Here are all the films in competition at the 2016 QCinema Film Festival
Aside from the films in competition, there are also special screenings, including its opening film, Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden, which was nominated for a Palme d’Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.
In celebration of the 20th death anniversary of the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski, his films Blue (1993), White (1994), and Red (1994) will be screened at the festival.
For the Screen International section will screen films that have been lauded in the international film festival circuit, while RainbowQC will show movies that depict the experiences of the LGBTQ community.
Digitally restored films will be shown for Back Throwback, movies from across the country will be shown for Cinema Rehiyon, and Pinoy Spotlight features Blanka by Kohki Hasei and Area by Louie Ignacio.
L’Shana Tova! This week we’re featuring SAND STORM – Israel’s official submission to this past year’s Academy Award. The film takes place in a Bedouin village in Southern Israel – and it’s rich in cultural specifics. But it’s themes are so universal. It gives a powerful – clear–eyed look at the inequalities facing women in that part of the world.
Below is a review from Variety. It plays tonight at 5:00pm and tomorrow at 7:30pm at the Riviera Theatre.
A sympathetic but clear-eyed look at the inequalities that entrap women (and the men they love and resent) in a Bedouin village.
By Ella Taylor – Variety
On the face of it, “Sand Storm” presents a familiar feminist tale of a teenaged girl trapped between her desire to control her destiny and the constraints of her traditional family. Yet this emotionally intelligent first feature offers a sympathetic but clear-eyed look at the tangled skein of inequalities that entrap women (and the men they love and resent) in a Bedouin village stranded between modernization and anachronistic patriarchy. Written and directed by a Jewish Israeli woman, Elite Zexer, and made with a Jewish-Arab crew, the film boasts alluring desert visuals, muscular acting and intricate psychology that should attract audiences for women’s movies, foreign art films and those who believe that melodrama still has a place in cinema.
Men are not permitted at a Bedouin celebration in Southern Israel to welcome (with variable enthusiasm) the arrival of a second wife. Instead the older women wear fake mustaches, one of many striking images in “Sand Storm” that address the crucible of anger and pain that simmers beneath the revelry. Jalila (Ruba Blal-Asfour), the man’s first wife, glowers magnificently, and not just because she’s going to have to share power with the younger newcomer. Discovering that her daughter, Layla (Lamis Ammar), has a secret lover at school, Jalila freaks out at first, then defends Layla to her father, Suliman (Haitham Omari), who has given his eldest child many modern advantages — a cell phone, driving lessons, an education — and yet, for his own murky reasons, shows willing to sacrifice her future to an arranged marriage to a village man she barely knows.
At once autocratic and weak, Suliman props up an archaic social structure in which men call the shots but women clean up the messes. Ammar makes a charmingly frisky Layla, but the energy of “Sand Storm” surely belongs to Blal-Asfour as her mother, a caged tiger who smolders and paces and deliver tongue-lashings to her hapless conformist of a husband as needed. Rail as they might, Jalila and Layla remain caught between loyalty to their disintegrating family and an emerging hunger for autonomy and experience that are prohibited by their medieval fate. Those fake mustaches signal both strength and vulnerability, and the movie captures the stark beauty of the Negev desert where this traditionally nomadic tribe has put down roots, marred by a pervasive sense of entrapment for the young woman who’s both deeply attached to her mother and sisters, and desperate to fly the coop.
The handheld camerawork can be rough at times, and here and there Zexer steps a little heavily on the pedal of metaphor: A long tunnel works a touch too hard to flag Layla’s struggle between freedom and family duty. But the director juggles different points of view with aplomb, and her strong script addresses with impressive subtlety the gap between what people say and what they do under extreme pressure.
The strands of her narrative come together to show how everyone is left the loser in polygamous marriage, a divide-and-rule institution that pits not only husband and wife against one another, but also women who would otherwise be inclined to mutual support. Mercifully there’s no Hollywood ending here, only a bracing touch of mordant humor about interior decor that has the discreet hum of groundwork being laid, and rebellions yet to come.
