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The 25th anniversary edition of the New York Indian Film Festival — one of the nation’s leading showcases of independent Indian cinema — unspools at New York’s Angelika through Sunday, June 22.

Officially opening Friday, June 20 with Raam Reddy’s 2024 Berlinale selection “The Fable,” the festival includes Anurag Kashyap’s intense Hindi-language thriller “Kennedy” as the Centerpiece on June 21. Kashyap will also host a master class on the challenges facing Bollywood and the future of independent cinema in India.

There’s also a tribute to late, great Indian filmmaker Shyam Benegal, with a 4K restoration of his 1976 landmark “Manthan,” about India’s White Revolution and revived by the Film Heritage Foundation.

As part of a program of films honoring master storytellers, the New York Indian Film Festival will also screen Dev Benegal’s 2024 short for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “An Arrested Moment.” The film explores Oscar-winning director James Ivory’s...

Subhash K Jha revisits the adaption of V.S. Naipaul’s novel Mystic Masseur, directed by Ismail Merchan, which was released in 2001. Om Puri’s thoughts on the film right after he returned from the location shoot in Trinidad are included in this special feature.

Ismail Merchant’s adaptation of V.S. Naipaul’s Mystic Masseur is no achievement. The ‘unfilmable’ novel is part of the immense Naipaulean vision of an existential conundrum where characters don’t mean to say what or who they are. But they are, period. No wonder the author denied permission to film any of his novels. Mystic Masseur was the first of his books, which the Nobel prize-winning V.S. Naipaul allowed to be filmed.

I’m sure Naipaul doesn’t regret his decision to let Merchant into the invaluable merchandise of his creativity. The film has turned out exactly how Naipaul would’ve wanted it to.

Jenny Beavan, a three-time Oscar winner, has plenty to celebrate this year. Her fellow costume designers have chosen her as the recipient of the Career Achievement Award at the 27th Annual Costume Designers Guild Awards on February 6. This honor recognizes her nearly five-decade-long career as one of Hollywood’s leading costume designers.

“It’s extremely special,” Beavan tells Gold Derby (watch the video interview above). “At the same time, I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’ve achieved everything I need to achieve in my career. I’m not finished yet!”

This year, the 12-time Academy Award nominee is back in contention for her post-apocalyptic designs in George Miller‘s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. The film tells the origin story of renegade warrior Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) before her encounter and team-up with Mad Max. It is a prequel to Beavan’s previous collaboration with Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road,...

An insightful appreciation of the director/producer team who gave us The Remains of the Day and launched the careers of Hugh Grant and Helena Bonham Carter

Documentary-maker Stephen Soucy pays a handsome, thorough tribute to the remarkable independent production company Merchant Ivory, a period-movie powerhouse with an intensely literary kind of creativity, comprising producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins.

It was a company which started with the bustling brilliance of Indian films such as Shakespeare Wallah (1965), whose depiction of a touring Shakespeare company in India effectively provided the template for Merchant’s vision of his own company: an extended family whose members should often accept his big delicious communal meals in lieu of payment.

For over four decades, James Ivory and Ismail Merchant collaborated to produce some of the most acclaimed period films of all time. Working under their banner, Merchant Ivory Productions, the American director and Indian producer created lavish literary adaptations and costume dramas that brought 19th-century worlds to life. Their films like A Room with a View and Howards End not only enthralled audiences but earned widespread critical acclaim.

In 2019, filmmaker Stephen Soucy paid tribute to Ivory and Merchant’s remarkable partnership with the documentary Merchant Ivory. Through interviews and behind-the-scenes glimpses, Soucy celebrated these cinema greats and their incredible bodies of work. However, the documentary also left some wanting more analysis of exactly what made Merchant Ivory’s films so special. This review will examine what the documentary did well in honoring Ivory and Merchant’s legacies, as well as areas that could have provided deeper insight into their enduring artistry.

From their feature film debut with the exquisite India-set drama “The Householder” in 1963 to their final collaboration on 2005’s sumptuous historical epic “The White Countess,” director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant were cinema’s most reliable director-producer team, a couple (in both work and life) responsible for a filmmaking streak that consisted of dozens of great movies and no bad or indifferent ones. Noteworthy for their supreme attention to visual detail, highly literate screenplays (often written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala), and flawlessly cast ensembles, the films of Merchant Ivory Productions were near-annual gifts that were often undervalued; unlike less prolific auteurs like Stanley Kubrick, Ivory never made us wait for his movies, which made it easier to take them for granted.

Not that Merchant Ivory Productions lacked box office success or acclaim in their time; “A Room with a View” (1985) was a bona fide smash that won three Academy...

A pair of moderate releases with a handful of docs and titles in limited release topline an end-of-summer specialty market. Labor Day weekend can be slow and indie openings are up against few new wide releases and holdovers from Deadpool & Wolverine to Inside Out 2. Meanwhile, the Venice film festival, with Telluride and TIFF coming soon, is generating indie headlines and the new crop of arthouse films.

