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Jonathan Perel's Corporate Accountability is showing exclusively on Mubi starting October 13, 2021 in the series Undiscovered. This introduction is sourced from a conversation between Perel and Michael Pattison first published by Alchemy Film & Arts in April 2020.Corporate Accountability is a film based on a book that was published by the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. It describes how 25 companies helped the dictatorship in the repression and disappearance of its own workers. Being the state of Argentina the one publishing the book is very important, because it’s not that the film is making a selection or investigating these companies, but the government itself.Although the book is available online, very few printed copies exist, and it’s not really well-known. With the film I want to make the book visible, and to create an image for it. An image that will connect the past with the present. To show these same companies today,...

The Scottish gathering, unspooling from 29 April-3 May, will showcase 171 works encompassing experimental film, artists’ moving image and animation, split into live screenings and on-demand programmes. Scotland’s Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival will run for the 11th time from 29 April-3 May. The event, co-directed by Rachael Disbury and Michael Pattison, will showcase 171 works encompassing experimental film, artists’ moving image and animation, split into live screenings and on-demand programmes. The entire programme will be available worldwide, for free. In addition, all 171 films will be captioned for d/Deaf audiences, and a selection of audio-described programmes can also be enjoyed by blind and partially sighted audiences. Discussion events and Q&As will also be live-captioned. This year’s iteration includes two keynote speeches by historian Vijay Prashad, a live performance by Natasha Ruwona, an expanded talk by Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa, and programmes guest-curated by Greg de Cuir Jr and the “New...

The Scottish festival, co-directed by Michael Pattison and Rachael Disbury, will take place entirely online owing to the ongoing Covid-19 outbreak. The tenth edition of the Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, exceptionally renamed Alchemy Live, will be the online iteration of the annual flagship event organised by Alchemy Film & Arts, whose activities are year-round and are not limited to the days of the festival. On this occasion, the event will take place from 1-3 May. Alchemy Live will include 15 film programmes, including ten curated shorts screenings, three new “spotlight” slots and two features (one UK premiere and one European premiere). Each of the programmes is set to screen once, viewable in real time on this webpage. The festival will kick off with a morning screening of the “Ghost Dwelling” shorts programme, followed by the “Build Me a Dream” strand. The two features being presented at this year’s...

Aniara, Atlantics, Blind Spot, Irina, Les Misérables and Ray & Liz vie for the European Discovery - Prix Fipresci award. The European Film Academy has announced the nominees for the European Discovery 2019 - Prix Fipresci, an award presented annually as part of the European Film Awards to a director for a first full-length feature film. This year's nominations were determined by a committee comprised of Efa Board Members Mike Goodridge (UK) and Valérie Delpierre (Spain), festival programmers Azize Tan (Turkey) as well as film critics Marta Bałaga (Finland), Robbie Eksiel (Greece) and Michael Pattison (UK) as representatives of Fipresci, the International Federation of Film Critics. The nominees are: European Discovery - Prix Fiprescianiara - Pella Kågerman, Hugo Lilja (Sweden)Atlantics - Mati Diop (France/Senegal/Belgium)Blind Spot - Tuva Novotny (Norway)Irina - Nadejda Koseva (Bulgaria)Les Misérables - Ladj Ly (France)Ray & Liz - Richard Billingham (UK) The nominated films will soon be.

Ceremony, directed by Phil Collins, who will attend a Q&A Photo: Courtesy of Alchemy Film & Moving Image The line-up of Alchemy Film & Arts Moving Image Festival has been announced, along with a new slogan: "Embrace the Strange", which incoming creative director Michael Pattison describes as "an invitation as well as a dare".

The festival, which will run from 2 to 6 May in Hawick, Scottish Borders, will showcase 147 moving-image works, including four feature films and 11 shorts programmes alongside guest-curated programmes, performances and moving-image installations.

Highlights include Turner Prize nominee Phil Collins' Ceremony, plus the UK premieres of feature films by Stephen Broomer (Canada), Karolina Breguła (Poland) and Yashaswini Raghunandan (India) and a programme of shorts curated by Crossroads, San Francisco Cinematheque’s annual film festival.

Avant-garde filmmakers Barbara Meter, Esther Urlus and Deborah S Phillips will also be celebrated by showcases.

Writer/actor/director Gerda Stevenson will lead a Film Walk...

