The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival has announced its first wave of program details for its upcoming 58th edition, which is set to take place from June 28 through July 6, 2024. The Czech festival, widely considered to be the most prestigious film festival in Eastern Europe, is set to honor one of the nation’s most famous writers with a new retrospective titled “Franz Kafka and the Cinema.”
The series is set to feature screenings of a wide range of films inspired by the Czech novelist, who famously wove themes of alienation and existential angst into cryptic novels that often flirted with surrealism. Some films, like Orson Welles’ “The Trial” are direct adaptations of Kafka’s writings; but the series also includes movies about Kafka’s life, and films like Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” that were influenced by Kafka’s ideas.
“For decades, Kafka’s oeuvre has functioned as a continuing provocation to filmmakers,...
The series is set to feature screenings of a wide range of films inspired by the Czech novelist, who famously wove themes of alienation and existential angst into cryptic novels that often flirted with surrealism. Some films, like Orson Welles’ “The Trial” are direct adaptations of Kafka’s writings; but the series also includes movies about Kafka’s life, and films like Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” that were influenced by Kafka’s ideas.
“For decades, Kafka’s oeuvre has functioned as a continuing provocation to filmmakers,...
- 4/23/2024
- by Christian Zilko
- Indiewire
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSSouth Korean police have finally identified a suspect for the Hwaseong murders, best known as the serial killer case at the center of Bong Joon-ho's chilling 2003 hit Memories of Murder. Actor Sid Haig, known for his parts in films like Spider Baby, Jackie Brown and Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, has died, leaving a sizable contribution to the horror genre across decades and styles.Recommended VIEWINGThe hard-to-find Street Scenes, a documentary directed by Martin Scorsese regarding NYU student strikes circa 1970, has been mysteriously uploaded to YouTube. (Via The Film Stage.)The official trailer for Uncut Gems introduces Adam Sandler as a seedy jeweler caught in a basketball betting scheme. Read editor Daniel Kasman's review of the film here. Neon's first trailer for Chinonye Chukwu's Clemency, which follows a prison...
- 9/25/2019
- MUBI
In MemoriamEver since the late eighties French filmmaker Jean-Claude Rousseau has been a name commonly attached to the most adventurous and difficult type of filmmaking. Far from the American, well-established niches of experimental film, he has been working sparsely in Europe (and Japan) for over thirty years becoming a sort of mythological, solitary figure for this continent’s avant-garde. His oeuvre, roughly divided into two periods—the Super 8mm period going from 1983 to 1995; and the video work, still ongoing since 2003—deals constantly with the most primary elements of cinema: composition, movement, trace, and light, as if in every single shot of his films he wanted to make us reconsider what we normally take for granted about these concepts. Nevertheless, much more interested in cinema’s ends than in its mediums, Rousseau’s extremely rigorous but romantic approach to art reminds us less of structuralist filmmakers such as Ernie Gehr or...
- 9/23/2019
- MUBI
Celebrating its 72nd edition this year, the Locarno Film Festival has been the birthplace for the finest in international arthouse cinema and this year’s lineup looks to continue the tradition. Ahead of the festival, running August 7-17, the full slate has been announced.
Top highlights include the world premieres of Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela (pictured above), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s To the Ends of the Earth, Ben Rivers & Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Krabi, 2562, Ben Russell’s Color-blind, Denis Côté’s Wilcox, Fabrice Du Welz’s Adoration, as well as a new 12-minute short film from Yorgos Lanthimos titled Nimic and starring Matt Dillon. Other titles that have caught out eye are Echo, from Sparrows director Rúnar Rúnarsson, and A Girl Missing, from Harmonium director Koji Fukada.
The festival will also kick off with some star power as Patrick Vollrath’s 7500, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, will premiere. Check out the lineup below,...
Top highlights include the world premieres of Pedro Costa’s Vitalina Varela (pictured above), Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s To the Ends of the Earth, Ben Rivers & Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Krabi, 2562, Ben Russell’s Color-blind, Denis Côté’s Wilcox, Fabrice Du Welz’s Adoration, as well as a new 12-minute short film from Yorgos Lanthimos titled Nimic and starring Matt Dillon. Other titles that have caught out eye are Echo, from Sparrows director Rúnar Rúnarsson, and A Girl Missing, from Harmonium director Koji Fukada.
