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As France’s role as a hub for international production continues to gain momentum, a new breed of international sales company, The Pool Films, is making its debut in the fall festival circuit with a one-stop-shop model incorporating financing, co-production, post production and filming location as part of its services.

Based in Paris, The Pool Films is being launched by international sales veteran Gilles Sousa and producer Tim Belda, with the backing of Digital District Group – the VFX house behind Netflix’s “Under Paris” and “Lupin,” among others — and the Victorine Studios. The latter is a Hollywood-style centenary venue in the French Riviera, in Nice, which has hosted many iconic films, including François Truffaut’s “Day for Night,” Marcel Carné’s “Children of Paradise” and Jacques Tati’s “My Uncle.”

Sousa, who co-founded Pulsar Content where he headed international sales following a long tenure at Bac Films, knows the festival and market circuit inside out.

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Back in December, the internet met its latest obsession: the ‘Wirkin’ — a viral handbag that set social media and shoppers into a frenzy. Priced under $80 at Walmart, the Wirkin drew instant comparisons to the iconic Birkin bag, which can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $200,000 — assuming you’re lucky enough to be invited to buy one.

Buy the dasein satchel bag

The lookalike tote became an overnight sensation, selling out quickly both in-store and online.

Exclusive: Italy’s Open Reel has agreed key sales for dramas on its slate, including North America and UK deals for Daniel Nolasco’s Only Good Things and Sergio De León’s Keep Coming Back.

Brazilian Lgbtqia+ feature Only Good Things, which recently premiered at Guadalajara and Frameline has sold to Tla Releasing for North America and the UK, and to Optimale for France and Gm Films for Germany and Austria.

Set in 1984, Only Good Things centres on Antonio who takes care of his small, isolated farm and who takes care and falls in love with Marcelo, a lonely motorcycler...

In a move to boost its international division, Snd Films has appointed Alexis Reybet-Degat as head of international library and scripted sales.

He will over oversee all international sales of the film catalogue, TV series, and remake rights for both library and original scripted content for Snd Films, the distribution and production arm of French media powerhouse Groupe M6.

Reybet-Degat most recently served as VP of international library & remake sales at Studiocanal, following roles in global sales and acquisitions at Elle Driver and Borsalino. In his new role at Snd, he will report to Ramy Nahas, the company’s director...

Exclusive:French powerhouse studio Gaumont has taken on international sales rights to prolific French filmmaker François Ozon’s adaptation of Albert Camus’ literary masterpiece The Stranger.

Ozon reteams with hisSummer Of ’85 breakout star Benjamin Voisin who plays main character Meursault, a Frenchman living in 1930s Algeria whose apathy and indifference to the surrounding world culminate in cold-blooded murder and a trial that explores both the crime and his character.

The Swimming Pool, Under The Sand and 8 Women director also reteams with Rebecca Marder, who starred in Ozon’s 2023 courtroom comedy The Crime Is Mine, and Pierre Lottin, who starred in...

This intriguing noir mystery with a twist in its tale sees a couple befriend a tennis coach at a holiday resort with unnerving results

German film-maker Jan-Ole Gerster has created an intriguing noir mystery starring Sam Riley and Stacy Martin. It has very good performances and witty visual ideas, but the dramatic shape and emotional focus could have been tightened and sharpened. Yet this is a smart film which pays its audience the compliment of assuming they are intelligent enough to work things out on their own in a drama of sexual tension and dangerously polite encounters, something like Jacques Deray’s The Swimming Pool or Paul Schrader’s The Comfort of Strangers.

Riley plays Tom, a tennis coach at a middling hotel resort in Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands. He has been here for almost a decade, increasingly unhappy with his aimless, pointless life of no worries, no responsibilities,...

Alain Delon, the legendary French actor, was a central figure in the French golden age of cinema during the 1960s and 70s. Known for his suave, tough-guy persona and striking good looks, Leon appeared in more than 100 movies in his five-decade career. What made Delon so memorable was the unpredictable nature of his performances. From the ruthless assassin he played in Le Samouraï, to the charismatic criminal in Borsalino, Delon especially shone when he showed his seductive side in L'Eclisse and La Piscine. Hiss filmography even includes iconic literary characters, such as Zorro and Tom Ripley.

Delon passed away on August 18th, 2024, at the age of 88. Since then, film scholars, journalists, and fans have reflected on his remarkable body of work and the legacy his powerful performances have left in cinema history. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest actors of his generation and the rare international star to achieve global acclaim.