The 21st Busan International Film Festival will show a total of 299 movies from 69 countries, and among them 122 films will premiere at the event, its organizers said Sunday.
The annual festival, which will open Thursday and run through Oct. 15, will show a wide variety of films ranging from critically acclaimed films to experimental movies and those made by female directors.
Under the World Cinema section, numerous award-wining films from the 2016 Cannes Film Festival will be featured. Among those are I, Daniel Blake by Ken Loach, It’s Only the End of the World by Xavier Dolan and Personal Shopper by Olivier Assayas.
A Window on Asian Cinema section also boasts a variety of films that have been highly acclaimed in Cannes. The list includes Ma‘ Rosa by Brillante Mendoza and The Salesman by Asghar Farhadi.
Korean-Chinese Zhang Lu’s A Quiet Dream will be screened as the opening movie. It is about a young Korean woman named Ye-ri who runs a bar and takes care of her paralyzed father. The Dark Wind by Hussein Hassan will be the closing movie.
For the Gala Presentation, four movies — Bleed for This by Ben Younger, Daguerrotype by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Rage by Lee Sang-il, and Your Name by Makoto Shinkai — wait to meet cinemagoers in the southern port city of Busan.
Those who look for some experimental Korean movies should check out the following films: The Table by Kim Jong-kwan, Picture of Hell by Park Ki-yong and Jane By Cho Hyun-hoon.
Female directors’ works such as Desperate Sunflowers by Hitomi Kuroki and The Long Excuse by Miwa Nishikawa will also be screened.
Desperate Sunflowers is a directorial debut film by a well-known Japanese actress who starred in, most famously, Paradise Lost in 1997.
For those who consider themselves to be avid, patient film fans, try A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery by Lav Diaz. The running time is 480 minutes. (Yonhap)
October 2, 2016 – Today’s White House Student Film Festival in Washington, DC, marked AFI’s third annual collaboration on the event, which inspires and celebrates young filmmakers from around the nation. AFI welcomed aspiring K–12 filmmakers to the White House to premiere their work for an audience of special guests and film artists from in front of and behind the camera, including Ty Burrell, Alfre Woodard and STRANGER THINGS creators Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer and star Millie Bobby Brown.
AFI is a founding partner of the festival, which took place this year preceding South by South Lawn, an elaborate outdoor event celebrating the arts to be held on Monday, October 3. As part of AFI’s ongoing mission to educate today’s audiences and tomorrow’s storytellers — a mandate that began when AFI was born in the White House Rose Garden in 1965 — participating filmmakers will continue to learn about the art form after the festival by working closely with AFI Conservatory alumni as mentors.
Open to K–12 student filmmakers, storytellers were encouraged to submit their short film based on this year’s festival theme, “The World I Want to Live In.” Thirteen finalist films were screened at the event, followed by a meet-and-greet with festival attendees. In line with this year’s theme of looking toward the future, and the festival’s annual spirit of innovation, Virtual Reality stations were also part of the experience for guests, filmmakers and their families.
Since the White House Student Film Festival inception in 2014, AFI has worked on President Barack Obama’s program as an advisor and producer, reviewing submissions and creating a celebration that includes educational opportunities for the selected young filmmakers. This year, that partnership continued as the White House Student Film Festival highlighted both the Administration’s commitment to public service and AFI’s ongoing mission to nurture the next generation of storytellers.
The Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) held a press conference to announce lineups in the all sections, jury members, and this year’s topics and highlights at Toranomon Hills Forum in Tokyo.
In the Competition section, 16 films were selected from among 1,502 titles from 98 countries and regions. Representing the two Japanese titles in this main competitive section, director Daigo MATSUI and actress Yu AOI from Japanese Girls Never Die, and actor Munetaka AOKI from Snow Woman were welcomed on the stage and made remarks.