Bleecker Street goes the widest under 1,000 screens with Mikael Håfström’s Slingshot, starring Casey Affleck and Laurence Fishburne, at 840 locations.

This psychological space thriller follows an elite trio of astronauts aboard a years-long, possibly compromised mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. As the team gears up for a highly dangerous slingshot maneuver that will either catapult them to Titan or into deep space, it becomes increasingly difficult for one astronaut to maintain his grip on reality.

Written by R. Scott Adams...

James Ivory has made so many films. And of the forty-plus he’s made––nearly everything under the Merchant Ivory Productions banner––many are masterpieces. Truly, you could count on one hand the number of living filmmakers as accomplished as James Ivory. So what an honor, then, to speak with him and filmmaker Stephen Soucy about the new documentary Merchant Ivory (directed by Soucy) and the many films of Merchant Ivory. There’s talk of those famous Ismail Merchant crew meals, the film Ivory thinks is their best, the one unrealized project that Ivory wishes they had made, and giving performance notes to Paul Newman on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.

The Film Stage: Stephen, with the documentary, it’s fascinating to rewatch it and think about the breadth of work as a documentarian. What is the “in,” initially, for you? What is the movie or the question...

One would be justified in assuming that Merchant Ivory, the legendary production company that gifted the world with classic costume dramas like The Remains of the Day starring Anthony Hopkins and A Room with a View starring Helena Bonham Carter, would hum along as a refined moviemaking machine so successful and respected that every production was a breeze. But as director Stephen Soucy explains in his informative and entertaining documentary, Merchant Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant and helmer James Ivory often worked under constraints so onerous that Hopkins once sued the company for unpaid wages.

Soucy's documentary is filled with such behind-the-scenes tea-spilling, yet its also quite affecting when it recounts the personal relationship between Ivory, who grew up in Oregon, and Merchant, a Mumbai-born Muslim. They were a gay couple during a fraught time for such relationships. However, despite cultural pitfalls and bouts with infidelity, they maintained an unbreakable personal...

Vanessa Redgrave with Madeleine Potter in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s adaptation of Henry James’s The Bostonians, directed by James Ivory

Stephen Soucy’s Merchant Ivory (co-written with Jon Hart) takes us into the extraordinary world of the creative quartet of producer Ismail Merchant, filmmaker James Ivory, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and composer Richard Robbins through film clips and on-camera interviews with Ivory and Robbins, actors Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter,...

One of cinema’s greatest partnerships is getting its due with Stephen Soucy’s forthcoming documentary Merchant Ivory, set for a release on August 30. Ahead of the release from Cohen Media Group, it’s prime time to revisit the work of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, and now those in NYC will get a chance. “Merchant Ivory: An Extraordinary Partnership,” taking place August 23-29 at Quad Cinema, features restorations of seven masterpieces from the Cohen Film Collection and we’re pleased to debut the exclusive series trailer.

Titles include Merchant Ivory classics Howards End, Maurice, The Bostonians, Heat and Dust, and Quartet, plus brand-new restorations of James Ivory’s 1977 ballroom drama Roseland starring Teresa Wright, Geraldine Chaplin, and Christopher Walken and Ismail Merchant’s 1993 directorial debut In Custody starring frequent Merchant Ivory collaborator Shashi Kapoor. James Ivory will be in person for post-screening Q&As on August 27 & 28 for select screenings of In Custody,...

The British film company, Merchant Ivory, introduced Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Hugh Grant, and Anthony Hopkins to the world through their Academy Award-winning works such as Howard's End, A Room With A View, The Remains Of The Day among others. A new documentary by film director and theater producer, Stephen Soucy takes you behind Merchant Ivory's successful run with director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant at the helm.

As the summer movie season comes to a close, August brings a shockingly stacked slate of offerings, topped by a film that is sure to age like a fine classic in years to come. Elsewhere we have accomplished debuts, action spectacles, and a thriller from the man who has recently returned to perfecting the formula.

15. Blink Twice (Zoë Kravitz; Aug. 23)

While its new title doesn’t quite have the hook of its original, Pussy Island, we’re curious what’s in store for the directorial debut of Zoë Kravitz. Featuring some cast––including Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Simon Rex, Adria Arjona, Haley Joel Osment, Kyle MacLachlan, Alia Shawkat, Christian Slater, and Geena Davis––the story follows a cocktail waitress who becomes infatuated with a tech mogul and travels with him to his private island, where things begin going wrong. Featuring cinematography by Adam Newport-Berra (The Last Black Man in San...

