"After the documentary world's boldface names of the 1920s and 30s — Robert Flaherty, Joris Ivens, Pare Lorentz — the typical college-survey doc hit parade goes silent until cinema vérité," writes Nicolas Rapold in the Voice. "Anthology's eye-opening 13-program series posits an intervening 'New York School' of lefty filmmakers, and then focuses on one eye-opening blacklistee: Leo Hurwitz, forefather of cinema vérité and TV news broadcasting, forger of a soulful yet rigorous style of film essay."
Leo Hurwitz and the New York School of Documentary Film runs today through March 19. More from Laura Blum at Fest21.com. Related viewing: Leo Hurwitz in 1961: The Roots of a Radical Filmmaker, a presentation by Tom Hurwitz, award-winning cinematographer and Leo's son.
Rendez-Vous with French Cinema opens tomorrow in New York and runs through March 21. Jan Stuart's previewed much of the program, the House Next Door has begun its coverage and Time Out New York's David Fear recommends "Trois must-sees."
The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights screens twice tomorrow evening at IFC Center in New York and then at SXSW in Austin on Friday night. In the Voice, Zach Baron finds director Emmett Malloy taking "the Dont Look Back route, filming mostly in black-and-white (and red), cataloging all the different ways two people can be lonely."
Updates, 3/11: "Roughly 20 features will be shown in Rendez-Vous, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Unifrance and now in its 15th year," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "Following a grand opening on Thursday at Alice Tully Hall with Christian Carion's fact-based espionage drama Farewell, set in the twilight of the cold war, Rendez-Vous will have screenings at the Walter Reade Theater, the IFC Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music through March 21. Overall it is as consistent as Rendez-Vous usually is. It may lack a certifiable masterpiece, but it offers a fair number of B-plus or better adult features, and no real duds."
And James van Maanen, who's seen all the festival's offerings, presents "a quick checklist of titles, arranged in no particular order, with a short paragraph describing their themes and merits. After that, it's your move."
IN OTHER NEWS
Abbas Kiarostami has called for the release of Jafar Panahi and Mahmoud Rasoulof, arrested last week in Iran.
Corey Haim, "a teen star in the 1980s in such movies as The Lost Boys and License to Drive," has died at age 38, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The trials and tribulations of Variety in the wake of an evidently not-so-lucrative awards season are being chronicled here.
Images: Leo Hurwitz and The White Stripes.
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