Acclaimed director Mamoru HOSODA, who is being honored this year with “The World of Mamoru Hosoda” in the Animation Focus section, greeted the audience after the retrospective lineup was announced. He will appear for stage talks during TIFF with such special guests as director Hirokazu KORE-EDA and filmmaker Daisuke “Dice” TSUTSUMI.
This year’s International Competition Jury members were also announced. French director/writer/producer Jean-Jacques BEINEIX will serve as President, working with director Hideyuki HIRAYAMA, actor Valerio MASTANDREA, producer Nicole ROCKLIN, and director Mabel CHEUNG.
During the 10-day celebration, more than 200 films will be screened and there will be unique film-related events every day at the festival venues, including stage appearances, Q&A sessions and symposia featuring celebrated guests from around the world.
The 29th TIFF will take place October 25 to November 3, 2016 at Roppongi Hills, EX Theater Roppongi (Minato City) and other theaters, halls and facilities in Tokyo Metropolitan Area.
Nate Parker talks quickly, in grandly eloquent phrases, about slavery, injustice, about his Art (with a capital A), about how he became imbued with the revolutionary spirit and the obstacles he has faced.
He talks in lengthy and complex diatribes, not only about his controversial movie, The Birth of a Nation, which he co-wrote, directed and stars in, but digresses on to other subjects: religion, family, racism.
But what he doesn’t talk about and refuses to address is the 17-year-old rape case in which he was acquitted and why he has not apologised to the woman concerned and her family.
In interviews, at press conferences and on the red carpet at the Toronto Film Festival in September, he consistently dodged questions about the sexual abuse allegations at Penn State University in which he and a fellow student athlete were accused of rape. They claimed the sex was consensual.
Parker was acquitted in a 2001 trial and his roommate, Jean McGianni Celestin, who co-wrote The Birth of a Nation, was convicted but he appealed the verdict and was granted a new trial; the alleged victim would not testify again. She committed suicide in 2012 after two previous attempts.
Speaking to CBS television’s 60 Minutes show for a forthcoming interview, Parker addresses the court case but stops short of an apology: “I was falsely accused,” he tells host Anderson Cooper. “I went to court, I was vindicated. I feel terrible that this woman isn’t here. Her family had to deal with that, but as I sit here, an apology is — no.”
Parker admits to Cooper that what happened that night was “morally wrong” when viewed through his faith: “As a Christian man . . . just being in that situation, yeah, sure. I am 36 years old right now. My faith is very important to me, so looking back through that lens . . . it’s not the lens I had when I was 19 years old.” But when asked if he felt any guilt at all, his answer is unequivocal: “I don’t feel guilty.”
Parker’s film tells the story of Nat Turner (Parker), a slave who led a bloody rebellion in Virginia in 1831; among the many violent scenes is a brutal depiction of Turner’s wife being raped. Although it received a standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival and rave reviews in January and won two awards there, the American Film Institute later refused to screen it amid concerns from the students about the resurfaced sexual allegations.
Nate Parker in Birth of a Nation
The initial Oscar buzz died down after The Hollywood Reporter quoted members of the Academy who admitted that the controversy had made them less likely to vote for the film – or even watch it. Almost overnight, one of Hollywood’s most promising new film-makers had become damaged goods, and his eagerly anticipated film was suddenly a PR nightmare.
Parker’s case hasn’t been helped by an essay written by his accuser’s sister, Sharon Loeffler. “In the years that followed, Nate Parker became a well-known actor,” she wrote in Variety. “It tormented my sister to see him thrive while she was still struggling… As her sister, the thing that pains me most of all is that in retelling the story of the Nat Turner slave revolt, they invented a rape scene. The rape of Turner’s wife is used as a reason to justify Turner’s rebellion.” Loeffler goes on to call the scene “creepy and perverse”.
When The Birth of a Nation premiered at Toronto it was reasonably well received with plenty of applause. Tellingly, though, it received no end-of-festival awards and critics have suggested that Parker’s history and present adamant refusal to address the issue will have an adverse affect on the movie’s performance. It is due to be released in the UK on January 20 next year.
