Exclusive: Boutique distributor Juno Films has taken North American rights to Playland, a queer genre-bender marking the first feature from writer-director Georden West. On the heels of a festival run that saw it world premiere in Rotterdam before going on to play the Tribeca Festival and others, the film is slated for a theatrical release this spring, with a digital release for Pride Month to follow in June.
Playland conjures a time-bending night in Boston’s oldest and most notorious gay bar. Featuring an eclectic ensemble of queer performers, including drag icon Lady Bunny and Pose‘s Danielle Cooper, the transdisciplinary film sees music, dance, archival footage, tableaux, opera, and performance art layered into an ethereal piece subverting all boundaries. The work of queer fantasy and history takes place inside the empty husk of the Playland Café. Although the cafe shut down in the late ’90s, West stages one last...
Playland conjures a time-bending night in Boston’s oldest and most notorious gay bar. Featuring an eclectic ensemble of queer performers, including drag icon Lady Bunny and Pose‘s Danielle Cooper, the transdisciplinary film sees music, dance, archival footage, tableaux, opera, and performance art layered into an ethereal piece subverting all boundaries. The work of queer fantasy and history takes place inside the empty husk of the Playland Café. Although the cafe shut down in the late ’90s, West stages one last...
- 1/11/2024
- by Matt Grobar
- Deadline Film + TV
Having its world premiere at the Intl. Film Festival Rotterdam, Georden West’s directorial debut “Playland” is an interdisciplinary film about the titular establishment, Boston’s oldest gay bar. “I was volunteering at an MIT event, like an archive hackathon, and I learned about People Before Highways, which was a grassroots movement against urban renewal and the construction of a highway through the middle of Boston, and they were successful,” says West of how they first came across the bones for the film. “I think it is a story of what happens when government intervention is very successful in a fringe subculture in erasing it. So I became quite impassioned, and that’s what led me initially to the archive to dig at the history project.”
Commenting on the ensemble-based format of the film, West says they were “interested in something that was polyphonic. Following a single protagonist through an...
Commenting on the ensemble-based format of the film, West says they were “interested in something that was polyphonic. Following a single protagonist through an...
- 1/26/2023
- by Rafa Sales Ross
- Variety Film + TV
‘The Eyeslicer’: Cult Variety Streaming Series Shifts Offline With New Festival and More — Exclusive
Cult variety TV show “The Eyeslicer” is gearing up for its second season, one that will move the streaming series into the terrestrial world with a brand new mini film festival, taking place in Brooklyn from September 14 to 17. The brainchild of creators Dan Schoenbrun and Vanessa McDonnell, the episodic series invites some of independent film’s most exciting directors to embrace their weird and experimental side in making a variety of short content, which is then weaved into thematic episodes.
The 13-episode Season 2 of “The Eyeslicer” will feature work from over 70 filmmakers, offerings that the co-creators describe as “a deep-dive into the strange, dark heart of our contemporary American hellscape, while also being an optimistic celebration of independent art-making within said hellscape.”
Starting with this new season, the internet will no longer be the series’ principal platform, but it will instead use a unique, zine-inspired mini-festival in Brooklyn and the...
The 13-episode Season 2 of “The Eyeslicer” will feature work from over 70 filmmakers, offerings that the co-creators describe as “a deep-dive into the strange, dark heart of our contemporary American hellscape, while also being an optimistic celebration of independent art-making within said hellscape.”
Starting with this new season, the internet will no longer be the series’ principal platform, but it will instead use a unique, zine-inspired mini-festival in Brooklyn and the...
- 8/1/2019
- by Chris O'Falt
- Indiewire
“I was always happy just being the guitar player,” Dave Keuning says. “All my idols growing up — Angus Young, Keith Richards — were the guitar player. That’s all I really ever wanted to be.”
As a member of the Killers for the past 17 years, that’s exactly what Keuning has been. But that’s about to change. The guitarist has now unveiled a solo project, named Keuning, as well as a new album, Prismism. The 14 tracks effort boast plenty of Killers-esque New Wave rockers, but also show Keuning indulging...
As a member of the Killers for the past 17 years, that’s exactly what Keuning has been. But that’s about to change. The guitarist has now unveiled a solo project, named Keuning, as well as a new album, Prismism. The 14 tracks effort boast plenty of Killers-esque New Wave rockers, but also show Keuning indulging...
- 10/12/2018
- by Richard Bienstock
- Rollingstone.com
Read More: 8 Legal Tips for Documentary Filmmakers This post was original published on the Ifp blog and has been republished here with permission. What kind of income can a filmmaker expect to earn over his lifetime? A jury in San Diego recently considered that question and came up with a multi-million dollar award to a promising 26-year-old filmmaker who suffered serious injuries in a car accident. Russell Sheaffer was a 24-year-old doctoral student at Indiana University who was in California working on a documentary film. He was driving a car on Interstate 15 when a large truck crashed into a line of vehicles, causing a chain-reaction. Sheaffer's Toyota was struck from behind, causing his driver's seat to break and pushing his car into a large SUV in front of him. The case is tragic but also interesting because the amount of income a young filmmaker can expect to earn is difficult to calculate.
- 7/24/2015
- by Mark Litwak
- Indiewire
The 22nd annual Chicago Underground Film Festival presents five days of devastating celluloid provocations on May 13-17 at the Logan Theatre.
The fest kicks off on May 13 with the incredibly haunting short film Echoes by Jaimz Asmundson and the Filipino romantic crime drama Ruined Heart: Another Lovestory Between a Criminal and a Whore by the single-named director Khavn.
Highlights of the fest include the new slacker-ific comedy by Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn, L for Leisure; the Spanish socio-political documentary Speculation Nation by Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat; the pastoral friendship drama For the Plasma by Bingham Bryant & Kyle Molzan; and the joyful pop doc Living Stars by Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn.
There are also loads of un-missable short films, such as the gritty modern film noir Bite Radius by Spencer Parsons; and amazing new films by Jennifer Reeder (Blood Below the Skin), Zachary Epcar (Under the Heat Lamp...
The fest kicks off on May 13 with the incredibly haunting short film Echoes by Jaimz Asmundson and the Filipino romantic crime drama Ruined Heart: Another Lovestory Between a Criminal and a Whore by the single-named director Khavn.
Highlights of the fest include the new slacker-ific comedy by Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn, L for Leisure; the Spanish socio-political documentary Speculation Nation by Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat; the pastoral friendship drama For the Plasma by Bingham Bryant & Kyle Molzan; and the joyful pop doc Living Stars by Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn.
There are also loads of un-missable short films, such as the gritty modern film noir Bite Radius by Spencer Parsons; and amazing new films by Jennifer Reeder (Blood Below the Skin), Zachary Epcar (Under the Heat Lamp...
- 5/11/2015
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
This year there were well over 50 shorts screened at the Tribeca Film Festival. That’s quite a lot. Spread across nine programs, they’re a diverse bunch both in form and quality. They come from all over the world, too, though there’s a significant emphasis on home-grown New York City filmmakers. This variety makes any attempt at synthesis a little daunting, so instead of drawing any sort of overarching thematic conclusions I’ll just go ahead and tell you which ones are the best. Here are 12 of them, in alphabetical order. Acetate Diary, by Russell Sheaffer Many of the shorts in this year’s experimental program bemoan the so-called “death of cinema” that has resulted from the declining production of film stock. Russell Sheaffer took film and used it, instead, to try saying something much more open and dynamic. Acetate Diary is a 16mm film used as a diary. While...
- 4/26/2014
- by Daniel Walber
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
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