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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.

The Black Sea (Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden)

For most of its runtime, Crystal Moselle and Derrick B. Harden’s fish-out-of-water non-fiction hybrid The Black Sea teeters on the edge of being too cute. But Harden is the variable––the lead performer whose dynamic with both actors and non-actors skirts the right side of the line between intuition and invention. It’s a line that’s also been the driving cinematic force of Moselle’s insider approach to the stories of outsiders. And throughout her career, one of her greatest skills has been her eye for not only the right story, but the right storytellers. – Michael S. (full review)

Where to Stream: Metrograph at Home

Cidade Campo (Juliana Rojas)

Two tales...

Mubi has unveiled next month’s streaming lineup, and it’s a major lineup for new releases, including Mati Diop’s Golden Bear-winning Dahomey (alongside more from the director), Andrea Arnold’s Bird, and Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker. Also in the lineup is the new restoration of Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer’s Candy Mountain, along with films from Steven Soderbergh, Alex Ross Pery, Takashi Miike, and more.

Leonardo Goi said in his Berlinale review of Dahomey, “Dahomey begins where Statues Also Die ended, wondering what remains of our identities when the things those cling onto suddenly disappear––then resurface from oblivion. To this, Diop offers no clear answers. But in the heart-shaking passion of that university debate, in those students’ resolute commitment to reappropriate their own narratives, she finds something rarer still: a snapshot of a generation for whom this isn’t just the story of a restitution.

Once a mainstay for cinephiles in 1980s and 1990s Manhattan, the sprawling video emporium Kim’s Video stocked over 50,000 films—both popular favorites and obscure international discoveries almost impossible to find elsewhere.

From its flagship location on St. Mark’s Place, owner Youngman Kim grew his chain to five stores across the city, amassing the most diverse collection of movies anywhere through his relentless passion. However, the rise of DVD and streaming led to Kim’s closure in the late 2000s, leaving fans bereft of its treasure trove.

Kim’s donation of the massive collection to the small Italian town of Salemi offered hope that it would live on for future generations. But what truly became of these films? This is the mystery director David Redmon sets out to solve, uncovering unexpected twists.

Redmon’s cinematic sleuthing takes him from the ruins of 80s East Village to the back alleys of Sicily and beyond.

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.

La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)

While Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny perhaps garnered more press out of Cannes, another selection involving archaeologists and tomb raiders will have a longer shelf life. Alice Rohrwacher’s latest feature La Chimera ranked quite highly on our top 50 films of 2023 list for good reason. It’s a dreamy, magical odyssey in which the Italian director whisks viewers away with the kind of transportive vision she’s exuded in all her features thus far.

Where to Stream: VOD

Eileen (William Oldroyd)

Considering how many jokesters online talk about supporting women’s wrongs, Eileen should have made a billion dollars. Alas, not everyone can have impeccable taste. William Oldroyd’s character study grabs you from the first scene,...

Image: Carnivalesque Films As any cinephile well knows, the physical places that serve as meaningful ports of entry to our love affair with cinema can often take on swollen, totemic value. It’s fitting, then, that one of the most legendary independent American video stores of all time gets its...

Image: Carnivalesque Films

As any cinephile well knows, the physical places that serve as meaningful ports of entry to our love affair with cinema can often take on swollen, totemic value. It’s fitting, then, that one of the most legendary independent American video stores of all time gets its...

If the only April release was my top pick of the month it would be one of the finest lineups of the years, but thankfully there’s more to recommend. Featuring films about cinephilic obsession, subversive superhero tales, and what is sure to be at least one divisive big-screen near-future adventure, check out the list of must-sees below.

12 & 11. Kim’s Video (David Redmon and Ashley Sabin; April 5) and I Like Movies (Chandler Levack; April 8)

Anyone interested in physical media will appreciate a pair of films this month. Kim’s Video explores the strange story of the East Village establishment that housed around 55,000 DVDs while I Like Movies is a Canadian coming-of-age tale about a video store clerk who has bigger dreams in life, and is chockfull of cinephile-related humor that rang quite a familiar bell for this writer. John Fink said in his review of the former, “A sweeping documentary...

What happened to Kim’s Video? New York cinephiles were devastated to see the iconic Manhattan video store close in 2008. For decades, the venue offered an unrivaled selection — partly aided by an expansive bootleg inventory. That underground mentality permeates through the new documentary “Kim’s Video.” Directors Ashley Sabin and David Redmon offer a glimpse of what made it beloved before discovering a surprising mystery around the store’s storied collection.

