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NEWS
Haunted Hotel (Guy Maddin, 2022).
- The British Film Institute has begun unveiling the program for the London Film Festival, which runs from October 5-16. So far, they have announced the official competition, featuring films from Alice Diop, Mark Jenkin, and Hlynur Pálmason, and the VR- and AR-oriented "Extended Realities" strand, including a new work from Guy Maddin, Haunted Hotel.
- Production has begun on Bruno Dumont's The Empire. Cineuropa reports that the science-fiction film depicts the "epic parallel life of knights from interplanetary kingdoms"; the cast includes Lyna Khoudri (César-winner for Papicha) and the gendarmerie duo from Li'l Quinquin, Bernard Pruvost and Philippe Jore.
- The international film critics association FIPRESCI have chosen the winner of their 2022 Grand Prix for Film of the Year: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- Andrew Mau and Alan Mak's seminal Hong Kong action trilogy Infernal Affairs returns to U.S. theaters soon. Janus Films have shared a trailer showcasing the 4K restoration, created using the original camera negatives and remixed versions of the digital audio master files.
- Shot on location in Oakland, California with a cast of non-professionals, Sal Watts's 1974 cult action film Solomon King has also been restored through a crowdfunding campaign. Distributor Deaf Crocodile Films shared a trailer ahead of the restoration's premiere at Fantastic Fest in September.
- Netflix have shared a teaser for White Noise, Noah Baumbach's adaptation of the 1985 Don DeLillo novel. The film opens the Venice Film Festival today.
- Until September 4, seventeen films from the Philippines' non-fiction cinematic history are available to watch free on DAFilms, all handpicked by the curators at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival.
RECOMMENDED READING
Geographies of Solitude (Jacquelyn Mills, 2022).
- "The first two decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed explosive growth in the genre of the environmental documentary," writes Girish Shambu in a Film Quarterly article about Jacquelyn Mills's Geographies of Solitude, an environmental film wherein "nature is embedded deep in the very form of the film."
- In the New Yorker, Adam Nayman has a lengthy chat with John Carpenter about his life and work, with requisite digressions into Carpenter's love of gaming and the Golden State Warriors.
- "The Bombay movie industry was a place where actors shot one film in the morning and another in the evening, where gangsters bankrolled features, where the only constant across five decades was a pair of Maharashtrian sibling singers." For the 1991 Project, Uday Bhatia looks at the liberalization of Bollywood.
- In Filmmaker Magazine, Sahar Driver and Sonya Childress overview the history of documentary impact producing, outlining what they see as the "next evolution" of the field: "a consideration of the ways filmmakers of color have defined impact, the structural barriers filmmakers of color face in the industry and its implications for impact."
Malcolm X (Spike Lee, 1992).
- For a series of articles about the 1990s on Indiewire, Jim Hemphill interviews Spike Lee about the 30th anniversary of his hugely ambitious and influential biopic Malcolm X. Also in this series, Chloë Sevigny speaks to Esther Zuckerman about her experiences navigating the American film industry.
- For Verso Books, Francesca Peacock details how John Berger's Marxism shaped his outlook on art criticism.
- “I’m just proud that we still exist—that we’ve been able to show what we want, on our own terms, have that autonomy and still keep the lights on.” For Filmmaker Magazine, Conor Williams pens an ode to Brooklyn microcinema Light Industry.
- "The mechanisms behind collective forgetting are not a metaphor that belongs to any one or other historical moment. " In Metrograph's Journal, Rebecca Harkins-Cross talks to Lucretia Martel about her 2008 film The Headless Woman, about which Harkins-Cross is writing a monograph.
- Finally, the new issue of Cineaste has arrived. Articles excerpted online include Phillip Lopate on André Bazin and J.E. Smyth on working-class actors in Britain.
RECOMMENDED EVENTS
Minamata: The Victims and Their World (Noriaki Tsuchimoto, 1971).
- London: Open City Documentary Festival returns for a twelfth edition from September 7-13. Highlights include programs devoted to Alexandra Cuesta and Betzy Bromberg, plus a larger retrospective of Noriaki Tsuchimoto. The festival has also been publishing short texts about the films in their program, most recently Philippa Snow on Maria Schneider and Elisabeth Subrin’s Maria Schneider, 1983.
- New York: We're looking forward to a trio of autumn series at the Museum of Modern Art. In mid-September, there will be a focus on New York underground legends Beth B and Scott B. From September 23-October 10, a Moyra Davey series presents a "mid-career survey," including her newest work Horse Opera. And October brings a retrospective of the magnetic, enigmatic Pierre Clémenti, including the entirety of his 16mm directorial output.
- Online: Spectral Grounds, "a free and available worldwide screening of moving image works by Black women and nonbinary filmmakers," will take place from September 19-25. The program has not yet been announced, but a short teaser offers some clues as to what will be included.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Factory of the Sun (Hito Steyerl, 2015).
- This week's episode of the Film Comment Podcast features Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish in conversation with Hito Steyerl. The episode is a 45-minute slice of "The Future of Attention," an experimental 24-hour talk held at this year's Locarno Film Festival.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
Brooke Adams in Michael Roemer's Vengeance Is Mine (1984).
- The latest Deuce Notebook column is a portrait of Brooke Adams from guest author Madelyn Sutton. Adams starred in Michael Roemer’s Vengeance Is Mine, and Sutton spoke with her on the occasion of the film's recent re-release in theaters.
- At the Locarno Film Festival, Laura Staab interviewed filmmaker Helena Wittmann and actor Angeliki Papoulia about their collaboration on Human Flowers of Flesh, the follow-up to Wittmann's well-regarded debut, Drift. For Staab, Human Flowers of Flesh "crosses borders of various kinds: aesthetic, geographic, mortal."
- In the newest installment of "The Current Debate," Leonardo Goi looks at responses to the announcement of the merger of HBO Max and Discovery+, two streaming platforms owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
- "People look plenty in Carpignano’s films, and the glances they dart—furtive, curious, forbidden—stand as world-unlocking ruptures that shatter whatever fantasy they may have conjured for themselves." Also by Leonardo Goi, an in-depth examination of Jonas Carpignano’s Calabrian Trilogy.
EXTRAS
- Little White Lies' 95th issue focuses on Park Chan-wook's latest film Decision To Leave. For the cover, illustrator Michael Dunbabin crafted a portrait of actor Tang Wei in the style of a classic film noir poster.
- We'll leave you with a non-sequitur: Robert Bresson's rave review of the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only.