"No serious film lover should miss this documentary!" Cohen Film Collection has revealed an official trailer for Merchant Ivory, a documentary film by director Stephen Soucy. It's a look back at the iconic cinema partnership known as Merchant Ivory Productions, founded in 1961 by producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory. Merchant & Ivory were life and business partners from 1961 until Merchant's death in 2005. During their time together, they made 44 films (including A Room with a View and Howards End ). Merchant Ivory is the definitive presentation and tribute to the Merchant Ivory partnership, anchored by interviews with James Ivory and 41 other Merchant Ivory close collaborators detailing and celebrating their experiences of being a part of the "wandering company" helmed by the legendary producer Ismail Merchant. With a total of 6 Academy Award-winners among the notable artists participating with interviews, including Emma Thompson and Vanessa Redgrave, the documentary provides new and compelling perspectives on...

One of the greatest filmmaking partnerships to grace the industry is getting its deserved due in a new documentary. Directed by Stephen Soucy and featuring Dame Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Hugh Grant, Vanessa Redgrave, Rupert Graves, and James Wilby, Merchant Ivory explores the collaboration of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and their primary associates, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins. For those not familiar, Merchant Ivory Productions was responsible for the likes of A Room with a View, Howards End, The Remains of the Day, Maurice, and The Bostonians. Following a festival tour, the first trailer has now arrived from Cohen Media Group ahead of an August 30 release.

Here’s the synopsis: “Merchant Ivory (2023) is the first definitive feature documentary to lend new and compelling perspectives on the partnership, both professional and personal, of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant and their primary associates, writer Ruth...

The film collaborations of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory were so successful that “Merchant Ivory” became synonymous not just with the name of their production company but an entire style, if not genre, of filmmaking: Well-mounted period dramas of sophistication, taste, and erudition that come across today as light-years more refined than “Downton Abbey” or other costume dramas created in the wake of their popularity.

Stephen Soucy pays tribute to this remarkable collaboration and what made the films of Merchant Ivory so distinctive and unreplicatable in his new documentary of the same name, “Merchant Ivory,” the trailer for which IndieWire is exclusively debuting below. The documentary appeared at Doc NYC 2023 and was an official selection of the Palm Springs International Film Festival and Sarasota Film Festival earlier this year. It features commentary from Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, and others, including Ivory himself, now 96 years old, and the oldest Oscar winner ever,...

Cohen Media Group will give “Merchant Ivory,” a documentary about the professional and personal partnership of director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant and their production company — Merchant Ivory Productions — a theatrical release on Aug. 30 in select markets, including New York and Los Angeles, before expanding to theaters nationwide in September. The film will will debut at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan at at various theaters in Los Angeles, including Laemmle’s Royal.

Directed by Stephen Soucy, “Merchant Ivory” chronicles the pair’s road to success and how their company became synonymous with nuanced literary adaptations in the 1980s and 1990s, making an indelible impact on film culture. The company’s output of more than 40 productions over nearly 50 years includes Academy Award-winning films “A Room With a View” and “Howards End,” as well “The Remains of the Day,” “Mr. & Mrs. Bridge” and “Maurice.”

The doc is split into chapters with sections devoted to Merchant,...

They were the box-office titans behind sumptuous period masterpieces. Yet underneath, reveals a new warts-and-all film, they were skint, stressed, prone to blood-curdling bust-ups – and ping-ponging between lovers

If you were asked to guess which prestigious film-making duo had spent their career scratching around desperately for cash, trying to wriggle out of paying their cast and crew, ping-ponging between lovers, and having such blood-curdling bust-ups that their neighbours called the police, it might be some time before “Merchant Ivory” sprang to mind. But a new warts-and-all documentary about the Indian producer Ismail Merchant and the US director James Ivory makes it clear that the simmering passions in their films, such as the Em Forster trilogy of A Room With a View, Maurice and Howards End, were nothing compared to the scalding, volatile ones behind the camera.

From their initial meeting in New York in 1961 to Merchant’s death during surgery...

A brace of films exploring important subjects are in contention from India in the best live action short film category at the 96th Academy Awards.

Reema Maya’s “Nocturnal Burger,” an investigation of child abuse at a dysfunctional police station in Mumbai, had its world premiere at Sundance. It has since traveled to more than 50 film festivals globally and won 34 awards including the Oscar-qualifying Golden Chair for best international short at KortfilmFestivalen, Norway.

The cast includes Bebo Madiwal, Millo Sunka, Trupti Khamkar, Shrikant Mohan Yadav, Pushpendra Singh, Somnath Mondal, Vicky Shinde and Mukesh Pachode.

“The journey of this film started from a very unfortunate true incident a few years ago. Everything that happened that night stayed deep inside me, and ‘Nocturnal Burger’ is the first outlet it has had. It is an exploration of abuse and trauma; fantasy and escapism. It talks about the omnipresence of sexual abuse even in our public spaces,...