Below you will find our favorite films of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, as well as an index of our coverage.AwardsTOP Pickstop 10(1) Transit (Christian Petzold)(2) Infinite Football (Corneliu Porumboiu)(3) An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo)(4) The Waldheim Waltz (Ruth Beckermann)(5) Season of the Devil (Lav Diaz)(6) In the Realm of Perfection (Julian Faraut)(7) Classical Period (Ted Fendt)(8) Notes on an Appearance (Ricky D'Ambrose)(9) Inland Sea (Kazuhiro Soda) & Unsane (Steven Soderbergh)(Contributors: Annabel Ivy Brady-Brown, Giovanni Marchini Camia, Celluloid Liberation Front, Adam Cook, David Hudson, Jordan Cronk, Daniel Kasman, Olaf Möller, Michael Pattison, Richard Porton, Christopher Small, Barbara Wurm)Daniel Kasman(1) Season of the Devil (2) The Waldheim Waltz (3) Grass (4) Jamila (5) Foreboding (6) Transit (7) An Elephant Sitting Still (8) Infinite Football (9) In the Realm of Perfection (10) Inland SeaADAM Cook(1) Infinite Football (2) The Tree (3) Season of the Devil (4) Transit (5) Grass (6) In the Realm of Perfection (7) Optimism (8) Isle of Dogs (9) The Waldheim Waltz (10) L.

Partycrashers is an on-going series of video dispatches from critics Michael Pattison and Neil Young.Partycrashers has never exactly been metronomic in its regularity, but even by our eccentric standards the timings of the last few editions has been... erratic: five months between our report from the Curtas festival of Vila do Conde, northern Portugal, in July 2016 and the year-end pre-Christmas round-up recorded in Newcastle, then an 11-month "hiatus" until our report from the Post/Doc festival of Porto, northern Portugal, then a gap of less than two weeks before this year-end pre-Christmas round-up recorded in Newcastle. We may be unpredictable chronologically; geographically somewhat less so, it seems.And, as has become something of an unwanted Partycrashers tradition, we have—the last twice—been bedeviled by technical mishaps, perhaps an inevitable consequence of our ingrained "one-take" preference (we're more Eastwoodian than Kubrickian in this regard). The camera used for our...

Part of the Jerry Lewis tribute A Mubi Jerrython.Jerry Lewis, one of the most successful and volatile of popular artists, and something of a personal hero, died late in the summer at the age of 91. After revisiting 32 films in preparation for a long article published to coincide with his 90th birthday, I had already seriously contemplated the idea of him dying. The elderly Jerry who appeared in the morning television segments that I consumed vociferously while writing the essay was not the Jerry starring in the glut of movies I was poring over. His vitality lasted through middle-age and into his advanced years, seemingly with little resistance despite three or four lifetimes worth of illnesses, addictions, and injuries. But finally, senescence had ensnared him; I remember being particularly moved by his admission that what he missed most was his ability to stand up straight and walk. Writing about Lewis,...

Partycrashers is an on-going series of video dispatches from critics Michael Pattison and Neil Young.The stars align! Eventually: though we’ve notched up 40 film festivals between us this year (16 for me, contrary to the miscount offered in the video below), the fourth edition of Porto/Post/Doc was only the third we’d attended together—and the first proper opportunity to record a dispatch of this kind. As parties go, this one was easy to crash: ostensibly an event dedicated to nonfiction, Post/Doc, held in beautifully distinctive Porto, was also open to feature films such as The Beguiled, Lucky, and 120 Bpm, as well as more or less more straightforward documentaries like Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk’s An Inconvenient Sequel and Sophie Fiennes’ Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami.The primary source of interest for us, however, was the festival’s main bulk: its competition, including Gürcan Keltek’s prize-winner Meteors,...

Keep up with the glitzy awards world with our bi-weekly Awards Roundup column.

– The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced that Academy Award–winning actor Helen Mirren will be honored at the 45th Chaplin Award Gala on Monday, April 30, 2018. A beloved figure of stage, screen, and television, Mirren has bestowed upon the world a series of iconic performances in a career spanning more than fifty years. The annual event will be attended by a host of notable guests and presenters and will include movie and interview clips, culminating in the presentation of the Chaplin Award.

“It is an honor and a pleasure for us to present Helen Mirren with our 45th Chaplin Award,” said Ann Tenenbaum, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Board Chairman. “From housemaid to Queen and everything in between, Ms. Mirren has delivered masterful performances of complex characters, upending stereotype after stereotype along the way.

