Documentary festival IDFA, which runs Nov. 8 to 19 in Amsterdam, has revealed its first 50 titles, including the top 10 Chinese films selected by Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing, IDFA’s Guest of Honor.
The festival has also revealed the films playing in two of the three Focus programs: Fabrications, which probes the difference between reality and realism, and 16 Worlds on 16, an homage to 16mm film.
Wang’s selection will take the viewer “on a contemplative journey into contemporary Chinese cinema,” according to the festival. “The films and their politics are subtle in their film language, representing a wave of filmmaking rarely shown internationally.”
The selection (see below), which covers films produced since 1999, includes Lixin Fan’s 2009 film “Last Train Home,” which was supported by IDFA’s Bertha Fund. The film documents the millions of migrant factory workers that travel home for Spring Festival each year.
Fabrications explores the relationship of trust between documentary film and audiences,...
The festival has also revealed the films playing in two of the three Focus programs: Fabrications, which probes the difference between reality and realism, and 16 Worlds on 16, an homage to 16mm film.
Wang’s selection will take the viewer “on a contemplative journey into contemporary Chinese cinema,” according to the festival. “The films and their politics are subtle in their film language, representing a wave of filmmaking rarely shown internationally.”
The selection (see below), which covers films produced since 1999, includes Lixin Fan’s 2009 film “Last Train Home,” which was supported by IDFA’s Bertha Fund. The film documents the millions of migrant factory workers that travel home for Spring Festival each year.
Fabrications explores the relationship of trust between documentary film and audiences,...
- 9/19/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
In 1983, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, along with Media Study/Buffalo, created a touring retrospective of avant-garde films, primarily feature-length ones and a few shorts, which they called “The American New Wave 1958-1967.” To accompany the tour, a hefty catalog was produced that included notes on the films, essays by film historians and critics, writings by major underground film figures and more.
The retrospective was created at a time when financially viable independent filmmaking was on the rise, such as films made by John Sayles, Wayne Wang and Susan Seidelman. According to the co-curators of the retrospective, Melinda Ward and Bruce Jenkins, the objective of the tour was to:
provide a more adequate picture than conventional history affords us of a rare period of American cinematic invention and thereby prepare a coherent critical and historical context for the reception of the new work by the current generation of independent filmmakers.
The retrospective was created at a time when financially viable independent filmmaking was on the rise, such as films made by John Sayles, Wayne Wang and Susan Seidelman. According to the co-curators of the retrospective, Melinda Ward and Bruce Jenkins, the objective of the tour was to:
provide a more adequate picture than conventional history affords us of a rare period of American cinematic invention and thereby prepare a coherent critical and historical context for the reception of the new work by the current generation of independent filmmakers.
- 11/25/2017
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Don’T Blink – Robert Frank Screens September 23rd – 25th at 7:30pm at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood).
Robert Frank, now 91 years old, is among the most influential artists of the last half-century. His seminal volume, The Americans, published in 1958, records the Swiss-born photographer’s candid reactions to peculiarly American versions of poverty and racism. Today it is a classic work that helped define the off-the-cuff, idiosyncratic elegance that are hallmarks of Frank’s artistry. Director Laura Israel (Frank’s longtime film editor) and producer Melinda Shopsin were given unprecedented access to the notably irascible artist. The assembled portrait is not unlike Frank’s own movies – rough around the edges and brimming with surprises and insights – calling to mind Frank’s quintessential underground movie, the 1959 Beat short, Pull My Daisy (co-directed by Alfred Leslie). Don’t Blink includes clips from Frank’s rarely seen movies, among them Me and My Brother...
Robert Frank, now 91 years old, is among the most influential artists of the last half-century. His seminal volume, The Americans, published in 1958, records the Swiss-born photographer’s candid reactions to peculiarly American versions of poverty and racism. Today it is a classic work that helped define the off-the-cuff, idiosyncratic elegance that are hallmarks of Frank’s artistry. Director Laura Israel (Frank’s longtime film editor) and producer Melinda Shopsin were given unprecedented access to the notably irascible artist. The assembled portrait is not unlike Frank’s own movies – rough around the edges and brimming with surprises and insights – calling to mind Frank’s quintessential underground movie, the 1959 Beat short, Pull My Daisy (co-directed by Alfred Leslie). Don’t Blink includes clips from Frank’s rarely seen movies, among them Me and My Brother...