There’s often been unfair snobbery about the films of Merchant Ivory, the production banner founded in 1961 by producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory, which gives Stephen Soucy’s entertaining documentary study its title. The British costume drama was widely considered a wheezing genre — fusty, middlebrow and too calcified in its literary sources to acquire much cinematic vitality — when A Room with a View came along in 1986 and became a global art-house crossover hit. At their best, notably in Howards End and Remains of the Day, Merchant Ivory’s films stand the test of time as influential works that removed the starch from the stodgy period piece.

Contemporaries reductively dismissed their output as “Laura Ashley filmmaking,” referencing the design firm known for its pretty Romantic Victorian inspirations. But Merchant Ivory did more than anyone from the mid-1980s to the early ‘90s to popularize and legitimize the thematically and emotionally rich costume drama.

The best moments of Merchant Ivory––a documentary directed by Stephen Soucy concerning the legendary production company––feel like their most-successful pictures: restrained and revealing at the same time. Mostly told chronologically and split into chapters with talking heads to drive the narrative, the film dutifully recounts the agony and ecstasy of Merchant Ivory Productions. Sections are devoted to producer Ismail Merchant, director James Ivory, writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and composer Richard Robbins. Dedicated crew members and stars sing their praises while softly criticizing their methods of madness, most of the latter directed at Merchant. Highlights include recollections of Merchant’s culling together funds for each production, often starting a film before all the money was put together. Or Jhabvala’s brutal judgment: Ivory recalls her dislike of Maurice from pre-production onward, all because the novel wasn’t, in her opinion, up to snuff. Somewhat ironically, Maurice is perhaps the...

Exclusive: Cohen Media Group has acquired worldwide rights to Merchant Ivory, a documentary about the cinematic and personal partnership of filmmakers James Ivory and Ismail Merchant. The film directed by Stephen Soucy makes it world premiere on Saturday at Doc NYC.

Merchant Ivory became synonymous with quality filmmaking over a period of more than 40 years, earning particular acclaim for A Room with a View (1985), Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990), Howards End (1992), and The Remains of the Day (1993). They were life partners from 1961 until Merchant’s death in 2005.

Soucy’s film features interviews with major stars of Merchant Ivory productions, including Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, and Hugh Grant. Ivory, who turned 95 in June, and Charles S. Cohen, Cmg Chairman and CEO, serve as executive producers.

Director James Ivory (L) with actor Anthony Hopkins and producer Ismail Merchant on the set of ‘The Remains of the Day’ in 1993.

“Merchant Ivory...

The foundation of any story lies in the plot and characters of the script, and there are instances where legendary Hollywood directors have crafted extraordinary screenplays without directing them. Before any casting, location scouting, or directing can take place, there needs to be a script. While films can captivate through visuals, acting, and direction, a weak screenplay can hinder a story's connection with the audience.

Many of the most esteemed directors possess notable screenwriting skills, demonstrating a profound mastery of the foundational narrative they aim to convey. While many directors often get their breakthroughs by directing and writing their own pictures, there have been a few directors who actually got their big break from just writing alone. This was certainly the case for several of these Hollywood directors.

James Ivory - Call Me By Your Name

James Ivory, an acclaimed American film director, is well-known for his long-time collaboration with...

In 1985, English director James Ivory and his Indian producer and life partner Ismail Merchant became a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood after their romantic comedy period piece A Room with a View became a breakout hit. Even before the good name of Merchant-Ivory Productions was established, the duo somehow nabbed one of the greatest ensemble casts ever assembled, including Helena Bonham Carter, Julian Sands, Maggie Smith, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench, Denholm Elliott, Rupert Graves, Simon Callow, and many other heavyweights from the British character actor scene.

As might be expected from that list of names, the film is filled to the brim with memorable and scene-stealing performances. Throughout the runtime of A Room with a View, it seems that each supporting actor is more perfectly cast in their role than the last. Nearly every role is given hilarious and endlessly quotable dialogue (A Room with a View is...

Director James Ivory became an art house favorite thanks to a series of lofty literary adaptations produced by his partner Ismail Merchant. He shows no signs of slowing down in his twilight years. In fact, he recently become the oldest Oscar winner in history for penning the script to “Call Me by Your Name” (2017).

Although the majority of his work takes place overseas, Ivory was born in Berkeley, CA, in 1928. After cutting his teeth as a documentarian, he kicked off a professional and romantic relationship with Merchant, and together they formed the production company Merchant Ivory. Together, with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala serving as the third member of their team, they produced a series of acclaimed films based on the works of E. M. Forster, Henry James, Kazuo Ishiguro and other seemingly unadaptable sources.

They struck Oscar gold with a trio of films that earned nominations for Best Picture, Best Director,...

The All Quiet on the Western Front cast and crew began trooping into the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts as the clock was about to strike 1 a.m. Monday

They were brandishing gold statuettes. “This is the Vanity Fair Oscar Party. We were were curious about this place,” the partner of one of the movie’s key creatives tells me.