Over the past decade, Luca Guadagnino has become one of the in, biggest auteurs of the generation. Perhaps that felt inevitable for those who remember the 2009 Venice Film Festival world premiere of his breakout “I Am Love.” But 2015’s “A Bigger Splash,” a sly retelling of the Jacues Deray‘s 1969 French classic “La piscine,” cemented Guada with stateside audiences.

Continue reading ‘An Even Bigger Splash’: Luca Guadagnino Confirms The Extended Cut Of His 2015 Film Is “100%” On The Way: “We’re Finalizing It” at The Playlist.

Jane Birkin was a prolific actress with a film career that spanned decades, starting back in 1965. Born in London, Birkin mostly worked as an actress in French cinema, becoming a major movie star in the country for her early roles in films like Slogan, La Piscine, and Cannabis. Alongside her work as an actress, she was a singer, with a number of studio albums throughout her career. However, Birkin is perhaps most famous for being the namesake of Birkin bags, fashion house Herms' most famous luxury handbags.

Sadly, Jane Birkin passed away on July 16, 2023, just two years after suffering a stroke in 2021. Her last film was the docu-drama, Jane by Charlotte, the directorial debut of her daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg. Since first appearing in an uncredited role in the film The Knack... and How to Get It in 1965, Birkin had a legendary career right until the end.

Daddy Nostalgia (1990) Jane Birkin...

The Swimming Pool, or as the French version goes, La Piscine, things get heated pretty fast and its thanks to a combination of heightened drama and the French Riviera sun. The psychological thriller dives into the dynamics of an eerily seductive love triangle, taking things to a level thats equal parts tense and glamorous. At the start of the movie, Jean-Paul (Alain Delon) and Marianne (Romy Schneider) seem to have it all together, lounging around the pool of their borrowed villa at the height of summer in St.Tropez. But in a blink of an eye, their idyllic getaway turns into a nightmare when Mariannes old flame, the wealthy and borderline pompous Harry (Maurice Ronet), shows up out of the blue with his 18-year-old daughter, Penelope (Jane Birkin).

La Piscine Photo: Criterion Collection The French Film Festival is returning to cinemas next month across the UK with a programme of French and Francophone films, mostly UK Premieres, spreading over 60 screenings.

Talents in attendance include actor and director Mathieu Amalric and filmmakers Jean-Marie Larrieu, Arnaud Larrieu, Claire Simon, Emmanuel Mouret, Payal Kapadia, Isabelle Prim and Yolande Zauberman.

Cinemas showing films include the French Institute in Edinburgh and the city's Dominion, Glasgow's Gft, Chichester Cinema and London's Ciné Lumière.

Holy Cow Photo: Laurent Le Crabe Among the current crop of Francophone films that will screen is Emmanuel Courcol's The Marching Band, which recently won the Audience Award at San Sebastian Film Festival, charming coming-of-age film Holy Cow and Belgian #MeToo drama Julie Keeps Quiet.

Classic movies in the line-up include Claude Sautet's César And Rosalie and Jacques Deray's sultry La Piscine.

Read more about the festival and...

French production-distribution-sales powerhouse Studiocanal, which holds one of the largest film libraries in the world with some 9,000 titles, has completed its Jean-Pierre Melville collection with the acquisition of his 1950 classic “The Terrible Children” (“Les Enfants Terribles”).

This latest high-profile addition joins the ranks of the studio’s Melville lineup, which includes “Army of Shadows,” “Le Cercle Rouge,” “Bob le Flambeur,” and “Le Doulos.” This acquisition solidifies Studiocanal’s position as a leading player in both the French and international film markets

A subsidiary of the Canal+ Group, Studiocanal’s acquisition policy focuses not just on contemporary film rights, but on the preservation and restoration of cinematic treasures. By securing rights from other studios and investing in the preservation of older titles, the company not only controls distribution and remake rights but also breathes new life into some of cinema’s most revered works.

Ahead of the International Classic Film Market...

The 1958 version of “Bonjour Tristesse” is everything Hollywood seems to be wary of these days: a notoriously mean, allegedly misogynistic filmmaker’s interpretation of a book written by and about a French teenage girl. “He used me like a Kleenex and then threw me away,” Jean Seberg said of director Otto Preminger. Well, get out your hankies for a more sensitive (and plenty chic) take, one that asks: What might an adaptation of “Bonjour Tristesse” look like if it were a woman interpreting Françoise Sagan’s words? Better yet, how might it feel?

