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Buenos Aires, Argentina — Alongside a tide of pensioner rallies and a workers strike that crippled a day’s transportation, the 26th edition of the Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival (Bafici) managed another explosive set of diverse screenings and industry discussions that wrapped on April 13, after 13 days of cinematic indulgence.

An awards ceremony, held at La Boca’s Usina del Arte Saturday evening, ushered in the final day of the buoyant affair, Laura Casabe’s “The Virgin of the Quarry Lake,” “Under the Flags, the Sun” from Juanjo Pereira, and Tomás Terzano’s latest short “The Banner,” (“El Banner”) taking top plaudits.

The meticulously curated program coaxed throngs of cinephiles to six arthouse and mainstream venues nestled in the heart of the city’s theater district, Teatro San Martin, acting as the event’s industry hub. The Museo del Cine, south-of-center, held special screenings and events in parallel. 298 films from...

New York Film Festival parent Film at Lincoln Center has set the slate for its Currents strand at the 62nd edition – 12 features and 28 shorts meant to complement the Main Slate with an emphasis on new, innovative voices.

Currents’ Centerpiece selection is the world premiere of Jem Cohen’s Little, Big, and Far, a tale of catastrophes through the travels of an astronomer in search of a sky dark enough to study the stars.

Other portraits include Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, a fragmented recomposition of the Martiniquan writer and activist’s legacy; Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré’s 7 Walks With Mark Brown, following the path of a paleobotanist in search of native plants; Yashaddai Owens’s debut feature, Jimmy, which imagines a young James Baldwin as he arrives in Paris from New York; and Lilith Kraxner and Milena Czernovsky’s bluish (winner of the Grand Prix at...

The Playmaker has acquired international sales rights to the provocative satirical thriller “The Protected Men,” based on the novel “Les hommes protégés” (The Virility Factor) by Robert Merle.

The film is set in Germany, where a mysterious disease afflicting only men strikes, leading to a women-led government takeover. A group of scientists, the “protected men,” are tasked with developing a vaccine. However, the self-proclaimed chancellor, Sarah Bedford, secretly sabotages the vaccine efforts in a bid to stay in power. Her best friend Anita Martinelli has a decision to make: Can she stop the repressive government’s plans before it’s too late?

Frieder Schlaich, the film’s producer, said: “Although the novel ‘The Virility Factor’ is nearly half a century old, it remains a magnificent source to spur on the debate regarding gender roles. This whimsical and boisterous story fits perfectly into that discourse: how would the world be without men?...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Center Stage (Stanley Kwan)

Following her breakout with Jackie Chan in Police Story and before her iconic roles in the films of Wong Kar-wai and Olivier Assayas, Maggie Cheung delivered one of the best performances of her career in Stanley Kwan’s lush, definitive, and boldly conceived biopic Center Stage, also known as Actress. Now gorgeously restored in 4K from the original negative, and approved by Kwan himself, the film follows Cheung as iconic silent film star Ruan Lingyu, who committed suicide at the age of 24 in 1935 after a tumultuous private life that was frequent fodder for the vicious Shanghai tabloids—and began to mirror the melodramas that brought her fame. With Cheung receiving the Best Actress award at Berlinale, the film...

Slaughterhouses of Modernity, the latest film by Heinz Emigholz, has arrived in New York. The filmmaker refers to it in passing as a work of propaganda, which means, he reminds me, that it is a film designed to advance an agenda. To this end, Emigholz has adopted a mode of direct address. With John Erdman, Stefan Kolosko and Arno Brandlhuber acting intermittently as chorus, Slaughterhouses of Modernity castigates the works of art, architecture and philosophy—collected post-hoc under the banner of Modernism—nourished by the conditions of genocidal, colonialist, “Western values.” For Emigholz, the century that seemed to place the individual at […]

The post Nothing Can Fall Out of an Image: Heinz Emigholz on Slaughterhouses of Modernity first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Titles include Sofia Brockenshire’s ‘The Dependents’.

Eight feature documentaries will have world premieres in the international feature competition of Dok Leipzig, which runs from October 17-23 in Germany.

World debuts in the 13-strong international competition include Sofia Brockenshire’s The Dependents, an Argentina-Canada co-production about the life of an official in the Canadian Immigration Service.

Scroll down for the full competition selection

Brockenshire previously co-directed One Sister, a fiction film that debuted in Biennale College – Cinema at Venice Film Festival in 2016.

The international competition section will also launch Joseph Mangat’s Divine Factory, a Filipino-us-Taiwanese co-production that looks at the economic,...

One of the final things I latched onto at Grasshopper Film was Friends and Strangers. I’d heard no word before its Rotterdam programming and it caught my attention in an early-year festival crush for no other reason than a) some pleasant stills and b) the promise of an Australian comedy, which had more or less never come into my sight in five years of distribution.