Continue reading ‘Kim’s Video’ Trailer: New York’s Beloved Cinephile Video Store Gets The Doc Treatment at The Playlist.

Anyone interested in physical media should surely know the tale of Kim’s Video. The East Village establishment last closed its doors in 2014, though its rental collection recently returned to Alamo Drafthouse’s Lower Manhattan location. The story of where the 55,000 films ended up in between is far stranger than one may expect and now its gotten documentary treatment from David Redmon and Ashley Sabin. After premiering at Sundance last year, Drafthouse Films fittingly picked up the film for a release beginning April 5 and now the trailer has arrived.

John Fink said in his review, “A sweeping documentary by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, Kim’s Video follows the personal-inquiry, man-on-the-street format from their previous works Mardi Gras: Made in China and Girl Model. With Redmon largely remaining behind the scenes, asking questions while holding his camera, the film is simply left to wander where the story takes it: from...

Considering the recent success of films like “Minari”, “Everything Everywhere All At Once”, and “Past Lives” the necessity for such a list became dire, even though film critics and programmers around the world are still fighting about the genuine origin of the movies that are Asian-themed, but are either produced by companies from countries outside Asia, or by individuals of Asian descent. In that fashion, we also decided to include co-productions where the non-Asian element is quite intense either in terms of production or crew. The +1 is obviously there due to the particular director, although the film is Hollywood in every other aspect.

Without further ado, here are the best Asian Diaspora Movies of 2023, in reverse order, and, as always, with a focus on diversity in style, directors, and country of origin. Some films may have premiered in 2023, but since they mostly circulated in 2023, we decided to include them. When...

As we have mentioned many times before, the documentary format has been improving significantly through the latest years, particularly due to the increased exposure of the category due to both festivals and streaming services. With the main motto here being that ‘reality goes beyond any kind of imagination', the stories presented have been shocking and at the same time, quite entertaining, particularly since a number of Asian countries have started loosening the control over information available and the overall censorship. Even in countries that have not done the same, the result is actually similar, due to the diaspora filmmakers, who, outside the confines of authorities, managed to say all those things they were supposed not to. Lastly, the rise of the mockumentary, which seems to be included in various programs more as documentary rather than fiction, adds even more depth to the category.

Without further ado, here are the best...

With the festival kicking off tomorrow, Telluride Film Festival has now unveiled its lineup, featuring new films from Jeff Nichols (the first image from which can be seen above), Emerald Fennell, Annie Baker, Andrew Haigh, Yorgos Lanthimos, Justine Triet, Wim Wenders, Kitty Green, Ethan Hawke, and many more.

“Fifty years is a long time to do anything. And while we might be a little biased, we feel the work that Tff does is pretty important,” comments Telluride Film Festival director Julie Huntsinger. “We take the charge of preserving the theatrical experience and promoting film seriously, but with necessary winks here and there. We’re ecstatic to share a program we feel reflects so much of the past fifty years, naturally and organically, films old and new, which stand as a testament to our beloved co-founders Tom Luddy and Bill Pence who are no longer with us.”

• All Of US Strangers...

Welcome to Give Me the Fear, a new Frightfest 2023 preview series hosted by screenwriter Stuart Wright.

These brief, spoiler-free interviews will – across the entire series – help you to discover the kind of knowledge and experience about how to make indie horror films that they don’t teach at film school.

After looking back at the blood, sweat and tears that went into their creative successes, I ask them one last question: If you could hand pick one person to be in the audience for your Frightfest screening, who would it be and why? I think you going to love the answers this question elicits.

This episode features Hostile Dimensions (Graham Hughes), Kim’s Video (Ashley Sabin & David Redmon) and Enter the Clones of Bruce Lee (David Gregory)

For more details about Frightfest see https://www.frightfest.co.uk/2023FrightFestLondon/index.html

Powered by RedCircle...

The last year has been a chastening one for television, with budgets nosediving and streamers pulling back on the mega-spending of yesteryear to offset financial disappointments. But the investment in eye-catching doc series has continued despite the threat of global recession, and the unscripted market now finds itself at a crossroads as it splinters into expensive, premium fare and low-budget, high-volume returners.

“There’s still big appetite from commissioners,” says one prominent UK doc maker, while a German-based factual producer adds, “What’s being sold are very commercial projects – bankable names and directors.”

Dogwoof Head of Sales Cleo Veger believes there’s a bigger divide than ever between the sales of lower-budget festival docs and premium projects. “There’s a drive towards IP and buyers are talking about ‘fewer, bigger swings’,” she adds.

