Noticias

A fresh crop of directors are rejecting stereotypical roles and predictable plots, creating films that deal with real life and rounded characters

Ira Sach's new film, Keep the Lights On, follows the decade-long relationship between two men who meet on a New York phone-sex line in 1998. It includes explicit sex and copious drug use; it also includes domestic squabbles, quotidian work hassles and meals with friends, straight and gay. No one comes out or dies, and everything is shown with the same fluid, elegant transparency. "I feel very few films convey the communal nature of urban life these days, the lack of boundaries," Sachs says. "'Those are the gays over there' – that's not how we live any more."

Keep the Lights On is at once very good and conspicuously ordinary. Like several other recent features about gay characters by gay directors, it deploys naturalism – often shooting handheld in found locations...

"The indie Texan filmmaker David Lowery receives a double bill at the reRun Gastropub Theater in Dumbo, Brooklyn, and while Pioneer, a 16-minute short, and St Nick, an 86-minute feature, don't provide hard answers to their mysteries, both are deeply intriguing," writes Andy Webster in the New York Times. Regarding St Nick, a "potentially stifling ambience is deflected by quiet suspense and the awe-inspiring compositions of the cinematographer, Clay Liford. Decaying rustic interiors evoke Andrew Wyeth still lifes; pastoral long shots suggest a Southwestern walkabout. And Mr Lowery seems ready for a bigger canvas."

"Obliquely charting the terror, loneliness, and liberation of navigating a cold, callous grown-up world, St Nick follows nameless brother and sister runaways (played by real-life siblings Tucker and Savanna Sears) who take up impermanent residence in an empty Texas house," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "David Lowery's debut feature is long on silence and laden...

Bowie, Christiane F and Taxi zum Klo: these are the things that made Berlin so alluring to the British pop culture of the late 70s and early 80s. Jon Savage remembers a bewitching era

Frank Ripploh is fed up. Stuck in hospital for six weeks with some unnamed contagious sexual disease – most probably hepatitis – he receives a visit from his live-in lover. Instead of listening sympathetically to Frank's moans about the other patients, Bernd gives him a right telling-off about his promiscuity: "I hope lying here teaches you something." After Bernd leaves, a furious Frank pulls his clothes on and hails a taxi. There then follows a mad dash around various public toilets. With the meter running, he desperately searches for a quick pick-up and eventually ends up in Berlin's Tiergarten – a large public park near the centre of the city that was a notorious cruising ground at that time.

One+One Filmmakers Journal is a Brighton, U.K. based publication that was founded back in May 2009. Issue #5 is about to be launched, so to celebrate the occasion there will be a panel discussion and short film screening at the Cine-City: The Brighton Film Festival on Nov. 28 at 4:30 p.m. at the Sallis Benney Theatre. This is a free and open event.

Daniel Fawcett, a filmmaker and the founder of One+One, will participate on the panel and screen clips from Dirt, his second feature film. One of Fawcett’s stated goals is to further remove cinema from its relationship with money. He has committed One+One to being a free publication, available to read both on the web and in print.

Also, in the first edition of his journal, Fawcett wrote an editorial announcing his refusal to work in the traditional film industry to fund his own personal...