There was some doubt as to whether Parker would even attend the Toronto festival and if he did, whether he would give press conferences and interviews. But for four days during the festival Parker was in the spotlight, always evading questions about the rape scandal with convoluted diversions into the subject matter of the movie, saying: “This is a forum for the film. I don’t want to hijack this with my personal life.”
Nate Parker with his wife Sarah DiSanto (Photo credit: Getty Images)
When we talked at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, I asked whether he thought the rape case would damage the movie’s performance at the box office and how he felt when details of the allegations resurfaced he replied: “I am 36 years old, there are so many obstacles in my life so many obstacles getting this film off the ground. I go to God with my thoughts and my prayers for support and getting through any of the obstacles that have presented themselves in my life.”
Will it have any affect on the movie’s chances for awards?
“I try not to think of awards. I don’t make movies for awards, I make movies for people. I am an artist and not a politician.”
But how have the recent events affected him and how will it affect the movie?
“I am going to speak first to the rape scene in the movie… I made this film without any reflection of anything that did or didn’t happen in my life. As a black man, as a father, as a husband my last 36 years have been many obstacles that have led me to this moment and the way I have continued to get through them all is in prayer and petitioning to the God that I believe in.”
Nate Parker was born in Norfolk, Virginia, 40 miles east of where Turner’s rebellion occurred. His parents never married although his mother later married an Air Force officer.
“I grew up with nine of us in a three-bedroom apartment and it was very hard in the sense that we had very little,” he recalls. “But as a kid you don’t understand what you don’t have until you turn on the television and then you are able to contextualise your position in society.
“So in seeing the different ways people that look like me were represented in the media it affected me greatly and I grew up with a very heavy and dense chip on my shoulder, like I am sure many others do, and I had very few ways of dealing with it because there were so many closed doors for people who look like me.”
However, he went to Pennsylvania State University where he became a nationally ranked wrestler and met his future wife, Sarah, who is white. The couple have four daughters in addition to another daughter Parker had from a previous relationship. Parker has also adopted his sister’s son.
Nate Parker at the Toronto Film Festival in September (Photo credit: Reuters/Jack Thornhill)
His Hollywood career began when he was spotted by a talent manager while attending a modelling convention in Texas. He moved to Los Angeles and made his screen debut in the TV series “Cold Case,” before being cast by Denzel Washington in the historical drama The Great Debaters, which Washington directed. He went on to appear in The Secret Life of Bees, Red Tails and Arbitrage.
He was in his 20s when he learned of Nat Turner, an educated slave and preacher whose rebellion is now seen as a turning point in the fight for liberation. “It made me feel a bit more whole, like I knew more about the contributions of people that looked like me to the country that everyone said was so great,” he says. “I thought more people needed to know about it.
“So when I became an artist I said I wanted to present this to the world and to be honest, I didn’t know if I was going to direct. I just knew it needed to be told. I don’t think this story is important just for black people; I think it’s important for all of us. It’s something necessary and worthy of our attention.”
In 2014 he began work on the script and on raising the £7 million budget for the movie he called The Birth of a Nation. He ironically used the same title as D.W. Griffith’s 1915 movie which was notorious for its virulently racist views of blacks and which historians see as a major impetus for the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan and a rise in lynching and other racist violence.
“I reclaimed the title and re-purposed it as a tool to challenge racism and white supremacy in America,” says Parker.
In his version of Turner’s story, a brutal sexual assault by white men on Turner’s wife feeds a rage that sets the rebellion in motion. History, however, shows that Turner never acknowledged having a wife and his rebellion was, according to his own writings, based on spiritual visions.
The film was shot in 27 days and first screened at the Sundance Film Festival where Fox Searchlight £14 million for the worldwide distribution rights, the biggest deal in the festival’s history.
“When I made this film I had no idea… I would never have guessed in a million years that I would be sitting here today,” says Parker. “I just made a movie and kept going forward and tried to finish it.”