The festival will also kick off with some star power as Patrick Vollrath’s 7500, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, will premiere. Check out the lineup below,...
- 7/17/2019
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
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
Mrs. Fang director Wang BingBelow you will find the awards for the 70th Locarno Festival, as well as an index of our coverage.AWARDSInternational CompetitionGolden Leopard: Mrs. Fang (Wang Bing) Special Jury Prize: Good Manners (Juliana Rojas, Marco Dutra) Best Direction: F.J. Ossang (9 Doigts) Best Actress: Isabelle Huppert (Madame Hyde) Best Actor: Elliott Crosset Hove (Winter Brothers)Filmmakers of the Present Golden Leopard: ¾ (Ilian Metev) Special Jury Prize: Milla (Valerie Massadian) Prize for Best Emerging Director: Kim Dae-hwan (The First Lap) Special Mentions: Distant Constellation (Shevaun Mizrahi), Damned Summer (Pedro Cabeleira)Signs of Life Best Film: Cocote (Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias) Mantarraya Award: Phantasiesätze (Dane Komljen)First Feature Best First Feature: Scary Mother (Ana Urushadze)Art Peace Hotel Award: Meteors (Gürcan Keltek)Special Mention: Those Who Are Fine (Cyril Schäublin)Favorite MOMENTSFestival coverage by Daniel KasmanYacht Strafing, Gym Rivalry, Alcatraz Island: On Jacques Tourneur's Nick Carter, Master...
- 8/28/2017
- MUBI
The Wandering Soap OperaThis year at the Locarno Festival I am looking for specific images, moments, techniques, qualities or scenes from films across the 70th edition's selection that grabbed me and have lingered past and beyond the next movie seen, whose characters, story and images have already begun to overwrite those that came just before.***The camera’s brief tracking movements in Jacques Tourneur's Appointment in Honduras (1953). This filmmaker, to whom Locarno is devoting an extensive retrospective, is not a formalist like some of his more acclaimed contemporaries like John Ford, Otto Preminger, or Hitchcock, whose overt and idiosyncratic use of the camera makes far more obvious each director’s perspective on their stories. But that doesn't mean Tourneur didn't have formal flourishes, and none are so lyrically charged as the subtle and surprising times in his films when there’s a cut and suddenly the camera is floating...
- 8/12/2017
- MUBI
Ben & Joshua Safdie's Good TimeThe lineup for the 2017 festival has been revealed, including new films by Wang Bing, Radu Jude, Raúl Ruiz and others, alongside retrospectives and tributes dedicated to Jean-Marie Straub, Jacques Tourneur and much more.Piazza GRANDEAmori che non sonno stare al mondo (Francesca Comencini, Italy)Atomic Blonde (David Leitch, USA)Chien (Samuel Benchetrit, France/Belgium)Demain et tous les autres jours (Noémie Lvovsky, France)Drei Zinnen (Jan Zabeil, Germany/Italy)Good Time (Ben & Joshua Safdie, USA)Gotthard - One Life, One Soul (Kevin Merz, Switzerland)I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, USA)Iceman (Felix Randau, Germany/Italy/Austria)Laissez bronzer les cadavres (Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani, Belgium/France)Lola Pater (Nadir Moknèche, France/Belgium)Sicilia! (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, Italy/France/Germany)Sparring (Samuel Jouy, France)The Big Sick (Michael Showalter, USA)The Song of Scorpions (Anup Singh, Switzerland/France/Singapore)What Happed to Monday (Tommy Wirkola,...
- 7/12/2017
- MUBI
Chis Marker's Chat écoutant la musiqueThere are dog people and there are cat people, this we know, and there are even people who claim to be of both—though latent sympathies remain unspoken, like with a parent and which child is their favorite. With the Vienna Film Festival welcoming me with a tumbling collection of dog and cat short films spanning cinema's history—the Austrian Film Museum, an essential destination each year collaborating with the Viennale, is hosting a “a brief zoology of cinema” throughout the festivities—it is clear that filmmakers, too, have their preference. Silent cinema decidedly prefers the more easily trained and exhibited canine, with 1907’s surreal favorite Les chiens savants as a certain kind of cruel pinnacle. For the cats, Chris Marker, already the presiding figure over so much in 20th century art, I think we can easily claim is the cine-laureate. One need not know...
