? What is it to be alive?” asks customer service expert Michael Stone in Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s stop-motion masterpiece Anomalisa. These are the same questions that the late Belgium filmmaker Chantal Akerman posed over 30 years ago in her black-and-white debut feature Je, Tu, Il, Elle.
Watch a...
- 3/14/2016
- by TFS Staff
- The Film Stage
Mubi will present the exclusive online premiere of Isiah Medina's 88:88 on March 18, 2016. The Acropolis Cinema will screen the film in Los Angeles on March 11, 2016. The director was kind enough to share with Mubi and the Acropolis a written introduction to his feature film debut.The title comes from not being able to pay your bills, and when your electricity, water, heat, etc, gets cut. Later when you are able to pay again, the digital clocks in your home flash 88:88, --:--, - . There is no given, and even if when in poverty you can say "I have nothing," to be completely clear, this nothing is itself not given. So poor, even nothing itself is not given. So we need a new name of nothing. Our own name, to be able to begin. And that name for us was 88:88.It is important for us to link poverty to the beginning of thinking.
- 3/11/2016
- by Isiah Medina
- MUBI
Berlin Critics' Week returns this year for a second edition, running from February 11 through 18. We've got notes on the lineup, which includes Zahra Vargas's Homer, a Hunter's Fate, Pablo Agüero's Eva Doesn't Sleep, Sara Fattahi's Coma, Philippe Grandrieux's Malgré la nuit, Denis Côté's Que nous nous assoupissions, Andrej Zulawski's Cosmos, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Vapour, Igor Minaev's Blue Dress, Lewis Klahr's Sixty Six, Isiah Medina's 88:88 and Marita Neher and Tatjana Turanskyj's Disorientation Isn't a Crime. » - David Hudson...
- 1/28/2016
- Fandor: Keyframe
Berlin Critics' Week returns this year for a second edition, running from February 11 through 18. We've got notes on the lineup, which includes Zahra Vargas's Homer, a Hunter's Fate, Pablo Agüero's Eva Doesn't Sleep, Sara Fattahi's Coma, Philippe Grandrieux's Malgré la nuit, Denis Côté's Que nous nous assoupissions, Andrej Zulawski's Cosmos, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Vapour, Igor Minaev's Blue Dress, Lewis Klahr's Sixty Six, Isiah Medina's 88:88 and Marita Neher and Tatjana Turanskyj's Disorientation Isn't a Crime. » - David Hudson...
- 1/28/2016
- Keyframe
The 7th annual Wndx Festival of Moving Image, in addition to the fest’s usually fantastic lineup of new experimental film and video, is presenting a virtual smorgasbord of special events. So, be on the look out for them as they completely take over the city of Winnipeg on Sept. 26-30.
The fun kicks off on Sept. 26 with the debut of “Situated Cinema,” a roving microcinema created by Thomas Evans and Craig Rodmore that will screen at different venues throughout the entire festival. The opening night will take place at Raw Gallery and feature five films curated by Solomon Nagler that will connect viewers with their environment. The filmmakers presenting work at this unique screening experience are Heidi Phillips, Alexandre Larose, Caroline Monnet, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof and Alex MacKenzie.
Another fantastic multi-part special event at Wndx will be hosted by underground film historian Jack Sargeant, the world’s foremost authority on Beat Cinema.
The fun kicks off on Sept. 26 with the debut of “Situated Cinema,” a roving microcinema created by Thomas Evans and Craig Rodmore that will screen at different venues throughout the entire festival. The opening night will take place at Raw Gallery and feature five films curated by Solomon Nagler that will connect viewers with their environment. The filmmakers presenting work at this unique screening experience are Heidi Phillips, Alexandre Larose, Caroline Monnet, Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof and Alex MacKenzie.
Another fantastic multi-part special event at Wndx will be hosted by underground film historian Jack Sargeant, the world’s foremost authority on Beat Cinema.
- 9/24/2012
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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