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NEWS
Break no.1 & Break no.2. (Lei Lei, 2024).
- The lineups for select sections of the 2024 editions of the Berlinale and International Film Festival Rotterdam have been unveiled, with films from Panorama, Forum, Forum Expanded, Generation, and Berlinale Special announced for the former, and the Tiger and Big Screen competitions at the latter. In Berlin, so far, we are excited by the prospect of new films by Jane Schoenbrun (We’re All Going to the World’s Fair) and Jérémy Clapin (I Lost My Body), whereas in Rotterdam, we have our eye on new work by Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich (Conspiracy, Spit on the Broom) and Lei Lei (Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish, Breathless Animals).
- As the year comes to a close, the Best of 2023 lists keep coming. Sight & Sound shared the seventh edition of their always-interesting poll of the best video essays of the year, with an introductory reflection from organizers Queline Meadows, Irina Trocan, and Will Webb. For IndieWire, Anthony Kaufman overviewed the year in US nonfiction, observing considerable constriction in the field and a dearth of opportunities for makers and options for audiences. Screen Slate polled a great many individuals, including Frederick Wiseman, Isabelle Huppert, and John Wilson, on their favorite new films and first watches of 2023, while Film Comment shared several interesting lists, including Gina Telaroli’s Best Restorations, Leo Goldsmith’s Best Short Films, and the all-important Best Undistributed Films of 2023, in which such Notebook favorites as The Human Surge 3, Eureka, Close Your Eyes, and Gush have popped up. US distributors, you know what to do! (And in fact, Grasshopper Film does; they announced the acquisition of The Human Surge 3 this morning.)
REMEMBERING
Favorites of the Moon (Otar Iosseliani, 1984).
- Georgian filmmaker Otar Iosseliani has died aged 89. When Favorites of the Moon was released in France in 1985, “little was known in western Europe” about its director, claims Ronald Bergan in the Guardian obituary. Though Favorites of the Moon offered many “their first entry into the singular world of Iosseliani [...] he had already made three features and several shorts in the Soviet Union” before “becoming an exile in France in 1982.” Iosseliani “observed his characters through behaviour rather than dialogue,” Bergan notes. “His use of sound and silence, and his complex movements of people, animals and objects made him the true heir to Jean Renoir, Jacques Tati and Luis Buñuel.” Iosseliani, a “bibulous man given to extravagant discourses on history and literature,” is being remembered fondly online—with more than one critic recalling that Iosseliani demanded that they recite Shakespeare to him as part of the interview. If you are in search of somewhere to start, six of Iosseliani's short films can be watched on the Cinemathèque Française's Henri platform.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
The Store (Frederick Wiseman, 1983).
- With another great offering this week in the form of Frederick Wiseman’s The Store (1983)—a “two-hour immersion into the world of retail” in which the documentarian trains his eye on a US departmental store during the seasonal shopping frenzy—Le Cinéma Club is becoming something of an indispensable platform. Also neat is their annual book club, wherein friends of the website (including Martine Syms, Sebastián Silva, and Charlotte Wells) send in a photo of a film book of their choosing.
- Experimental filmmaker Jerome Hiler has been presenting his “meditation on stained glass as a popular and devotional art, and as a precursor to cinema” at a few US venues recently. Anyone who has been curious to learn more about Cinema Before 1300 will be pleased to hear that the lecture can now be watched for free online worldwide through March 15, 2024, thanks to the Harvard Film Archive.
RECOMMENDED READING
The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, 2023).
- “Boyhood’s litany of cracks and crevices lead to nightmare worlds.” Grace Bryon assesses Hayao Miyazaki’s career for the Baffler, looking in particular at his attempt, through his new film The Boy and the Heron, to craft an “alternative vision of boyhood in our patriarchal world.”
- “What does ‘poetry’ mean for Cocteau?” For 4Columns, Brian Dillon uses Secrets of Beauty, a new translation of a short book by Jean Cocteau, as a starting point to discuss the writer, artist, and filmmaker, a “restless and buzzy frequenter of surfaces, a gadfly whose addictions to style and celebrity mark him out as something like the anti-Duchamp of the twentieth century,” more broadly.