- 11/8/2015
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
Fallen Objects. Image: Courtesy of the artistHey Fernando, are you at a film right now? Sneaking away from the festival always feels so wrong, doesn't it? We're here to grind through, to fill every empty moment in our day with yet another film or another few dashed words of writing, and so stepping out of the multiplex to grab a leisurely meal with a friend or to explore a new neighborhood inspires in me nothing but guilt. Luckily, the festival has thought of such things and has given me reasons to get away from the festival center...more films! The Wavelengths section, which curates a more radical type of cinema than the rest of the fest, has often featured video art pieces installed both near and far during the festival (you may recall last year I reported on a wonderful piece in Future Projections, the old name of the Wavelengths...
- 9/14/2015
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
Edited by Adam Cook
Senses of Cinema's last issue of 2014 is now online—though we can still anticipate their epic annual Best of the Year poll (our personal favorite among the great many out there). Among the impressive wealth of content is a piece on the late, great Harun Farocki, and an amazing assortment of festival reports. Another major new issue is #61 of Cinema Scope, and you can read several of the articles online (including our own Daniel Kasman on Episode of the Sea)—but you're best off to pick up the print copy if you want to enjoy everything the magazine has to offer (such as my piece on Dumb and Dumber To)! The A.V. Club and The Dissolve are among the latest to contribute Best of 2014 lists, which you can find here and here. Scott Foundas is one of several writers for Variety to provide an end of year list,...
Senses of Cinema's last issue of 2014 is now online—though we can still anticipate their epic annual Best of the Year poll (our personal favorite among the great many out there). Among the impressive wealth of content is a piece on the late, great Harun Farocki, and an amazing assortment of festival reports. Another major new issue is #61 of Cinema Scope, and you can read several of the articles online (including our own Daniel Kasman on Episode of the Sea)—but you're best off to pick up the print copy if you want to enjoy everything the magazine has to offer (such as my piece on Dumb and Dumber To)! The A.V. Club and The Dissolve are among the latest to contribute Best of 2014 lists, which you can find here and here. Scott Foundas is one of several writers for Variety to provide an end of year list,...
- 12/30/2014
- by Notebook
- MUBI
The 6th annual Migrating Forms will be returning to the BAMcinématek in Brooklyn, New York on December 10-18 for a full week of new and classic experimental media.
The fun kicks off with the lyrical portrait of North Korea, Songs From the North, for which filmmaker Soon-Mi Yoo compiled footage from popular films, state-organized demonstrations and home video from her own visits to the country.
Highlights of the fest include a three-film retrospective of documentarian William Greaves, Still a Brother, The Fight and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One; a new consumerist exploration by Cory Arcangel, Freshbuzz (www.subway.com); the oblique narrative Don’t Go Back to Sleep by Stanya Kahn; and the Hong Kong experimental post-apocalyptic The Midnight After by Fruit Chan.
The full lineup for the 2014 Migrating Forms is below:
December 10
8:00 p.m.: Songs From the North, dir. Soon-Mi Yoo. This portrait of North Korea has been crafted...
The fun kicks off with the lyrical portrait of North Korea, Songs From the North, for which filmmaker Soon-Mi Yoo compiled footage from popular films, state-organized demonstrations and home video from her own visits to the country.
Highlights of the fest include a three-film retrospective of documentarian William Greaves, Still a Brother, The Fight and Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One; a new consumerist exploration by Cory Arcangel, Freshbuzz (www.subway.com); the oblique narrative Don’t Go Back to Sleep by Stanya Kahn; and the Hong Kong experimental post-apocalyptic The Midnight After by Fruit Chan.
The full lineup for the 2014 Migrating Forms is below:
December 10
8:00 p.m.: Songs From the North, dir. Soon-Mi Yoo. This portrait of North Korea has been crafted...
