The members of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Laboratory have made some of the most daring and fascinating documentaries of the past decade, using experimental cinema techniques to portray a variety of subjects ranging from a Queens junkyard (Foreign Parts) to Montana sheep farmers (Sweetgrass) to Maine fisherman braving the rough ocean waters (the masterful Leviathan). In each movie, they manipulate sight and sound in new ways, delivering an immersive viewing experience that isn’t as much about depicting something on screen as it is about taking you deep inside of it.
In the latest Lab effort, somniloquies, which was directed by the...
In the latest Lab effort, somniloquies, which was directed by the...
- 2/14/2017
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
It’s one thing to come up with a top 10 list of the best movies in any given year. The best movies of the decade is even harder. But the best movies of a century? Ok, when it comes to the new millennium, that’s just a decade and a half. Still, it’s no easy task to consider the highlights from 16 years of viewing — but that’s part of what makes it such a compelling challenge.
Recently, BBC polled a large group of critics, including IndieWire’s Eric Kohn and David Ehrlich, for their lists of the best achievements of the 21st century. (The full results will run in mid-to-late August.) The results of the poll have yet to run, but as countless participants have begun sharing their results, we felt compelled to weigh in. Of course, lists are highly subjective and almost always omit some major titles, so...
Recently, BBC polled a large group of critics, including IndieWire’s Eric Kohn and David Ehrlich, for their lists of the best achievements of the 21st century. (The full results will run in mid-to-late August.) The results of the poll have yet to run, but as countless participants have begun sharing their results, we felt compelled to weigh in. Of course, lists are highly subjective and almost always omit some major titles, so...
- 6/25/2016
- by Eric Kohn and David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
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We take a spoiler-free look at Sky Arts' terrific quartet of Neil Gaiman short stories, starting on Thursday the 26th at 9pm...
Neil Gaiman's success gives me faith in the world. He's a great writer, and he's well known because of that fact. I think it springs from the particular way he has of looking at humanity, and passing along his insights to us - with wit, warmth, and not a small bath of uncomfortable self-realisation topped with the occasional cold shower of fear. If that sounds like a lot for a writer to accomplish, well, that's why he's so good, and why he should be able to make a living with his words. The fact that he does makes me feel better about us all.
The big challenge of Likely Stories, therefore, is to capture Gaiman's appeal and put it across without losing any one of those elements.
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We take a spoiler-free look at Sky Arts' terrific quartet of Neil Gaiman short stories, starting on Thursday the 26th at 9pm...
Neil Gaiman's success gives me faith in the world. He's a great writer, and he's well known because of that fact. I think it springs from the particular way he has of looking at humanity, and passing along his insights to us - with wit, warmth, and not a small bath of uncomfortable self-realisation topped with the occasional cold shower of fear. If that sounds like a lot for a writer to accomplish, well, that's why he's so good, and why he should be able to make a living with his words. The fact that he does makes me feel better about us all.
The big challenge of Likely Stories, therefore, is to capture Gaiman's appeal and put it across without losing any one of those elements.
- 5/25/2016
- Den of Geek
Last year, 2.5 billion people traveled by rail across the wild expanse of China. With each passing year the country continues to sink massive amounts of money into the high speed infrastructure – this year alone the China Railway Corp. plans to spend a whopping $121.5 billion toward construction and expansion. In The Iron Ministry, the latest feature production from Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, director/editor/cameraman J.P. Sniadecki attempts to convey what those numbers look like from the inside out. Riding tracks throughout China throughout 2011 and on through 2013 with the camera rolling, Sniadecki’s curious findings flow with affectionate intrigue and an instinctive eye for beauty in the mundane.
The Iron Ministry joins an immense body of train-centric documentary cinema, from its birth back at the beginnings of film itself by way of the Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat through D.A. Pennebaker’s mid-century short Daybreak Express...