Camilo Restrepo's Impression of a War (2015) is playing August 10 - September 8, 2017 on Mubi in many countries around the world as part of the series Direct from Locarno.Like Shadows Growing as the Sun Goes DownThe characters in Camilo Restrepo’s films make art in the face of death. They are dancers, jugglers, tattoo artists, painters, and singers who collectively rise to exorcise hardships. Their journeys are chronicled in lucid, elliptical fashion by an artist whose handheld pursuits of people endow them with explosive and ethereal impressions of force and power.Restrepo was born in 1975 in Colombia, where he lived until a scholarship took him to Europe to study painting. His first three films were shot in his birth country on Super 8 and 16mm and additionally utilized digital archival materials to tell parts of the nation’s recent past in relation to its present time; his two subsequent films were...

It’s icky, drippy and grindingly gross — and will make your forehead itch — but Abel Ferrara’s Bowery-set dime store horror opus has withstood the test of time. It’s a decent enough psychodrama, if one can set aside all the psychological-philosophical booshwah that’s leaked into horror criticism. Oops, Savant’s guilty of that too.

The Driller Killer

Blu-ray + DVD

Arrow Video

1979 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 101, 96 min. / Street Date December 13, 2017 / 39.95

Starring Abel Ferrara, Carolyn Marz, Baybi Day, Harry Schultz, Alan Wynroth

Cinematography Ken Kelsch, Jimmy Spears

Film Editor Jimmy Laine, Orlando Gallini

Original Music Joe Delia

Written by N.G. St. John

Produced by Rochelle Weisberg

Directed by Abel Ferrara

As some may have noticed, I’ve mellowed on the output of low-budget and independent horror efforts from the 1970s. While I was in film school bending my own tastes toward high production values and artistic merit, some crazy young filmmakers,...

Partycrashers is an on-going series of video dispatches from critics Michael Pattison and Neil Young.Now it's dark.Twelve months ago we recorded our 2015 Review on the 8th floor of a certain Newcastle tower-block, looking out over the river towards Gateshead as the late-afternoon sunlight rapidly faded into deep dusk and the pinprick lights of rush-hour on the Tyne Bridge steadily gained luminescence. But by the time Craig Hawkes' camera started rolling for the 2016 edition—in the very same room looking out through the very same windows—night had already fallen over a city which had, in the intervening year, resurfaced onto the global cinema radar thanks to I, Daniel Blake.We make no apologies for Paul Laverty and Ken Loach's much-loved Palme d'Or winner dominating the early stretches of our exchange, nor for us once again extolling the virtues of Best Picture laureate Spotlight, a 2015 picture in the...

Arrow Video has a few items for horror fans to place under the tree and slip into stockings this holiday season, and we have full release details and cover art for their December Blu-ray releases of Hellraiser: The Scarlet Box Limited Edition Trilogy, Creepshow 2, and The Driller Killer (which is now slated for a December 13th release).

Press Release:Mvd Entertainment Group furthers the distribution of Arrow Video in the Us with three great new titles in December. The biggest release of the the month is Hellraiser: The Scarlet Box Limited Edition Trilogy, a limited edition run of 10,000 deluxe box-sets featuring Clive Barker's iconic and seminal horror classic Hellraiser. Arriving just in time for Christmas on December 13th, this exclusive box set will include the first three films in the Hellraiser saga alongside an abundance of bonus materials and never-before-seen footage.

The horror continues with the...

This November, Arrow Video offers horror fans a wide variety of thrills and onscreen kills with their respective Blu-ray releases of C.H.U.D., The Initiation, and The Driller Killer, and the full release details for all three Blu-rays have now been revealed.

Press Release: Mvd Entertainment Group furthers the distribution of Arrow Video in the Us with three great new titles in November. The month kicks off with The Initiation on Blu-ray, one of the best of the college-based slasher movies of the 1980s. One of the later entries into the genre, it had horror fans hooked with its tense stalk 'n' slash scenes and it's surprising twist of an ending.

The horror continues with C.H.U.D., the classic 80s horror featuring the Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers making their long-awaited debut on Blu-ray with a brand new restoration from original film elements.

Last but by no means least comes Arrow Video's...

Warsaw Next workshop for young Polish filmmakers with 70+ participants is organized in cooperation with Sundance TV who hosts a masterclass on 15 October.

The Warsaw Film Festival (October 7–16, 2016) promotes Eastern European cinema as well as world cinema. With over 100 titles, five competitive sections, Fipresci workshops and the ever-expanding industry event CentEast Market, the 32nd edition of the Warsaw Film Festival this year is its largest ever event.

