https://independent-magazine.org/2010/03/27/nd_nf_shorts/
Obsessed with Independent Film Since 1976
Obsessed with Independent Film Since 1976
Best of 11 Short Films from New Directors/New Films Logorama (H5: François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy, and Ludovic Houplain. 2009. France. 17 min.) And you thought only Chuck Workman could give us a fast-cut world of colliding, spiraling images we somehow retain. Advertising’s even faster, more vivid, more memorable, because the 2,500-and-counting corporate logos that… Read more »
Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press. 2010. USA. 84 min.) “I let the street speak to me.” At 80 and still pedaling a Schwinn bike (his 29th, the other 28 rode off without him), the New York Times style photographer knows Manhattan sidewalks and the women and men walking them better than anyone. Midtown strollers… Read more »
Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton. 2009. Australia. 101 min.) Jeff Bridges can teach you a sad thing or two about chronic alcoholism in Crazy Heart. And if you’d like a primer in the despair of speed and heroin, look no further than Julian Schnabel’s artful filming of Lou Reed’s Berlin concert. But petrol sniffing? Well,… Read more »
The Evening Dress (La Robe du soir) (Myriam Aziza. 2009. France. 98 min.) You can count on one hand the recent films that get adolescent sexual awakening right. If you narrow that to female adolescent sexual longings, only a few stand out. Water Lilies, made in France in 2007 about a girls’ synchronized swim team,… Read more »
The Red Chapel (Mads Brügger. 2009. Denmark. 87 min.) Repression. Imprisonment. Extermination. North Korea’s shameful secret is its network of hidden rural prisons, where over a quarter million dissidents have been locked up to rot and die. Last year’s Yodok Stories, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, was a closeup look at one escapee,… Read more »
The Father Of My Children (Le père de mes enfants) (Mia Hansen-Love. 2009. France/Germany. 110 min.) For a long, long time in Mia Hansen-Love’s heartbreakingly beautiful tribute to the French indie film producer Humbert Balsan, the camera holds tight on the actor (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) playing Grégoire, the maverick producer. Grégoire is brisk, casually but… Read more »
Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Andy Warhol Superstar (James Rasin. 2010. USA. 86 min.) The defining artifact that seems to have launched the persona, transformation, and life journey (1944-74) of a Long Island boy named James Slattery was a letter from Kim Novak. It’s a generic response to a fan, but… Read more »
For the past 38 years in Manhattan, The Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art have collaborated on an annual presentation of New Directors/New Films. This year’s 27 features and 11 shorts, representing 20 countries, will screen at both locales between March 24th and April 4th. Many events host directors for… Read more »
The Man Next Door (El hombre de al lado) (Mariano Cohn & Gastón Duprat. 2009. Argentina. 103 min.) Nobody loves movies about the neighbor-from-hell more than a New Yorker, because we live with so many of them. This one’s a keeper. Imagine you’re residing in a drop-dead showplace actually designed by the famed Swiss/French architect,… Read more »