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NEWS
- Thanks to a donation of DKK 300 million, the Danish Film Institute will now "digitise, study and disseminate Denmark’s entire silent film heritage, consisting of some 415 titles with a combined running time of around 350 hours." The project is the largest film dissemination effort in Danish history, as the films will be made available in an "online universe" for streaming.
- The iconoclastic French-Mauritanian filmmaker (and actor!) Med Hondo has died at the age of 82. Tambay Obenson provides a thorough remembrance at Indiewire, which includes this perceptive quote from the auteur: “I decided to make films to bring some black faces to the lily-white French screens, which have been ignoring us and the black contribution to the world for years.”
- The Tribeca Film Festival has announced the lineup for its 2019 edition, which includes films by Werner Herzog (Nomad: In The Footsteps Of Bruce Chatwin), Abel Ferrara (The Projectionist), and Bora Kim (House of Hummingbird), along with a new Critics’ Week section.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- The first teaser for Hereditary director Ari Aster's second feature, Midsommar, offers a cursory peek at a terrifying pagan cult disguised as a summertime Swedish festival.
- Christian Petzold shares a charming anecdote of meeting Abbas Kiarostami in New York, which somehow features the Trump Tower, Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret, and Jonathan Glazer's Birth.
RECOMMENDED READING
Harmony Korine's The Beach Bum.
- "I felt like I wanted to laugh," says Harmony Korine, in an interview regarding his forthcoming stoner comedy, The Beach Bum.
- For a world still captivated by the "magic spell" of Michael Jackson, Wesley Morris's review of the documentary Leaving Neverland poses a number of challenging questions: "If we believe the accusers (and I believe Wade and James), what do we do with the art?"
- Speaking of Christian Petzold, Melissa Anderson's overview of the German director's extensive filmography traces the ways in which the auteur "revitalizes old templates to offer new perspectives on historical rifts and traumas."
Chantal Akerman's installation In the Mirror, MOCA Toronto.
- At Canadian Art, Yaniya Lee interviews Claire Atherton, editor of many of Chantal Akerman's films, about her "unique relationship" with Akerman and their many exceptional collaborations.
- Vulture takes an enlightening deep dive into the labyrinthine world of Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington's multi-media send-up of film culture, On Cinema.
- Peter Bogdanovich sat down for a career spanning, contentious interview encompassing his films, Dorothy Stratten's murder, and age-old Hollywood gossip.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- An interview with filmmaker Beatrice Gibson about her largest exhibition to date, "Crone Music."
- Kelley Dong's latest entry for her column Under Childhood, examines the concept of edutainment in relation to How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.
- A review of Christian Petzold's Transit. By "cover[ing] terrain that’s particularly, if not exclusively intellectual, Transit sets the mind aflame."
EXTRAS AND RE-DISCOVERIES
- If you're following our retrospective of Japanese observational filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda, here's an excellent primer on his work by Max Nelson for Cinema Scope.
- Sony's sixth generation video game console PlayStation 2 celebrated its 19th birthday this past weekend, which makes it a good as time as any to revisit "The Third Place," one of David Lynch's remarkable advertisements for the system. There's also a "making-of" for the video available on YouTube.
— RPG Site (@RPGSite) March 4, 2019
- In counter point to the many claims Peter Bogdanovich makes in the noted interview, here's a 1993 portrait of producer, production designer, and screenwriter Polly Platt on her landmark New Hollywood career. (Via @FilmBart.)