Projects with big names attached are commanding big bucks – Veger points to Davis Guggenheim’s Apple TV...

Last week, Sundance returned in-person for the first time in two years – and “Kim’s Video” played on the historic first night. The excitement in the air was palpable. Paper cutouts of cinema’s greatest directors were strewn across the seats of the cinema; I myself picked up a mask of Jean Luc-Godard. Audience members tried on the masks and dried off their snow-crusted boots; the cinema was a-buzz with warm chatter. Like the original Kim’s Video in New York, Park City’s Prospector Square Theater seemed to witness a newfound community of cinephiles in the making.

Kim’s Video was nominated for the Next Innovator Award at Sundance Film Festival

According to David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s sophomore feature, the film’s titular subject was a humble franchise and legendary storefront in the Lower East Village. It was, they claim,...

When documentarians go on the hunt for something specific, it’s often a historical artefact or, sometimes, as with Searching For Sugarman, a person. The object of desire in this quirky film from David Redmon and Ashley Sabin is more modern than most - the contents of a once-famous New York video rental store.

Kim’s Video was on St Mark’s Place in the city’s East Village and it was a treasure trove of films, a place where Debbie Does Dallas rubbed cases with 400 Blows. The store, which had begun as a small offshoot of a launderette run by Korean-American businessman Yongman Kim, was home to more than 55,000 movies, many of them bootleg copies which added to their rarity value. Importantly, for the purposes of this film, it was a Mecca for Redmon, whose near-obsessive love for the store is vital to the success of this highly personal doc.

New York City’s fabled movie rental chain, Kim’s Video, shuttered its downtown locations throughout the early-to-mid aughts, offering an early warning sign that the cinema as we once knew it was dying, or at least migrating to other formats.

The chain’s disappearance left an open wound among lower Manhattan film buffs, stranding Kim’s hundreds of thousands of members without a good place — any place, actually — to rent movies, while leaving behind a collection of 55,000 VHS tapes and DVDs that encompassed everything from horror flicks like C.H.U.D. to the complete works of Paul Morrissey to bootleg copies of Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma.

What happened to Kim’s treasure trove of films remained a mystery for quite some time, with occasional stories popping up — including a long-form Village Voice piece by movie critic and podcaster Karina Longworth (You Must Remember This) — explaining...

It was the spring of 2007 — the height of the DVD boom — and I struggled to choose between the only two colleges that wanted me. Both were in Manhattan, but only one had a Kim’s Video within a one-block radius of the freshman dorms. I’m not saying that was the deciding factor, but I’m not not saying that was a deciding factor.

As an aspiring movie addict with a new driver’s license and nowhere to go, I’d spent an ungodly number of teenage weekends loitering around the Tower Records that sat at the corner of a strip mall a few towns over from my parents’ house. It was the kind of brick-and-mortar Brigadoon that corporate seemed to have semi-forgotten about, and the store’s irregular hours — combined with its ghostly lack of foot traffic — often left me with the feeling that it was only there on...

Kim’s Video was a grungy movie rental empire and cinephile paradise in downtown Manhattan that grouped its tapes and DVDs by director. Started in 1987 out of a dry-cleaning business by Yongman Kim, who was a little-seen and mysterious figure to even his employees, Kim’s Video eventually expanded to five stores and became a way of life for both the customers and the people who worked there.

(I worked at the Kim’s farthest west on Bleecker Street one summer and we all gorged ourselves on movie classics, cult films, outsider art, bootlegs of rarities, and shelves and shelves of unclassifiable ephemera.)

Video stores started to close by 2008 when the near-mythical Mr. Kim offered his collection of 55,000 movies to any institution that would keep it intact. The town of Salemi, Sicily, acquired the archive, and in 2012 there was an article in The Village Voice by Karina Longworth that attempted...

A sweeping documentary by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, Kim’s Video follows the personal-inquiry, man-on-the-street format from their previous works Mardi Gras: Made in China and Girl Model. With Redmon largely remaining behind the scenes, asking questions while holding his camera, the film is simply left to wander where the story takes it: from the cool counterculture of the East Village before eventually turning into a heist film with a mafia connection. Haunted by the ghosts of cinema, Youngman Kim’s collection calls out to David; eventually he’s able to rescue and repatriate it back to Lower Manhattan. Its happy end is known, with a collection of over 55,000 rare VHS tapes and DVDs from the chain’s flagship Mondo Kim’s now available to rent at the Alamo Drafthouse’s lower Manhattan outpost, the Found Footage Festival’s Nick Prueher responsible for the preservation and cataloging of titles.

