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NEWS
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012).
- Though he’s known for nonfiction, Joshua Oppenheimer just began production on a musical about the end of the world, fittingly called The End. Filming now in Dublin, it stars Tilda Swinton and George Mackay, via the production company’s website. (For a refresher on Oppenheimer, revisit Notebook editor-in-chief Daniel Kasman on his “extraordinary, repulsive, flabbergasting, and completely engrossing work of quasi-documentary,” The Act of Killing.)
- After 23 years, A.O. Scott is stepping away from film criticism at the New York Times, transitioning to a new role as a critic at large for the Book Review. He conducts his own exit interview.
- In comedy news, Safdie muse and Razzie record-breaker Adam Sandler was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor this week in Washington, D.C.
- Finally, we’re thinking of the character actor Lance Reddick this week, who died suddenly last Friday at age 60. “With a preacher’s commanding baritone, he embodied stolid paternalism as readily as menace, fragility, or absurdity,” writes Charles Bramesco in the Guardian of Reddick’s role in The Wire.
RECOMMENDED VIEWING
- A 1991 Nike advertisement by Jean-Luc Godard has resurfaced online, proof that a compelling story about sneakers can be told in 15 seconds. Considering the length, just press play.
- Human Flowers of Flesh (2022), Helena Wittmann’s follow up to her acclaimed debut Drift (2017), has a trailer courtesy of Cinema Guild, who are releasing the film in the US. Laura Staab interviewed Wittmann about the film for Notebook when it premiered at Locarno.
- “I trust that a film festival is going to expand my idea of the world, and also build a vocabulary and probably expose me to things I would never have seen otherwise.” Gabrielle de la Puente (of the art critic duo The White Pube) vlogs a “nourishing” weekend at the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, touching on works by Fox Maxy, Lucrecia Martel, Rea Tajiri, and more.
RECOMMENDED READING
Drylongso (Cauleen Smith, 1998).
- “Low-key yet capacious, Cauleen Smith’s Drylongso makes room for a host of different genres, all while giving viewers a very specific sense of place.” For 4Columns, Melissa Anderson writes effusively about Cauleen Smith’s feature debut, which has been restored to 4K and is touring US theaters.
- On the occasion of a rare New York screening of experimental filmmaker Robert Beavers’s work, Reverse Shot’s Phil Coldiron analyzes the work of a “uniquely formal lyricist” whose “films typically consist of the rhythmic analysis of a narrow band of content, spiraling out from a core of significant people or objects to examine their immediate environment.”
- “Films need to be seen in their own countries.” In the Financial Times, Maya Jaggi profiles June Givanni, whose personal archive is “one of the world’s most important collections documenting the moving image for the African continent and its diaspora.”
- Inaugurating a new column on unconventional desires in cinema, Beatrice Loayza examines Todd Field’s Little Children (2006), “a stereotypically “dark” portrait of the American dream” that finds “great drama and intrigue within the banal strictures of middle-class existence.”
- “So I went to art school. But after I got out, I realized the precious white walls of the galleries were not what I was interested in. I wanted to be out on the streets.” Caitlin Lent speaks to the influential no wave filmmaker Beth B for Interview.
- “I said, ‘Bob, what if I gave you a million bucks to save me five [million]? Could you do it?’ And he goes, ‘Fuck, I’ll save you 10.’ There are people who just have their hand on the wheel in ways people don’t understand.” In a frank and candid interview with Rebecca Keegan of the Hollywood Reporter,Ben Affleck explains, among other things, the unusual and innovative ways in which he is structuring Artists Equity, the new production company he has started with Matt Damon.
RECOMMENDED EVENTS
A.K.A. Serial Killer (Masao Adachi, 1969).
- New York: This Friday March 24 at e-flux Screening Room, catch a screening of Masao Adachi’s seminal landscape film A.K.A. Serial Killer (1969) followed by a video conversation with the filmmaker.
- New York: The 17th edition of Making Waves, a festival for Romanian cinema, is running in a range of New York theaters from March 30 through April 2, and then from April 28 through May 4. Highlights include Cristian Mungiu’s R.M.N (2022) and Lucian Pintilie’s The Oak (1992), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival but has since fallen from circulation.
- Portland: Ongoing through June 18 at Portland Art Museum is “This is the Future,” “a vibrant, imagined garden” featuring “video projection, sculpture, and spatial intervention” by Hito Steyerl. Alongside the opening, Kate Brown interviewed the artist about the exhibition, and about AI and NFTs, for Art News.
RECENTLY ON NOTEBOOK
If You Don't Watch the Way You Move (Kevin Jerome Everson, 2023).
Features:
- Waterfalls, analog monitors, and beanbags: Sophia Satchell-Baeza reports from the Berlinale Forum Expanded exhibition. She captures the “bardo states of non-theatrical moving-image work” through contemporary artists (Tenzin Phuntsog, Eduardo Williams, Kevin Jerome Everson) and retrospective selections (Takahiko Iimamura, Michael Snow).
- Leonardo Goi unravels Everything Everywhere All at Once’s “Oscars deluge” in the latest installment of The Current Debate—in an awards season marred by campaign controversies, what does the Daniels’ astonishing triumph mean for the Academy and the industry at large?
- On the occasion of a Tod Browning retrospective at Film at Lincoln Center, Z. W. Lewis invites us into the world of William Mortensen, whose “photography of the grotesque” made an indelible mark on the films of Browning, DeMille, and others.
- “I felt there was a necessity to do it. The 20th century is part of my life. Its events are part of me.” Aleksandr Sokurov speaks to Jordan Cronk about his new film Fairytale, which uses deepfake animation to facilitate a meeting between Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Churchill in a purgatorial netherworld.
Quick Reads:
- Eugene Kotlyarenko, the director of Wobble Palace and Spree, shares five inspirations on his filmmaking, with special appearances from Agnès Varda, Kate Lyn Sheil, and the Kool-Aid Man. The series Love Me, Click Me: Films by Eugene Kotlyarenko is now showing on MUBI in most countries.
EXTRAS
- If you would like to try your hand at outrunning a boring ex-friend on a scenic Irish island with a donkey, there’s a charming 8-bit The Banshees of Inisherin browser game that you can play, developed by the marketing firm Cogs & Marvel.
- See behind the curtain of the treasure trove that is the Library of Congress with scholar-in-residence Maya Cade’s illustrated Twitter thread of her archival research there.