The Iron Ministry joins an immense body of train-centric documentary cinema, from its birth back at the beginnings of film itself by way of the Lumière brothers’ Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat through D.A. Pennebaker’s mid-century short Daybreak Express...
- 2/16/2016
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
From the Film Society of Lincoln Square This thrilling new film from J.P. Sniadecki (People’s Park, Foreign Parts), shot over three years during a series of train journeys across China, begins with metal: the sounds and sights of gears, wheels on tracks and linked railway cars meshing, crunching, and grinding. We are gradually introduced to the people who ride and work on the cars, with their luggage, their produce, the products they’re hawking, the goods they’re transporting. People are crammed into every corner of every train car, with the exception of a first-class compartment from which the filmmaker is barred. At one point, Sniadecki follows a food vendor from one [ Read More ]
The post New York Film Festival 2014: The Iron Ministry Gets New Clips appeared first on Shockya.com.
The post New York Film Festival 2014: The Iron Ministry Gets New Clips appeared first on Shockya.com.
- 9/7/2014
- by Rudie Obias
- ShockYa
Opening Night – World Premiere
Gone Girl
David Fincher, USA, 2014, Dcp, 150m
David Fincher’s film version of Gillian Flynn’s phenomenally successful best seller (adapted by the author) is one wild cinematic ride, a perfectly cast and intensely compressed portrait of a recession-era marriage contained within a devastating depiction of celebrity/media culture, shifting gears as smoothly as a Maserati 250F. Ben Affleck is Nick Dunne, whose wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing on the day of their fifth anniversary. Neil Patrick Harris is Amy’s old boyfriend Desi, Carrie Coon (who played Honey in Tracy Letts’s acclaimed production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) is Nick’s sister Margo, Kim Dickens (Treme, Friday Night Lights) is Detective Rhonda Boney, and Tyler Perry is Nick’s superstar lawyer Tanner Bolt. At once a grand panoramic vision of middle America, a uniquely disturbing exploration of the fault lines in a marriage,...
Gone Girl
David Fincher, USA, 2014, Dcp, 150m
David Fincher’s film version of Gillian Flynn’s phenomenally successful best seller (adapted by the author) is one wild cinematic ride, a perfectly cast and intensely compressed portrait of a recession-era marriage contained within a devastating depiction of celebrity/media culture, shifting gears as smoothly as a Maserati 250F. Ben Affleck is Nick Dunne, whose wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing on the day of their fifth anniversary. Neil Patrick Harris is Amy’s old boyfriend Desi, Carrie Coon (who played Honey in Tracy Letts’s acclaimed production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) is Nick’s sister Margo, Kim Dickens (Treme, Friday Night Lights) is Detective Rhonda Boney, and Tyler Perry is Nick’s superstar lawyer Tanner Bolt. At once a grand panoramic vision of middle America, a uniquely disturbing exploration of the fault lines in a marriage,...
- 8/20/2014
- by Notebook
- MUBI
★★★★☆The latest remarkable offering from Harvard University's Sensory Ethnography Lab (whose additional credits include Sweetgrass, Foreign Parts and the upcoming Manakamana), Lucien Castiang-Taylor and Verena Paravel's hulking behemoth of a documentary, Leviathan (2012), rightly caught the eye after scooping up the top prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival earlier this year. Unlike any other doc seen this year - or any year, for that matter - Leviathan soars above the black waves of the Atlantic before plummeting into the depths as it follows a group of hardened fishermen trawling for their prey off the New Bedford coast.
- 11/28/2013
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
News.
Above: Filmmaker Andrei Ujică in conversation with Dennis Lim.
Dennis Lim is the new year-round Cinematheque programmer for the Film Society at Lincoln Center. Not too long ago we reported Robert Koehler had taken the position, but due to family health issues, he has stepped down. We congratulate Dennis Lim and our thoughts are with Robert Koehler. He may not be a household name, but he meant a lot to those who knew him: Ric Menello passed away at the age of 60 last week. Menello is known for co-writing Two Lovers and Lowlife with James Gray, and for directing this. Take a look at the Ditmas Park Corner blog's remembrance of Menello.