As for the violent and bloody rebellion in which Turner and his followers hack and murder white men, he says: “We have to give our audiences credit to think that they won’t reduce the entire film to being about black people killing white people. If you watch the film and are honest with yourself you can see past the skin colour and recognise it was literally the oppressed against the oppressor.
This film is about so many things that are bigger than me.”
The Birth of a Nation will screen at the London Film Festival in October followed by a January UK release.
Terry Gilliam‘s longtime passion projectThe Man Who Killed Don Quixote has been delayed again. The writer-director was going to start shooting the film (for the second time) next week, but another unexpected curveball has been thrown in this troubled project’s direction. Gilliam called the most recent delay of his fantastical adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’ novel “slight.”
What’s preventing Don Quixote from going before cameras this time? Money.
While speaking with Jonathan Ross on the BBC Radio 2 talk show (via Indiewire), Gilliam explained the delay:
“I was supposed to start to be shooting it starting next Monday. It’s been slightly delayed. I had this producer, a Portuguese chap, who claimed he’d get all the money together in time. And a few weeks ago, he proved that he didn’t have the money. So we are still marching forward. It is not dead. I will be dead before the film is.”
Back in March, it was reported Gilliam would begin principal photography on October 4th. The film, which will star Adam Driver and Michael Palin– (Monty Python), was said to have an $18 million budget. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote started to appear genuinely close to happening, but that still sounds like the case, despite the new delay. As Gilliam said, they’re marching forward.
A few months ago, the director’s plan was to have the film finished in time for next year’s Cannes Film Festival. He told reporters at this year’s fest he’s ready to get this movie out of his head and into the world (Source: Indiewire):
“We should be here in Cannes next year with the finished film, and then you can ask me why I made such a mess of it or why I made such a wonderful film. I think it’s going to be great…It’s one of those dream nightmares that never leave you until you finish the thing. I want to get this film out of my life so that I can get on with the rest of my life.”
If this recent delay is only momentary, Gilliam can probably still reach that 2017 Cannes premiere he wants. The last we saw of the filmmaker he was scouting locations for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which is set to co-star Olga Kurylenko, Stellan Skarsgård, and Joana Ribeiro. After 20 years of waiting, Terry Gilliam will, sadly, just have to wait a little bit longer complete The Man Who Killed Don Quixote.
When the 54th annual New York Film Festival opened making history. Ava DuVernay’s powerful 13th which explores the history of race relations through the prism of prisons and the preponderance of young black and Latino men who make up a large part of their populations, will become the first documentary to open the Big Apple festival. It will also be the first one that will become available on television just a week later when it debuts on Netflix day-and-date with a limited theatrical release.
The choice of 13th surprised many, as major Oscar contenders normally fight to get that high-profile slot. By making this choice, NYFF has thrust the Netflix doc right into the awards-season limelight and perhaps propelled its chances to prevail in the nascent Best Documentary Feature race. Certainly NYFF has had its footprint in past Oscar seasons by debuting the likes of eventual Best Picture nominees Hugo, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies, Her, Life of Pi and Captain Phillips, to name a few. Birdman, an eventual Best Picture winner, played New York for its official North American premiere (even though it unofficially played Telluride at the time) and skipped the more awards-centric Toronto fest, causing lots of friction at the time between TIFF and Telluride.
Coming just two weeks after what is known at the fall festival trifecta of Venice/Telluride/Toronto, NYFF carefully has used its opening, centerpiece and closing slots as bait for Oscar-hungry contenders. With the unusual choice of 13th as its opener and James Gray’s The Lost City 0f Z — a 2017 release not playing in this year’s awards sandbox — as the closer, the NY event risked losing some of the Oscar cred the other three fests have built up.
Cast of 2oth Century Women (Photo courtesy of A24)
The centerpiece film from savvy indie A24, Mike Mills’ transcendent 20th Century Women is a certain contender with a brilliant performance by Annette Bening as well as wonderful turns by Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning as the influential women in the life of a young man somewhat reminiscent of Mills himself. The December release is sure to generate Oscar buzz once it premieres next week in New York.