CentEast Market focuses on Eastern European cinema and will present 13 new works-in-progress, new Polish films and workshops for both filmmakers and film critics.

The CentEast Market runs 14–16 October during the final days of the Warsaw Film Festival. Since 2005, the market has provided a meeting space for sales agents, distributors, festival programmers and producers interested in Eastern European cinema.

This year’s CentEast Market will be repeated in Moscow a few days after its October 14 presentation in Warsaw. Peter Bebjak (The Cleaner [+]), Inara Kolmane (Mona...

Arrow Video has now given horror fans several big reasons to look forward to November, as they will keep the scary spirits alive post-Halloween with Us / UK Blu-ray releases of The Initiation and The Driller Killer, a Us Blu-ray / DVD release of C.H.U.D., and a UK Blu-ray / DVD release of Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf.

From Arrow Video’s official Facebook page: “New Us Title Announcement: C.H.U.D Dual Format Blu-ray & DVD

The ultimate underground movie experience

North American Blu-ray pre-order link should be live soon!

They’Re Not Staying Down There, Anymore!

From the subterranean depths it crawls! Finally making its long-awaited debut on Blu-ray, director Douglas Cheek’s cult ‘80s favorite C.H.U.D. is the ultimate underground movie experience.

In downtown Manhattan, a police captain’s hunt for his missing wife leads to the discovery of a series of mysterious disappearances in the area.

Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.

Filmmaker Magazine has published their annual 25 New Faces of Independent Film, featuring Sasha Lane, Macon Blair, Connor Jessup, and more.

Watch a clip from the restoration of Abel Gance‘s Napoleon:

Mubi‘s Michael Pattison on Don Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day, our favorite animation of the century so far:

Psycholinguists call the opening gag of It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012), Don Hertzfeldt’s delightful hour-long feature, a blend. Bill, a black-on-white stick figure whose only distinctive feature is his top hat, is on his way to the bus stop when he sees someone he recognizes but whose name he doesn’t remember.

Partycrashers is an on-going series of video dispatches from critics Michael Pattison and Neil Young.Anniversaries are bunk, and birthdays not much better, but it seems acceptable to note that this ninth Partycrashers discussion—taped at the Curtas shorts film festival in Vila do Conde, Portugal—took place almost exactly a year after our first, recorded as the sun set on a muggy evening within sight of Marseille’s port.In between, we've ventured to Poland (Wrocław), Kosovo (Prizren), Austria (Vienna), back 'home' to the UK (Newcastle), Germany (Berlin), Austria again (Graz) and the USA (Los Angeles), debating films, film festivals and whatever else caught our passing fancy and didn't seem too self-indulgently tangential or esoteric. While we’d like to think the standard of debate has been consistent—hopefully improving as we’ve gone on—the technical aspects have been, shall we say, somewhat more erratic, dependent on the...

Partycrashers is an on-going series of video dispatches from critics Michael Pattison and Neil Young.NY: From a sun-raked rooftop in Downtown, Los Angeles (capital-d and comma deliberate) we survey the scene: bluntly domineering skyscrapers of the 'Business Improvement District' behind us in space; Palm Springs' genial American Documentary Film Festival a few days behind us in time; Michael Mann's Heat (1995) neon-fresh in our memories, the ultimate Los Angeles film (discuss) having pre-loaded the mega-metropolis into our impressionable cinema-contoured consciousnesses before either of us had ever set foot in the place.The city plays itself: concrete intersections of memories, films, architecture, roads, people. A place to ponder and (though you have been assured myriad times to the contrary) to walk: the day before recording, we'd clocked 22 miles on foot between Downtown and the Pacific Ocean at Santa Monica. A trek rounding off a week's semi-haphazard perambulations that had encompassed...

Mubi is exclusively showing two new, brilliant and unconventional films from Spain: Luis López Carrasco's El Futuro (April 11 - May 10) and Ion de Sosa's Androids Dream (April 12 - May 11). We asked the two filmmakers—friends and collaborators—a few questions about their work. For an in-depth exploration of the two films, we recommend Michael Pattison's article, Back to the Future: Androids Dream and El Futuro.Spanish directors Ion de Sosa (front left) and Luis López Carrasco (back right).Notebook: How did you each manage to bring your projects to life?Luis LÓPEZ Carrasco: After living in Berlin for a few months through a scholarship program, I came back to Spain in 2010 fully energized with the aim to set up a production company, finance my own projects and support friends whose work I deeply admire. The international success of Los Hijos Collective led me to believe...