Editor of The Chiseler and Notebook contributor Daniel Riccuito has a new book coming out, and it's a humdinger: The Depression Alphabet Primer, with illustrations by Tony Millionaire. You can find a sample of the delights...
Above: Filmmaker Andrei Ujică in conversation with Dennis Lim.
Dennis Lim is the new year-round Cinematheque programmer for the Film Society at Lincoln Center. Not too long ago we reported Robert Koehler had taken the position, but due to family health issues, he has stepped down. We congratulate Dennis Lim and our thoughts are with Robert Koehler. He may not be a household name, but he meant a lot to those who knew him: Ric Menello passed away at the age of 60 last week. Menello is known for co-writing Two Lovers and Lowlife with James Gray, and for directing this. Take a look at the Ditmas Park Corner blog's remembrance of Menello.
Editor of The Chiseler and Notebook contributor Daniel Riccuito has a new book coming out, and it's a humdinger: The Depression Alphabet Primer, with illustrations by Tony Millionaire. You can find a sample of the delights...
- 3/6/2013
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
Nature documentaries tend to be relegated to a format that conforms to National Geographic standards; not "Leviathan." A collaborative effort by filmmakers Verena Paravel ("Foreign Parts") and Lucien Castaing-Taylor ("Sweetgrass"), the movie is exclusively composed of frantic, powerful and often disturbing images shot with tiny cameras onboard (and sometimes just off-board) a fishing vessel off the coast of New Bedford, Massachusetts. The movie is a mesmerizing testament to the capacity for lightweight digital cameras to allow for more innovative filmmaking approaches, a lyrical ode to life at sea, a cautionary tale about life at sea, a blurring of the line between man, nature and fish. Cameras drift beneath the waves and assume the perspectives of the creatures swarming below, but they also capture that same haunting Pov from the deck of the ship when the animals are deceased. Crewmembers are glimpsed in heat of brutal physical labor but rarely speak.
- 3/1/2013
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
"Mind-blowing." Cinema Guild has released a trailer for what is being called one of the "most anticipated" documentaries this year, called Leviathan, directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel, of the docs Sweetgrass and Foreign Parts. It's set aboard a "hulking fishing vessel" hailing from New England, chronicling the commercial fishing world with some of the most raw visuals you'll see. THR's fest review describes it as "a wordless montage of footage filmed on small digital cameras from every dark corner of the boat." This is a fitting trailer for such an interesting and experimental doc, which may just be worth seeing. Watch the official trailer for Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel's doc Leviathan, from Apple: Leviathan is a thrilling, immersive documentary that takes viewers deep inside the dangerous world of commercial fishing. Set aboard a hulking fishing vessel as it navigates the treacherous waves off the New England coast—the...
- 2/8/2013
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
One of the most raved about docs on the festival circuit this year (It currently holds an A- from 23 critics on Criticwire) is "Leviathan," from filmmakers Vérena Paravel and Lucien Castain-Taylor, respectively the acclaimed director's of 2010's "Foreign Parts" and 2009's sheepherding doc "Sweetgrass." A portrait of a commercial fishing trawler off the Massachusetts coast, the film was shot on a multitude of small, waterproof cameras tethered to the fisherman or placed around the deck and in the water. You can check out a glimpse of the results below. "Leviathan" opens March 1st at the IFC Center in New York, followed by a limited nationwide release.
