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NEWS
The Pill Pounder (Gregory La Cava, 1923).
- The Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival is known for audiences who talk back to the screen, but such rowdiness took a dark turn last weekend at a screening of Love Lies Bleeding (2024), during which homophobic and misogynistic taunts caused more than 60 attendees to walk out and then to stage a protest at the cinema door, which was broken up by the police.
- Italy’s right-wing government has left the country’s motion-picture industry stalled in uncertainty as they debate new regulations to tax incentives for film and television production, some of which may give preference to films “tied to Italy’s national identity.”
- Ten of thirteen IATSE locals now have tentative agreements with AMPTP. Talks will turn to the broader issues of the Basic Agreement, which are expected to be more contentious, on April 29.
- The Clara Bow renaissance continues with the San Francisco Film Festival restoration premiere of Gregory La Cava’s The Pill Pounder (1923), a two-reeler long considered lost until it was rediscovered last year at a parking-lot auction in Omaha, Nebraska.
IN PRODUCTION
- Dustin Hoffman, Helen Hunt, and Sofia Boutella will star in Peter Greenaway’s film about “an intelligent man whose final big adventure is intended to be his death,” now shooting in Lucca, Italy.
- Ice Spice will make her cinematic debut with a cameo alongside in Spike Lee’s High and Low, a reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film starring Denzel Washington.
- Riz Ahmed will join Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, and Michael Cera in Wes Anderson’s latest, now shooting in Berlin.
- Werner Herzog will voice a character in Bong Joon-ho’s hand-drawn animated feature about deep-sea creatures.
REMEMBERING
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (Eleanor Coppola, 1991).
- Eleanor Coppola has died at 87. She was known for Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991), the Emmy-winning documentary about the fraught production of her husband Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). She made her narrative directorial debut with Paris Can Wait (2016), followed by Love Is Love Is Love (2020)
- Dan Wallin has died at 97. In the course of five decades, the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning scoring engineer recorded the music for about 500 films, including Spartacus (1960), Nashville (1975), and The Right Stuff (1983), working with a who’s who of composers. Michael Giacchino remembers him for his artistry and expertise: “What he taught me most was about the orchestra itself.”
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- Media Asia Film has released a new, English-subtitled trailer for Soi Cheang’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024), a martial-arts actioner set in the days of the Hong Kong Handover—due in theaters on May 1.
- Cinema Guild has released a trailer for Hong Sang-soo’s 30th film, In Our Day (2023), about two people united by, among other things, their enjoyment of eating ramyun noodles with hot pepper paste—scheduled for a May 17 release in the US.
RECOMMENDED READING
River's Edge (Tim Hunter, 1986).
- “Investments in the alchemy of the creative process do not perform well in quarterly reports.” For Harper’s, Daniel Bessner summarizes the labor history of the Hollywood screenwriter, from the industry’s monopolization to regulation, deregulation to conglomeration, and finally financialization, the death knell of economic stability for many workers.
- “What might be more evident if we displayed less gratitude for the crumbs we are offered as precarious artists, programmers, and invited guests?” For Documentary Magazine, Arta Barzanji speaks to Jemma Desai—scholar, artist, and curator of the 2025 Flaherty Seminar—about the craven logics of the international film festival.
- “Melamed asks us to consider the injuries that the grief of the witness can be used to inflict, as well as the dangers of a listenership that confirms the necropolitics of Jewish-Israeli victimhood.” World Records hosts a roundtable discussion on Laliv Melamed’s Sovereign Intimacy, a book-length critical study of memorial videos produced by the bereaved families of IDF soldiers, with Kareem Estefan, Alisa Lebow, Daniel Mann, Debashree Mukherjee, and Pooja Rangan.
- “One of the largest popular cinemas in the world, overwhelmingly for the State, but not by the State.” For Mint Lounge, Uday Bhatia reflects on the right-wing valence of recent Bollywood films in the run-up to this year’s Indian general elections, which will begin on April 19.
- “If Twin Peaks is David Lynch’s Transcendental take on the soap opera format, then River’s Edge is a heavy metal riff on the made-for-TV movie” For Metrograph’s Journal, Keva York considers Tim Hunter’s 1986 teen-horror film.
RECOMMENDED EVENTS
America (Garrett Bradley, 2019).
- New York, April 17: Light Industry presents a roundtable discussion on New York cinema unions, moderated by Alex Press.
- Los Angeles, April 18 through 21: The US leg of “The Art of the Benshi” tour concludes with screenings and performances at Japan House, the United Theater on Broadway, and the Hammer Museum.
- London, April 26: Waterstones on Gower Street presents a conversation between filmmaker Albert Serra and writer and philosopher Alexander García Düttmann about Serra’s first book in English, A Toast to St Martirià.
- New York: April 27 and 28: Metrograph presents a retrospective of the work of Garrett Bradley, who will be in attendance for a panel discussion with Sky Hopinka, Linda Goode Bryant, Dessane Lopez Cassell, and others.
RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK
The People's Joker (Vera Drew, 2022).
- “The realm of the subversive used to belong to queer artists like John Waters and Kenneth Anger, and it somehow got taken away from us.” Kamikaze Jones speaks with Vera Drew, cowriter-director-editor-star of The People’s Joker (2022).
- “Tokyo Story is almost perfect. But I don’t like this perfectness.” K. F. Watanabe sits down with the great Shiguéhiko Hasumi, whose seminal book Directed by Yasujiro Ozu is now available in English.
- “I've always felt affirmed by how Black folks are the first ones to know what's up—we don't wait to figure out why other people are running.” Dessane Lopez Cassell interviews Jazmin Jones and Olivia McKayla Ross about their documentary, Seeking Mavis Beacon (2024), and its subject, a Haitian American cover-art model for an early educational video game.
EXTRAS
- Charlotte Wells continues to attend to the affective dimensions of fatherhood in a new Quaker Oats commercial: her follow-up to Aftersun (2022) is perhaps inspired by Paul Mescal’s own enthusiasm for breakfast.