By the late 1960s, following the Second Vatican Council reforms, thousands of nuns had left their orders. What prompted this exodus? It’s a fascinating question, and when “Novitiate” retains its focus, it ventures towards some interesting answers. Writer-director Maggie Betts (who made the documentary “The Carrier”) does sometimes wander too far afield in her feature debut. Fortunately, a steel-spined Melissa Leo is always ready to wrench us back in. Leo plays Reverend Mother, the utterly unyielding leader of the strict Roman Catholic Order of the Sisters of Blessed Rose. It is 1964, and a new group of girls has just arrived.
- 10/26/2017
- by Elizabeth Weitzman
- The Wrap
Director Maggie Betts and Dp Kat Westergaard became creative partners on The Carrier, a 2010 documentary that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The two worked together again on a 2014 short (Engram) and again on Novitiate, which debuted at Sundance last week. The film marks Betts’ fiction feature debut and stars Margaret Qualley and Melissa Leo. Westergaard spoke with Filmmaker ahead of the festival about the film’s painterly aesthetic, lighting challenges and “ghostly intimacy.” Novitiate will screen in competition six times during the 2017 Sundance Film Festival Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led […]...
- 1/23/2017
- by Filmmaker Staff
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Sony Pictures Classics is finalizing a deal to acquire the worldwide rights to the drama “Novitiate,” which premiered Friday in the Sundance Film Festival’s U.S. Dramatic Competition section. The deal was somewhere in the seven figures, Deadline reports.
Read More: Amazon Wins ‘The Big Sick’ Bidding War With $12 Million Buy — Sundance 2017
Directed by Margaret Betts and set primarily in 1964 and 1965, the film centers on a young woman training to become a nun named Cathleen (Margaret Qualley). The teen struggles with faith, sexuality, and her relationship with the domineering Reverend Mother (Melissa Leo). The movie co-stars Julianne Nicholson, Dianna Agron, and Morgan Saylor.
“Both introspective and entertaining, Betts never forgets that her young nuns are still teenage girls, and ‘Novitiate’ rings as true as any other film about coming of age,” IndieWire’s Kate Erbland wrote in her review of the film. Carole Peterman, Celine Rattray and Trudie Styler served as producers,...
Read More: Amazon Wins ‘The Big Sick’ Bidding War With $12 Million Buy — Sundance 2017
Directed by Margaret Betts and set primarily in 1964 and 1965, the film centers on a young woman training to become a nun named Cathleen (Margaret Qualley). The teen struggles with faith, sexuality, and her relationship with the domineering Reverend Mother (Melissa Leo). The movie co-stars Julianne Nicholson, Dianna Agron, and Morgan Saylor.
“Both introspective and entertaining, Betts never forgets that her young nuns are still teenage girls, and ‘Novitiate’ rings as true as any other film about coming of age,” IndieWire’s Kate Erbland wrote in her review of the film. Carole Peterman, Celine Rattray and Trudie Styler served as producers,...
- 1/22/2017
- by Graham Winfrey
- Indiewire
What makes a young woman choose to be a nun? In Margaret Betts’ revelatory “Novitiate,” which traces the journey of the starry-eyed Cathleen, it begins in parochial school when a nun explains that the Catholic faith is different from all others because it’s built on the twin pillars of love and sacrifice. Combine that with the sense of peace that she gains from the church, and boom: This is a lovesick teenage girl, and Cathleen’s beloved is no less than God.
Largely set in 1964 and 1965, just as the Second Vatican Council (aka Vatican II) was beginning to roll out its new decrees for the way the church should be run, “Novitiate” follows Cathleen (a breakout Margaret Qualley) first as a postulate, then as the titular novitiate, which is regarded as a grueling training period in which young nuns “learn to be perfect.” Her mother (an excellent Julianne Nicholson...
Largely set in 1964 and 1965, just as the Second Vatican Council (aka Vatican II) was beginning to roll out its new decrees for the way the church should be run, “Novitiate” follows Cathleen (a breakout Margaret Qualley) first as a postulate, then as the titular novitiate, which is regarded as a grueling training period in which young nuns “learn to be perfect.” Her mother (an excellent Julianne Nicholson...
- 1/21/2017
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Better This World, The Tiniest Place and the other nominations for the 2011 Ida Awards have been announced. The 27th Annual Ida Awards (documentary awards) are presented by the International Documentary Association (Ida) “a non-profit organization promoting documentary film, video and new media, to support the efforts of documentary filmmaking and video production makers around the world and to increase public appreciation and demand for the art of the documentary…the Ida has approximately 2,800 members in 53 countries, providing a forum for supporters and suppliers of documentary film making.”
This years presentation will see “the 2011 Career Achievement Award [awarded] to legendary documentary filmmaker Les Blank. He will be presented his award by Werner Herzog. Director Danfung Dennis (Hell and Back Again) will receive the 2011 Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award.”
The full listing of the 2011 Ida Awards nominations is below.
Best Feature Award
Better This World
Directors/Producers/Writers: Katie Galloway & Kelly Duane de la Vega...
This years presentation will see “the 2011 Career Achievement Award [awarded] to legendary documentary filmmaker Les Blank. He will be presented his award by Werner Herzog. Director Danfung Dennis (Hell and Back Again) will receive the 2011 Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award.”
The full listing of the 2011 Ida Awards nominations is below.
Best Feature Award
Better This World
Directors/Producers/Writers: Katie Galloway & Kelly Duane de la Vega...
- 10/28/2011
- by filmbook
- Film-Book
Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan in Eugene Jarecki's Reagan Euthanasia, Political Repression, Liberian Warlord: International Documentary Association Nominations David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award This award recognizes exceptional achievement in non-fiction film and video production at the university level and brings greater public and industry awareness to the work of students in the documentary field. GUAÑAPE Sur Director/Executive Producer/Writer: János Richter Executive Producers: Heidi Gronauer, Lorenzo Paccagnella Producer: Georg Zeller ZeLIG- School for Documentary, Andanafilms, Icarus Films Heart-quake Director/Writer: Mark Olexa Executive Producers: Heidi Gronauer, Lorenzo Paccagnella Producers: Georg Zeller, Nadia Caruso ZeLIG – School for Documentary River Of Victory Director/Producer: Trevor Wright Executive Director: Jack Emery Producers: A. Todd Smith, Jordan Augustine Full Mountain Pictures, Brigham Young University Smoke Songs Director/Producer/Writer: Briar March Executive Producers: Jan Krawitz, Jamie Meltzer, Kris Samuelson On the Level Production Transit Director/Writer: Regina Tan Producers: Haley Quartarone, Juvia Chua,...
- 10/27/2011
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
If you were to watch "The Carrier" without subtitles, there are many points at which you'd suspect nothing is wrong and perhaps that's the saddest statement the film makes of all. A documentary about the life of a polygamous family in Zambia where the beauty of the landscape is diametrically opposed with the tragic spread of HIV between the members of the Mweeba clan, Maggie Betts' film often features its subjects as expressionless when discussing contraction of the disease as though it's an accepted part of life in their community, a feeling that emerges not out of a lack of care, but years of defeat.
For the family's patriarch Abarcon, it's a minor inconvenience, a price he pays for sleeping around with multiple partners both within and outside of his marriage, but for his three wives Brenda, Matildah and Mutinta, it's tantamount to a death sentence well before they're felled...
For the family's patriarch Abarcon, it's a minor inconvenience, a price he pays for sleeping around with multiple partners both within and outside of his marriage, but for his three wives Brenda, Matildah and Mutinta, it's tantamount to a death sentence well before they're felled...
- 4/22/2011
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
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