Montreal-born writer-director Durga Chew-Bose offers an impressionistic retelling, emphasizing tactile details: the way the Côte d’Azur sun hits the skin, the relief of sitting before an open icebox on a hot summer night, the smell of Dad’s aftershave. While promising, Chew-Bose’s attractive but ultimately hollow debut offers audiences a vicarious vacation to the south of France,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSChicken Run.After earlier claims that they were “not in jeopardy,” the 29-location Landmark Theatre chain now faces foreclosure, though IndieWire reports that may not be such a bad thing.After releasing a trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis that included phony, apparently AI-generated pull quotes attributed to real film critics, Lionsgate has issued an apology and ceremonially fired a marketing consultant.The fast-food chain Chick-Fil-a plans to launch a streaming service, which will apparently include game shows and reality programming.FESTIVALSAhead of its premiere this weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, we are pleased to share the first poster for Sofia Bohdanowicz's Measures for a Funeral (2024), designed by Charlotte Gosch of studio other types.

It is with great sadness that we report legendary French actor Alain Delon has died at the age of 88. Widely hailed as the most beautiful movie star of all time thanks to his ocean blue eyes and statuesque, sculpted cheekbones, Delon — star of Le Samourai, Plein Soleil, Rocco And His Brothers and much, much more — brought an insouciant cool to cinema on- and off-screen, and an ineffable capacity to convey the depths of a brooding soul in the level of those self-same eyes. Delon passed away at his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and family, on 18 August.

Born on 8 November 1935 to cinema projectionist (and later La Régina cinema director) father François Fabien Delon and pharmacist and cinema usher mother Édith Marie Suzanne Arnold, you could say that the movies ran in Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon's blood. After a turbulent series of school expulsions, spells in prison,...

Cinema isn’t a beauty contest, but if it were, Alain Delon surely would have won the title of the 1960s’ most handsome actor.

That’s a subjective call, of course, and as such, Delon is the kind of figure about whom writers tend to fall back on the word “arguably” — as in, “arguably the most handsome” — which is kind of a cop-out, as it leaves the argument to somebody else. When it comes to Delon, plenty have made the case. I loved Anthony Lane’s longform analysis of Delon’s allure in The New Yorker earlier this year. And none other than Jane Fonda, who co-starred with Delon in 1964’s “Joy House,” described him as “the most beautiful human being.”

The French star, who died Sunday, made more than 100 movies in a career that spanned 50 years, but for that one transformative decade in film history — beginning with the Patricia Highsmith...

Alain Delon, the French actor who became a screen icon in Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai, has died aged 88.

Delon died “peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family”, according to a statement released to the Afp news agency by his family.

As well as his famous role as professional hitman Jef Costello in Le Samourai, Delon collaborated with Melville in 1970 heist The Red Circle and 1975 crime thriller Flic Story.

Delon’s career began after he was spotted at Cannes Film Festival in 1957 by US talent agent Henry Willson, recruiting on behalf of David O. Selznick.

French acting star Alain Delon, whose many iconic roles included Le Samouraï, Plein Soleil and The Leopard, has died in France at the age of 88.

The actor’s children said in a statement that their father had passed away in the early hours of Sunday, surrounded by his family and beloved Belgian Shepherd Loubo, in his long-time chateau home in the village of Douchy, in the Le Loiret region some 100 miles south of Paris.

Delon’s death marks the passing of one of the last surviving icons of the French cinema scene of the 1960s and 70s, when the country was on an economic roll as it reconstructed in the wake of World War II.

Related: French Pres. Emmanuel Macron Leads Tributes To Alain Delon: “More Than A Star, A Monument”

The star, who was at the peak of this career from the 1960s to the 1980s, fell into acting by chance.

The Criterion Channel’s August lineup pays tribute to auteurs of all kinds: directors, actors, and photographers, fictional or otherwise. In a notable act of preservation and advocacy, they’ll stream 20 titles by the Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine, here introduced by the great Richard Peña. More known (but fun all the same) is a five-title Paul Thomas Anderson series including the exclusive stream of Licorice Pizza, as well as a Philip Seymour Hoffman series that overlaps with Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love (a Criterion Edition this month), and The Master, plus 25th Hour, Love Liza, and his own directing effort Jack Goes Boating. Preston Sturges gets five movies, with Sullivan’s Travels arriving in October.

Theme-wise, a photographer series includes Rear Window, Peeping Tom, Blow-up, Close-Up, and Clouzot’s La prisonnière; “Vacation Noir” features The Lady from Shanghai, Brighton Rock, Kansas City Confidential, Purple Noon, and La piscine. Alongside the aforementioned PTA and Antonioni pictures,...