After the official announcement of this year’s NYFF lineup, the festival sprang two more contenders on awards watchers — most significantly the October 14 world premiere of Ang Lee’s much-anticipated Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which will be shown in a groundbreaking format of 120 frames-per-second 4K 3D. It is an ultra-real process that no mainstream studio release has been exhibited in before and will be watched just as carefully for Oscar potential as the new film from a man who already has two directing Oscars for Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi, as well as one for his 2000 Foreign Language Film winner Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. For those of us stuck on the West Coast, studios usually offer up a simultaneous screening of this type of contender in Los Angeles, but not for Billy Lynn’s. The process is so delicate, NYFF had to go to a specially equipped commercial theater in New York City instead of the fest’s normal site of Alice Tully Hall.
Natalie Portman portrays Jackie Kennedy in Pablo Larrain’s bio-epic, Jackie. (Photo courtesy of Venice Film Festival/Biennale di Venezia/ASAC Images)
Another film, just recently announced, is Fox Searchlight’s Jackie, which will have its U.S. premiere at NYFF after a world premiere in Venice and North American launch in Toronto. The NYFF screening is sure to further Best Actress speculation for Natalie Portman’s uncanny Jackie Kennedy in the film from Chilean director Pablo Larrain (who has his Foreign Language Film entry Neruda playing New York). Like 20th Century Women it doesn’t open until December, so a key festival slot like this keeps it front and center in the awards conversation that now is going in earnest.
This is a very long festival, running from tonight through October 16, but the actual number of movies being shown that hope to advance through the also very long awards season is rather small compared with, say, Toronto, which had nearly 300 movies on display. Several titles from this year’s Cannes lineup — including Aquarius, Elle, Toni Erdmann, Graduation, Julieta, Neruda, Paterson, Personal Shopper, Sierranevada, Staying Vertical, The Rehearsal,The Unknown Girl and I, Daniel Blake — also show the impact that world-renowned film festival in the South of France always seems to have on this one in New York. Percentage-wise, it is a much higher number than Telluride or even Toronto poached from Cannes. Additionally, two very promising indie players will continue their fest exposure at NYFF: Sundance sensation Manchester by the Sea and A24’s terrific Moonlight, which debuted at Telluride. Both also played TIFF.
All in all, the 54th edition of NYFF promises to be, as usual, a very arty affair that could be seismic in terms of Oscar impact, if that October 14 unveiling of Sony’s big hope, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, ignites the race the way many think it could. Of course, it should be remembered that just last year another big, technically innovative Sony hope with Walk in its title tried to make a similar splash and sent some people running for the exits with vertigo. You never know.
While it doesn’t have the glitz of Venice, the breadth of Toronto, or the Cannesiness of Cannes, the New York Film Festival is still a heavy-hitting stop in the fall-prestige cycle. In addition to a few major fall releases that have already screened in the United States — including Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, Kelly Reichardt’s Certain Women, and Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight — the slate includes the U.S. premieres of some big-time movies, as well as two major worldwide debuts. Here are the highlights.
13th
Ava DuVernay’s new documentary is named for the 13th Amendment, which contains the clause that seems to presage mass incarceration in the United States: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” If there’s anyone who can take on a topic as weighty and complex as the prison system in modern America, it’s DuVernay, whose clear-eyed and humanizing approach seems like the ideal fit for a subject this inhumane.
20th Century Women
If you responded to Mills’s heartfelt and funny Beginners, which won Christopher Plummer a well-deserved Oscar, you’re likely to spark to this one, where Annette Bening stars as a witty, fretful single mother who enlists lodger Greta Gerwig and neighbor Elle Fanning to help raise her 15-year-old son. And if you respond to throwback attire, you’re definitely going to spark to every single jumpsuit, vintage tee, and denim jacket worn in this 1979-set film.
Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk
Besides being an Ang Lee film that’s likely going to be part of the Best Picture race, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is also sure to generate conversation for its technical ambition. Lee shot the movie, which adapts Ben Fountain’s novel about an Iraq War hero who returns home, at 120 frames per second versus the standard 24, with the intent of creating one of the most realistic and hypervisceral depictions of war ever to be shown on a movie screen. Regardless of how Billy Lynn turns out — and hopes are high — the 4K 3-D showing at NYFF should be a notable experience in and of itself.
Elle
A comedy about — wait for it — a woman brazenly overcoming her own rape, director Paul Verhoeven’s first film in French was one of the most talked-about films at Cannes. It’s also one of two acclaimed movies coming out this fall featuring the French actress Isabelle Huppert, whose Things to Come, directed by up-and-comer Mia Hansen-Løve, is also showing at NYFF. While Huppert’s two-pronged Oscar push could be a major awards-season narrative, Elle is worth seeing in its own right: Verhoeven is many things, but he’s never boring.
Jackie
Natalie Portman gives a brave, ballsy performance as Jackie Kennedy in this Pablo Larrain–directed biopic, which shrugs off the stodginess so often endemic to this genre in pursuit of something even bigger than real. Portman’s Jackie is no shrinking violet, though the men around her would love it if she played the dutiful, porcelain-faced wife even after the tragic assassination of her husband. How she, in turn, manipulates the image-crafters around her in one last bid for agency gives Jackie its startling kick.
Paterson
In an industry defined by big, loud, expensive superhero movies, Jim Jarmusch exists as the ultimate outlier. His movies are quiet, cool, and indie to the core, and new one Paterson sounds no different: Adam Driver plays a bus driver in Paterson, New Jersey, whose name is also Paterson, and who writes poems, and who hangs out with his wife and dog, and … that’s pretty much it. But that’s enough, and after raves out of Cannes, this should be the kind of film that gives a certain kind of moviegoer hope.
Personal Shopper
Personal Shopper director Olivier Assayas recently stated, in no uncertain terms, that Kristen Stewart is the best actress of her generation. If this comes as an unusual suggestion to you, then you haven’t been paying close-enough attention, because KStew has, truly, become a must-see performer — including in Assayas’s most recent movie, Clouds of Sils Maria, for which she won a César Award, something no American actress has ever done before. With a strange premise — Stewart’s character is a personal shopper and, also, a medium, meaning there are fancy clothes AND a ghost — and a famously divisive reception at Cannes, this gives the best actress of her generation one of the most anticipated films of the fall.
The Lost City of Z
James Gray’s last film The Immigrant was under-seen and under-heralded, as James Gray films tend to be. But his new one, The Lost City of Z, gives him an unusually sexy topic: The British explorer Percy Fawcett’s search for a city in the Amazon rain forest, based on the book of the same name by the virtuoso New Yorker writer David Grann. Hopefully, it can bring Gray the wide audience he deserves; at the very least, audiences in the know can savor a new film from one of the most thoughtful contemporary American directors.
The Love Witch is the second feature film from Anna Biller and it recently received distribution from Oscilloscope Laboratories. Oscilloscope Laboratories is scheduled to release The Love Witch in 35mm in Los Angeles at the Landmark Nuart on November 11th and in New York on November 18th, with additional screenings in select theaters across the country.
Biller’s first feature was Viva(2007), a dramedy musical about two Los Angeles suburbanites who experiment with drugs, sex and bohemia in the 1970’s. Both films are shot in 35mm. Biller wrote, directed and produced The Love Witch and also made many of the props and paintings and is credited with Costuming and Production Design. Biller also devoted time and efforts to the film’s musical score and composition and has quickly become known for using classic and outdated film genres to communicate the feminine role within contemporary culture. Interestingly, with The Love Witch Biller creates a visual style that pays tribute to the Technicolor thrillers of the 1960’s while exploring aspects of female fantasy along with the repercussions of pathological narcissism.