Partycrashers is an on-going series of video dispatches from critics Michael Pattison and Neil Young.Two white blokes from England sit down to discuss avant-garde cinema and the merits of Diversity® on the balcony of an Austrian arts museum. As bad jokes go, this one has a half-appropriate punch line: mournful whale-cries, blaring out with anarchist abandon, threaten to drown the “what do you think, this is what I think” exchange in a wall of sonic scorn. It’s almost as if we were asking for it. Graz, Austria. Birthplace of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Of a man named Schwarzenegger too. History has done what it can to sever both men’s umbilical ties: the former is less famous for being born in Graz than being assassinated in Sarajevo, while in 2005 Arnie withdrew his name from a football stadium christened in his honor, after local authorities hemmed and hawed following his refusal,...

Below you will find our favorite films of the 66th Berlin International Film Festival, as well as an index of our coverage.Daniel Kasmantop Picksi. From the Notebook Of..., Marble Ass, Tout une nuitII. A Quiet Passion, The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo & Isolation of 1/880000, Creepy, Things to Come, Short StayIII. Hanasareru Gang, Tempestad, Karla, A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery, Le fils de Joseph, Ta'angIV. Between Fences, Fire at Sea, Doomed Love – A Journey through German Genre FilmsCOVERAGEAwardsHail...Cinema?: Hail Caesar! (Joel & Ethan Coen)Two Women in Mexico's Storm: Tempestad (Tatiana Huezo)Why Not Stay in Philly?: Short Stay (Ted Fendt)The Title Says It Best: Creepy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)Women Poets and Philosophers: A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies), Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve)Refugee Cinema: Fire at Sea (Gianfranco Rosi), Ta'ang (Wang Bing), Havarie (Philip Scheffner)Cryptograms: Crosscurrent (Yang Chao), Life After Life (Zhang Hanyi)Lost Souls of the...

Partycrashers is an on-going series of video dispatches from critics Michael Pattison and Neil Young.The first Notebook appearance of the legendary Berlin establishment named 'Stadtklause' ("city retreat") was in 2009, when I described it as "an unremarkable-looking pub where, some evenings, a certain 'Bruno S' can be found playing his accordion and singing old Berlin songs. If you've seen Werner Herzog's Stroszek, you will know whom and what I am talking about. Bruno S was the star of that movie, and also of Herzog's Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, and for my money he's at least as important Herzog-collaborator as the rather better-known (and much-lamented) Klaus Kinski." Seven years later and Bruno S. is sadly no longer with us, but the Stadtklause remains. It's still a handy and unpretentious watering-hole on Bernburger Strasse near Anhalter Bahnhof, just a short walk from Potsdamer Platz, the grimly modernistic epicentre of the Berlinale...

Partycrashers is an on-going series of video dispatches from critics Michael Pattison and Neil Young.Newcastle is a technically neutral meeting-point for two likely lads from Sunderland (Neil) and Gateshead (me). Yet England’s northernmost city is still near enough to both that any notion of partycrashing flies right out of an eighth-floor window. With 53 foreign film festivals notched up between us this year, though, Neil and I might be forgiven for feeling like tourists on home turf. Not that we do: I never walk taller than when I’m on Tyneside, while Neil’s swagger is never anything other than an unwavering forward charge.In fact, nothing but a very fine river separates Newcastle from Gateshead: in the background of this latest video dispatch, we see the winter dark gradually fall upon the latter town. Similar views can be seen in Mike Figgis’s first feature, Stormy Monday (1988), and...

Up the steep track, under the warm dusk, we trudged with no purpose other than to reach our agreed-upon stop: a hillside café halfway between Prizren and the heavens. Below us, behind us, glittery headlights passed through Kosovo’s second city, en route to its capital, Priština. Stop-start progressions. Bad roads. I’d been overseas for eleven days, Neil for thirty. Our time in Prizren, home for fourteen editions now to the dependably curated Dokufest, had helped to barricade a week between the previous film festival and our imminent recording.From Locarno, Switzerland, news had just arrived to us of the winners awarded during the closing ceremony of that town’s 68th annual film festival. The Locarno Film Festival is never short of talking points: though some of its fare had already retreated into the ether of our minds (good riddance to the lot of it), some had proved to...