- “Cynicism is something that, really, I find revolting. I see no positive energy in it.” Nathan Taylor Pemberton speaks to Wim Wenders for the New Yorker, They talk about Anselm, Perfect Days, and a forthcoming project the director has been developing for six years.
- “I think the key is to switch genres. Still bring who you are because that never changes.” Reflecting on The Holdovers and the work he made prior to it, Alexander Payne is candid about his career while conversing with Bilge Ebiri for Vulture.
- “When you can build up your own little story within the official script. The great roles, and the great films, are where you can hide yourself in this secret place.” In a detailed, process-orientated profile for the New Yorker, Rebecca Mead talks with the “famously prolific” Isabelle Huppert about her acting methodologies and approach to filmmaking.
RECOMMENDED EVENTS
Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (Mark Leckey, 1999).
- London, January 19 through 28, 2024: London Short Film Festival returns for their 21st edition, presenting a varied program of unconventional, international, and independent short film. Many highlights can be found in the Special Events section, such as the programs dedicated to the revolutionary Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez, Parisian collective Air Afrique, and Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, or focusing on everything from rave, jazz, Asian diasporas in Germany, to culture clashes in a recently unified post-Cold War Europe.
- Los Angeles, through January 27, 2024: The National Film Registry, a list of films deemed “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress, just announced their annual round of new additions. The Academy Film Museum has put together a program of various films that have been added to the list, which is now 875 entries strong, since its inception in 1988. Titled “Works of Enduring Importance,” some series highlights include Michael Schultz’s Cooley High (1975) and Reginald Hudli’s House Party (1990), both presented on 35mm, and a 30th anniversary screening of Steve James’s Hoop Dreams (1994).
RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK
The Wandering Soap Opera (Raúl Ruiz and Valeria Sarmiento, 2017).
- “Sounds and images from a week’s worth of journeys into the Chilean filmmaker’s oeuvre had coalesced into a shapeshifting amalgam that made my own recollections hazy, and the films themselves porous.” Leonardo Goi reports from a Viennale Raúl Ruiz retrospective, discovering “worlds that bristle with a sense of narrative exuberance you seldom register in anything being made today.”
- Our movie poster columnist Adrian Curry unveils his favorite designs of the year, and in his introduction, cedes the floor to the staff of the Alhambra Cinema in Keswick, UK. As Curry says, "Who better to talk about movie poster design than the people who run one of the cinemas that rely on it?"
- “Words have no owner. They simply are.” Rodrigo Moreno’s The Delinquents, now streaming on MUBI, is the subject of an expansive examination by Roger Koza on the various influences on and inspirations for the film, and the role of language in the work.
- Hayao Miyazaki’s ten-years-in-the-making film is a gorgeous and personal reflection on life, memory, and creativity. It is also a love letter to the craft of hand-drawn animation, which opens a portal to "thoughtful introspection and joyful imagination." For the latest entry in her animation-focused column Jennifer Lynde Barker appraises The Boy and The Heron.
EXTRAS
- Published by Film Desk Books, Robert M. Rubin’s Vanishing Point Forever explores, over 572 pages, the “profound impact across popular media, the arts, and the car world” of the cult car chase film Vanishing Point (Richard C. Sarafian, 1971). Included in the volume is “a complete reproduction of the film’s final shooting script,” pages from screenwriter Cabrera Infante’s early drafts of the script, and his location scouting photos, plus various production and publicity stills, essays, and ephemera, and a foreword by J. Hoberman. New Yorkers can see the film at MoMA on January 14, 2024.
- One of the more unexpected end-of-year reflections comes from home entertainment label Radiance who have shared a list of some of the tantalizing titles they tried, and failed, to license, during their first year of operation, with details on the stumbling blocks faced.
- When in New York, Isabelle Huppert loves bretzel, 25 Bogart Street, the Bowery Hotel, and... Bushwick!