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Luca Guadagnino knows how to make a goddamn movie. That was clear to fans of his earlier works, like the sumptuous "I Am Love," more than a decade ago. It was clear to most other people about five years ago when the bold one-two punch of "Call Me By Your Name" and "Suspiria" made moviegoers sit up and pay attention. And it's more clear than ever now, with the release of the director's latest (and reportedly biggest-budgeted) effort, the endlessly thrilling Zendaya-led sports drama "Challengers." Film after film, Guadagnino manages to tap into some hidden corners of our hearts by telling stories that are evocative and colorful, musical and sensual, messy and true.

Though Guadagnino has gained more attention in recent years, the filmmaker has actually been working since the '90s and has by now made eight narrative (or meta-narrative) features, a TV show, and several documentaries and shorts.

Metrograph programmer Lydia Ogwang loves the balcony seats in the larger of the theater’s two screens. There’s something about having a visceral sense of the scale of the theater by being perched above the main floor. It’s easy to feel connected to the screening experience — even easier when you’re close enough to the booth that you can peek in and see the projectionist changing reels of the celluloid prints shown at the New York independent movie theater. But now, as part of Metrograph’s latest “Beach Bodied” series combining two great tastes that go great together — the beach and crime dramas — moviegoers now have the chance to see a brand-new 4K restoration of Kathryn Bigelow’s 1991 classic “Point Break” up on a big screen, no reel changes needed.

Breaking down the merits of film vs. digital in a single paragraph, or single article, would be like...

Swimming Home is an adaptation of Deborah Levy’s 2011 novel, written and directed by debut UK flmmaker Justin Anderson.

The UK-Dutch co-production premiered in the Tiger competition of this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

The film centres around a war reporter played by Mackenzie Davis, on a family holiday with her husband (Christopher Abbott), a poet, and their teenage daughter. Returning home to their villa with a friend (Nadine Labaki) they find a naked stranger, Kitti (Ariane Labed) floating in the pool. Invited to stay, Kitti’s presence comes to emphasise the tensions within the family.

Anderson studied...

Swimming Home is an adaptation of Deborah Levy’s 2011 novel, written and directed by debut UK flmmaker Justin Anderson.

The UK-Dutch co-production premiered in the Tiger competition of this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

The film centres around a war reporter played by Mackenzie Davis, on a family holiday with her husband (Christopher Abbott), a poet, and their teenage daughter. Returning home to their villa with a friend (Nadine Labaki) they find a naked stranger, Kitti (Ariane Labed) floating in the pool. Invited to stay, Kitti’s presence comes to emphasise the tensions within the family.

Anderson studied...

Award-winning artist Justin Anderson’s debut feature “Swimming Home” has its world premiere in competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam. Variety has secured access to the first clip from the film.

The film, an adaptation of Deborah Levy’s 2012 Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel, centers on poet Joe (Christopher Abbott) and war photographer Isabel (Mackenzie Davis), whose marriage is dying when Kitti (Ariane Labed), a naked stranger found floating in the pool at their sunny holiday villa in Greece, is invited to stay. Oscar nominated Lebanese actor-director Nadine Labaki plays a significant role in the film as does emerging actor Freya Hannan-Mills.

In 2014, Anderson directed “Jumper,” a short inspired by Pasolini’s “Teorema,” about a man emerging from a pool and standing naked in the window during a family dinner. A friend saw the film and suggested that he read Levy’s novel. The book resonated with Anderson and he contacted Levy.

Speak No Evil is on the move, with Blumhouse and Universal pushing it to Sept. 13. It previously was slated for Aug. 9.

It will now go head-to-head with the animated Paramount feature Transformers One.

James McAvoy stars in the remake of the Danish psychological horror thriller Gaesterne. According to the logline, it is “about a family invited for a weekend at an idyllic country house—a dream holiday that warps into a snarled psychological nightmare.” Christian Tafdrup was behind the original movie, which was nominated for 11 Danish Film Awards, the country’s Oscars equivalent.

James Watkins, who helmed Eden Lake and The Woman in Black, wrote and directed the feature. He is also known for work on the mind-bending Netflix series Black Mirror.

Blumhouse’s Jason Blum is producing. Executive producers are Paul Ritchie, Tafdrup, Jacob Jarek and Bea Sequeira. Blumhouse, which recently completed its merger with James Wan’s Atomic Monster,...

What happens when you take a San Francisco detective and retire him to the South of France? When the rights to the Dashiell Hammett character made famous by Humphrey Bogart in “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) became available, writer-director Scott Frank, perhaps emboldened by his Emmy-winning successes with his western series “Godless” and chess sensation “The Queen’s Gambit,” convinced his friend Tom Fontana (“Oz”) to co-create a limited series, “Monsieur Spade” about an older Sam Spade in France.