Within, say, two minutes I knew this had to be followed through—James Vaughn’s perfectly lit images of metropolitan life were composed like Heinz Emigholz, its performances willingly stilted, the vibe vaguely threatening. Progressively the thing grows funnier, its direction harder to guess, structure slightly bewildering yet fully determined. By film’s end Friends and Strangers is plainly fucking hilarious, teetering on the possibility of violent outburst, finally a wise statement on personal misdirection.

Cut to one year later. Though I no longer...

Cynthia Beatt has been making films since the late 1970s, which makes my discovery of her work at this year’s Berlinale woefully belated. But it also makes me hopeful that her essential experimental short, Fury Is a Feeling Too (1983), will screen more widely soon. Fury, which first showed at the Berlinale Forum in 1984, and which earlier this year was given a 2k restoration by Arsenal Berlin from the 16mm original, showed in this year’s Forum Expanded—the only film in the program that wasn’t a new production.The film’s inclusion is an inspired curatorial choice, not only because it continues the crucial work that the Berlinale is doing unearthing important cinema by women directors—including Self-Defined, the program of German women filmmakers organized together with Deutsche Kinemathek that I covered in 2019—but also because the film centers on the one thing that those experiencing the festival...

Michel Delahaye and Ingrid Bourgoin in Marie-Claude Treilhou’s Simone Barbès Or Virtue

At the New York Film Festival in 2020, there were a number of terrific free talks, including Gianfranco Rosi on Notturno (Italy’s Oscar submission); Christian Petzold with Heinz Emigholz (The Last City and The Lobby with John Erdman); Steve McQueen with Small Axe cinematographer Shabier Kirchner and his Lovers Rock (Opening Night Gala selection) cast Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn and Micheal Ward; Laura Dern, Joyce Chopra, and Joyce Carol Oates on Smooth Talk (Revivals selection); Chloé Zhao with Nomadland (Centerpiece selection) producer Peter Spears; Dea Kulumbegashvili on Beginning, and Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges and Azazel Jacobs on French Exit (Closing Night selection).

Serge Bozon discussed Simone Barbès Or Virtue with Marie-Claude Treilhou Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Serge Bozon (director of Madame Hyde,...

Time (dir. Garrett Bradley)Top Picksdoug DIBBERN1. Time (Garrett Bradley)2. Days (Tsai Ming-liang)3. Gunda (Viktor Kossakovsky)4. The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sang-Soo)5. The Disciple (Chaitanya Tamhane)6. The Salt of Tears (Philippe Garrel)7. Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen)8. The Calming (Song Fang)9. Night of Kings (Philippe Lacôte)10. Malmkrog (Cristi Puiu)Daniel KASMAN1. Figure Minus Fact (Mary Helena Clark)2. Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito)3. Untitled Sequence Of Gaps (Vika Kirchenbauer)4. Labor of Love (Sylvia Schedelbauer)5. Beginning (Dea Kulumbegashvili)6. The Disciple (Chaitanya Tamhane)7. Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen)8. Isabella (Matías Piñeiro)9. The Calming (Song Fang)10. Humongous! (Aya Kawazoe)Michael SICINSKI1. Figure Minus Fact (Mary Helena Clark)2. Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen)3. Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito)4. The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili)5. Apiyemiyeki? (Ana Vaz)6. The Human Voice (Pedro Almodóvar)7. Time (Garrett Bradley)8. Isabella (Matías Piñeiro)9. The Last City (Heinz Emigholz)10. Trust Study #1 (Shobun Baile)Correpondences#1 Daniel Kasman introduces the 2020 festival and reviews Lovers...

Christian Petzold: “My mother told me all the fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm, by [Wilhelm] Hauff and [Hans Christian] Andersen when I was very young.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Christian Petzold’s Undine (screening virtually in the Main Slate of the New York Film Festival through Wednesday and in London on Monday), starring Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski, is built on the legacy of centuries-old tales and myths. Stories need to change in re-telling in order to remain relevant, otherwise they too will turn to sea foam. Heinz Emigholz has two films in the Currents programme, The Lobby, shot in Buenos Aires during the fall of 2019, featuring solely John Erdman (credited as Old White Male) and The Last City (Die Letzte Stadt) with Erdman, Jonathan Perel, Young Sun Han, Dorothy Ko, and Susanne Sachsse.

John Erdman in Heinz Emigholz’s The Lobby

Jean Cocteau in his Beauty And The Beast used the...

Canadian novelist and playwright Robertson Davies once compared the continuity of a reader’s relationship to literature to that of architecture transforming in appearance with the rise and fall of the sun: “A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.” Davies’ refrain resounds throughout watching The Last City and The Lobby, the latest films from veteran experimental filmmaker Heinz Emigholz. Although each can be viewed as standalone, their thematic and formal ambitions are best realized as two parts of a larger whole––a concept expressed therein by the films themselves.

Best known for his series of films that seek to convey the ontological relationship between architecture as artistic expression and its functionality as traversable infrastructure, Emigholz continues to explore these career-long preoccupations while deconstructing the...