The words “Quentin Tarantino” and “video store” will forever be linked in the popular imagination. But imagine that Quentin didn’t just work at a video store. Imagine that he owned, operated, designed, and organized every shelf of the video store of his dreams. That place might have looked a lot like Kim’s Video.

If you were an ardent film fanatic and you walked into Kim’s, the fabled New York movie-rental emporium, which opened in 1987 and ultimately expanded to five Manhattan locations (the most famous was Mondo Kim’s on St. Mark’s Place), the store looked like nothing so much as the inside of your brain. At Kim’s, you seemed to be standing in the middle of an explosion of cinema. It was a store where grindhouse movies rubbed shoulders with Bergman and Bresson, where the wall of horror included films by Dario Argento that weren’t even out on video,...

Premiering on the first day of the Sundance Film Festival, Kim’s Video is the perfect Sundance documentary, a playful and intelligent film that teases one thing and delivers quite another. Just as 2012’s Searching for Sugar Man set out to find a missing soul singer and uncovered a secret history of anti-apartheid rebellion in South Africa, this affectionate and funny film by Ashley Sabin and David Redmon and playing in the fest’s Next lineup starts as a nerd’s quest and transforms into, well, actually two things: one a glorious shaggy dog story that somehow links a New York dry cleaner, the Coen brothers’ late fees, South Korea’s CIA and the Mafia, the other an astute and actually rather moving rumination on the very real social importance of film history.

The subject matter raises questions that have bugged even casual visitors to Manhattan of a certain age:...

Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? The biggest obstacle was whether to trust the voices that told me, David, to go to Salemi, Sicily, and rent a movie. Ashley suggested to listen to them and said, “Go for it! See what happens.” Initially, I didn’t intend to film or record my efforts to find Kim’s Video in Salemi and rent a movie. But the voices continued […]

The post “Initially, I Didn’t Intend to Film or Record My Efforts” | David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, Kim’s Video first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Every production faces unexpected obstructions that require creative solutions and conceptual rethinking. What was an unforeseen obstacle, crisis, or simply unpredictable event you had to respond to, and how did this event impact or cause you to rethink your film? The biggest obstacle was whether to trust the voices that told me, David, to go to Salemi, Sicily, and rent a movie. Ashley suggested to listen to them and said, “Go for it! See what happens.” Initially, I didn’t intend to film or record my efforts to find Kim’s Video in Salemi and rent a movie. But the voices continued […]

The post “Initially, I Didn’t Intend to Film or Record My Efforts” | David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, Kim’s Video first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Before streaming platforms took over home entertainment, there was New York City’s legendary video rental store Kim’s Video. With more than 55,000 beloved and rare movies to choose from, the Kim’s Video flagship store in St. Marks Place was essential stomping ground for not just cinefiles, but anyone who liked watching movies. The knowledgeable clerks could be scary, but being able to access the vast collection of films was worth being yelled at for not knowing enough about Hungarian cinema. The store was a magnet for big-name filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers. Then, in 2008, facing a changing industry, Kim’s Video founder, Yongman Kim, offered to give away his collection provided that it stay intact and be available to Kim’s Video members. Not long after, before all late fees had been collected from customers including Joel Coen, the archive found a new...

The annual IndieWire Studio at Sundance returns this year in person to Main Street in historic Park City, Utah.

Presented by Dropbox, the IndieWire Studio at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival will serve as a hub for video interviews with the top attending talent from the hottest indie films presented at the fest. Actors, directors, producers, screenwriters, and documentary subjects will be interviewed by IndieWire’s senior staff for exclusive video and social media content.

Dropbox is the perfect partner for IndieWire — and for Sundance — because it’s a brand that recognizes the power of collaborative effort. Their tools keep creative teams on the same page, whether sharing dailies, shooting schedules, costume specs, or film finance spreadsheets, so everyone’s marching toward the same goal. This year 60 percent of the films at the Sundance Film Festival were made with the help of Dropbox.

In addition, our Premiere Partner Adobe will host...

Returning to an in-person edition, along with the continuation of virtual offerings, the Sundance Film Festival kicks off this Thursday and lasts through January 29, offering a first glimpse at the year in cinema. While the annual festival has its fair share of returning filmmakers, it is certainly most renowned as a beacon of discovery, and we look forward to providing extensive coverage that one can follow here or on Twitter. Before reviews arrive, we’re highlighting the premieres that should be on your radar––a few we’ve already had the opportunity to see. If you’re interested in experiencing Sundance in person or from afar, one can see available tickets here.