Related: Oscars Analysis: First-Timers Lift Spirits And Emotions In Ceremony That Was Old-School Academy Awards In A Good Way

Related Story Vanity Fair Oscar Party Photos: See Jeff Bezos, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Wilde, Cardi B, Kendall Jenner & Many More On The Red Carpet Related Story Oscars Analysis: First-Timers Lift Spirits And Emotions In Ceremony That Was Old-School Academy Awards In A Good Way Related Story Ke Huy Quan Says He Honored His Mom By Reclaiming Birth Name As An Adult Actor; Declares "Goonies Never Say Die" – Oscars Backstage...

Oscars 2023This year India basks in the spotlight with three Academy Award nominations – ‘Naatu Naatu’ from Rrr for Best Song; All That Breathes for Best Documentary Feature Film, and The Elephant Whisperers for Best Documentary Short Film.Youtube/ScreengrabAs the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gears up to announce the recipients of its honours this year at the 95th edition of the Oscars on March 12, Indian cinema enthusiasts look forward in anticipation of an elusive Oscar coming home. The year 2009 saw the ‘Mozart of Madras’, Ar Rahman, bag an Oscar for Best Original Score for the Danny Boyle directorial Slumdog Millionaire, which won eight Academy Awards. Slumdog Millionaire also got Resul Pookutti the Oscar for Best Sound Mixing, while lyricist Gulzar and Ar Rahman jointly won the award for the Best Original Song (‘Jai Ho’), taking India’s count for the movie to three. This year has brought...

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Ian Whittaker, the British actor turned Oscar-winning set decorator known for his work on such films as Alien, Howards End, Tommy and Anna and the King, died Oct. 16 of prostate cancer, The Guardian reported. He was 94.

Whittaker also served as set dresser on Charlie Chaplin’s A Countess From Hong Kong (1967), James Clavell’s To Sir, With Love (1967), Tony Richardson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) and Jim Sharman’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and as art director on Michael Ritchie’s Downhill Racer (1969) and Derek Jarman’s The Tempest (1979).

He collaborated with director Ken Russell on nine features, from the 1971 releases The Music Lovers, The Boy Friend and The Devils to Tommy (1975), Lisztomania (1975) — both featuring The Who’s Roger Daltrey — and the Rudolf Nureyev-starring Valentino (1977).

Whittaker received his Oscar — shared with his production designer Luciana Arrighi, with whom he...

Set decorator who worked for Merchant Ivory productions, and with Ken Russell and Ridley Scott

The set decorator Ian Whittaker, who has died of prostate cancer aged 94, won an Oscar for the 1992 screen version of Em Forster’s Howards End. This was among the best in a string of literary adaptations directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant and scripted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Whittaker was in the running for another Oscar for the same team’s film of Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1993), though his career was not confined to costume drama. “Council houses, stately homes, spaceships, I’ve done them all,” he said.

His first nomination was for Ridley Scott’s intergalactic horror smash Alien (1979). To build the futuristic interior of the Nostromo spacecraft, where most of the action takes place, he assembled bits and bobs of old washing machines: “We just stuck them...

Cohen Film Collection is continuing its restorations of classic Merchant Ivory productions, among them 1963’s “The Householder,” the first film collaboration between Ismail Merchant and James Ivory.

The classics label of Cohen Media Group, Cohen Film Collection is lining up the restorations of four titles that also include the 1977 episodic romantic drama “Roseland,” with Teresa Wright and Christopher Walken, and two films directed by Merchant, “In Custody” (1994), featuring Shashi Kapoor, and “The Proprietor” (1996), starring Jeanne Moreau.

Tim Lanza, Cohen Film Collection vice president and archivist, says he chose “In Custody” – Merchant’s feature directorial debut — and “The Proprietor” in particular “because James Ivory was keen to have a rerelease of some of the films that were directed by Ismael Merchant himself.”

“The Householder” and “In Custody” are also among Merchant Ivory’s India-set films, which Lanza is likewise excited to reintroduce to audiences.

Cohen Film Collection acquired a number of...

The press blurb for “A Cooler Climate,” a 75-minute documentary from veteran director and writer James Ivory, calls it “deeply personal,” but this is a relative term in his case. At 94 years of age, Ivory is an extraordinarily reticent man, and that is partly a result of being born in a certain time and place. There is only so much he can or will reveal about himself before retreating and closing several doors firmly behind him.

The impetus behind “A Cooler Climate” was the chance to showcase color footage that a young Ivory shot in Afghanistan in 1960 with the idea of making a documentary. This was a few years before he made his first narrative feature with his longtime partner and producer Ismail Merchant, with whom he eventually made a series of prestigious literary adaptations in the 1980s and 1990s with screenplays by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.

Ivory’s literary adaptations...

