America’s Largest Documentary Festival – Nov. 8-26
Anselm Kiefer, Liv Ullmann, Little Richard, Jack and Sam Top DOC NYC How does one approach a film festival too…
Anselm Kiefer, Liv Ullmann, Little Richard, Jack and Sam Top DOC NYC How does one approach a film festival too…
Film at Lincoln Center knows its audiences. Christian Petzold’s Afire (2023), a German drama of wildfires setting an entire forest…
From video art’s emergence in the late 1960s, it has sparred in a productive tension with cinema, simultaneously appropriating and dismantling film’s conventions. Early pioneers such as Nam June Paik, who transformed television into sculptural architecture, Bruce Nauman, whose closed-circuit videos foregrounded surveillance, and Joan Jonas, who fused performance with myth, all redefined the screen as a physical and experiential space rather than a transparent narrative window. This expanded cinematic grammar saw further development by artists such as Douglas Gordon, whose temporal manipulations of Hollywood films fractured narrative time; Sam Taylor-Wood, who merged painterly stillness with cinematic duration; and Stan Douglas, whose meticulously constructed filmic installations interrogated history, memory, and the mechanics of storytelling.
The Independent was invited to cover “Taste of Cherry” during the Boston Festival of Films from Iran at the Museum…
The film is a celebration of a style that has largely disappeared from mainstream media. The comedy relies almost entirely on pop culture references and situational humor. It is a return to a simpler style of comedy, similar to that made by early YouTubers who had little but their friends and a webcam. While it still has that “early internet” feeling, Johnson and McCarroll find a way to make it relevant. Meta 4th-wall breaking and seamless restitching of never before seen archival footage are used tastefully rather than shoved in the viewer’s face. The movie is almost entirely set in real Toronto locations, harkening back to the 2000s style of mockumentary filmmaking popularised by projects like “The Office” and “Borat.”
In “We Had a World,” now having its New England premiere at The Huntington, playwright Joshua Harmon does the opposite. True, the one-act play is filled with explosive family arguments and petty vendettas, but is equalized so much by its genuine writing that the tender and sweet moments, though buried underneath the drama, are just as potent.
The indie charm of “Stardew Valley” shines through in this extreme, video-gamey design that prioritizes player freedom and connection with the world.
Unifrance serves up a delicious new edition of art cinema to Film at Lincoln Center patrons Surprises galore pop up…
When WNBA star Brittney Griner was detained at a Russian airport in February 2022, after she was accused of traveling with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil, her wife, Cherelle Griner, became her unwavering lifeline. For 294 days, while Brittney was kept in a Russian prison, Cherelle and Brittney’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, fought tirelessly — galvanizing public attention, refusing to let Brittney’s story fade and ultimately turning a wrongfully detained athlete into a national priority. ESPN’s documentary “The Brittney Griner Story,” directed by Alex Stapleton, which premiered at Sundance this year, follows both the public campaign for Brittney’s release and what she endured to survive it.
Project Inspire and PBS Guam’s enculturating dance documentary, “Something to Call Our Own,” distinguishes itself as a canonizing force for…
East of the Boston Common, atop a Downtown Crossing jewelry store stands James Bennett. To find him, you must walk…