These two writers had a blast making Spade (Clive Owen) middle-aged and grumpy — his doctor wants him to give up smoking. He’s grieving his lost wife, a Frenchwoman (Chiara Mastroianni) who left him a lovely estate. He reluctantly acts as a father figure for a teenage girl (Cara Bossom) whose mother Brigid O’Shaughnessy sent him eight years ago to Bozouls to deliver her child to her father (Jonathan Zaccaï). The plot is complicated,...

Actress Charlotte Gainsbourg made a moving presentation of her documentary Jane By Charlotte, capturing her complex relationship with her late mother Jane Birkin, ahead of a screening at the Lumière Film Festival on Saturday.

The documentary is playing as part of a tribute to iconic UK-French actress and singer Birkin, who died on July 16 at the age of 76.

Sparked by Gainsbourg’s desire to get closer to her mother amid a sense that time was running out, the film follows Birkin on tour in Japan, at her beloved Breton home and also on a visit to the untouched Paris mansion she once shared with Serge Gainsbourg.

“I haven’t yet dared to take on board what this film will mean in my eyes in the future. I miss her so much that I am not formulating anything yet,” a visibly moved Gainsbourg told a packed cinema in Lyon.

“But I...

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It was only a few days ago that the Criterion Collection had a surprise flash sale. The home video company’s entire catalog was slashed down to 50% off list prices. While that sale only lasted for 24 hours, there are a number of titles that are still on sale for half-off at Amazon.

We rounded up the best deals on Criterion Collection releases, including Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing,” Dennis Hopper’s “Easy Rider,” Whit Stillman’s “The Last Days of Disco” and much more. In fact, even a few boxed sets are half off, such as Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “The Dekalog” and Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” anthology.

Ahead, check out the best Criterion Blu-ray discs currently on sale for 50% off at Amazon:

‘Do the Right Thing...

Jane Birkin graced the front pages of most French newspapers on Monday as France mourned the death of the late British actress and singer who enjoyed icon status in the country that she had called home since the late 1960s.

“Our tears can’t change anything,” proclaimed Le Parisien newspaper, which first broke the news of Birkin’s death at the age of 76 on Sunday.

Libération ran with the simple headline “Without Jane”, while regional newspaper Le Maine Libre referred to the late actress as “The Eternal English Bride of France”.

International obituaries have highlighted Birkin’s notorious performance with partner and late bad boy of French pop music Serge Gainsbourg on the 1968 pop song, ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’, or the fact she inspired the Hermès Birkin bag.

For the French, she was much more.

In a six-page tribute, Libération mused over the reasons for Birkin’s never-ending...

With Jane Birkin’s passing, France loses both an icon and one of its greatest enigmas. To focus on France is not to diminish the fact that Birkin’s death will be mourned around the world. Alongside Brigitte Bardot, Françoise Hardy and Catherine Deneuve, Birkin was one of the last surviving 1960s femmes who sparked global interest in French culture.

Except that Birkin wasn’t French. She was born in London and clung to her English accent all her life. Birkin was perfectly fluent, but cultivated a faux-naïf way of speaking her adopted language that reinforced her persona as the eternal child. For the French, it was all part of her singular charm, established decades earlier… and which she sometimes struggled to escape.

As partner and muse to Svengali-like songwriting genius Serge Gainsbourg, Birkin posed for the cover of his “Histoire de Melody Nelson” album, wearing only a red wig and open-waisted blue jeans,...

Jane Birkin, the beloved British-French actor and singer who spent most of her life in France and is known for a tumultuous relationship with French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, died on Sunday at her home in Paris, according to Le Parisien newspaper. She was 76.

No cause of death has yet been confirmed.

Birkin was best known internationally for her steamy 1969 duet “Je t’aime… moi non plus” which she sang with Gainsbourg, one year after meeting him on the shoot of Pierre Grimblat’s “Slogan.” Although she hadn’t broken through at the time, she had a small but memorable part in Michelangelo Antonioni’s sultry 1966 film “Blow Up.”

Together, Birkin and Gainsbourg had a daughter, the actor and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg. After splitting in 1980, the pair remained close and pursued their artistic collaboration. Birkin was creatively involved in three albums by Gainsbourg, “Baby Alone in Babylone” in 1983, “Lost Song” in...

The Zurich Film Festival will honor Italian director and screenwriter Luca Guadagnino at its 18th edition, which runs Sept. 22-Oct. 2.

He will receive its “A Tribute To…” award on Sept. 30 before the screening of his latest film “Bones and All,” which plays in the Gala Premiere section, and will hold a public masterclass on Oct. 1. The film world premieres in Venice tomorrow.

Guadagnino, born in Palermo in 1971, has been one of the most internationally sought-after directors since the success of “Call Me By Your Name” in 2017, which Guadagnino presented in person at the Zurich fest.

