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NEWS
No Other Land (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, and Rachel Szor; 2024).
- The Berlin-Brandenburg Broadcasting Corporation (rbb), a state institution, has withdrawn funding for the €40,000 Berlinale Documentary Film Prize. The prize was most recently awarded to No Other Land (2024), which depicts the displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank by the Israeli military. While accepting the award, co-directors Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham called for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the occupation of Palestine, statements which were met with opprobrium by German state officials.
- After more than three months of contract negotiations, IATSE has reached a tentative agreement with AMPTP, including structured wage increases matching those won by SAG-AFTRA last year and new streaming residuals to address the union’s pension and health plan shortfall.
- La Clef, the storied community-run repertory cinema in Paris, will avoid eviction thanks to donations totalling $2.1 million, which will allow its parent organization to buy the theater. “We hold firm that culture is for all to share,” La Clef shared in a statement, “and that collective management is a path for emancipation.”
- London’s Prince Charles Cinema has canceled a private screening of The Last Screenwriter (2024), heralded as “the first film written entirely by AI,” after backlash from their customer base.
IN PRODUCTION
- Alex Cox is crowdfunding a western-genre adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls, which he plans to be his last movie.
REMEMBERING
Little Murders (Alan Arkin, 1971).
- Donald Sutherland has died at 88. The Canadian actor will be remembered for his performances in M*A*S*H (1970), Klute (1971), Fellini’s Casanova (1976), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), and many more. Longtime collaborator and friend Elliott Gould memorializes him thus: “As far as I’m concerned, so long as I’m living, Donald will always be with me.”
- Anouk Aimée has died at 92. The French actress achieved international recognition for her role in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) and went on to work with such directors as Jacques Demy (Lola, 1961), Claude Lelouch (A Man and a Woman, 1966), and Sidney Lumet (The Appointment, 1969).
RECOMMENDED READING
Janet Planet (Annie Baker, 2023).
- “It would be wrong to mistake the appreciation of nitrate as fetishism.… The Nitrate Picture Show operates according to the opposite principle, in which the highest compliment that can be paid to a film is to screen it.” For Film Comment, Genevieve Yue reports back from the George Eastman Museum’s annual showcase of rare, brilliant, and combustible nitrate film prints.
- “Baker’s patient, tender eye for detail and dry, observational style combine to render with uncommon nuance the study of a bond funneling toward its own disruption.” For 4Columns, Michelle Orange reviews celebrated playwright Annie Baker’s first film, Janet Planet (2023).
- “Altman may or may not have loved people, but it’s certain that he loved actors.” For Screen Slate, Patrick Dahl surveys the uneven charms of Robert Altman’s Prêt-à-Porter (1994).
RECOMMENDED EVENTS
Matins (Stan Brakhage, 1988).
- Naoshima, ongoing: Benesse Art Site Naoshima presents a new installation, The Ring of Fire, by Haegue Yang and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The former’s contributions are activated in the daytime, and the latter’s by night, both “fed by real-time seismic data.”
- Chicago, June 28 through 30: Tone Glow and Sweet Void Cinema present “Inventing Eternity,” a 51-film retrospective of Stan Brakhage’s late work.
- New York, June 30: Bidoun and Anthology Film Archives present Rahmaneh Rabani and Bahman Kiarostami’s Impasse (2023), a documentary of conversations with Rabani’s largely conservative family during the 2022 Iranian protest wave.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- Through June 28, stream “Now Serving,” a program of 14 shorts by trans filmmakers, on Ultra Dogme.
RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK
The Spy in Black (Michael Powell, 1939).
- “The fancy editing of the quota quickies now serves the purest cinema poetry: the symphony of boiling surf, brooding cloudbanks, and blustering wind in a climactic storm; long lap dissolves and superimpositions peopling the landscape with memories and ghosts.” Imogen Sara Smith considers the early films of Michael Powell on the occasion of a full retrospective of his work with Emeric Pressburger.
- “If I wasn’t rejected at Burning Man, I wouldn’t have found the guy with this massive bunker.” Andrew Northrop speaks to John Wilson about the end of How To, navigating red tape, and archiving the city.
- “I always wanted to make a comedy, but it hasn’t happened.” David Schwartz interviews Agnieszka Holland, whose Green Border (2023) continues her career-long engagement with the politics of personhood and statelessness, but this time in the present tense.
- “Mushrooms are simultaneously erotic and fantastic and morbid, and there’s this element of renewal that I wanted to evoke, of the rotting body somehow returning.” Beatrice Loayza sits down with Alain Guiraudie, whose Misericordia premiered at Cannes.
WISH LIST
Chess of the Wind (Mohammad Reza Aslani, 1976).
- Mississippi Records has issued a vinyl release of Sheida Gharachedaghi’s soundtrack for Chess of the Wind (1976), “a combination of Persian classical instrumentation and atonal dissonance.”
- Fireflies Press will publish Ingrid Caven: I Am a Fiction, a career-spanning monograph on the German actress and singer, with a new interview, “a dossier of photographs and other material from her personal archive,” an essay by Erika Balsom, and more.
- Éditions Azert has published two volumes of film theory by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, including a long essay about Robert Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematographer, in Japanese.
EXTRAS
- Charlie Shackleton’s The Afterlight (2021), of which, per the director’s wishes, only a single print exists, has become a lost film.
- Applications are open until July 10 for this fall’s Playlab Films workshop with Pedro Costa.
Update: The print of Charlie Shackleton's The Afterlight has now been recovered, giving the film a second life.