John Erdman in The Lobby, directed by Heinz Emigholz

Christian Petzold, the director of Undine (screening in the Main Slate of the 58th New York Film Festival), starring Paula Beer and Franz Rogowski, will participate in a Free Talk presented by HBO with Heinz Emigholz, the director of The Lobby, featuring solely John Erdman and The Last City with Erdman, Jonathan Perel, Young Sun Han, Dorothy Ko, and Susanne Sachsse (both films in the Currents programme).

Undine director Christian Petzold: "I will also have a rehearsal week with the actors where we'll just look into cinema" Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

In The Lobby, shot in Buenos Aires during the fall of 2019, the man (Erdman), called Old White Male in the credits, is at times angry, at others laconic, seldom scary. He believes that neither Jesus, nor the Ramones will be with us after death, and we will have no relatives. “Dying...

Joyce Chopra and Joyce Carol Oates will discuss Smooth Talk Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Film at Lincoln Center has announced that directors Garrett Bradley (Time); Ephraim Asili (The Inheritance); Valeria Sarmiento (The Tango Of The Widower And Its Distorting Mirror); Nicolás Pereda (Fauna); John Gianvito (Her Socialist Smile); Matías Piñeiro (Isabella); Gianfranco Rosi (Notturno) Heinz Emigholz; Filip Jan Rymsza and Bob Murawski; Tsai Ming-liang (Days), Sam Pollard (MLK/FBI); John Gianvito (Her Socialist Smile), and Christian Petzold (Undine) will participate in Free Talks during the 58th New York Film Festival. In addition, Marie-Claude Treilhou talks with Serge Bozon on Simone Barbes or Virtue; Steve McQueen speaks about The Making of Small Axe, and Joyce Chopra and Joyce Carol Oates will discuss Smooth Talk.

Marie-Claude Treilhou talks with Serge Bozon on Simone Barbes or Virtue Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

“Several roundtable discussions highlight thematic trends within this year’s program: Outside the Canon,...

As the New York Film Festival readies to roll out its 58th edition tomorrow (and running through October 11), IndieWire is pleased to share an exclusive look at the many festival-sponsored Talks which will roll out during this year’s event. HBO serves as the presenting sponsor of Talks, which supplement NYFF’s screenings with a series of free and live panel discussions and in-depth conversations with a wide range of guests.

As announced by festival brass earlier this summer, this year’s NYFF is going to operate differently than it has in previous incarnations. The event will combine a brand-new virtual presence with carefully designed outdoor screenings, including two drive-ins. The Talks are taking a new shape, too, and while they are not available as in-person events, as they have been in years past, the festival is hoping to turn them into “an essential live, online meeting place for audiences,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWith the eyebrow-raising working title of Soggy Bottom, Paul Thomas Anderson's new 70s-set project has quietly begun shooting in Los Angeles with Bradley Cooper, and possibly Alana Haim of the band Haim. Speaking of new projects, the next feature by Hirokazu Kore-eda will be a Korean production starring Bae Doona (who previously starred in his film Air Doll) and Song Kang-ho. Entitled Broker, the film is about characters linked by a "baby box," a place where parents may anonymously drop off babies they are unable to raise. Berlinale has announced plans for its 2021 edition, which will be a physical festival. For the first time, performance awards will be gender neutral, replacing the awards for the Best Actor and the Best Actress with a Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance and a Silver Bear for Best Supporting Performance.

This year, the New York Film Festival will look different than the past fifty-seven years––and it’s not just the shift from in-theater screenings to outdoor and virtual, but also with its programming. With the new leadership of NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez and NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim, one of the major changes in Film at Lincoln Center’s yearly showcase of the best in world cinema is the addition of a new section titled Currents.

A nod to previous programs featured in the festival––including Views From the Avant-Garde, Explorations, and Projections––Currents provides an expansive overview of the filmmakers that are among the boldest and most innovative working today. With a lineup including 14 features and 46 short films, representing 28 countries, Currents takes a comprehensive look at both the future of filmmaking from emerging directors as well as new offerings from established filmmakers.

Opening Night of Currents is...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSPainter Emil Kosa Jr.'s 1933 logo for 20th Century Fox. (Hollywood Reporter.)The Walt Disney Company has announced that it will be dropping the "Fox" brand from 20th Century Fox, rebranding the studio as 20th Century Studios. The exciting lineup for this year's Berlinale continues to be announced, and you can see the increasing list of titles—which includes films by Matías Piñeiro, Josephine Decker, Heinz Emigholz, and Kevin Jerome Everson—here.Recommended VIEWINGOur trailer for Diao Yinan's neon-soaked noir The Wild Goose Lake, coming exclusively to Mubi in the United Kingdom on February 28. The Sandler-Safdies collaboration continues with Goldman v Silverman, filmed during the production of Uncut Gems. The short stars Benny Safdie and a masked Adam Sandler as two silently dueling street performers in New York's Times Square. An adorable but compelling...

The 70th Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 20 – March 1) unveiled its Encounters program today, featuring the premieres of new works by Tim Sutton and Romanian director Cristi Puiu.