“Luca Guadagnino is a filmmaker who tells incredibly powerful visual stories and surprises time after time. With his distinctive style, the European director has also managed to make a name for himself abroad and is at the peak of his creative powers,” Christian Jungen, the festival’s artistic director, said.

“Guadagnino is also not afraid...

Cinematography retrospectives are the way to go—more than a thorough display of talent, it exposes the vast expanse a Dp will travel, like an education in form and business all the same. Accordingly I’m happy to see the Criterion Channel give a 25-film tribute to James Wong Howe, whose career spanned silent cinema to the ’70s, populated with work by Howard Hawks, Michael Curtz, Samuel Fuller, Alexander Mackendrick, Sydney Pollack, John Frankenheimer, and Raoul Walsh.

Further retrospectives are granted to Romy Schneider (recent repertory sensation La piscine among them), Carlos Saura (finally a chance to see Peppermint frappe!), the British New Wave, and groundbreaking distributor Cinema 5, who brought to U.S. shores everything from The Man Who Fell to Earth and Putney Swope to Pumping Iron and Scenes from a Marriage.

September also yields streaming premieres for the recently restored Bronco Bullfrog, Ang Lee’s Pushing Hands,...

You've heard me, scornful, harsh, and discontented,Mocking and loathing War: you've asked me whyOf my old, silly sweetness I've repented—My ecstasies changed to an ugly cry. You are aware that once I sought the Grail,Riding in armour bright, serene and strong;And it was told that through my infant wailThere rose immortal semblances of song. But now I've said good-bye to Galahad,And am no more the knight of dreams and show:For lust and senseless hatred make me glad,And my killed friends are with me where I go.Wound for red wound I burn to smite their wrongs;And there is absolution in my songs.—Siegfried Sassoon, “The Poet as Hero”Films about art and artists face different obstacles in making the art itself cinematic. A movie about a painter, like Pollock (2000) or My Left Foot (1989), can simply observe them at work. Keiichi Hara’s animated...

After a hiatus where New York’s theaters closed during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings are taking place.

Museum of the Moving Image

Commemorating the 20th anniversary of 9/11, 25th Hour, Something Wild, and New York, New York have showings; Lawrence of Arabia and Tenet play on 70mm; 2001 also screens.

Spectacle

The Mexican feature The Year of the Plague has showings, as do films by photographer Tracey Moffatt.

Paris Theater

Run Lola Run shows this Friday, while a print of The Limey screens Saturday and Sunday.

Film Forum

A 4K restoration of Goodfellas begins a run while La Piscine continues its reign; a print of Sherlock Jr. plays on Sunday.

Roxy Cinema

Godard’s Contempt has showings Saturday and Sunday.

After a hiatus where New York’s theaters closed during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings are taking place.

Spectacle

Spectacle has finally returned! Their first weekend back includes Jacques Rivette’s towering masterpiece Out 1 and the underscreened films of Peter Emanuel Goldman.

Museum of the Moving Image

Lawrence of Arabia, 2001, and Tenet have 70mm showings

Paris Theater

Alien plays on Saturday and Sunday.

Film Forum

As 4K restorations of Do the Right Thing and La Piscine continue, Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons screen.

Roxy Cinema

Godard’s Contempt has showings all weekend.

IFC Center

World of Wong Kar-wai and Miyazaki’s debut Lupin the 3rd have kept going.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: Out 1, Lawrence of Arabia on 70mm,...

Above: 1981 French grande for Stalker. Art by Bougrine.It’s been six months since I last did one of these round-ups of the most popular posters featured on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram (previously Tumblr).With some 3,349 likes to date, this rare French poster for Tarkovsky’s Stalker, posted just last month, outstripped the pack and is in fact the second most “liked” poster I’ve ever posted, just a couple of hundred likes shy of Andrew Bannister’s UK poster for Parasite which I posted over a Pandemic ago. With art signed by one “Bougrine” the poster is currently offered for sale at Posteritati. Though the style and signature don’t quite look right, there was a Vladimir Bougrine (1938-2001) who was a prominent Soviet dissident painter who ended up in Paris in 1977 where, according to Wikipedia, “the French Ministry of Culture introduced him to...a community of writers,...

Refresh for updates… Nine New Yorkers died in last night’s record-setting “horrifying storm,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio at a press conference this morning, who added “nine people who were alive at this time yesterday.”

“We saw a horrifying storm last night unlike anything we have ever seen before,” de Blasio said, adding, “The suddenness and brutality of storms we are seeing now, it is different…this is the biggest wake-up call we could get.”