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)

Considering the last directorial debut he backed ended up being our favorite film of the last year, expectations are high for the Barry Jenkins-produced All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt.

Fremantle and Carnivalesque Films have announced their partnership on Kim’s Video, a new feature documentary unearthing the stranger-than-fiction story of the legendary NYC video rental store Kim’s Video Collection, which will world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, as announced earlier today, screening as the opening day film of the Next section.

The film directed by award-winners David Redmon and Ashley Sabin (Girl Model) follows modern-day cinephile and filmmaker, Redmon, on a quixotic quest to track down the whereabouts of the massive video collection of the now-defunct Kim’s Video, an iconic shop that once housed more than 55,000 beloved and rare movies. Playing with the forms and tropes of cinema, David’s bizarre and increasingly obsessive quest takes him to Sicily, where he becomes entangled in a web of local politics, and to South Korea, where he tracks down the enigmatic Mr. Kim in the hope of influencing the collection’s future.

New York’s legendary video rental store Kim’s Video is getting the feature documentary treatment.

“Kim’s Video,” which will open the Sundance Film Festival’s Next section, is produced by Fremantle and Carnivalesque Films, and will unearth the stranger-than-fiction story behind the New York cornerstone’s vast collection of movies.

The documentary is directed by award-winning filmmakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin (“Girl Model”), and executive produced by Fremantle’s head of global documentaries Mandy Chang.

“Kim’s Video” follows modern-day cinephile and filmmaker David Redmon on a quixotic quest to track down the whereabouts of the massive video collection of the now-defunct Kim’s Video, an iconic NYC video rental store with more than 55,000 beloved and rare movies.

Playing with the forms and tropes of cinema, David’s bizarre and increasingly obsessive quest takes him to Sicily, where he becomes entangled in a web of local politics,...

Deep in the bowels of Wall Street, the legacy of Kim’s Video lives on. At the Alamo Drafthouse’s new downtown Manhattan location, just a few blocks from the New York Stock Exchange, the arrival of a movie rental store that hasn’t fully been appreciated for 12 years seems like some sort of anti-capitalist lark.

For Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League, however, the decision to ingest the collection of roughly 55,000 DVDs and VHS tapes once housed at the iconic East Village mainstay Kim’s Video & Music is an experiment with no real downside. “Free movie rentals is not a great business model, but we have the space,” League said in an interview last week, a few hours before Kim’s reopened in the lobby of the new location. “We’re already paying the rent, we already have people at the box office, and we have air conditioning. It’s...

"Plunge into the intrinsic range of unfamiliar expressions, inside this wild sanctuary that offers a sonorious glimpse into the reveries, melodies, and rhapsodies of a great donkey orchestra."   What is undoubtedly one of the strangest documentaries of 2017, David Redmon and Ashley Sabin's portrait of empathy on the most maligned of beasts, the humble Donkey, plays out like a fly-on-the-tail Frederick Wiseman film. Do Donkey's Act? is kind of an inversion of Titicut Follies through the needles-eye of Au Hasard Balthazar, only ponderously plush with purple prose, narrated with picnic panache by none other than Willem Dafoe.    It takes about 10 minutes or so to get into the rhythm of the film, but once you hang-five on the vibe (bro), the unconventional presentation becomes...

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

"Plunge into the intrinsic range of unfamiliar expressions, inside this wild sanctuary that offers a sonorious glimpse into the reveries, melodies, and rhapsodies of a great donkey orchestra." What will undoubtedly be the strangest film I catch at the 2017 edition of Hot Docs, David Redmon and Ashley Sabin's document of empathy on the most maligned of beasts, the humble Donkey, plays out like a fly-on-the-tail Frederick Wiseman film, Do Donkey's Act? is kind of an inversion of Titicut Follies through the needles-eye of Au Hasard Balthazar, only ponderously plush with purple prose, narrated with picnic panache by none other than Willem Dafoe.  It takes about 10 minutes or so to get into the rhythm of the film, but once you hang-five on the vibe...

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

“Do Donkeys Act?” will have its North American premiere at the Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival later this month, and will then screen at the Montclair Film Festival in May. Narrated by “Spider-Man” actor Willem Dafoe, the documentary takes viewers to a sanctuary where a group of donkeys is recovering from abuse.