Also screening is Josephine Decker’s Shirley with Elisabeth Moss and Michael Stuhlbarg, marking the film’s international premiere after its upcoming Sundance bow, and Gunda by Victor Kossakovsky, whose last pic was the 2018 Venice doc Aquarela.

Encounters is a newly-created competitive section at the Berlin festival that looks to highlight “new voices in cinema and to give more room to diverse narrative and documentary forms.” A three-member jury will choose the winners for Best Film, Best Director and a Special Jury Award.

“As a result of passionate research, the 15 titles chosen for Encounters present the vitality of cinema in all of its forms. Each film presents a different way of interpreting the cinematic story: autobiographical, intimate, political,...

‘Shirley’, starring Elisabeth Moss, among films in the new competitive strand.

The Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 20-Mar 1) has unveiled the 15 features that will comprise its first ever Encounters competitive strand.

The new section has been introduced to support new voices in cinema, running alongside the long-established competition and Berlinale Shorts, which award the Golden and Silver Bears.

A three-member jury, which has yet to be announced, will choose the winners of best film, best director and a special jury award.

The section will open with Cristi Puiu’s Malmkrog, a 200-minute drama in which an elite group of individuals...

Following our top 50 films of 2019, we’re sharing personal top 10 lists from our contributors. Check out the latest below and see our complete year-end coverage here.

If this past decade’s trajectory of film consumption continues, the future of film culture seems extremely promising. Despite the continued homogenization of certain studio slates dominating the mainstream box office, a rejuvenated political consciousness and the proliferation of streaming services has breathed a second life into those kinds of previously unavailable (unmarketable) films, now accessible to a broader public. Arthouse films are contended in wider circles; mid-budget filmmaking is reappearing from distinguished directors that could never quite draw the theater audiences they expected. Ticket sales may have steadily decreased, but the surge in options has integrated films more readily with the general social experience!

It is with this comfort in eventual exposure that I list some of my favorite films that premiered this...

At least once a decade since, I don't know, the 1960s, someone has declared the End of Cinema, sometimes with an air of triumph, occasionally a sense of relief, but usually a general tone of defeat. As we should have learned by now, cinema is resilient, not unlike the flu. It mutates, but it doesn't ever really go away. And as a specific subset of Cinema writ large, experimental film (and video? Do we still need to stipulate that?) has had its basic DNA rewritten dozens of times since the supposed heyday of the genre, the sixties-into-seventies sweet spot where autobiographical expressionism evolved into formalist rigor. The avant-garde, with its battered but still pulsating community ethos, and its inherent since of opposition (be it latent / aesthetic or blatant / political), has managed to keep on keeping on, even through the dim years of 1985–1993. Someone's always cooking up something good.Reviewing a...

Czech-born Milos Stehlik, an award-winning film critic and commentator for National Public Radio station Wbez and the film curator, founder and artistic director of the pioneering media arts center Facets Multimedia in Chicago, died Saturday of cancer.

Stehlik founded Facets in 1975, screening hard-to-find international and independent films in a Chicago Lutheran church. When the non-profit organization found a permanent home on Fullerton Avenue in 1977, Stehlik branched into video distribution, eventually offering thousands of otherwise unobtainable titles for sale and rental, both over the counter and by mail. As viewing formats changed, so did the Facets catalogue, moving into dvds and streaming.

Titles that Facets first made available in the U.S. or released on its private label included Krzysztof Kieslowski’s “Decalogue,” Bela Tarr’s “Satantango,” Milos Forman’s “Black Peter,” Forough Farrokhzad’s “The House Is Black,” Frantisek Vlácil’s “Adelheid,” and collections of experimentalists such as the American James Broughton,...

Photo courtesy of Pablo Ocqueteau and Berlinale 2019Below you will find our favorite films of the 69th Berlin International Film Festival, as well as an index of our coverage.AwardsFAVORITE Filmsdaniel KASMANHeimat Is a Space in Time (Thomas Heise)Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream (Frank Beauvais)Fourteen (Dan Sallitt)I Was at Home, But... (Angela Schanelec)Synonyms (Nadav Lapid)The Plagiarists (Peter Parlow)Delphine and Carole (Callisto McNulty)Holy Beasts Years of Construction (Heinz Emigholz)Bait (Mark Jenkins)Giovanni Marchini CAMIASynonyms (Nadav Lapid)I Was at Home, But... (Angela Schanelec)The Plagiarists (Peter Parlow)Just Don't Think I'll Scream (Frank Beauvais)The Blue Flower of Novalis (Gustavo Vinagre & Rodrigo Carneiro)The Portuguese Woman (Rita Azevedo Gomes)The Last to See Them (Sara Summa)Earth (Nikolaus Geyrhalter)Heimat Is a Space in Time (Thomas Heise)Ms Slavic 7 (Sofia Bohdanowicz & Deragh Campbell)Jordan Cronki Was at Home, But... (Angela Schanelec...

