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NEWS
Above: Kinuyo Tanaka. Courtesy of Nikkatsu / Carlotta.
- The Cannes Film Festival has announced the titles of its Cannes Classics section, which includes restored films by Kinuyo Tanaka, Bill Duke, Peter Wollen, and Oscar Micheaux.
- Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Mati Diop, Jessica Hausner, Mylene Farmer, Tahar Rahim, Song Kang-ho and Kleber Mendonça Filho will join director Spike Lee on the Cannes 2021 Competition jury.
- The Toronto International Film Festival is starting to announce its lineup for this year's edition, from an Alanis Morissette documentary and Kenneth Branagh's Belfast to Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho and Denis Villeneuve's Dune.
- In a special episode of New Beverly's Pure Cinema Podcast, Quentin Tarantino has announced he will work with Sony on a new, boutique Blu-Ray label "Tarantino Archives," taking inspiration from Twilight Time and reissuing films from their catalogue.
- Menelik Shabazz, a pioneering filmmaker of Black British cinema, has died. Shabazz's first feature, Burning an Illusion, is considered only the second British feature directed by a Black filmmaker.
- We are proud to present the second episode of the MUBI Podcast: Encuentros in co-production with La Corriente del Golfo Podcast. In this conversation, the Argentinian actor Romina Paula and the Mexican actor Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez discuss the impossibility of finding a single method of acting, and ask themselves: what does the camera capture of those who allow themselves to be filmed? They consider mise-en-scène as the place where biography and fiction mix, question the ways in which political convictions come to life in cinema, and consider how cinema offers anyone the possibility of becoming a spectator. To listen to this episode and subscribe on your favorite podcast app, click here.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Above: Abel Ferrara's The Projectionist (2020). Courtesy of Kino Lorber.
- Cinema Village owner Nicolas Nicolaou has invited Abel Ferrara to take over the New York theater with a nine day long retrospective and festival. As the Cinema Village website states, the event is "part of the broader celebration of the reopening of New York City's cultural life." All showings, live music performances, and talks, are just $5. The retrospective spans from early Ferrara titles like The Driller Killer (which he recently discussed with the Deuce Film Series & Sean Price Williams) to his latest film Siberia. Also showing is Ferrara's documentary The Projectionist, about the story of Nicolaou and his theaters.
- HBO Max's trailer for The Many Saints of Newark, Alan Taylor's feature-length prequel to the series The Sopranos. Available on October 31 in theaters and on HBO Max, the film follows a young Anthony "Tony" Soprano (played by Michael Gandolfini) who struggles between becoming further involved in the mafia and his dreams of a higher education.
- Apple TV has released its official trailer for Coda, Siân Heder's winner of the Grand Jury and Best Director prizes at last year's Sundance Film Festival.
- At the San Francisco Cinematheque's website, Cousins Collective continue their ongoing online series with program 4: Anti-Ethnography, which features films that explore "the power of Indigenous people claiming the camera for themselves."
- AND Festival is hosting an online screening of John Akomfrah’s Riot (1999) until July 2. The film consists of interviews that detail the 1981 Toxteth riots in Liverpool, a major turning point in Thatcher's Britain.
- The official trailer for Todd Stephens' Swan Song, starring the one and only Udo Kier as a retired hairdresser and local bar performer who embarks on a journey to style his dying former client's final hairdo.
- Magnolia has released an official trailer for Quentin Dupieux's Mandibles, which follows two men who decide to train a giant fly in hopes of making money.
RECOMMENDED READING
Above: Marlon Riggs' Tongues Untied (1989). Courtesy of the Criterion Collection.
- For Criterion, K. Austin Collins delves into the films of Marlon Riggs, his nimble interrogation of America's images of Blackness, and his methods of expressing his own inseparable identities as a Black queer man.
- The new issue of Cinema Scope includes Jordan Cronk's interview with Alexander Koberidze (whose film What Do We See When We Look at the Sky is on the cover), Beatrice Loayza's essay on Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Phil Coldiron's overview on the films of Radu Jude, and Christopher Huber's examination of Bertrand Tavernier's critical legacy.
- Accompanying Ferrara's Cinema Village retrospective are two new interviews with the ever-insightful filmmaker. The first, from Neil Bahadur on the Film Stage, covers Ferrara's creative process, specifically comparing his approach to both documentaries and narrative films. The second, by A.S. Hamrah at Screen Slate, includes Ferrara's musings on his film 4:44 in light of the pandemic, and his call to "get your ass out and come see a movie."
- In the latest edition of the Film Comment Letter, Kelli Weston reviews Janciza Bravo's forthright but uncurious Zola.
- For the summer issue of Three Fold Press, Sky Hopinka has compiled a dossier entitled "Disfluencies." Encompassing "the incomplete and the complete, the out-of-context and the wayward bits of things," the dossier includes videos, photographs, and text pieces leftover from Hopinka's films.
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
- In a new episode of the Light the Fuse podcast, Brian De Palma and Susan Lehman discuss his debut novel, Are Snakes Necessary?, Preston Sturges, and a reshoot for Mission Impossible suggested by George Lucas.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- The latest episode of the MUBI Podcast focuses on the Nigerian micro-budget feature Living in Bondage, which launched Nollywood. Critic Aderinsola Ajao expands on her commentary featured in the episode, providing historical context to explain the massive influence "Living in Bondage" had on the Nigerian Film Industry.
- In a wide-ranging discussion with Ariel Kling, Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott discuss Shiva Baby, which is exclusively showing on MUBI in some countries in the Debuts series.
- The latest Movie Poster of the Week focuses on the posters designed by Brian Hung for the American releases of Hong Sang-soo's films. In an accompanying interview, Hung discusses his approach to the "puzzle" aspect of Hong's films.
- For our Deuce Notebook series, the Deuce Film Series takes a deep dive into the production histories of Paul Morrissey's Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula.
- Filmmaker Stephen Cone reflects on the influence of Jenni Olson's The Royal Road and Arthur Bressan Jr.’s Gay USA in both his life and work. Both films are both part of MUBI's Pride Unprejudiced collection. The series Awakenings: Three By Stephen Cone is also playing on MUBI in many countries.
- Florence Scott-Anderton's new Soundtrack Mix is a moving tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach's contributions to cinema, from Battle Royale to Persona.
- Aaron E. Hunt examines Janciza Bravo's Zola, which continues and expands upon her earlier films and their efforts to examine whiteness.
EXTRAS
- Ahead of its Cannes 2021 premiere, a poster for Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria, starring Tilda Swinton, Jeanne Balibar and Daniel Giménez Cacho.
- To celebrate the release of Rogert Eggers' The Lighthouse in Japan, acclaimed horror manga artist Junji Ito has created a short adaptation of the film. The manga will be distributed in Japanese theaters when the film is released on July 21.