- 12/10/2014
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
L.M. Kit Carson, the Texan film legend best known for David Holzman's Diary, has passed away at the age of 73. For Filmmaker Magazine, Vadim Rizov gathers some valuable insight from Fabrice Aragno, the cinematographer of Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au langage. Eric Hynes provides an excellent and authentic New Yorker take on Gangs of New York for Reverse Shot's Martin Scorsese Symposium. Above: we're disappointed to hear that Paul Schrader's latest film has been essentially taken out of his hands—in response the filmmaker has disowned the picture. For Film Comment, Violet Lucca interviews Ruben Östlund about his acclaimed film, Force majeure:
"Lucca: Like your previous work, Force Majeure is intended to foster a philosophical debate about what human behavior means or implies. Do you envision that being more of an internal process, or do you want people to talk it out?
ÖStlund: Yeah, in a group.
"Lucca: Like your previous work, Force Majeure is intended to foster a philosophical debate about what human behavior means or implies. Do you envision that being more of an internal process, or do you want people to talk it out?
ÖStlund: Yeah, in a group.
- 10/21/2014
- by Notebook
- MUBI
brouillard passage #14
Dear Fern,
Many of the features you have told me about I have subsequently seen and very much like: Ferrara's tender, banal Pasolini (with a fantastic lead performance by Willem Dafoe, and, as you so justly pointed out, a truly moving homage with Ninetto Davoli), and the eccentric structural romantic comedy from Johnnie To, Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2. Two of the best films at Toronto, so far. Maybe I will return to these films later in the festival to tell you more of what I thought, but first somethings you may not have seen.
The much-anticipated shorts programs of the Wavelengths section wrapped up two nights ago and was presided over as always by indomitable programmer Andréa Picard—practically a cult figure in the festival world these days—who year after year has made it the most distinctive, the most personal, and the most engaged and engaging section at Tiff.
Dear Fern,
Many of the features you have told me about I have subsequently seen and very much like: Ferrara's tender, banal Pasolini (with a fantastic lead performance by Willem Dafoe, and, as you so justly pointed out, a truly moving homage with Ninetto Davoli), and the eccentric structural romantic comedy from Johnnie To, Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2. Two of the best films at Toronto, so far. Maybe I will return to these films later in the festival to tell you more of what I thought, but first somethings you may not have seen.
The much-anticipated shorts programs of the Wavelengths section wrapped up two nights ago and was presided over as always by indomitable programmer Andréa Picard—practically a cult figure in the festival world these days—who year after year has made it the most distinctive, the most personal, and the most engaged and engaging section at Tiff.
- 9/15/2014
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
What follows is a highly selective, unavoidably partial guide to the Wavelengths section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, which kicks off today. Perhaps it seems that “selective” and “partial” are synonymous enough to produce redundancy when placed within the same sentence, and in most instances I would agree with this objection. In the first case, "selective," I will note that, of the 28 shorts and features that I was able to preview from the Wavelengths section (impeccably curated, as always, by the perspicacious Andréa Picard), I have chosen to highlight the fifteen that I personally found most aesthetically and intellectually bold, invigo(u)rating, troubling, critical-verbiage-thwarting, or otherwise worthy of hearty recommendation. This in no way implies that the other works were somehow lacking, only that I could not see my way through to them at this particular time and place. A different set of viewing circumstances (the ones you’re about to embark upon,...
- 9/10/2014
- by Michael Sicinski
- MUBI
Yesterday, Tiff’s Wavelengths program unveiled a Locarno-heavy line-up of feature-length films that all aim to push the cinematic medium to its breaking point. Highlights include new films by Pedro Costa’s first “proper” feature in eight years, Horse Money (scarequotes because Ne change rien really is quite a singular, musky piece of work – see pic above); Eugène Green’s typically Baroque La Sapienza; 338 minutes of gruelling Filipino mastery from Lav Diaz in the form of From What is Before; Yoo Soon-mi’s essay film on the tensions between North and South Korea, Songs From the North; and The Princess of France, Matías Piñeiro’s follow-up to his breakout revisionist Shakespeare drama. Other features include Tsai Ming-liang’s sixth and longest entry in his Walker series, Journey to the West (complete with a Denis Lavant (Holy Motors) cameo); Cannes hits like Sergei Loznitsa’s Maidan and Lisandro Alonso’s Jauja...