- 9/22/2016
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Before its flame was extinguished, New York’s legendary Kim’s Video contributed further to the world of cinephilia by polling better-known customers about their favorite films. One of these customers happened to be Allen Ginsberg, a figure whose relative lack of experience in cinema certainly won’t stand as any sort of qualifier. Thanks to The Allen Ginsberg Project (via Open Culture), we can now get a wider — and, to our eyes, more immediately understandable — grasp of what made this generation-defining voice tick.
Two interests — French Poetic Realism and the work of (or at least work heavily relating to) his fellow Beat poets — announce themselves rather clearly, given the fact that they arguably occupy 90% of the final list. The sole “outsider” is Battleship Potemkin, a picture that, with fierce political intentions and poetic inclinations in its cutting, nevertheless makes perfect sense as a Ginsberg favorite. Some of these are...
Two interests — French Poetic Realism and the work of (or at least work heavily relating to) his fellow Beat poets — announce themselves rather clearly, given the fact that they arguably occupy 90% of the final list. The sole “outsider” is Battleship Potemkin, a picture that, with fierce political intentions and poetic inclinations in its cutting, nevertheless makes perfect sense as a Ginsberg favorite. Some of these are...
- 12/7/2015
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
If you, at the very least, have a passing interest in the Beat Generation, then you will definitely get a kick out of this oddball short film from 1959 called “Pull My Daisy.” The film stars Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky as themselves, more-or-less, and they’re invited into the home of a railway brakeman whose wife had invited a bishop over for dinner. After getting bombarded with a barrage of questions from the beat poets (“Is a cockroach holy?), the bishop leaves in a bit of a huff, much to the dismay of the wife. The short is set in the Lower East Side of New York and it’s shot in a very loose, casual, off-the-cuff style. The entire film is narrated by novelist/poet Jack Kerouac who also wrote the short. It was shot and directed by photographer Robert Frank and Abstract Expressionist painter Alfred Leslie, and according to Frank,...
- 5/20/2014
- by Ken Guidry
- The Playlist
It's no surprise that the film adaptation of Kerouac's book is rocky: the Beats have rarely fared well on the big screen
The Beat generation was vibrant for just a short cultural moment, proclaiming a loud "no way" to the great American "yes sir" sighed by fat, complacent Eisenhower-era America. The Beats sought escape in jazz, marijuana and heroin; in racial and sexual transgression and spiritual questing; in language still deemed obscene (Ginsberg: "America, go fuck yourself with your atom bomb"); and with a determination to live free of ambitions and schedules. Their exploits unfolded in a world now vanished, where racial segregation was the norm, and jazz was still a living music, not a museum art; before Eisenhower shrank America with the transcontinental highways, and the road was still The Road. They're people in history now, the Beats.
It's taken 55 years for Kerouac's On The Road, the movement's signature novel,...
The Beat generation was vibrant for just a short cultural moment, proclaiming a loud "no way" to the great American "yes sir" sighed by fat, complacent Eisenhower-era America. The Beats sought escape in jazz, marijuana and heroin; in racial and sexual transgression and spiritual questing; in language still deemed obscene (Ginsberg: "America, go fuck yourself with your atom bomb"); and with a determination to live free of ambitions and schedules. Their exploits unfolded in a world now vanished, where racial segregation was the norm, and jazz was still a living music, not a museum art; before Eisenhower shrank America with the transcontinental highways, and the road was still The Road. They're people in history now, the Beats.
It's taken 55 years for Kerouac's On The Road, the movement's signature novel,...
- 10/5/2012
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
(This article is posted to honor filmmaker George Kuchar, who passed away just this week. As an artist, he was a pioneer and a visionary and the impact of his legacy on the film world is too great to comprehend. But, we try.)
On Friday, Dec. 11, 1964, several filmmakers met at a meeting hall called the Eventorium in NYC to participate in a symposium called 8 mm.: Avant-Garde of the Future?.
Speaking on the panel were Lenny Lipton, Alfred Leslie, Serge Gavronsky and Mike & George Kuchar. Two members of the panel are not primarily known for working with 8 mm. Leslie, co-director of the legendary film Pull My Daisy, filmed primarily — and maybe exclusively — in 16 mm; while Gavronsky is a poet and novelist.