In Reverse Shot, Michael Pattison writes about the 18 films Sergei Loznitsa has made since 1996: "In his three best-known films"—My Joy (2010), In the Fog (2012) and Maidan (2014)—"he shows himself to be—all at once—an artist, a documentarian, an ethnographer, a historian, and a storyteller." Also in today's roundup: David Bordwell on Jean-Luc Godard, Burt Lancaster and Bill Forsyth; Howard Hampton on Stephen Frears's My Beautiful Laundrette; Jonathan Rosenbaum on Carl Dreyer’s Gertrud; James Slaymaker on Robert Greene; Patrick Z. McGavin's interview with Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss; plus Jacques Rivette's interview with Jean Renoir and more. » - David Hudson...

In Reverse Shot, Michael Pattison writes about the 18 films Sergei Loznitsa has made since 1996: "In his three best-known films"—My Joy (2010), In the Fog (2012) and Maidan (2014)—"he shows himself to be—all at once—an artist, a documentarian, an ethnographer, a historian, and a storyteller." Also in today's roundup: David Bordwell on Jean-Luc Godard, Burt Lancaster and Bill Forsyth; Howard Hampton on Stephen Frears's My Beautiful Laundrette; Jonathan Rosenbaum on Carl Dreyer’s Gertrud; James Slaymaker on Robert Greene; Patrick Z. McGavin's interview with Christian Petzold and Nina Hoss; plus Jacques Rivette's interview with Jean Renoir and more. » - David Hudson...

Above: the 2015 Crossroads Film Festival kicks off on Friday, April 10th, and features Paul Clipson's Hypnosis Display with a live soundtrack by Grouper. Check out the rest of the amazing lineup here. Like everyone, we're devastated that David Lynch will not be directing the Twin Peaks revival season after all. Above: the latest issue of La Furia Umana is online now and includes an intriguing survey of "What's (Not) Cinema Becoming?"From the new issue of The Brooklyn Rail: pieces on Tsai Ming-liang's Rebels of the Neon God, J.P. Sniadecki's The Iron Ministry, and an interview with Xin Zhou.For Cinema Scope, Jordan Cronk writes on this year's True/False Film Festival. There are two incredible websites for you to browse from La Cinématheque Francaise: one on Pier Paolo Pasolini, and one on Michelangelo Antonioni. For his blog Following Film, Christoph Huber writes on "The Siodmak Variations":...

The International Film Festival of  Cartagena de Indias, Colombia's most important film event, announced the winners for its 55th edition. The top prize in the narrative competition went to Guatemala's "Ixcanul" by Jairo Bustamante, which after its triumph in Berlin has become a festival hit. However, the Brazilian feature "White Out, Black In"(Branco Sai, Preto Fica)  took home both the Special Jury Prize and the Fipresci Award, becoming the big winner at the festival. Notable Colombian winners include documentaries "Letter to a Shadow" and "Tea Time" (also honored in Miami) and narrative feature "The Silence of the River." Here is the full list of winners. 

Official Fiction Competition

Jury Members

Michael Fitzgerald- Malgorzata Szumowska - Cao Guimaraes

Best Film: "Ixcanul" by Jayro Bustamante (Guatemala) - Wins Cine Colombia Award that includes  $15.000 - Isa: Film Factory Entertainment

Special Jury Prize: "Branco Sai, Preto Fica" (White Out, Black In) by Adirley Queirós (Brazil) - PC: Cinco Da Norte Serviços AudiovisuaisBest Director: Hector Galvez for "Nn" (Peru, Colombia, Germany, France) - Isa: Habanero

The International Federation of Film Critics Award - Fipresci

Jury Members

Ivonete Pinto - Michael Pattison - Roger Alan Koza

Best Film: "Branco Sai, Preto Fica" (White Out, Black In) by Adirley Queirós (Brazil)Colombian Cinema Official Competition

Jury Members

Mirsad Purivatra - Gerwin Tamsma - Juan Carlos Arciniegas 

Best Film: "El Silencio del Rio" (The Silence of the River) by Carlos Tribiño (Colombia, Uruguay, France) - Wins Cinecolor Award that includes Usd $11.000 in deliveries and the Lci Seguros Award, which consists of a  50% discount on the insurance purchase for production up to Us$50,000. -Isa: Habanero Films

Special Jury Prize: "Carta a Una Sombra" (Letter to a Shadow) by Daniela Abad and Miguel Salazar(Colombia) - PC: Producciones la Esperanza