Located 14 miles north of San Francisco with a population of just over 14,000, the community of Mill Valley has evolved into a West Coast epicenter for showcasing independent and international films. As the Mill Valley Film Festival prepares to celebrate its 45th year with screenings of films by Rian Johnson (“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”), Darren Aronofsky (“The Whale”) and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, original founder and director Mark Fishkin attributes its pedigree for attracting top-tier talent to its unique combination of geographic and philosophical specificities.

“The Mill Valley Film Festival has the best of both worlds: the clout of an urban festival and the ambiance of the destination festival,” says Fishkin. “And this aspect of being professional but unpretentious is still very important to us.”

Fishkin conceived the festival, running Oct. 6-16 this year, precisely because he managed to be in the right place at the right time. A former...

Sony Pictures Classics presidents Michael Barker and Tom Bernard offered sound advice to U.S. theater chains, while explaining the reasons behind their continued success, during a discussion at the Zurich Film Festival on Saturday about their colorful and storied partnership that has spanned more than four decades.

Zurich is honoring the duo for their services to film culture with its Game Changer Award on Sunday.

Speaking to Roeg Sutherland, co-ceo of CAA Media Finance, at the festival’s Zurich Summit industry event, Barker and Bernard took an engaging and humorous trip down memory lane, from first working together at United Artists Classics and then at Orion Classics, before establishing Sony Pictures Classics in 1992, to working with Akira Kurosawa, and managing to reacquire “Howards End” from Ismail Merchant, despite Harvey Weinstein’s efforts to significantly outbid them.

In discussing the current state of the industry, however, Bernard expressed exasperation with...

English novelist E.M. Forster never married, and why would he? The author of “Maurice” and “Howards End” was gay, reportedly maintaining relations with a much-younger police officer over the span of four decades. That man did marry, and history has it that his wife knew their secret. In “My Policeman,” this unconventional arrangement lends itself quite nicely to one of those slightly stuffy yet respectable period pieces of the kind that Ismail Merchant and James Ivory have made of Forster’s novels, jumping back and forth in time between the sexy stuff and the maudlin way it resolves itself so many years later.

It all starts with a special delivery to a dreary seaside cottage: An invalid arrives at the house of retired policeman Tom (Linus Roache) and his schoolteacher wife Marion (Gina McKee). It was her idea to take in the unpleasant and largely uncooperative Patrick Hazelwood, whose presence clearly annoys her husband.

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“Brosnan Before Bond”

By Raymond Benson

In 1986, Pierce Brosnan almost became James Bond, nearly a decade before he actually did so. He had been cast to replace Roger Moore as the iconic 007, but at the last minute, NBC waved his contract for the television series Remington Steele at him, exercising the option to make another season. Brosnan was out, and Timothy Dalton was in.

And then… Remington Steele’s new season ended up consisting of only six episodes, finishing its run in early 1987. So, Brosnan had been baited and switched. Nevertheless, in the interim years between then and his appearance in GoldenEye (1995), the actor set about establishing himself as a leading man in feature films.

One of these early starring roles was in the 1988 production, The Deceivers, a British picture made by the elite Merchant Ivory Productions, and it was produced by Ismail Merchant himself.

Nicholas Meyer’s ‘other’ fantastic film project was ignored for all the wrong reasons; Pierce Brosnan fills a heroic leading role in a revisit of The Stranglers of Bombay, but filmed on location with great attention to authentic details. An officer of the East India Company detects an incredibly murderous cult of Kali-worshipping Thugs, a criminal underclass of thieves that practice ritual mass murder. The story has roots in history, snarled in colonial injustice and xenophobia. It’s a period picture unafraid to be controversial. Also starring Saeed Jaffrey and Helena Mitchell.

The Deceivers

Blu-ray

The Cohen Film Collection / Kino

1988 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 103 min. / Street Date November 16, 2021 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Saeed Jaffrey, Shashi Kapoor, Helena Michell, Keith Michell, David Robb.

Cinematography: Walter Lassally

Art Directors: Gianfranco Fumagalli, Ram Yedekar

Film Editor: Richard Trevor

Original Music: John Scott

Written by Michael Hirst from the novel by John Masters

Produced by Ismail Merchant,...

At 93, the Merchant Ivory director – and oldest ever Oscar winner – reflects on enduring love, delighting in his sexuality and defying film-making expectations

James Ivory’s movies revel in the elegance of the swan and simultaneously show how frantically its feet are paddling beneath the water. In the films for which he is best known – 1985’s A Room With a View, 1987’s Maurice, 1992’s Howards End and 1993’s The Remains of the Day, a fraction of his output – we see the effort put into making those rooms look so beautiful; the human cost of controlling your emotions. Cecil (Daniel Day-Lewis) pretending to clean his spectacles after Lucy (Helena Bonham Carter) breaks their engagement in A Room With a View; Stevens (Anthony Hopkins) looking at Miss Kenton (Emma Thompson) as she takes the book out of his hand: Ivory knows that an ocean of emotions can be contained in the smallest gesture.