Read More: ‘Behind the White Glasses’ Exclusive Clip and Poster: Documentary Chronicles the Career of Lina Wertmüller — Watch

Helmed by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin — the directing duo behind “Girl Model” and “Choreography” — the unexpectedly emotional documentary seeks to portray how these animals inhabit and interact with each other, while imagining how they communicate among themselves and with humans. The film already screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January and last month at the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival.

Read More: ‘Leaning Into The Wind’ Is A Worthy Sequel To Documentary Smash ‘Rivers And Tides’ — Sf...

The documentary festival is also launching a fifth competition strand at its 2017 edition.

Scandi documentary festival Cph:dox (Mar 16-26) has unveiled the films in its usual four competitions as well as introducing a new competition section.

World premieres announced across the competitions include Bridgend director Jeppe Rønde’s The John Dalli Mystery [pictured], a Kafkaesque story with Mikael Bertelsen and Mads Brügger; Do Donkeys Act?, a film about unruly donkeys narrated by Willem Dafoe; Accidental Anarchist, about the British former diplomat Carne Ross who has transformed into an anarchist; Sigrid Dyekjær’s A Modern Man, about violinist and model Charlie Siem; and Ben Rivers’ Urth, about the failed ecosystem Biosphere 2.0 in Arizona.

Read Screen’s festival preview here.

Other high profile documentaries to screen at the event include Matthew Heineman’s Cartel Land follow up City Of Ghosts.

New competition Next:wave is launched to highlight international emerging talents “who have the courage to take chances and stand out.”

The...

The Ann Arbor Film Festival celebrates its epic 53rd annual edition on March 24-29 with a colossal selection of experimental short films and features.

Feature film highlights include the documentary Speculation Nation by regular collaborators Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat, which examines the recent Spanish housing crisis; a new ethnographic doc by Ben Russell, Greetings to the Ancestors, which plunges deep into the culture of South Africa; and Jenni Olson’s grand California study The Royal Road.

Short film highlights include the much anticipated new film by Jennifer Reeder, Blood Below the Skin, a narrative following a week in the dramatic and romantic lives of three teenage girls; a new music video by Mike Olenick called Beautiful Things with music by The Wet Things; new animations by Don Hertzfeldt, World of Tomorrow, and Lewis Klahr, Mars Garden; plus new experimental work by Vanessa Renwick, Peggy Ahwesh and Zachary Epcar.

Special...

The festival’s 25th edition will feature a contribution from Ai Weiwei and competition titles including Whiplash, Nightcrawler and Foxcatcher.

The Stockholm International Film Festival (Nov 5-16) is to present its Achievement Award to Us actress Uma Thurman.

The Kill Bill star will will visit Stockholm to receive the prestigious Bronze Horse and meet the audience during an exclusive “Face2Face”.

Thurman will also take part in the inauguration ceremony, which will include the unveiling of an ice sculpture by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

Weiwei was a Stockholm jury member last year but since he wasn’t allowed to leave China, he sent an empty chair named ”The Chair for Non-attendance” as symbol of his absence.

He is still not allowed to leave China so will send a design that will be portrayed in the form of a large ice sculpture symbolising this years’ Spotlight theme - Hope.

Brazil

The festival will focus this year on Brazil...

The odds of having your short film included in this year’s Sundance Film Festival are .008 percent. Out of the 66 short film line-up (selected among 8,161 submissions) we find actress Rose McGowan move behind the camera for her directing debut (Dawn), we have Ain’t Them Bodies Saints producer Toby Halbrooks shovel out Dig (see pic above) and Todd Rohal (The Guatemalan Handshake) returns to the fest in between features with Rat Pack Rat. Filmmaker Magazine New Faces of Independent Film director Dean Fleischer-Camp rolls up his shirt sleeves with Catherine, Matthew Lessner returns to Park City with the helping hand Chapel Perilous while The Strange Ones (’11 accepted short) co-helmer Christopher Radcliff won’t be making a dissappearing act with Jonathan’s Chest. Finally docu feature-film helmer Lucy Walker moves into The Lion’s Mouth Opens. I’ll of course be covering several of these – look out for our coverage.

Here...

Short films can go a long way. Especially when they’re showcased at the Sundance Film Festival. The festival’s Shorts program, which was announced today, has a tradition of identifying remarkable filmmakers as well as introducing stories that ultimately make it to the big-screen as features. For example, David O. Russell brought his first film, a short titled Bingo Inferno to Sundance in 1987, while Half Nelson, which earned Ryan Gosling his first Oscar nomination, grew out of Ryan Fleck’s 2004 Sundance short titled, Gowanus, Brooklyn. “If you look back at the directors who got their start by having a short at Sundance,...