As for the others, a decade later, Lipton would go on to literally write the book on this particular film gauge, 1975′s The Super 8 Book. And the Kuchar brothers were known,...
On Friday, Dec. 11, 1964, several filmmakers met at a meeting hall called the Eventorium in NYC to participate in a symposium called 8 mm.: Avant-Garde of the Future?.
Speaking on the panel were Lenny Lipton, Alfred Leslie, Serge Gavronsky and Mike & George Kuchar. Two members of the panel are not primarily known for working with 8 mm. Leslie, co-director of the legendary film Pull My Daisy, filmed primarily — and maybe exclusively — in 16 mm; while Gavronsky is a poet and novelist.
As for the others, a decade later, Lipton would go on to literally write the book on this particular film gauge, 1975′s The Super 8 Book. And the Kuchar brothers were known,...
- 9/9/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Avant-garde director best known for Hallelujah the Hills
Adolfas Mekas, who has died aged 85, was the director of Hallelujah the Hills (1963), perhaps the most light-hearted, amusing, innovative, allusive and freewheeling film to come out of the New American Cinema Group established in 1962. One of the clauses in its manifesto reads: "We believe that cinema is indivisibly a personal expression. We therefore reject the interference of producers, distributors and investors until our work is ready to be projected on the screen." Mekas, his older brother Jonas, and other avant-garde members of the group, such as Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie, Shirley Clarke and Gregory Markopoulos, lived by this doctrine in all their film-making.
Shot in black and white in 16mm, Hallelujah the Hills, which cost only $75,000 from concept to can, was directed, written and edited by Mekas, with Jonas as assistant; a young friend, David Stone, as first-time producer; Stone's wife, Barbara,...
Adolfas Mekas, who has died aged 85, was the director of Hallelujah the Hills (1963), perhaps the most light-hearted, amusing, innovative, allusive and freewheeling film to come out of the New American Cinema Group established in 1962. One of the clauses in its manifesto reads: "We believe that cinema is indivisibly a personal expression. We therefore reject the interference of producers, distributors and investors until our work is ready to be projected on the screen." Mekas, his older brother Jonas, and other avant-garde members of the group, such as Robert Frank, Alfred Leslie, Shirley Clarke and Gregory Markopoulos, lived by this doctrine in all their film-making.
Shot in black and white in 16mm, Hallelujah the Hills, which cost only $75,000 from concept to can, was directed, written and edited by Mekas, with Jonas as assistant; a young friend, David Stone, as first-time producer; Stone's wife, Barbara,...
- 6/8/2011
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Maverick director best known for his film of Ulysses – widely seen as a noble failure
There must be something quixotic about a director who sets out to make a film of James Joyce's Ulysses. A passionate Joycean, Joseph Strick, who has died aged 86, was undeterred by the challenge and the obstacles: "Even before I made it, people were saying it was unfilmable. I think the truth is, some people just find the book unreadable."
The iconoclastic Strick first envisaged an 18-hour version, faithful to every word, but unsurprisingly he could not get anyone to finance it. When the final two-hour version, shot in Dublin, was completed in 1967, it fell foul of censorship – just like the novel. The British Board of Film Censors requested 29 cuts to remove sexual references from Molly Bloom's final, expletive-laden soliloquy. Strick obliged by replacing all of the offending footage with a blank screen and a high-pitched shrieking sound.
There must be something quixotic about a director who sets out to make a film of James Joyce's Ulysses. A passionate Joycean, Joseph Strick, who has died aged 86, was undeterred by the challenge and the obstacles: "Even before I made it, people were saying it was unfilmable. I think the truth is, some people just find the book unreadable."
The iconoclastic Strick first envisaged an 18-hour version, faithful to every word, but unsurprisingly he could not get anyone to finance it. When the final two-hour version, shot in Dublin, was completed in 1967, it fell foul of censorship – just like the novel. The British Board of Film Censors requested 29 cuts to remove sexual references from Molly Bloom's final, expletive-laden soliloquy. Strick obliged by replacing all of the offending footage with a blank screen and a high-pitched shrieking sound.