- 8/13/2014
- by Blake Williams
- IONCINEMA.com
The Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin zombie drama Maggie, Dustin Hoffman drama Boychoir, Kristen Wiig comedy Welcome To Me and Sophie Barthes’ Madame Bovary have landed world premieres, Tiff gala and special presentation slots.
Also in line to screen for the first time anywhere at the Toronto International Film Festival (Sept 4-14) are crime thriller The Forger starring John Travolta, Christopher Plummer and Tye Sheridan, thriller Escobar: Paradise Lost starring Benicio Del Toro, Thomas McCarthy’s The Cobbler starring Adam Sandler, and Paul Bettany’s directorial debut Shelter.
Tiff top brass also unveiled the Wavelengths, Future Projections, Tiff Cinematheque and shorts programmes.
Wp = World premiere / Nap = North American premiere / IP = International premiere / Cp = Canadian premiere.
Galas
Boychoir (Us), François Girard Wp
The Connection (La French) (France-Belgium), Cédric Jimenez Wp
Escobar: Paradise Lost (France), Andrea Di Stefano Wp
The Forger (Us), Philip Martin Wp
Infinitely Polar Bear (Us), Maya Forbes Cp
Laggies (Us), Lynn Shelton IP
Ruth & Alex...
Also in line to screen for the first time anywhere at the Toronto International Film Festival (Sept 4-14) are crime thriller The Forger starring John Travolta, Christopher Plummer and Tye Sheridan, thriller Escobar: Paradise Lost starring Benicio Del Toro, Thomas McCarthy’s The Cobbler starring Adam Sandler, and Paul Bettany’s directorial debut Shelter.
Tiff top brass also unveiled the Wavelengths, Future Projections, Tiff Cinematheque and shorts programmes.
Wp = World premiere / Nap = North American premiere / IP = International premiere / Cp = Canadian premiere.
Galas
Boychoir (Us), François Girard Wp
The Connection (La French) (France-Belgium), Cédric Jimenez Wp
Escobar: Paradise Lost (France), Andrea Di Stefano Wp
The Forger (Us), Philip Martin Wp
Infinitely Polar Bear (Us), Maya Forbes Cp
Laggies (Us), Lynn Shelton IP
Ruth & Alex...
- 8/12/2014
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
The Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin zombie drama Maggie, Kristen Wiig comedy Welcome To Me and Sophie Barthes’ Madame Bovary have landed world premieres, Tiff gala and special presentation slots.
Also in line to screen for the first time anywhere at the Toronto International Film Festival (Sept 4-14) are crime thriller The Forger starring John Travolta, Christopher Plummer and Tye Sheridan, thriller Escobar: Paradise Lost starring Benicio Del Toro, Thomas McCarthy’s The Cobbler starring Adam Sandler, and Paul Bettany’s directorial debut Shelter.
Tiff top brass also unveiled the Wavelength, Future Projections, Tiff Cinematheque and shorts programmes.
Wp = World premiere / Nap = North American premiere / IP = International premiere / Cp = Canadian premiere.
Galas
Boychoir (Us), François Girard Wp
The Connection (La French) (France-Belgium), Cédric Jimenez Wp
Escobar: Paradise Lost (France), Andrea Di Stefano Wp
The Forger (Us), Philip Martin Wp
Infinitely Polar Bear (Us), Maya Forbes Cp
Laggies (Us), Lynn Shelton IP
Ruth & Alex (Us), Richard Loncraine Wp
Special...
Also in line to screen for the first time anywhere at the Toronto International Film Festival (Sept 4-14) are crime thriller The Forger starring John Travolta, Christopher Plummer and Tye Sheridan, thriller Escobar: Paradise Lost starring Benicio Del Toro, Thomas McCarthy’s The Cobbler starring Adam Sandler, and Paul Bettany’s directorial debut Shelter.
Tiff top brass also unveiled the Wavelength, Future Projections, Tiff Cinematheque and shorts programmes.
Wp = World premiere / Nap = North American premiere / IP = International premiere / Cp = Canadian premiere.
Galas
Boychoir (Us), François Girard Wp
The Connection (La French) (France-Belgium), Cédric Jimenez Wp
Escobar: Paradise Lost (France), Andrea Di Stefano Wp
The Forger (Us), Philip Martin Wp
Infinitely Polar Bear (Us), Maya Forbes Cp
Laggies (Us), Lynn Shelton IP
Ruth & Alex (Us), Richard Loncraine Wp
Special...
