Rushes | Dismembering the Alamo, IFFR Jurist Detained, a Bill to Kill Trailers

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NEWS

Shoulder Arms (Charlie Chaplin, 1918).

• Recent layoffs of 70 workers at Alamo Drafthouse locations in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn have prompted the union to file an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board. United Auto Workers Local 2179 alleges that the theater chain “failed or refused to bargain in good faith” after management abruptly declared an impasse in negotiations over the issue of reduction in force, part of company-wide austerity measures. The locations unionized in fall of 2023 and have yet to settle the terms of their first contract.
• Actress Soheila Golestani was barred from leaving Iran to attend the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where she was set to be a member of the Tiger Competition jury. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) star has been accused of propaganda against the Iranian regime and promoting immorality through her role in Mohammad Rasoulof’s Oscar-nominated film.
• Connecticut State Senator Martin Looney has proposed a bill that would require movie theaters to list the start time of the feature presentation, after the pre-roll of advertisements and trailers. The director of one of the state’s remaining independent cinemas warned that the proposed change “would have a direct negative impact on our financial stability in an already so challenging environment.”
• The Museum of Modern Art has meticulously restored Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918), believed to be the first war comedy film, from “surviving prints based on the original A-negative material,” which features the director’s preferred takes from his preferred camera angles. Previously, the only officially available version of the film was taken from a foreign-market negative that featured Chaplin’s “second-choice takes from his second-choice angles” as part of the anthology film The Chaplin Revue (1959).

FESTIVALS

• In a recent interview, Berlinale’s new festival director, Tricia Tuttle, discusses the festival ahead of its 75th anniversary. While Tuttle doesn’t address the controversy surrounding the censorship of pro-Palestine voices at last year’s Berlinale or the renewed calls to boycott this year’s edition, she argues that “external political discussions have sometimes overshadowed our focus on cinema itself.”
• Meanwhile, Berlinale clarified its position on freedom of expression, stating that it “welcomes different points of view, even if this creates tension or controversy,” and that “all of our guests have a right to free speech within the bounds of the law.” The festival claims the German parliament’s wide-reaching 2024 “Antisemitism Resolution” would not have an impact on how the festival is run, and that “wearing or displaying signs and symbols of national or political expression or solidarity (e.g. a watermelon pin, a Keffiyeh, etc.) is not forbidden.” However, the festival cautioned attendees to use “particular care” with the phrase “from the river to the sea” as “there have been cases where it has been prosecuted” in Berlin.

DEVELOPING

The Longest Nite (Johnnie To, 1998).

• Johnnie To has reportedly started location scouting for a new film starring actor Tony Leung, anticipated to be released in 2027. To and Leung have previously collaborated on four films, the last of which was The Longest Nite (1998).
• Ulrike Ottinger is set to direct Isabelle Huppert in a new vampire film, The Blood Countess. Co-written by Ottinger and The Piano Teacher (1983) writer Elfriede Jelinek, the film is loosely inspired by the legend of Hungarian Countess Elizabeth Báthory, who was convicted of torturing and killing hundreds of women in a specious witch hunt.
• Cristian Mungiu will shoot his new film, Fjord, entirely in Norway starting in March. The film chronicles an “encounter between two neighboring families living in a remote Norwegian village” and stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve.
• Universal Pictures has permanently shuttered the Michel Gondry-directed movie musical Golden about the childhood of singer and producer Pharrell Williams. In a joint statement, Gondry and Williams said, “When all of us got into the editing room we collectively decided there wasn’t a path forward to tell the version of this story that we originally envisioned.” The film was in early post-production and was set to be released May 5.

REMEMBERING

Serpico (Sidney Lumet, 1973).

• Tony Roberts has died at 85. Roberts is best known for his multiple collaborations with Woody Allen, often playing the suave, self-assured foil to Allen’s neurotic nebbish on screen. He first appeared alongside Allen in the Broadway play Play It Again, Sam (1969); after earning a Tony nomination for his performance, he reprised the role in Herbert Ross’s 1972 film adaptation. Roberts went on to co-star in Annie Hall (1977), Stardust Memories (1980), A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1972), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Radio Days (1987). Roberts also had key supporting turns in Serpico (1973) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). He appeared on Broadway 23 times, including replacing Robert Redford in Mike Nichols's original production of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1965).

RECOMMENDED READING

Pilgrim, Farewell (Michael Roemer, 1982).