Mario Sesti programmes retrospective and preview strand in new museum Maxxi.

The Rome Film Festival (Nov 8 -17) is renewing Cinema at Maxxi, the series of film events curated by Mario Sesti.

Before the festival, between September 14 – November 6, recently launched museum Maxxi (the National Museum of 21st Century Arts) will host retrospectives, meetings with actors and directors, lectures and previews of documentaries and features.

Series The Forgotten will offer a retrospective of classics spanning postwar Italian cinema to the end of the seventies, opening with Pietro Germi’s Divorce Italian Style (Divorzio all’Italiana), followed by a conversation with Italian actor and director Carlo Verdone and curator Mario Sesti.

The strand will also include films by Mario Monicelli, Antonio Pietrangeli, Riccardo Freda, and Steno among others.

Doc series Meet Exceptional Men and Women launches with Girl Models, by David Redmon and Ashley Sabin. The festival’s preview series will include Alicia Scherson’s The Future with Rutger Hauer and Nicholas...

Yesterday, the Sundance Institute announced the 29 documentary projects that have been selected to receive in total $550,000 worth of grant money from its Documentary Film Program and Fund. A lot of these are for projects in development by emerging filmmakers, but in there are also some films by more established names such as Jesse Moss (Full Battle Rattle), Lucia Small and Ed Pincus (The Axe in the Attic) and Ashley Sabin and David Redmon, who received audience engagement money for their 2011 doc Girl Model. In a press release, Cara Mertes, the Director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program …...

Sorry Oscars. But after the Indie Spirit Awards, the number two spot in terms of Award Season importance are the Cinema Eye Honors. Seems like it was only yesterday when Aj Schnack & Thom Powers teamed up for one basic, logical concept: an event that would reward yearly output of documentary film in a rightfully sound manner. With the wind in their sails, the 6th annual edition was held last night and deservingly so, adding to its double wins at the Idfa and Sundance, it is 5 Broken Cameras that took the top honors for Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking. Co-directed by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi – political activism via you guessed it, five video cameras. The film was released via Kino Lorber.

The night’s only double winner, could be regarded as the silver medal doc film of the year: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Detropia grabbed the Outstanding...

"The Imposter" and "Searching for Sugar Man" each received 5 nods from the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking. 31 features and 5 shorts will vie for the best of the best in documentary filmmaking. Check out the full list of nominees below including the Audience Award and Heterodox Award.

Winners of the 6th Annual Cinema Eye Honors will be announced on January 9, 2013 as Cinema Eye returns for a third year to New York City.s Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens.

Outstanding Achievement in Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking

5 Broken Cameras

Directed by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi

Produced by Christine Camdessus, Serge Gordey, Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi

Detropia

Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady

Produced by Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady and Craig Atkinson

The Imposter

Directed by Bart Layton

Produced by Dimitri Doganis

Marina Abramović The Artist is Present

Directed by Matthew Akers

Produced by Jeff Dupre and Maro Chermayeff...

As the four rainy days of the 8th Annual Camden International Film Festival wound down, the energy was still high as documentary fans nestled into their seats at Sunday's closing-night screening of Jeff Orlowski's environmental photography doc "Chasing Ice." Festival founder Ben Fowlie opened the evening by thanking the audience for continuing to make the small-town festival a robust showcase for great documentary films. The festival, which hosts screenings in Camden and Rockland, Maine, plus a filmmaking forum, is New England's most respected documentary film festival. Also last night, the festival's Harrel Award for Best Film (for which I was a jury member) was given to Pete Nicks' look at emergency room care and American health care, "The Waiting Room." A special jury mention went to David Redmon and Ashley Sabin's "Downeast," about a small-town lobster processing plant. The festival's Emerging Cinematic...

Title: Girl Model Directors: David Redmon and Ashley Sabin A vivid and surprisingly emotive exploration of fashion modeling and the refracted reality and cost of the economic opportunities it presents for prepubescent Eastern European girls in particular, the spare but rather superb documentary “Girl Model” walks a tight-rope adjacent to exploitation, peering down into its caverns, and asking uneasy questions about whether the alternatives for so many young girls are really that much better. Narrowly focused in savvy fashion, “Girl Model” interweaves the stories of two subjects who only briefly cross paths. There’s Ashley Arbaugh, an early-30s ex-model turned scout who scours rural Russian open casting calls looking for fresh faces, and [ Read More ]...