Best Director: Roberto Flores Prieto for "Ruido Rosa" (Pink Noise) - Wins Hangar Films Award that includes Usd $30.000 in film equipment for the production of his next film. - PC: Kymera Producciones

Additional Awards

Club Colombia Audience Award: "Carta a Una Sombra" (Letter to a Shadow) by Daniela Abad and Miguel Salazar (Colombia) - Wins Usd $15.000

Official Documentary Competition

Jury Members

Sergio Wolf - Ally Derks - Meredith Brody

Best Film: "La Once" (Tea Time) by Maite Alberdi (Chile, U.S.) - Wins Cinecolor Award that includes Usd $13.000 in digital post-production services - Isa: Cat & Docs

Special Jury Prize: "Tu y Yo" (You and Me) by Natalia Cabral and Oriol Estrada (Dominican Republic) - PC: Faula Films

Gems

Jury Members

Jorge Sanchez Sosa - Nicolas Morales Thomas - Ciro Guerra

Best Film: "Hermosa Juventud" (Beautiful Youth) by Jaime Rosales (Spain, France) - Wins Rcn Award for promotional purposes during its release in Colombia,  valued at Usd $50.000. - Isa: Ndm

Special Jury Prize: "El Hombre de las Multitudes" (The Man of the Crowd) by Marcelo Gomes and Cao Guimaraes (Brazil) Isa: FIGa Films

Special Mention: "Timbuktu" by Abderrahmane Sissako (Mauritania, France) - Isa: Le Pacte/U.S. Dist: Cohen Media Group

Official Shorts Competition

Jury Members

Joel del Rio - Roberto Fiesco - Andres Parra

Best Short Film: "Se Venden Conejos" (Rabbits for Sale) by Esteban Giraldo (Colombia) - Wins a professional Sony camera and  Usd $3.000 from Cinecolor in digital post-production services for the director's next project.

Special Mention: "Completo" by Iván Gaona (Colombia)

New Creators

Jury Members

Maite Alberdi - Franco Lolli - Jorge Forero

Best Short Film: "En Busca del Aire" (Searching for Air) by Mauricio Rojas Maldonado (Antioquia University) - Wins a professional  Sony camera; and GoPro HERO4 camera from Revista Shock.Special Mention: "La Ruta de Julita" (Julita's Route) by Omar Eduardo Ospina (Magdalena University) - Wins a scholarship to study film production at the Bucaramanga University.

Special Mention: "Estepario" by Ángela Duque (Sabana University) - Wins a scholarship to study sound recording and design at Bucaramanga University.

One half of enjoying a marvel is wondering how it works, and the other half is not knowing. Bruce McClure’s cinema is a spectacle to savor, for once his built-up gallows are packed away and taken home, there can be no encore. While film projectionists have long been an endangered species, the Brooklyn-based licensed architect assumes the mantle of sole creator, hunched over one or two or three 16mm or Super-8 projectors, twiddling away behind a torchlight on a handmade soundboard, with which he has as much fun as he does the guitar pedals at his feet.

This is autonomy incarnate: projector, performer, meaning-maker and destroyer. “Have we got time?” He asks during one of his nine live shows at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam. “I mean I know we have time but I could go on with this all night.”

McClure is difficult to pin down in a number of ways.

Tired of Top Ten lists and best-of polls? Too bad! Some of the best and most anticipated have hit the internet in the past week, including Senses of Cinema's epic World Poll featuring countless contributors the world over including myself and our own Daniel Kasman. Reverse Shot has published their Best of 2014 featuring eloquent annotations from various contributors. Meanwhile, Movie Mezzanine does the same but with a Top 50. On the latest episode of The Cinephiliacs, Peter Labuza and Keith Uhlich discuss their favorites of the year. The latest issue of Film Comment is on shelves now and you can find some of the articles online now. The National Society of Film Critics selected Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au langage as their Best Picture. Jason Bailey writes on the controversial choice for Flavorwire.

Above: a New Year's message/poem/film from Apichatpong Weerasethakul via our official Tumblr. Head over to Sight...

How would you program this year's newest, most interesting films into double features with movies of the past you saw in 2014?

Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2014—in theatres or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2014 to create a unique double feature.

All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2014 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch...

Something of his sad freedom

As he rode the tumbril

Should come to me, driving,

Saying the names

Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,

Watching the pointing hands

Of country people,

Not knowing their tongue.