Jerry Schatzberg is among the great American filmmakers who changed the landscape in the 1970s, but his name is one that has taken some time to get the recognition it deserves. While he may not have landed with the same initial impact as a Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese, the years have been kind to films like The Panic in Needle Park and Scarecrow, invigorating a passion that ranks them as some of the decade’s very best.

A renowned photographer with work in magazines such as Vogue and Esquire, Schatzberg is also responsible for the iconic cover of Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. This was all done before he made his feature debut with 1970’s Puzzle of a Downfall Child, starring then-fiancée Faye Dunaway. That would begin a career working with some of the best actors the world has ever seen, from Al Pacino and Gene Hackman...

“The Rapist,” which has its premiere next month at the Busan International Film Festival is the hardest hitting film that Indian filmmaker Aparna Sen has ever made.

A chronicler of different aspects of Indian life, Sen has previously won global acclaim for her eclectic body of work, which includes “36 Chowringhee Lane” (1981), “Paroma” (1985) and “Iti Mrinalini” (2010) as a director.

Sen is also one of India’s most feted actors who has worked with the stalwarts of the country’s cinema including Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen and Rituparno Ghosh and internationally with Ismail Merchant and James Ivory.

Sen had the idea for “The Rapist” some 15 years ago, and decided to revisit the subject after the recent spate of rape incidents in India. “I began to wonder about why men rape. No one is born a rapist. They go through infancy, through the toddler stage and through boyhood in all innocence,” Sen tells Variety.

Several Indian films, featuring eclectic subject matter, are making bids to snag Oscars in the shorts categories at the 2021 Academy Awards.

Keith Gomes’ “Shameless,” Tushar Tyagi’s “Saving Chintu” and Shaan Vyas’ “Natkhat” are aiming for nominations in the live action short category, and Saurav Vishnu’s “Tailing Pond” in the documentary short subject category.

All the films boast Bollywood or Hollywood pedigrees.

“Shameless” stars Sayani Gupta (Emmy-nominated Amazon series “Four More Shots Please”) and writer and actor Hussain Dalal (“Sitara”). Sound design is by Oscar-winner Resul Pookutty (“Slumdog Millionaire”). Shabinaa Khan (“Laxmii”) presents the film alongside producers Ashley Gomes, Sandeep Kamal and co-producer Girish Bobby Talwar.

Keith Gomes has a few shorts to his credit, including the award-winning “Doobie.” He also co-wrote and was an associate director on “Kick,” starring Bollywood royalty Salman Khan.

In “Shameless,” a work-from-home software engineer is trapped by a delivery girl, raising questions on the issues of entitlement,...

by Cláudio Alves

Director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant met in 1959, and quickly started a romantic and professional partnership. It lasted for 44 years until Merchant's death. Along with screenwriter, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, they made a name for themselves with the production of prestigious literary adaptations. Their first brushes with success came in the late 70s and early 80s, but it was in 1985 and 1986 that their lives changed. A Room With a View, their first E.M. Forster adaptation was a huge hit, both with critics and audiences. The picture even won three Oscars, including for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Following such a triumph, one would expect Merchant & Ivory to bask in their glory, perchance repeating the formula of their success. They did end up adapting another of Forster's works, though they chose what, at the time, was the author's least known and least respected book. The result of this unexpected...

On Feb. 27, 1992, Sony Pictures Classics held the premiere for James Ivory's Howards End adaptation in New York. The film would go on to earn nine Oscar nominations at the 65th Academy Awards, winning three, including best actress for Emma Thompson, adapted screenplay and art direction. The Hollywood Reporter's original review is below:  

From start to finish, Howards End is a sumptuous visual delight. But the beauty of this film is far more than skin deep.

Director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, two names synonymous with quality, have once again turned out a production that is ...

On Feb. 27, 1992, Sony Pictures Classics held the premiere for James Ivory's Howards End adaptation in New York. The film would go on to earn nine Oscar nominations at the 65th Academy Awards, winning three, including best actress for Emma Thompson, adapted screenplay and art direction. The Hollywood Reporter's original review is below:  

From start to finish, Howards End is a sumptuous visual delight. But the beauty of this film is far more than skin deep.

Director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant, two names synonymous with quality, have once again turned out a production that is ...

Exclusive: The 26th Annual Austin Film Festival & Writers Conference is putting some shine on the often unsung and overlooked heroes of film: the writer. This year, the fest revealed that they will be honoring Oscar-winning screenwriters James Ivory with the “Extraordinary Contribution to Film” Award and Ron Bass with the “Distinguished Screenwriter” Award. The fest, which takes place October 24-31, also unveiled their programming which includes conversations with Lulu Wang, director and writer of the critically acclaimed dramedy The Farewell and Sofia Alvarez, the scribe behind the Netflix hit To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.

