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NEWS
Above: Titane (2021).
- Actor Vincent Lindon has been announced as the president of this year's Cannes competition jury, leading a group that includes Rebecca Hall, Deepika Padukone, Jeff Nichols, and Joachim Trier. The festival has also added several pleasant surprises to the lineup: films by Serge Bozon, Albert Serra, Louis Garrel, Patricio Guzmán, and more.
- Subscribe to our limited-edition, print-only Notebook magazine by April 30 to secure your copy of Issue 1, featuring a conversation between Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Yoshitomo Nara, a carte blanche contribution by Christopher Doyle, and much more.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
Above: I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) .
- Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation has launched a virtual screening room for restored films, called the Restoration Screening Room. The fun begins with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1945 film I Know Where I'm Going!, which will be available for a 24-hour window on May 9. Co-curated by Scorsese and Kent Jones, the screenings will continue with films by Federico Fellini, Edgar G. Ulmer, G. Aravindan, Sarah Maldoror, and more.
- In collaboration with Cinelimite, Another Screen presents Mulheres: Uma Outra Historia, a series of six essential films by Brazilian women filmmakers about women's labor struggles. As usual for this essential virtual screening series, rich texts surround the films with key context and interpretation.
- Bodies Bodies Bodies, Halina Reijn's new horror film and English directorial debut, has a trailer. Written by "Cat Person" author Kristen Roupenian, the film follows seven young people whose house party results in a mysterious murder.
- Grasshopper Films' trailer for Michelangelo Frammartino’s third feature Il Buco, which premiered and won the Special Jury Prize at Venice in 2021. Read our review of Il Buco by Leonardo Goi, and Daniel Kasman's 2010 festival dispatch covering of Frammartino's Le quattro volte.
- A sweet, flirty official trailer for Andrew Ahn's queer romantic comedy Fire Island. Inspired by Pride and Prejudice, the film stars comedians Bowen Yang and Joel Kim Booster as two friends who head to the titular island for the summer. Read Kelley Dong's essay on Ahn's feature debut Spa Night here.
- A new trailer for Peter Strickland's Flux Gourmet showcases the film's bloody mix of food and experimental performance art. In a previous statement, Strickland stated that Flux Gourmet stemmed from a desire to "write something devoted to the disruptions of the stomach whilst attempting to maintain a degree of dignity to deeply private and embarrassing symptoms."
RECOMMENDED READING
- "What came to mind recently is that, when I look at my films and I look at my writing, I have the feeling that my films are like my voyage out in the world, and my writing is home," reflects Werner Herzog in a new interview at the New Yorker. Herzog has been busy during the pandemic: The New German Cinema maverick has two films and two books forthcoming.
- "...arguably the best punk movies are stories that tap into the spirit of the time through imagined characters and invented situations." Pitchfork has published a guide to the 20 best punk movies.
- In an essay for Metrograph, Tom Paulus reflects on Jacques Rivette's trajectory as a political filmmaker.
- "If we are amenable, the past and the past selves of those we love most are available for conversation, camaraderie, goodbyes that look a lot like full-armed hellos." Michelle Orange's review of Céline Sciamma's Petite Maman for 4Columns navigates the film's themes of grief and solace.
RECOMMENDED EVENTS
- The second edition of experimental film festival Prismatic Ground will take place virtually and in-person from May 4–8. The full lineup (which features artists like Jodie Mack, Bill Morrison, Christopher Harris, and more) can be found on Screen Slate.
- The Brooklyn Academy of Music's series In the Images, Behind the Camera: Women’s Political Cinema, 1959—1992 takes place May 6–12. Programmed by critic Yasmina Price, the series brings together films by women filmmakers that "[offer] multi-layered reckonings with the interlocked global systems of colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism."
- Registration is open for Contested Ground: Landscape as Territory, a three-day workshop hosted by UnionDocs on Friday, May 6 on film's relationship to landscape. Speakers include filmmakers Basma Alsharif, Salomé Lam, Fox Maxy, Pablo Álvarez Mesa, Ana Vaz, and Jacquelyn Mills.
- How It's Done: The Cinema of James Wong Howe is a 19-film series devoted the groundbreaking cinematographer whose career endured from the 1920s to the 1970s. The series comes to the Museum of the Moving Image on May 13, and ends June 26.
RECENTLY ON THE NOTEBOOK
- "To me, the camera discloses both an intimacy and distance between Lou, John, and Andy." Ed Lachman introduces his film Songs for Drella, which is exclusively showing on MUBI in most countries in the series Rediscovered.
- Peter Kim George explores how Panah Panahi's Hit the Road brings its own sensibility to the tradition of the Iranian art cinema.
- Egor Sheremet investigates three films released last year—Pig, Willy's Wonderland, and Prisoners of the Ghostland—that encapsulate three sides of the star's persona: the recluse, the craftsman, and the outlaw.
- Danielle Burgos' Notebook Primer is all about eco-horror, or when nature turns against humans in cinema—often for good reason.
- The latest subject of Patrick Holzapfel's Full Bloom column are the hydrangeas of Danièle Huillet’s and Jean-Marie Straub’s History Lessons (1972).
EXTRAS
- C'mon C'mon: Drawings from the Set is a 176-page book featuring illustrations by French artist Yann Kebbi of Mike Mills' production of C'mon C'mon.