- 8/12/2014
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
Above: From Greece (1965)
In London in November 2012 a retrospective of the films of German filmmaker Peter Nestler appeared for the first time in the English speaking world, where Nestler was and is still largely unknown, despite having a few vocal fans, including Jean-Marie Straub, Hartmut Bitomsky, and Harun Farocki. The clarity of Nestler’s films reveals the paucity of the contemporary documentarian’s work; in his films every image and sound counts, every idea is expressed precisely and with purpose, whether it is a history of manual glass making techniques in Sweden, or a look at Hungarian proletariat artists who worked in factories or as farmers all their lives, and now make art for themselves and for their families. Yet, like Straub, Nestler works only with what already exists, his cinema preconditioned on attentiveness to the environment in which he films: his compositions, voice-over, editing, etc, all come after the...
In London in November 2012 a retrospective of the films of German filmmaker Peter Nestler appeared for the first time in the English speaking world, where Nestler was and is still largely unknown, despite having a few vocal fans, including Jean-Marie Straub, Hartmut Bitomsky, and Harun Farocki. The clarity of Nestler’s films reveals the paucity of the contemporary documentarian’s work; in his films every image and sound counts, every idea is expressed precisely and with purpose, whether it is a history of manual glass making techniques in Sweden, or a look at Hungarian proletariat artists who worked in factories or as farmers all their lives, and now make art for themselves and for their families. Yet, like Straub, Nestler works only with what already exists, his cinema preconditioned on attentiveness to the environment in which he films: his compositions, voice-over, editing, etc, all come after the...
- 11/26/2013
- by Christopher Small
- MUBI
By my first afternoon in Rotterdam I had found an image that positively vibrated out of the screen at me. A dark doorway, seen obliquely in an empty frame, contained by stolid, lifeless rural architecture, cloaked in a miasma conjured from a combination of haze, a fogged lens, old film stock, and blown out whites from an open aperture. It is from Letter, a short work, not so much a documentary but a fragment drawn carefully and gently into immanence by Sergei Loznitsa, conjured from footage he shot, the program notes tell me, over ten years ago “at a psychiatric institution in a forgotten corner of Russia.” But even with no text or voice over to place and set this artifact resurrected (or projected), and a soundtrack achingly follied and sneakily dubbed, the sense of lostness, malady and asynchronicity is prevalent. Some persons, mostly old and bumbling, pursue the frame...
- 2/1/2013
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
A man sits alone in a hotel room. That he is wearing his hat, coat, and scarf tells us he is waiting for the time of his departure from this transitionary moment. Yet the mundane appearance of Jean-Claude Rousseau’s short film Faux départ is merely a way to lull us into missing the sleight-of-hand happening before our eyes. Rousseau plays the role of a stone-faced magician, a mix of Méliès and Keaton, and toys with the conventions of how space and continuity are created and maintained through editing. He shows us even the simplest of spaces have the possibility to surprise.
The bulk of the film’s runtime consists of a shot containing the bed, table, and chair. We watch as the man (Rousseau) sits, waits, and wanders about the room, idly killing time. A trip to open the room’s window motivates the first cut of the film.
The bulk of the film’s runtime consists of a shot containing the bed, table, and chair. We watch as the man (Rousseau) sits, waits, and wanders about the room, idly killing time. A trip to open the room’s window motivates the first cut of the film.
- 10/9/2012
- by Alex Hansen
- MUBI
News.
Above: Cinetract 2: Revolution Is in the Eye of the Beholder, a video essay by David Phelps. The video is part of a new issue of one of our very favorite—and one of the best—film magazines in the world, La Furia Umana, which is now out. Each issue is focused on dossiers on particular directors, and this issue includes essential articles on Leo McCarey, Paul Vecchiali, Jean-Claude Rousseau and José Luis Guerín. In the McCarey dossier are pieces by our very own Daniel Kasman—on the Cary Grant & Ginger Rogers vs. the Nazis film, Once Upon a Honeymoon—and Ted Fendt on McCarey's Charley Chase comedy shorts. But don't ignore the depth and variety of articles outside this center, which include searing video pieces by Notebook regulars David Phelps—on Lang, Vertov and protest—and Gina Telaroli on Joan Bennett, Max Ophüls, The Reckless Moment and the reflections of American presidents.
