Seeking the Monkey KingIt is all too fitting that a film series focusing on “3D in the 21st Century” should feature the work of Ken Jacobs. More than any other single avant-garde filmmaker, Jacobs has explored the pulsating, tremulous frontier where images hit the eyes, and a great deal of his exploration over the last 30+ years—beginning with his experiments with the Pulfrich filter and his development of the dual projection “Nervous System”—has involved three-dimensional illusionism, that ambiguous perceptual space where flatness and depth wrestle in the optical mind. Historically, aesthetically, and technologically, it would make no sense to consider cinema in three dimensions without including Jacobs’ contributions.But there’s more at stake in Jacobs’ presence in the Bam’s 3D series. No mere formalist, Jacobs has been a tireless artistic whistleblower, documenting and cataloging the ugliest aspects of American culture. From blackface and animal torture in Star Spangled to Death,...
- 5/11/2015
- by Michael Sicinski
- MUBI
Let Your Light ShineIt took over a century, but 3D is finally generating some cultural goodwill. With two major retrospectives of 3D filmmaking taking place next month—one at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen (May 1-5), focusing on a broad range of stereoscopic experimentation throughout avant-garde history, and the other, BAMcinématek’s “3D in the 21st century” series (May 1-17), looking at both experimental and mainstream manifestations from the last fifteen years—the tenacious ‘here again/dead again’ format is apparently beginning to transcend its stigma as a box office gimmick; its capacity for new formal breakthroughs now more than ever met with inklings of trust instead of contempt. Pernicious connotations of commerce, power, and excess haven't been exorcised from 3D so much as they've been fused into its very infrastructure, opening up new opportunities for radical abstractions, poetics, disruptions, and historical inquiries to subvert grand institutions and languages from within the form itself.
- 5/1/2015
- by Blake Williams
- MUBI
With so few events during which to premiere new and important avant-garde films in North America—among them, the recently wrapped Wavelengths section of the Toronto International Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Fest, and the San Francisco Cinematheque's Crossroads series—the shift that has occurred at this year's New York Film Festival is one well worth noting. This weekend, the inaugural Projects program will debut. Previously known as "Views from the Avant-Garde" and programmed by Mark McElhatten and Gavin Smith (though last year's titanic program was done by McElhatten alone), this sidebar more akin to a festival-inside-a-festival of film and video works has been re-named "Projections" and in its first year is programmed by a returned Smith, Film Society of Lincoln Center's Director of Programming Dennis Lim, and Aily Nash.
The section encompasses 13 programs over a single weekend during the festival, including a handful of feature length films and numerous shorts,...
The section encompasses 13 programs over a single weekend during the festival, including a handful of feature length films and numerous shorts,...
- 10/4/2014
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
Below you will find our total coverage of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, including a round up on experimental short films, reviews, and the festival-spanning dialog between our two main critics at Tiff. More interviews will be added to the index as they are published.
Correspondences
Between Fernando F. Croce and Daniel Kasman
#1
Fernando F. Croce on Pedro Costa's Horse Money, Lisandro Alonso's Jauja, and Olivier Assayas' Clouds of Sils Maria
#2
Daniel Kasman on Pedro Costa's Horse Money, Peter Ho-Sun Chan's Dearest, Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, Takashi Miike's Over Your Dead Body, and Sono Sion's Tokyo Tribe
#3
Fernando F. Croce on Sono Sion's Tokyo Tribe, Jessica Hausner's Amour Fou, Johnnie To's Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2, and Abel Ferrara's Pasolini
#4
Daniel Kasman on Alexandre Larose's brouillard passage #14, Friedl vom Gröller's...
Correspondences
Between Fernando F. Croce and Daniel Kasman
#1
Fernando F. Croce on Pedro Costa's Horse Money, Lisandro Alonso's Jauja, and Olivier Assayas' Clouds of Sils Maria
#2
Daniel Kasman on Pedro Costa's Horse Money, Peter Ho-Sun Chan's Dearest, Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, Takashi Miike's Over Your Dead Body, and Sono Sion's Tokyo Tribe
#3
Fernando F. Croce on Sono Sion's Tokyo Tribe, Jessica Hausner's Amour Fou, Johnnie To's Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2, and Abel Ferrara's Pasolini
#4
Daniel Kasman on Alexandre Larose's brouillard passage #14, Friedl vom Gröller's...
- 9/16/2014
- 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
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