Ivory has received multiple Oscar nominations for directing and writing. He won the Oscar for adapting Andre Aciman’s novel Call Me by Your Name which was directed by Luca Guadagnino. He also received the BAFTA and the Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. In addition, he received d Best Director Oscar...

And the next prime minister of Great Britain will be… Hugh Grant!

Okay, maybe not.

However, Grant says he has entertained the idea of running for office. “I have thought about it a bit to be honest,” Grant says in this week’s episode of “The Big Ticket,” Variety and iHeart’s movie podcast.

The 58-year-old actor knows his way around politics after being on the forefront of the battle against British tabloids that regularly bugged his and other celebrities’ phones. His anti-hacking campaign uncovered cozy relationships that elected officials had with press barons, including Rupert Murdoch.

He even has an campaign slogan. “My main slogan would be, ‘I Don’t Want to Be Reelected.’ It seems to me that the desire to be reelected or be a career politician poisons everything,” Grant said.

While Grant says he “gets incandescently angry” watching today’s political news, the chances of him actually running are pretty slim.

Henry James novels have made terrific movies; this precise, strongly-felt adaptation expresses interior feelings that James — the master of ambiguity — may not have intended, yet seem essential to the story. A dynamic young female public speaker transfixes all around her, and is taken in and mentored by an activist for the women’s movement. But will a conventional, confining, repressive romance undo a perfect political relationship? The Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala combination does a powerful book full justice; Vanessa Redgrave got the awards attention but it’s also one of the best films by Christopher Reeve.

The Bostonians

Blu-ray

Cohen Film Collection

1984 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 122 min. / Street Date May 21, 2019 / 30.98

Starring: Christopher Reeve, Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Tandy, Madeleine Potter, Nancy Marchand, Wesley Addy, Barbara Bryne, Linda Hunt, Charles McCaughan, Nancy New, Jon Van Ness, Wallace Shawn, Peter Bogyo.

Cinematography: Walter Lassally

Film Editor: Mrk Potter Jr., Katherine Wenning

Original Music: Richard Robbins

Written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala,...

James Ivory celebrates his 91st birthday on June 7, 2019. The director, who became an art house favorite thanks to a series of lofty literary adaptations produced by his partner Ismail Merchant, shows no signs of slowing down in his twilight years. In fact, he recently become the oldest Oscar winner in history for penning the script to “Call Me by Your Name” (2017). In honor of his birthday, let’s take a look back at 15 of his greatest films, ranked worst to best.

Although the majority of his work takes place overseas, Ivory was born in Berkeley, CA, in 1928. After cutting his teeth as a documentarian, he kicked off a professional and romantic relationship with Merchant, and together they formed the production company Merchant Ivory. Together, with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala serving as the third member of their team, they produced a series of acclaimed films based on the works of E.

Most cinephiles associate the Merchant Ivory catalogue with English dramas like “A Room With a View” and “Howards End” — even the film company’s own Wikipedia page makes amusing note of how many of their best-known features follow “genteel characters who suffer from disillusionment and tragic entanglements” and often involve some kind of house — but with 44 films in its library, Merchant Ivory contains its own vastly different multitudes.

One such unexpected entry: the Jean Rhys adaptation “Quartet,” inspired by the “Wide Sargasso Sea” author’s own experiences as an up-and-comer in swinging Paris. While the film’s pedigree is classic Merchant Ivory — written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant — its subject matter and tone are a fair bit different than some of the more staid dramas in the company’s oeuvre. For one thing, it’s a surprisingly dramatic story of a love triangle gone darkly awry.

This flawed Merchant Ivory gem picks apart imperial and sexual politics to reveal a story of forbidden love – but of what kind?

Those two obliterating forces in the title are what officers of the British Raj famously and self-pityingly resented. Other colonialists saw empire as a personal adventure and an arena of secret delight and shame, a personal drama obscured by the dazzling glare and discomfiting dustclouds.

Heat and Dust, the 1983 movie adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from her own Booker-winning novel, directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant, is now revived in British cinemas. It emerges from literary and cinematic styles that haven’t been fashionable for many a year: the Anglo-Indian world made famous by Em Forster, Paul Scott and Jg Farrell and the costumed Edwardian period-prestige movies that came out under the Merchant Ivory banner.

Ahead of the re-release of Heat and Dust, we apply a social pecking order to the duo’s best movies that had James Ivory as director and Ismail Merchant producing

No one liked this adaptation of Tana Janowitz’s novel, and I ain’t gonna lie, it’s pretty bad (save for an amazing turn from a drag Supremes troupe). But I have to include it for its sheer bonkersness. How did Merchant Ivory end up making a movie about the downtown New York art scene? Nothing about it makes sense, and I admire that.