• “We don’t want to know the dark side of ourselves, and there’s some dark stuff in that film. But that’s one thing about theater or film that’s useful. People who have darkened stuff in themselves or feel like they’re outsiders—they think, This film makes me feel like I’m not alone. At least, that’s how I feel.” For Vulture, Michael Roemer speaks to Bilge Ebiri about his recent career resurgence on the occasion of two of his films—Dying (1976) and Pilgrim, Farewell (1982)—receiving a belated theatrical release at Film Forum.
• “Carax both is and isn’t committed to this brand of sulky resignation because commitment is his conundrum. His ostentatiously intelligent films, hypermediated by film history, are all in frantic search of a worldview to adopt.” For the New York Review of Books, Anna Shechtman unpacks Leos Carax’s career, in the context of his modernist forebears and postmodern peers, following the release of It’s Not Me (2024).
• “All I remember seeing, by the light of the car’s high beams, was a grocery-store shopping cart abandoned on the side of the road. I decided—with a little overreach, admittedly—that this was an exquisitely Lynchian oddity: something banal that, by popping up where it didn’t belong, became ineluctably sinister.” For The New Yorker, Justin Chang remembers the late David Lynch in the context of his adopted home city of Los Angeles.
• “Sundance is a brand, but it’s also an ideal, one that cleaves to the belief that there’s more to film than the Oscars and the box office, even if the festival does drone on about storytelling.” For the New York Times, Manohla Dargis recaps the latest Sundance amidst impending changes at the festival, including an ongoing search for a new home.

RECOMMENDED EVENTS

Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the ’60s in Brussels (Chantal Akerman, 1994).

• Hong Kong, February 15: M+ presents “Avant-Garde Now: Sensing Time,” the latest entry in a regular series examining contemporary trends in image-making. To kick off a “year-long investigation of time as both a subject matter and a medium for artistic expression,” four artists will present their research and artistic experiments through analog and digital screenings and performances.
• Boston, through March 16: The Institute of Contemporary Arts Boston presents “Charles Atlas: About Time,” the first American museum survey of the film and video artist, featuring “several monumental multi-channel video installations.”
• New York, through May 11: Pioneer Works presents “Are We Still (Surfing)?” the first solo exhibition by web artist Yehwan Song. The exhibition “suggests that the internet is no longer a space designed for users or attentive to their needs” through an installation “intentionally designed to immerse, stagnate and overwhelm.”
• London, through April 5: The Institut Francais presents “Revisiting Chantal Akerman,” a retrospective of the filmmaker's work, presented in partnership with the BFI. The series includes a screening of Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the ’60s in Brussels (1994), Akerman's contribution to the nine-part television series All the Boys and Girls of Their Age, which also included Olivier Assayas’s Cold Water (1994) and Claire Denis’s US Go Home (1994).

RECOMMENDED VIEWING

Princess Iron Fan (Meng Hua Ho, 1966).

• The Shaw Brothers Studio presents multiple full films from their archive on their official YouTube channel, including The Butterfly Chalice (1963) and Princess Iron Fan (1966).
• The Film and Television Institute of India presents Vidhu Vinod Chopra's debut short film, Murder at Monkey Hill (1976), about a professional hitman who falls in love with his target, which won the National Film Award for Best Short Experimental Film and the Guru Dutt Memorial Award for Best Student Film.
• The New Yorker presents a wide-ranging conversation between the magazine’s film critics, Richard Brody and Justin Chang, moderated by senior editor Leo Carey, about the practice and tradition of criticism.
• RLJE Films has released a trailer for Ash (2025), a sci-fi horror film directed by electronic artist Flying Lotus and starring Eiza González and Aaron Paul, out March 21.

RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK

Photography by Saffron Maeve.

• “Something I started exploring was the idea of a protagonist being a bit disgusting.” Saffron Maeve profiles Deragh Campbell, stalwart of the Canadian independent screen.
• “This program brings together episodes of rebellion, riot, and resistance in interdependent struggles over wages, political rights, and everyday life.” Yasmina Price delivers expanded program notes for “The Black Worker,” a series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
• “The film is a window onto India’s domestic revolution, illuminating the personal desires and sacrifices that have propelled the country’s highly unequal economic growth.” Sanoja Bhaumik writes about the dissolution of the Indian joint family, as seen in a new restoration of Nirad Mohapatra’s The Mirage (1983).
• “In De Sica’s films, no story is ever truly individual—no matter how personal, no matter how intimate, it’s always something that can and has happened to others. ... No story is truly one's own.” Jonathan Mackris writes about collective action in the films of the great Italian neorealist.

WISH LIST

Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith, 1963).

• Verso Books will soon publish Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop, J. Hoberman’s history of (sub-)cultural life, available to preorder now.

EXTRAS

• The Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival has launched an open call to invite emerging UK writers to apply for their Early Career Critics program, which runs from March 27 through 30.
• In response to the recent Los Angeles fires, the Center of Visual Music has launched a fundraiser to help relocate and preserve their storied archives.