The mayor also said that first responders rescued ‘hundreds and hundreds” of New Yorkers from subway trains and homes. Eight of the nine deaths occurred in homes in the borough of Queens, with the ninth in a car on a highway.

De Blasio joined New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in calling for federal assistance and assuring New Yorkers that President Joe Biden has already pledged federal help. “We...

Due to its persistent on-screen presence, the swimming pool can be taken for granted; but beneath the surface it is cinema’s Jungian friend, representing secrets lying underneath. It exudes glamour and danger, shifting beyond conscious realms. It is a key to transformation, coming of age tales and renewed relationships. It is a status symbol and whether or not the pool is intact says a lot about the mood of the film and the state of its characters. Away from states of intensity, the swimming pool emerges on screen as a signifier of a time to unwind and to forget life past the poolside. The films featured in this mix show how the pool alludes mysterious symbolism and sexual awakening; murder, lust, and love brush shoulders as sun kissed babes in bikinis whisper sweet truths or uncover deadly secrets (such as the strange swimming pool activities in Three Women or...

The 13th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival runs weekends from Aug. 13 through Aug. 29 at Webster and Washington Universities. Courtesy of Cinema St. Louis

The 13th Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — presented by TV5MONDE, sponsored by the Jane M. & Bruce P. Robert Charitable Foundation, and produced by Cinema St. Louis (Csl) — celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s extraordinary cinematic legacy, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.

The Robert Classic French Film Festival is the first Csl in-person event since the Covid-19 pandemic. The host venues — Washington University on Aug. 13-15 and Webster University on Aug. 20-22 and 27-29 — have not yet determined whether capacity limits or masks will be required. Details will be announced on the Csl website when available.

The fest annually includes significant restorations, and this year features a quintet of such works: Melvin Van Peebles’ “The Story of a Three-Day Pass,” Diane Kurys’ “Entre Nous,...

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 Hottest August (Brett Story)

Where better than New York City to make a structuralist film? Cities are iterative, their street grids diagrams of theme and variation, and New York most of all—with its streets and avenues named for numbers and letters and states and cities and presidents and Revolutionary War generals spanning an archipelago, intersecting at a million little data points at which to measure class, race, culture, history, architecture and infrastructure. And time, too—from this human density emerge daily and seasonal rituals, a set of biorhythms, reliable as the earth’s, against which to mark gradual shifts and momentary fashions. Summer is for lounging on fire escapes, always, and, today, for Mister Softee. Yesterday it was shaved ice.

After a hiatus where New York’s theaters closed during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings are taking place.

Anthology Film Archives

Breathe easy: Anthology is back, marking their resurrection with screenings of Paul Sharits’ dual-projection Razor Blades.

Paris Theater

Yet another return! To coincide with The Forty-Year-Old Version, filmmaker Radha Blank has organized a series of her influences: Cassavetes on Friday, Wilder and Tap on Saturday, Waiting for Guffman and The Last Detail on Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

2001 shows on 70mm this Friday, Dcp on Sunday, while Eyes Wide Shut and Fear and Desire have screenings; on the non-Kubrick front, Ran and The Age of Innocence have screenings.

Film at Lincoln Center

Mo’ Better Blues...

After a hiatus where New York’s theaters closed during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings are taking place.

Film at Lincoln Center

Jia Zhangke’s Xiao Wu plays through the weekend, while Raúl Ruiz’s The Tango of the Widower screens this Saturday.

Museum of the Moving Image

2001 plays on Sunday.

Film Forum

The huge Humphrey Bogart series continues, still stacked with great films, as do La Piscine and Blue Collar.

IFC Center

World of Wong Kar-wai has been extended, while Miyazaki’s debut Lupin the 3rd begins its run.

Roxy Cinema

The natural pairing of L’Avventura and Body Double run this weekend.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: Raúl Ruiz, The Big Sleep, L'Avventura & More first appeared on The Film Stage.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Pedro Almodóvar's Parallel Mothers (2021). The lineup for the 2021 Venice Film Festival has been unveiled, featuring the latest from Pedro Almodóvar, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Pablo Larraín, Paul Schrader, Ridley Scott, and more. Find the full lineup here. The New York Film Festival has announced that this year's Centerpiece Selection will be Jane Campion's Power of the Dog, an adaptation of Thomas Savage's novel starring Jesse Plemons, Kirsten Dunst, and Benedict Cumberbatch. New additions to the TIFF roster include Joachim Trier's The Worst Person In The World, Masaaki Yuasa's Inu-Oh, and Ho Wi Ding's Terrorizers. A24 has won the rights to Octavia E. Butler's science-fiction novel Parable of the Sower, and Time director Garrett Bradley is set to direct. The novel follows a girl with a unique gift who rises to...