- 6/17/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
First the history, then the list:
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
- 5/3/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
So, with this week, I’m thinking up and trying to implement new ways to pull links from more diverse sources, so that I’m not just linking to the same types of posts. Although some of my “regulars” are posting consistently interesting things, too. Let’s start mixing it up!
You might have to register for these, but first here’s a classic review from the 1975 New York Times by Richard Eder for a re-release of Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Pull My Daisy, the notorious 1959 Beat film. Then, more recently, Dave Itzkoff interviews Chuck Workman, the director of Visionaries, a documentary about Jonas Mekas and the history of avant-garde film. The site Guest of a Guest also reviews Visionaries and includes an early — and I mean early — acting clip of Robert Downey Jr. in one of his dad’s films. Another blast from the past, Making Light...
You might have to register for these, but first here’s a classic review from the 1975 New York Times by Richard Eder for a re-release of Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Pull My Daisy, the notorious 1959 Beat film. Then, more recently, Dave Itzkoff interviews Chuck Workman, the director of Visionaries, a documentary about Jonas Mekas and the history of avant-garde film. The site Guest of a Guest also reviews Visionaries and includes an early — and I mean early — acting clip of Robert Downey Jr. in one of his dad’s films. Another blast from the past, Making Light...
- 4/25/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Feb. 7
6:00 p.m.
Anthology Film Archives
2nd Ave at 2nd St.
NYC, NY
Hosted by: Anthology Film Archives
Two classic underground films from the 1950s are going to be screened back-to-back. First is Jean Genet’s Un Chant D’Amour (1950) and second is Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Pull My Daisy (1959).
Pull My Daisy is a classic of Beat cinema and is based on an unfinished play written by Jack Kerouac, who provides the poetic narration. A working class husband embarrasses his wife when his unruly poet friends — played by real-life poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso — crash a dinner party being held for a bishop and his family. The film is based on a true story from Kerouac’s life.
The making of Pull My Daisy is covered extensively in Jack Sargeant’s essential underground film history book Naked Lens: Beat Cinema, which also includes lengthy interviews...
6:00 p.m.
Anthology Film Archives
2nd Ave at 2nd St.
NYC, NY
Hosted by: Anthology Film Archives
Two classic underground films from the 1950s are going to be screened back-to-back. First is Jean Genet’s Un Chant D’Amour (1950) and second is Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie’s Pull My Daisy (1959).
Pull My Daisy is a classic of Beat cinema and is based on an unfinished play written by Jack Kerouac, who provides the poetic narration. A working class husband embarrasses his wife when his unruly poet friends — played by real-life poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso — crash a dinner party being held for a bishop and his family. The film is based on a true story from Kerouac’s life.
The making of Pull My Daisy is covered extensively in Jack Sargeant’s essential underground film history book Naked Lens: Beat Cinema, which also includes lengthy interviews...
- 2/5/2010
- by screenings
- Underground Film Journal
Tim Burton invades New York, New Italian Cinema hits Los Angeles, Harold and Kumar spread holiday cheer in Austin and everywhere you look, they're celebrating All Tomorrow's Parties -- just some of the holiday film fun you can have this winter at your local repertory theater.
More Holiday Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]
[Repertory Calendar] [Anywhere But a Movie Theater]
New York
92YTribeca
In November, the 92YTribeca Screening Room will have some special guests in the house when it hosts the already sold out "A Conversation with Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman" on November 10th, with the two longtime collaborators discussing their latest film "Fantastic Mr. Fox." But tickets are still available for the night before (Nov. 9th), when actor Ben Foster and director Oren Moverman will screen their acclaimed new post-war drama "The Messenger". Much of the rest of the month is devoted to Cinema Tropical's Ten Years of New Argentine Cinema series with screenings of Adrián Caetano's immigration...
More Holiday Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]
[Repertory Calendar] [Anywhere But a Movie Theater]
New York
92YTribeca
In November, the 92YTribeca Screening Room will have some special guests in the house when it hosts the already sold out "A Conversation with Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman" on November 10th, with the two longtime collaborators discussing their latest film "Fantastic Mr. Fox." But tickets are still available for the night before (Nov. 9th), when actor Ben Foster and director Oren Moverman will screen their acclaimed new post-war drama "The Messenger". Much of the rest of the month is devoted to Cinema Tropical's Ten Years of New Argentine Cinema series with screenings of Adrián Caetano's immigration...
- 11/3/2009
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
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