Going UNDERGROUNDEverybody and their dog, it seems, feels this off imperative to try to identify common themes in the handful of festival films they (we) (I) see in a given year. It's the Ghost of Hegel, I suppose, demanding that we make sense of our times by referring to some Zeitgeist. (Zeitgeist? Isn't this just as likely to Strand the FilmsWeLike in some oh-so-precious Music Box, to be unearthed years later by members of some as-yet-unassembled Cinema Guild? But I digress.) There may or may not be tendencies running through this year's feature selections, and if there are, that could have as much to do with the people who selected them than with any global mood. But there does seem to be a generalized turning-inward, with filmmakers making works about themselves and their immediate lives, the cinematic process, and the very complexities of communicating with other human beings. There are...
- 9/17/2015
- by Michael Sicinski
- MUBI
Adieu au langageWhen I stumbled out of the theatre after my first viewing of Jean-Luc Godard’s newest film, Adieu au langage—which will be released on home video by Kino Lorber on April 14—I felt that nagging feeling that only a few films can give. That feeling isn’t necessarily limited to great or even good films, but belongs instead to a certain special, disparate troupe. I left feeling that Godard had made a film that wanted to think about film in some way, aligning itself with the films that made their ways into books of philosophy by film theorists Noël Carroll and Stanley Cavell.Admittedly, there’s a danger in these feelings. Adieu au langage, as well as the whole lot of these “thinking” films, could simply be playfully “meta,” purposefully toying with the conversations that critics and academics love. Maybe I’ve just taken the filmmaker’s bait here,...
- 4/14/2015
- by Zach Lewis
- MUBI
With so few events during which to premiere new and important avant-garde films in North America—among them, the recently wrapped Wavelengths section of the Toronto International Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Fest, and the San Francisco Cinematheque's Crossroads series—the shift that has occurred at this year's New York Film Festival is one well worth noting. This weekend, the inaugural Projects program will debut. Previously known as "Views from the Avant-Garde" and programmed by Mark McElhatten and Gavin Smith (though last year's titanic program was done by McElhatten alone), this sidebar more akin to a festival-inside-a-festival of film and video works has been re-named "Projections" and in its first year is programmed by a returned Smith, Film Society of Lincoln Center's Director of Programming Dennis Lim, and Aily Nash.
The section encompasses 13 programs over a single weekend during the festival, including a handful of feature length films and numerous shorts,...
The section encompasses 13 programs over a single weekend during the festival, including a handful of feature length films and numerous shorts,...
- 10/4/2014
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
Photo courtesy of Abby Rose Photography.
This year marked the 50th anniversary of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which would be a milestone for any cinema-related event in the U.S. But for a festival that has carved out a niche in the area of experimental and avant-garde film and video, Aaff's achievement is especially noteworthy. Even within the rarefied realm of cinephilia, the avant-garde tends to be something on the margins, or even in the best of circumstances (e.g., the Rotterdam, New York, or Toronto film festivals) one part of a much larger whole. So the fact that Ann Arbor and its intrepid citizens have continued to support this strange little festival, and all the bizarre films the festival has thrown their way over the years, speaks very highly of both the town and the festival founders and organizers (many of whom were present for an on-stage birthday ceremony,...
This year marked the 50th anniversary of the Ann Arbor Film Festival, which would be a milestone for any cinema-related event in the U.S. But for a festival that has carved out a niche in the area of experimental and avant-garde film and video, Aaff's achievement is especially noteworthy. Even within the rarefied realm of cinephilia, the avant-garde tends to be something on the margins, or even in the best of circumstances (e.g., the Rotterdam, New York, or Toronto film festivals) one part of a much larger whole. So the fact that Ann Arbor and its intrepid citizens have continued to support this strange little festival, and all the bizarre films the festival has thrown their way over the years, speaks very highly of both the town and the festival founders and organizers (many of whom were present for an on-stage birthday ceremony,...
- 5/7/2012
- MUBI
Still Raining, Still Dreaming (Phil Solomon) / Waterfront Follies (Ernie Gehr)
A perfect double feature. Still Raining, Still Dreaming continues Solomon's explorations of Grand Theft Auto, this time without the glitches, to make the film's background texture–the characters and shadows programmed to pass on-screen–his foreground; in Waterfront Follies Ernie Gehr tapes three sunsets in Brooklyn with a shitty decade-old camcorder that, as Daniel Kasman put it, “can barely register the image.” Gehr calls his movie a “manufactured universe,” which is what they both are: self-contained worlds that show natural phenomena to be a matter of artificial programming. On film, Waterfront Follies would just show three sunsets from the pier and unbearable to watch with the sun staring into the camera for 40 minutes. On video, the sun becomes a flat disc that lowers itself across the screen as the light of sky and the lapping water (heard lapping smoothly, but...
A perfect double feature. Still Raining, Still Dreaming continues Solomon's explorations of Grand Theft Auto, this time without the glitches, to make the film's background texture–the characters and shadows programmed to pass on-screen–his foreground; in Waterfront Follies Ernie Gehr tapes three sunsets in Brooklyn with a shitty decade-old camcorder that, as Daniel Kasman put it, “can barely register the image.” Gehr calls his movie a “manufactured universe,” which is what they both are: self-contained worlds that show natural phenomena to be a matter of artificial programming. On film, Waterfront Follies would just show three sunsets from the pier and unbearable to watch with the sun staring into the camera for 40 minutes. On video, the sun becomes a flat disc that lowers itself across the screen as the light of sky and the lapping water (heard lapping smoothly, but...
- 10/29/2009
- MUBI
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