Alongside Angela Schanelec's I Was at Home, But..., the Berlinale is premiering new work by another stalwart practitioner of a highly individual film language. German filmmaker Heinz Emigholz has made what seems to be the final entry in his long-running, multi-film series of documentaries devoted to architecture, which has included such films as Sullivan’s Banks (2000) and Perret in France and Algeria (2012). (Mubi presented a retrospective of some of these films last winter.) Part of a greatly ambitious, international, multi-architect project of cinematic surveys, Emigholz’s beautiful new film, Years of Construction, is a gesture of powerful summary for the series, as it charts the destruction of a building and the creation of a new one.Commissioned by Kunsthalle Mannheim for this purpose, we get to see this through Emigholz’s characteristic gaze: no voiceover or text explanation, and favoring still shots on tripods that fleetly move from composition to composition,...

Selection includes 39 titles and 31 world premieres.

This year’s Forum programme at the Berlin Film Festival (Feb 7-17) will feature 39 films, including 31 world premieres.

The Forum brings together challenging and thought-provoking filmmaking that brings together film with visual art, theatre and literature.

Highlights include a Super 8 silent vision of Elfriede Jelinek’s ghost novel ’Die Kinder der Toten’ in a film of the same name by Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska, Ghassan Salhab’s “essayistic collage” An Open Rose for which the filmmaker has used the letters from prison by Polish Marxist Rosa Luxembourg, and the documentary Landless, the...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Heinz Emigholz's Streetscapes [Dialogue] (2017) is showing June 18 - July 18, 2018 as part of the series Heinz Emigholz's Streetscapes.“I believe that everyone perceives space differently and that art and structure arise out of the perception of these nuances. The world reveals itself to us, and we show each other the world—not just different facets, but our different views.”—Heinz Emigholz (quoted by Rüdiger Suchsland in German Film Quarterly 3/2013)Heinz Emigholz’s architecture films document practices of devotion—to certain forms, certain materials, certain social ideas. As an ongoing body of work, they also constitute a practice, no less devoted, to a certain way of constructing cinematic space. Anyone who has seen one of these films knows that Emigholz’s way of showing us architecture is highly idiosyncratic. The major feature of his style, the oblique camera angle, defies standards of documentary representation,...

This month, Mubi is playing four films by the great German documentarian Heinz Emigholz. Called “the film world’s most acute observer of architecture” by Variety, Emigholz has been making beautiful, structural, contemplative and rigorous films since 1972. Art Forum wrote in 2010 that:Emigholz is best known these days for his meticulous, meditative architecture films, composed of stationary shots of a particular architect’s buildings. His early 1970s work, even more fastidious in its spatial and geometric precision, has clear affinities with the structuralist-materialist American avant-garde of the period.I was first struck by this beautiful poster, above, for his 2013 film The Airstrip and, digging deeper, I discovered a whole series of posters for Emigholz’s work which adhere to a similar deceptively utilitarian style. (The Airstrip is actually unusually baroque, composed as it is from multiple images.)Since 2002, Emigholz’s posters have all been designed by the Berlin graphic design agency Moniteurs,...

The first part of Mubi's retrospective, Heinz Emigholz: Architecture as Autobiography, is showing February 5 - March 16, 2018 in most countries in the world.Heinz Emigholz’s films in the “Photography and Beyond” series are decidedly not documentaries, or at least that’s not all they are. Although the films certainly convey the facticity of certain spaces that exist in our world, they are primarily “documents” of a particular engagement with space, a highly personal mode of looking and moving-through. Emigholz tends to work in overlapping series, and many of the “Photography and Beyond” films are also subtitled “Architecture as Autobiography.” But what exactly do these terms mean?First of all, the vast majority of individual shots in Emigholz’s films are static. They are extremely obvious in their composition, often resembling Cubist canvases, demonstrating a highly motivated eye for selection of detail. In other words, Emigholz tends to treat...

I Am GodI’ve said it before and I will always be pleased to say it again: For a film festival to be relevant it is absolutely essential it presents to its audience a line connecting cinema’s present with cinema’s past. The education is key, the experience thrilling and the open-mindedness engendered are all requisite to keep the art living and enjoyed, especially in an age where an audience might be attracted to the event of a film festival but otherwise rarely, if ever, go to the cinema anymore. With over 250 feature films and a similar amount of shorts in its 2018 selection, it was easy to get lost in the massive schedule of the 47th International Film Festival Rotterdam. Which is why I greatly appreciated two particular sections at the festival curated by programmers with acute focus and taste that comparatively left the larger, more vaguely collected sections...

Partycrashers is an on-going series of video dispatches from critics Michael Pattison and Neil Young.Partycrashers has never exactly been metronomic in its regularity, but even by our eccentric standards the timings of the last few editions has been... erratic: five months between our report from the Curtas festival of Vila do Conde, northern Portugal, in July 2016 and the year-end pre-Christmas round-up recorded in Newcastle, then an 11-month "hiatus" until our report from the Post/Doc festival of Porto, northern Portugal, then a gap of less than two weeks before this year-end pre-Christmas round-up recorded in Newcastle. We may be unpredictable chronologically; geographically somewhat less so, it seems.And, as has become something of an unwanted Partycrashers tradition, we have—the last twice—been bedeviled by technical mishaps, perhaps an inevitable consequence of our ingrained "one-take" preference (we're more Eastwoodian than Kubrickian in this regard). The camera used for our...