- 2/7/2013
- by Mark Lukenbill
- Indiewire
Cinema Guild has released the trailer for Lucien Castaing-Taylor ("Sweetgrass") and Verena Paravel's ("Foreign Parts") festival favorite doc "Leviathan." The film is nominated for the Indie Spirit's Truer Than Fiction award and will be released theatrically March 1 at NYC's IFC Center, followed by a national rollout. Check out the trailer and synopsis below: Leviathan is a thrilling, immersive documentary that takes you deep inside the dangerous world of commercial fishing. Set aboard a hulking fishing vessel as it navigates the treacherous waves off the New England coast–the very waters that once inspired Moby Dick– the film captures the harsh, unforgiving world of the fishermen in starkly haunting, yet beautiful detail. Employing an arsenal of cameras that pass freely from film crew to ship crew, and swoop from below sea level to astonishing bird’s-eye views, Leviathan is unlike anything you have ever seen; a purely...
- 2/7/2013
- by Sophia Savage
- Thompson on Hollywood
Today, the True/False Film Festival announced that Sebastian Junger's "Which Way is the Front Line from Here? The Life & Time of Tim Hetherington" will receive the 2013 True Life Fund award. Junger made the film about his "Restrepo" co-director, the photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who was killed while working in Libya. The Fund, set up by festival sponsor The Crossing, a local church, donates money to the subjects of a deserving documentary film. This year, the fund will go to Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues (Risc) and the Milton Margai School for the Blind in Sierra Leone, two organizations chosen by the people behind the Hetherington film. Lucien Castaing-Taylor ("Sweetgrass") and Verena Paravel ("Foreign Parts"), who directed "Leviathan," which will screen at the festival, will receive the festival's True Vision Award, given to filmmakers whose work "shows a dedication to the creative...
- 2/7/2013
- by Bryce J. Renninger
- Indiewire
Check out the poster for the documentary Leviathan from Cinema Guild helmed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Sweetgrass) and Verena Paravel of Foreign Parts. Leviathan is a thrilling, immersive documentary that takes you deep inside the dangerous world of commercial fishing. Set aboard a hulking fishing vessel as it navigates the treacherous waves off the New England coast–the very waters that once inspired Moby Dick– the film captures the harsh, unforgiving world of the fishermen in starkly haunting, yet beautiful detail. Employing an arsenal of cameras that pass freely from film crew to ship crew, and swoop from below sea level to astonishing bird’s-eye views, Leviathan is unlike anything you have ever seen; a purely visceral, cinematic experience. Leviathan opens on March 1st at the IFC Center in New York City, followed by a national release at a later date.
- 1/29/2013
- Upcoming-Movies.com
Check out the poster for the documentary Leviathan from Cinema Guild helmed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Sweetgrass) and Verena Paravel of Foreign Parts. Leviathan is a thrilling, immersive documentary that takes you deep inside the dangerous world of commercial fishing. Set aboard a hulking fishing vessel as it navigates the treacherous waves off the New England coast–the very waters that once inspired Moby Dick– the film captures the harsh, unforgiving world of the fishermen in starkly haunting, yet beautiful detail. Employing an arsenal of cameras that pass freely from film crew to ship crew, and swoop from below sea level to astonishing bird’s-eye views, Leviathan is unlike anything you have ever seen; a purely visceral, cinematic experience. Leviathan opens on March 1st at the IFC Center in New York City, followed by a national release at a later date.
- 1/29/2013
- Upcoming-Movies.com
Reviewer: Philip Tatler IV
Ratings (out of five): ****
Foreign Parts (directed by the team of Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki) has all the makings of a groan-inducing activist documentary along the lines of Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s The Garden or (worse) a ghoulish voyeur’s-eye-view of extreme poverty in America. Instead, Paravel/Sniadecki have pulled off the rare verite documentary that manages a formal grace and doesn’t patronize or fetishize its subjects.
Ratings (out of five): ****
Foreign Parts (directed by the team of Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki) has all the makings of a groan-inducing activist documentary along the lines of Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s The Garden or (worse) a ghoulish voyeur’s-eye-view of extreme poverty in America. Instead, Paravel/Sniadecki have pulled off the rare verite documentary that manages a formal grace and doesn’t patronize or fetishize its subjects.