“Girl Model” opens not on a Fashion Week runway in New York or Paris, but in about the last place we would expect to find the starting point of this film: Siberia. Indeed, the sad, eye-opening documentary from directors David Redmon and Ashley Sabin seems to revel in subverting this expectation of what constitutes the fashion industry, starting with ground zero for new talent. Here, in deep Siberia, far from a Vogue photo shoot, a cluster of pale, rail-thin teenagers, many in matching black bikini tops and bottoms, gamely smile as photographers shoot away, and Redmon and Sabin’s camera pans across their wide-eyed, startlingly young faces. As the film’s title appears onscreen, the girls are marched cattle-style, before being called individually before the scouts. Some continue to smile at the directors’ camera, while others eye the lens suspiciously. “I feel like her hips are too big,” says Ashley,...

The work of David Redmon and Ashley Sabin first came on my radar when they arrived in Hartford, Ct to promote their eye-opening documentary, Mardi Gras: Made in China, tracing both the production and disposal of Mardi Gras beads. Recently I chatted with Redmon regarding his latest documentary Girl Model, which he co-directed with Sabin and I reviewed at Tiff. Girl Model has screened at festivals internationally including the One World Human Rights International Documentary Festival and you can read our conversation from SXSW below as the film is now in theaters.

Tfs: We met back in Hartford (at Real Art Ways) a few years ago and I was wondering what role cities with vibrant art communities that house these Micro Cinemas in often non-traditional venues (galleries, bars, libraries, coffee shops) play for you as filmmakers and distributors (via Carnavlesque Films)?

David Redmon: It’s even more necessary than before,...

If You’re Having Girl Problems, I Feel Bad For You Son…

In Serbia, many families ignorantly push their daughters to become models in hopes of pulling themselves from poverty, not knowing that scouting agencies are willing and able to take advantage of their children’s inexperience, often sending them abroad for work only to bring them back confused and in debt. Looking into the disconcerting connection between the Serbian and Japanese modeling industries, directors David Redmon and Ashley Sabin’s Girl Model explores the moral disconnect between those who work in it and the abuses that pervade it.

It’s no secret that underneath the make-up caked glamor of the fashion industry women worldwide are starving their skin and bone bodies for a buck in the name of ‘beauty’, but this is not the trade’s only closeted skeleton. The thoroughly disturbing show Toddlers & Tiaras is proof that the industry starts young,...

Documentaries find success through compelling stories. Whether a salacious expose on an industry many looking in don’t understand or a stirring rags-to-riches tale depicting a young girl’s rise to fame and fortune—intrigue is the name of the game. Many times directors aren’t even sure what their film will be until everything plays out and the editing process begins. For David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, the simple fact their Girl Model delves into the scary reality of thirteen-year old girls being taken advantage of with the hope to help themselves and their family means controversy is bound to rear its head.

Pitched by the cautiously critical talent scout at its center, Ashley Arbaugh, the film’s genesis begins within the industry. A former model in Japan at 18—shown via autobiographical diary-like footage from 1999—Ashley doesn’t love her job yet continues to stick with it. Often censoring...

We know all too well the incessant, often pervasive nature of the fashion and marketing industry, but directors David Redmon and Ashley Sabin take a look at an even more disturbing aspect of it: the underage modeling machine. Premiering at Tiff last year, one of the film’s subjects is 13-year-old Siberian model Nadya Vall, who is sent to Tokyo to launch a career in the industry.

We called it a “powerful” look inside this underbelly and the film even stirred up some controversy regarding the now 17-year-old Vall. As she went on to have a healthy modeling career, her current agency wants the film shelved due to her portrayal in the film. It looks like that clearly hasn’t happened as a limited release is kicking off next month. Check out the new trailer below, as well as a new poster, for what could be one of the most eye-opening documentaries of the year.

A number of our favorite independent films of the year are screening this week at the Northside Festival, a Brooklyn-based film and music event that gathers a number of film organizations, includuing Filmmaker, to guest curate some of its programming. Filmmaker‘s night is Wednesday, when we screen in its New York premiere Andrew Neel’s wickedly funny King Kelly (pictured) and Jeremiah Zagar & Nathan Caswell’s haunting short, Remains, but there are a number of other favorites dotted throughout the schedule. For example, tonight there’s one of the best documentaries of the year, Ashley Sabin and David Redmon’s Girl Model (presented by Pov) as well Ryan O’Nan’s warm and spirited Ifp Lab project, The Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best (presented by Oscilloscope and Rooftop Films). Also tonight is the Cuban artist doc Unfinished Spaces, which you’ll read about in the next issue of the magazine,...