UntitledIt’s not common that you find yourself having a moment of sudden comprehension and even illumination, almost like finding an inner peace: a sense of quiet and tranquil meditation that allows you to qualm your more restless moments regarding the value and importance of the things that you hold dear. In this case, I’m talking about cinema, and in particular, documentary cinema, the kind of which has always been the sole focus of the Art of the Real festival since 2014, and this year’s edition (April 20th - May 2nd) with over 25 screenings that combine short and feature length non-fiction films at New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center.Along with new films from established directors like Jem Cohen and Michael Glawogger, this year features spotlights on Chinese documentary cinema, Latin American documentary hybrids (with a particular spot for Chilean cinema), the late Brazilian master director Andrea Tonacci...

Art of the Real, a nonfiction filmmaking showcase at Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York, celebrates its fourth year with 27 films in the lineup, continuing the exploration of cinematic possibilities of the film/digital medium. This year, the series highlights established figures such as Heinz Emigholz, Robinson Devor, Jem Cohen as well as newcomers Theo Anthony (Rat Film), Salomé Jashi (Dazzling Light of Sunset) and Shengze Zhu (Another Year). It also gives well deserved recognition to the Chilean cinema with two from documentary veteran Ignacio Agüero and two from José Luis Torres Leiva whose film The Sky, the Earth and the Rain made an international splash in 2008. His new film The Wind Knows I'm Coming Back Home, starring Agüero will be shown...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has today announced the fourth edition of Art of the Real, their essential showcase for boundary-pushing nonfiction film, scheduled to take place April 20 – May 2. Billed as “a survey of the most vital and innovative voices in nonfiction and hybrid filmmaking,” this year’s showcase features an eclectic, globe-spanning host of discoveries, including seven North American premieres and eight U.S. premieres.

“In our fourth year we’ve put an emphasis on placing works by first-time and emerging filmmakers alongside established names, with the aim to highlight the experimentation happening across generations, and to trace a new trajectory of documentary art that points to its promising future,” said Film Society of Lincoln Center Programmer at Large Rachael Rakes, who organized the festival with Director of Programming Dennis Lim.

The Opening Night selection is the New York premiere of Theo Anthony’s “Rat Film,” which has...

World premieres include Barrage, starring Isabelle Huppert and her daughter Lolita Chammah.Scroll down for full list

This year’s Forum programme at the Berlin Film Festival (Feb 9-19), which highlights avant garde and experimental works, will feature 47 films, including 29 world premieres.

These include the premiere of Laura Schroeder’s Barrage, which stars Isabelle Huppert alongside her daughter Lolita Chammah in the story of a young woman who returns to Luxembourg after a 10-year absence to spend time with her estranged child. Huppert plays the grandmother, who has fostered the young girl during that absence.

Read: ‘Barrage’, starring Isabelle Huppert and daughter Lolita, finds sales home

Having its international premiere at Forum this year will be Golden Exits, the new feature from American filmmaker Alex Ross Perry. His previous credits include Queen Of Earth, which premiered at Berlin in 2015. His latest tells the story of a young Australian woman who comes to New York for a few months...

The 67th Berlin International Film Festival announced 43 additions to its 2017 roster today, including Alex Ross Perry’s “Golden Exits,” Joshua Z. Weinstein’s “Menashe,” and Amman Abbasi’s “Dayveon,” and rounding out much of the festival’s main line-up.

Read More: Berlinale 2017 Will Premiere ‘Logan,’ ‘Trainspotting: T2,’ and Hong Sangsoo’s Latest

Known for its robust variety of programming, the festival previously announced new films from Aki Kaurismaki, Oren Moverman, Sally Potter, Agnieszka Holland, and Sebastian Lelio. More commercial fare includes the international premiere of Danny Boyle’s “Trainspotting” sequel, and the world premiere of James Mangold’s addition to the Wolverine franchise, “Logan.”

Read More: 5 Exciting Films in the 2017 Berlin Film Festival Competition Lineup

The films of the 47th Forum are:

2 + 2 = 22 [The Alphabet] by Heinz Emigholz, Germany – Wp

Adiós entusiasmo (So Long Enthusiasm) of Vladimir Durán, Argentina / Colombia – Wp

At Elske Pia (Pia Loving) by Daniel Joseph Borgmann, Denmark – Wp...

Films include Shepherds and Butchers with Steve Coogan; Don’t Call Me Son from Anna Muylaert; and a documentary about a director and actress who were kidnapped by Kim Jong-il.