In the film’s opening, blood-red, gothic text provides introductory credits. Soon we see the film’s protagonist Elaine, a stunningly, good-looking young witch, played by the svelte Samantha Robinson, driving in a mint-condition, red mustang convertible from the mid-to-late 1960’s. An inner voice-over narration informs the viewer Elaine is leaving the city (San Francisco) driving into the redwoods where no one will know her. A flashback to the scene of her former husband Jerry’s death and more voice-over indicate Elaine suffered a nervous breakdown after he “left her” and she’s under suspicion.
As Elaine is driving the Mustang convertible in the first scene Biller appears to pay homage to Hitchcock’s Psycho with some nice camera work from cinematographer M. David Mullen with a police cruiser appearing in the rear view mirror coupled with a closeup of an eyeball. Other closeups are provided in this sequence of a Tarot deck and a heart card with swords through it as well as an opened pack of cigarettes. It becomes quite clear Elaine is hell-bent on having a man to love her.
Without much adieu, Elaine moves into a small-town (presumably in or near Eureka, California) and holes up in a three-story, royal purple Victorian home. Her friend Barbara, another witch, played by Jennifer Ingrum, has made available an apartment space within. The apartment décor seemed rather peculiar to the interior decorator, Trish, played by Laura Waddell, who welcomed Elaine and showed her the place. Trish commented she had decorated the apartment with the peculiar color scheme from a soft tarot deck while Barbara and “her students” provided the occult paintings and other similarly styled wiccan décor adornments.
The Love Witch 05/19/15
Biller makes an interesting choice with her filmmaking in the next scene as she makes a leap, or jump cut, to a lavish Victorian Tea Room for Ladies Only after Elaine said she’d only need a moment to freshen up. The costuming and visual colors are alluring and highly feminine complete with a golden-haired harpist maiden and large pastel-colored hats. Here Elaine reveals she has fairy princess fantasies and that all women are just little girls underneath with dreams of a prince carrying them off on a white horse. Trish agrees she has those fantasies too – commenting about how ridiculous it all is. After a slight pause Elaine confides she doesn’t think she’s found her Prince Charming yet. However, she believes she’s discovered the formula as she’s been studying parapsychology and now knows everything there is to know about men.
Her “formula” are spells and potions she conjures up in her apartment. She then proceeds to pick up her unsuspecting male victims, seduce them and leaves them forlorn and hapless. Finally, she at last meets her Prince Charming. However, her overriding and desperate need to be loved drives her to the edge of insanity and to murder.
The Love Witch is a beautifully lush film with its lavish, fetish costuming and meticulous set designs. It also has a 1960’s look and feel despite its contemporary setting and it makes extensive use of high-key lighting as it delves into female culturally defined roles with entrancing scene work. These filmmaking techniques and production design attributes allow Biller to encode feminist ideas within the frames of cinematic aesthetics and visual pleasure. And even though Biller was making a film for women, I can tell you after seeing this film, it’s a film made for men, too, with what could arguably have the longest running female tampon joke. The Love Witch is wholeheartedly recommended and dare I say…. “a film to die for.” It’s intriguing and, in my opinion, it’s fun!
Again, the film will be screening in Los Angeles at the Landmark Nuart on November 11th and in New York on November 18th, with additional screenings in select theaters across the country. Hope to see you there.
(Press materials provided courtesy of Marina Bailey PR)
The choice of 13th surprised many, as major Oscar contenders normally fight to get that high-profile slot. By making this choice, NYFF has thrust the Netflix doc right into the awards-season limelight and perhaps propelled its chances to prevail in the nascent Best Documentary Feature race. Certainly NYFF has had its footprint in past Oscar seasons by debuting the likes of eventual Best Picture nominees Hugo, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies, Her, Life of Pi and Captain Phillips, to name a few. Birdman, an eventual Best Picture winner, played New York for its official North American premiere (even though it unofficially played Telluride at the time) and skipped the more awards-centric Toronto fest, causing lots of friction at the time between TIFF and Telluride.