Above: Cinetract 2: Revolution Is in the Eye of the Beholder, a video essay by David Phelps. The video is part of a new issue of one of our very favorite—and one of the best—film magazines in the world, La Furia Umana, which is now out. Each issue is focused on dossiers on particular directors, and this issue includes essential articles on Leo McCarey, Paul Vecchiali, Jean-Claude Rousseau and José Luis Guerín. In the McCarey dossier are pieces by our very own Daniel Kasman—on the Cary Grant & Ginger Rogers vs. the Nazis film, Once Upon a Honeymoon—and Ted Fendt on McCarey's Charley Chase comedy shorts. But don't ignore the depth and variety of articles outside this center, which include searing video pieces by Notebook regulars David Phelps—on Lang, Vertov and protest—and Gina Telaroli on Joan Bennett, Max Ophüls, The Reckless Moment and the reflections of American presidents.
- 7/4/2012
- MUBI
Right now is not a bad time for admirers of Robert Bresson. A traveling retrospective has made its way across numerous cities, and people who'd never gotten a chance to glimpse Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971) now get to watch it on the big screen in a proper print. Furthermore, the critical and cinephilic culture surrounding Bresson's work is probably more alive now than it has been in a long time. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than the wider interest in (and affection for) the director's late color films, earlier misunderstood and dismissed in some quarters as odd aberrations which lacked the spiritual clarity or asceticism of the black-and-white work. It's for this reason that film culture can welcome a second, revised edition of James Quandt's crucial anthology, Robert Bresson.
There is simply no more essential book of material on Bresson to be found in the English language, unless...
There is simply no more essential book of material on Bresson to be found in the English language, unless...
- 4/9/2012
- MUBI
With 2010 only a week over, it already feels like best-of and top-ten lists have been pouring in for months, and we’re already tired of them: the ranking, the exclusions (and inclusions), the rules and the qualifiers. Some people got to see films at festivals, others only catch movies on video; and the ability for us, or any publication, to come up with a system to fairly determine who saw what when and what they thought was the best seems an impossible feat. That doesn’t stop most people from doing it, but we liked the fantasy double features we did last year and for our 3rd Writers Poll we thought we'd do it again.
I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.
I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.
- 1/10/2011
- MUBI
I. Festivals And Ideology
"I cannot tell a lie," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum in the catalogue introduction to the retrospective on American film comedy he curated for this year's Viennale (in collaboration with the Austrian Filmmuseum), "the initial concept and impulse for this series weren’t my own." A paragraph later, he goes on to explain, "[...] both the selection of the films and the preparation of this catalogue [...] came only after I overcame a certain amount of resistance." And as if he weren't transparent enough, Rosenbaum adds, "I was tempted by [the Viennale and Filmmuseum directors' joint proposal], but various roadblocks stood in the way, most of them either logistical or ideological." One of these roadblocks, "a reluctance to restrict [himself] to 'American cinema' after living through eight years of American separatism and exceptionalism as propounded and promulgated by the administration of George W. Bush," is not much of an ideological leap for those familiar with Rosenbaum.
"I cannot tell a lie," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum in the catalogue introduction to the retrospective on American film comedy he curated for this year's Viennale (in collaboration with the Austrian Filmmuseum), "the initial concept and impulse for this series weren’t my own." A paragraph later, he goes on to explain, "[...] both the selection of the films and the preparation of this catalogue [...] came only after I overcame a certain amount of resistance." And as if he weren't transparent enough, Rosenbaum adds, "I was tempted by [the Viennale and Filmmuseum directors' joint proposal], but various roadblocks stood in the way, most of them either logistical or ideological." One of these roadblocks, "a reluctance to restrict [himself] to 'American cinema' after living through eight years of American separatism and exceptionalism as propounded and promulgated by the administration of George W. Bush," is not much of an ideological leap for those familiar with Rosenbaum.
- 11/13/2009
- MUBI
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