The Berlinale (Feb 11-21) has completed the selection for this year’s Panorama strand, comprising 51 films from 33 countries. A total of 34 fiction features comprise the main programme and Panorama Special while a further 17 titles will screen in Panorama Dokumente.

A total of 33 films are world premieres, nine are international premieres and nine European premieres. The 30th Teddy Award is also being celebrated with an anniversary series of 17 films.

Notable titles include Shepherds and Butchers from South Africa, which is set toward the end of Apartheid and stars Steve Coogan as a hotshot lawyer who faces his biggest test when he agrees to defend a white prison guard who has killed seven black men. What ensues is a charge against the death penalty itself, in a case...

Films include Shepherds and Butchers, starring Steve Coogan; Don’t Call Me Son from Anna Muylaert; and a documentary about a director and actress who were kidnapped by Kim Jong-il and forced to make films.

The Berlinale (Feb 11-21) has completed the selection for this year’s Panorama strand, comprising 51 films from 33 countries. A total of 34 fiction features comprise the main programme and Panorama Special while a further 17 titles will screen in Panorama Dokumente.

A total of 33 films are world premieres, nine are international premieres and nine European premieres. The 30th Teddy Award is also being celebrated with an anniversary series of 17 films.

Notable titles include Shepherds and Butchers from South Africa, which is set toward the end of Apartheid and stars Steve Coogan as a hotshot lawyer faces his biggest test when he agrees to defend a white prison guard who has killed seven black men. What ensues is a charge against the death penalty itself...

The Berlinale presents the complete lineup of this year's Forum Expanded program: "The reference points here include genres such as science fiction (Larissa Sansour, Søren Lind, Clemens von Wedemeyer), war (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson) or horror films (Anja Kirschner), Egyptian film and media history (Heba Amin, Islam Kamal, Mayye Zayed) as well as the work of directors such as Yvonne Rainer (Kerstin Schroedinger), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Anja Kirschner), Michelangelo Antonioni (Volker Sattel), Alain Resnais, Chris Marker (Joe Namy, Clemens von Wedemeyer), Ingmar Bergman (Maged Nader) or Jack Smith (Marie Losier). Museum and exhibition culture (Assad Gruber, Hila Peleg), the history of sculptures and monuments (Heinz Emigholz, Ahmad Ghossein, Joe Namy) or art concepts such as Lettrism (Mika Taanila) equally flow into new forms of expression within which the artists then position themselves." » - David Hudson...

The Berlinale presents the complete lineup of this year's Forum Expanded program: "The reference points here include genres such as science fiction (Larissa Sansour, Søren Lind, Clemens von Wedemeyer), war (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson) or horror films (Anja Kirschner), Egyptian film and media history (Heba Amin, Islam Kamal, Mayye Zayed) as well as the work of directors such as Yvonne Rainer (Kerstin Schroedinger), Pier Paolo Pasolini (Anja Kirschner), Michelangelo Antonioni (Volker Sattel), Alain Resnais, Chris Marker (Joe Namy, Clemens von Wedemeyer), Ingmar Bergman (Maged Nader) or Jack Smith (Marie Losier). Museum and exhibition culture (Assad Gruber, Hila Peleg), the history of sculptures and monuments (Heinz Emigholz, Ahmad Ghossein, Joe Namy) or art concepts such as Lettrism (Mika Taanila) equally flow into new forms of expression within which the artists then position themselves." » - David Hudson...

Other titles include Rebecca Miller’s Maggie’s Plan, starring Greta Gerwig, and David Farr’s The Ones Below, starring David Morrissey.Scroll down for full lists

The Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 11-21) has announced the first titles in Panorama – its strand that comprises new independent and arthouse films that deal with controversial subjects or unconventional aesthetic styles.

The initial features include three from the UK, with John Michael McDonagh returning to Berlin for the world premiere of War On Everyone.

The film, a satire centred on two corrupt cops in New Mexico, stars Alexander Skarsgård, Michael Peña, Theo James and Tessa Thompson.

McDonagh was previously in Panorama in 2011 with The Guard and 2013 with Calvary.

Also from the UK is David Farr’s The Ones Below, which revolves around a couple expecting their first child who discover an unnerving difference between themselves and the couple living in the flat below. Receiving its European...

We knew that Alfonso Cuarón would be presiding over the competition jury at the 72nd Venice Film Festival (September 2 through 12); as of today, we know that the other members are Elizabeth Banks, Emmanuel Carrère, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Diane Kruger, Francesco Munzi, Pawel Pawlikowski and Lynne Ramsay. On the Orizonti (Horizons) jury: Jonathan Demme (President), Anita Caprioli, Fruit Chan, Alix Delaporte and Paz Vega. And awarding a debut film will be Saverio Costanzo (President), Charles Burnett, Roger Garcia, Natacha Laurent and Daniela Michel. Also in today's news: Josephine Decker, Miguel Arteta and Heinz Emigholz. » - David Hudson...