It’s French! It’s hot! Jacques Deray’s most unusual film is an intimate, minimalist murder story that digs deep into the affairs of four very superficial people. Among the wealthy set are four pleasure seekers with a laissez faire take on relationships, that think they’re above basic drives — jealousy, possessiveness, resentment. The movie also makes book on the fame & notoriety of the off-on show biz couple Romy Schneider and Alain Delon — the film’s opening seems to celebrate their bigger-than-life glamour and beauty. A notable extra is a 2019 documentary with Delon and his co-star Jane Birkin, plus the film’s famous writers.

La piscine

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1088

1969 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 122 min. / Available at The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 20, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Alain Delon, Romy Schneider, Maurice Ronet, Jane Birkin, Paul Crauchet, Suzie Jaspard.

Cinematography: Jean-Jacques Tarbès

Production Designer: Paul Laffargue

Film Editor: Paul Cayatte

Original Music: Michel Legrand

Written by Jean-Claude Carriìre,...

The Criterion Collection prides itself on curating fantastic classic cinephile-friendly films that may have gone under-the-radar in the home release market and their upcoming Blu-Ray release won’t be any different. Criterion has announced that they’ll be putting together an essential collection of Melvin Van Peebles movies with their latest offering, “Melvin Van Peebles: Four Films” set to be released on September 28.

Read More: Criterion Adds ‘Bringing Up Baby,’ Tarkovsky’s Mirror,’ ‘La Piscine’ & More For July

A one-man creative maverick and revolutionary, who wrote, directed, starred in, and composed the music for many of his works, Melvin Van Peebles was a shock to the system of American Independent cinema.

Continue reading Criterion To Release ‘Melvin Van Peebles: Four Films’ Blu-Ray Collection This September at The Playlist.

Lizzie Borden’s groundbreaking film “Working Girls” is coming back to theaters. The project, detailing the lives of sex workers, approaches the topic with a seldom-seen motivation towards removing stigmas. It was revolutionary at the time of release, garnering attention from audiences as well as a 1987 Sundance Film Festival Special Grand Jury Prize.

Read More: Criterion Adds ‘Bringing Up Baby,’ Tarkovsky’s Mirror,’ ‘La Piscine’ & More For July

‘Girls’ conscious inspection of characters helps set apart the film’s structure.

Continue reading ‘Working Girls’ Trailer: Lizzie Borden’s Groundbreaking Sex Workers Film Is Coming Back To Theaters at The Playlist.

After a hiatus as theaters in New York City and beyond closed their doors during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, there’s a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings taking place.

Paris Theater

A Bob Dylan retrospective is now underway through June 7, with Dont Look Back, No Direction Home, The Last Waltz, and more.

Film Forum

A new restoration of Ealing comedy classic The Ladykillers opens while the new restorations of Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Jacques Deray’s La Piscine are playing daily.

Quad Cinema

A “Celebrate Pride” series is underway with Girls Will Be Girls, Straight-Jacket, and more.

Film at Lincoln Center

The new restoration of In the Mood for Love continues playing daily.

Museum of the Moving Image

2001: A Space Odyssey,...

After a hiatus as theaters in New York City and beyond closed their doors during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, there’s a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings taking place.

Quad Cinema

Eyes Wide Shut, Funny Girl, and Ghostbusters play as part the series “A New York State of Mind.”

Listen to Bilge Ebiri discuss Stanley Kubrick’s final film on The B-Side.

Paris Theater

A Charlie Kaufman retrospective is underway through June 1, while A Color Purple plays on Sunday with Michael Koresky in person.

Film Forum

The new 4K restorations of Frederico Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Jacques Deray’s La Piscine are playing daily.

Roxy Cinema

Stranger Than Paradise plays on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center

World of Wong Kar Wai,...

After a hiatus as theaters in New York City and beyond closed their doors during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, there’s a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings taking place.

Paris Theater

The late Monte Hellman’s masterpiece Two-Lane Blacktop plays in 35mm on Saturday and Sunday.

IFC Center

The long-lost, newly restored George A. Romero feature The Amusement Park is now playing.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Fabulous Baker Boys plays in 35mm on Saturday. Read Matthew Eng on Michell Pfeiffer’s performance from his recent feature:

Pfeiffer egregiously lost an easy Oscar years earlier to Driving Miss Daisy’s sentimental favorite Jessica Tandy, despite claiming every major critics’ prize for playing escort-turned-lounge-singer Susie Diamond in The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989). Slinking on...