- 10/27/2012
- by weezy
- GreenCine
Leviathan is yet another rich project hailing from the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab, which has brought us fascinating, anthropologically-driven experimental work since its inception in 2007, including award-winning films like Sweetgrass (2009) and Foreign Parts (2010). The lab was formed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor, who co-directs Leviathan with Véréna Paravel. The film takes place on a fishing boat, shot on cheap, tiny digital cameras that are attached to fishermen, dead fish and even thrown overboard on tethers. Just as Abbas Kiarostami's Five was a film that somehow articulated the essence of Yasujiro Ozu with its patient observation of the slow and beautiful ebb and flow of life, Leviathan does the same, though unconsciously, for the late Tony Scott with its kinetic, often aesthetically stunning visual noise. It is a film that evades description with its originality, something which is brought up in the following exchange I had with Véréna Paravel at the Locarno Film Festival,...
- 8/29/2012
- MUBI
On day nine of the San Francisco International Film Festival, Meredith Brody starts small and winds up enthralled by the enduring allure of Terence Stamp. Odd and thrilling to watch a tiny movie, shot by a two-person crew, about nearly-invisible lives and occupations, on the biggest screen in the Kabuki: one of the treats of a festival. The movie is Foreign Parts, by Véréna Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki. For the first time in these chronicles, I’m tempted to quote directly from the Sfiff catalogue : “Anthropological in scope, sensuous in detail, and emotionally resonant throughout…,” with which I can only concur. The filmmaking pair, associates of the Harvard University Sensory Ethnography Lab, insinuated themselves into the daily life of a grubby enclave of car repair ...
- 5/1/2011
- Thompson on Hollywood
The 49th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival is an epic celebration of experimental media that runs for six days on March 22-27. There’s so much great stuff screening this year, it makes one wonder what they’ll have left for their 50th anniversary next year!
A couple of the highlights include the highly anticipated feature-length documentary The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye by Marie Losier, which chronicles the pandrogynous love story between industrial music pioneer Genesis P-Orridge and his late wife. The film already made a big splash at the Berlinale earlier in the year and looks to be a major hit on the festival circuit this year.
Also not to be missed is a special retrospective of one of this year’s festival jury members, Vanessa Renwick, a longtime favorite on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film. Renwick will screen 10 of her quirky and artistic documentary portraits,...
A couple of the highlights include the highly anticipated feature-length documentary The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye by Marie Losier, which chronicles the pandrogynous love story between industrial music pioneer Genesis P-Orridge and his late wife. The film already made a big splash at the Berlinale earlier in the year and looks to be a major hit on the festival circuit this year.
Also not to be missed is a special retrospective of one of this year’s festival jury members, Vanessa Renwick, a longtime favorite on Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film. Renwick will screen 10 of her quirky and artistic documentary portraits,...
- 3/7/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Updated through 10/11.
"A deserving winner of the Best First Feature prize at this year's Locarno International Film Festival," begins Adam Nayman in Reverse Shot, "Verena Paravel and Jp Sniadecki's Foreign Parts was produced with the support of Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab — the same department that produced Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash's Sweetgrass (Castaing-Taylor is the program's director). There are no sheep in Foreign Parts, but its relationship to the earlier film is unmistakable: not only in the sense that Sniadecki and Paravel favor an immersive yet unobtrusive documentary style, which eschews narration or contextualization, but also in its focus on a long-standing yet vanishing professional community."...
"A deserving winner of the Best First Feature prize at this year's Locarno International Film Festival," begins Adam Nayman in Reverse Shot, "Verena Paravel and Jp Sniadecki's Foreign Parts was produced with the support of Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab — the same department that produced Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash's Sweetgrass (Castaing-Taylor is the program's director). There are no sheep in Foreign Parts, but its relationship to the earlier film is unmistakable: not only in the sense that Sniadecki and Paravel favor an immersive yet unobtrusive documentary style, which eschews narration or contextualization, but also in its focus on a long-standing yet vanishing professional community."...
- 10/11/2010
- MUBI
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