We knew that Alfonso Cuarón would be presiding over the competition jury at the 72nd Venice Film Festival (September 2 through 12); as of today, we know that the other members are Elizabeth Banks, Emmanuel Carrère, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Diane Kruger, Francesco Munzi, Pawel Pawlikowski and Lynne Ramsay. On the Orizonti (Horizons) jury: Jonathan Demme (President), Anita Caprioli, Fruit Chan, Alix Delaporte and Paz Vega. And awarding a debut film will be Saverio Costanzo (President), Charles Burnett, Roger Garcia, Natacha Laurent and Daniela Michel. Also in today's news: Josephine Decker, Miguel Arteta and Heinz Emigholz. » - David Hudson...

Dear Adam,

What a pleasure to be at another film festival with you. Despite the frenzy of activity, the audiences and the society of such events, I tend to find them lonely places, so much time in the dark with your own thoughts, so many single-minded scrambles from venue to venue, most conversations before the late hours being mere passing salutations or monosyllabic recommendations. The only other time I’ve been able to strike up a correspondence like this is with the inimitable Fernando F. Croce during Toronto’s film festival, and I count myself lucky to be able to resume this missive format with you. It’ll be good to have a place to chat, both out there, in Berlin, and here.

This year, for the first in many, I have optimistically opted to visit the Berlin International Film Festival rather than attend the International Film Festival Rotterdam, mainly...

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...

Opening on January 9 with Jessica Hausner's Amour fou and running through January 18, the fourth edition of the Museum of the Moving Image's "annual showcase for new, inventive international cinema (and more)" marks a sort of promotion, or at least an expansion. First Look is now "officially a festival," and the lineup for the 2015 edition includes work by Denis Côté, Heinz Emigholz, Aleksey German, Ken Jacobs, Jon Jost, Ulrich Seidl and many, many more. » - David Hudson...

Opening on January 9 with Jessica Hausner's Amour fou and running through January 18, the fourth edition of the Museum of the Moving Image's "annual showcase for new, inventive international cinema (and more)" marks a sort of promotion, or at least an expansion. First Look is now "officially a festival," and the lineup for the 2015 edition includes work by Denis Côté, Heinz Emigholz, Aleksey German, Ken Jacobs, Jon Jost, Ulrich Seidl and many, many more. » - David Hudson...

Alleluia

Dear Fern,

Aye!—you make my festival experience sound like a superhuman toil! If anything, I'm seeing less than you, as you get the pleasures of catching up with the crème de la crème of Cannes. It seems like I see a lot because I'm often reporting on a slew of shorts, but remember, the Wavelengths shorts programs so central to my (any many others') Tiff experience are only four strong, over nearly as soon as they start, the Monday after the festival's opening night. Don't you see what I'm actually doing here? I'm luxuriating in your taking the pressure off me, handling all the much anticipated films by the big auteurs while I get to relax, scribbling notes in the margin about the smaller movies: you make my life easier! That being said, there are still some major films I need to tell you about, to begin wrapping the festival experience up.

The 2014 Viennale gets underway on October 23rd and runs to November 6th. The festival has published a preview of their lineup:

Features

Frank (Lenny Abrahamson)

Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)

Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)

Two Day, One Night (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)

Li'l Quinguin (Bruno Demont)

Hard to Be a God (Aeksej German)

Adieu au langage (Jean-Luc Godard)

Mambo Cool (Chris Gude)

Amour fou (Jessica Hausner)

The Last Summer of the Rich (Peter Kern)

Time Lapse (Bradley King)

The Kindergarten Teacher (Nadav Lapid)

Sorrow and Joy (Nils Malmros)

Suddarth (Richie Mehta)

Macondo (Sudabeh Mortezai)

Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund)

I'm Not Him (Tayfun Pirselimoglu)

Favula (Raúl Perrone)

Buzzard (Joel Potrykus)

A Proletarian Winter's Tale (Julian Radlmaier)

Two Shots Fired (Martín Rejtman)

Mauro (Hernán Rosselli)

The Sad Smell of Flesh (Cristóbal Arteaga Rozas)

Love is Strange (Ira Sachs)

The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)

Why Don't You Play in Hell?...

Vienna film festival to include a tribute to Viggo Mortensen and a retrospective on John Ford.Scroll down for list of higlights

Highlights of the 52nd Vienna International Film Festival (Oct 23-Nov 6) have been unveiled, including buzz titles from Cannes and Sundance as well as a tribute to actor Viggo Mortensen and a retrospective on director John Ford.

The feature film programme includes Jean-Luc Godard’s Goodbye to Language 3D, Olivier Assayas’s Clouds of Sils Maria and the Dardenne brothers’ Two Days, One Night. Other titles include Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, Ruben Ostlund’s Turist and Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank.

In the documentary line-up, highlights include Nick Cave doc 20,000 Days On Earth, from directors Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard; Frederick Wiseman’s National Gallery; and Tessa Louise Salome’s Mr Leos Carax.

The Viennale will pay tribute to American-Danish actor Viggo Mortensen, whose films range from The Lord of the Rings trilogy to David Cronenberg features...