Out here in Jutland

In the old man-killing parishes

I will feel lost,

Unhappy and at home.

—Seamus Heaney, The Tollund Man

It ended, like all journeys do, in Solitude, a long way from any cinema. Solitude—or rather Zolitūde, in Latvian—is a suburb of Riga, four miles as the crow flies from the fancy Scandi-Gothic-Art Nouveau city centre; six miles on foot if the pedestrian avoids diversions. But by the time I reached Solitude on that cold December Saturday afternoon, however, my inadvertent divagations must have pushed the total to the ten-mile mark. I'd looked at maps prior to departing from my hotel, of course but deliberately didn't bring one along (not a fan); I don't...

Where to begin? This past few days saw an influx of "Best of" lists, which will probably continue until and beyond year's end. Let's kick it off with Cahiers du Cinéma's Top Ten:

1. Li'l Quinquin (Bruno Dumont)

2. Adieu au langage (Jean-Luc Godard)

3. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)

4. Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg)

5. The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki)

6. Nymphomaniac (Lars Von Trier)

7. Mommy (Xavier Dolan)

8. Love is Strange (Ira Sachs)

9. Le Paradis (Alain Cavalier)

10. Our Sunhi (Hong Sangsoo)

Above: I expect we'll be seeing a lot of lists topped with Richard Linklater's Boyhood. Sight & Sound is one such list and also includes the following:

1. Boyhood (Richard Linklater)

2. Adieu au langage (Jean-Luc Godard)

=3. Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev)

=3. Horse Money (Pedro Costa)

5. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)

6. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)

7. Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

8. The Tribe (Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)

=9. Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski)

=9. Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)

See the rest here.

There’s always something special about a great long-take. Though it can be as routinized as any other formal device, the long-take retains, in the right hands, an exhilarating appeal: it intensifies time by making us feel it, heightening the incidents unfolding within the frame. Framing is also to do with space: a long-take orients us in a filmic world in a way that’s very distinct from montage. While the latter assembles space brick-by-brick, a long-take allows us to see it more fully, and less segmented, as a lived-in locale.>> - Michael Pattison...

There’s always something special about a great long-take. Though it can be as routinized as any other formal device, the long-take retains, in the right hands, an exhilarating appeal: it intensifies time by making us feel it, heightening the incidents unfolding within the frame. Framing is also to do with space: a long-take orients us in a filmic world in a way that’s very distinct from montage. While the latter assembles space brick-by-brick, a long-take allows us to see it more fully, and less segmented, as a lived-in locale.>> - Michael Pattison...

That there are no less than ninety-nine film stills used to illustrate the thirty-three-page introduction to Hou Hsiao-hsien, the first English-language critical anthology published on the Taiwanese filmmaker, indicates just how "visual" the director’s style is. All films are definitionally "visual," of course, but as is repeatedly argued in this insightful tome, Hou’s cinema seems to be exceptionally so: since making his debut feature Cute Girl in 1980, he has continued to consciously set new challenges for himself and his cinematographers>> - Michael Pattison...

That there are no less than ninety-nine film stills used to illustrate the thirty-three-page introduction to Hou Hsiao-hsien, the first English-language critical anthology published on the Taiwanese filmmaker, indicates just how "visual" the director’s style is. All films are definitionally "visual," of course, but as is repeatedly argued in this insightful tome, Hou’s cinema seems to be exceptionally so: since making his debut feature Cute Girl in 1980, he has continued to consciously set new challenges for himself and his cinematographers>> - Michael Pattison...

Mike Hoolboom. Photo by Tamara de la Fuente.

Is being photographed the only way to cheat death? Ask Mike Hoolboom, in whose Public Lighting (2004) the question is posed. Presented on 8 October as part of a retrospective of his work at the eleventh CurtoCircuíto—the excellent international short film festival in Santiago de Compostela, a city in Galicia, northwest Spain—Public Lighting is in many ways emblematic of Hoolboom’s work.

To begin with, there’s its agitated, almost frantic need to pay tribute to the world and its miscellany—and to allow such heterogeneity to inform its imagistic, editorial and thematic fabrics. Separated into seven aesthetically distinct segments, Public Lighting is about the many sources of pleasure to be found in an otherwise uncertain universe. It is about Madonna, Philip Glass, New York; it’s about identity and the inevitability of change; it’s about the amusing and tragic disconnect...

Edited by Adam Cook

Above: if you are fortunate enough to be in the vicinity of MoMA between now and November 21st, you may want to consider visiting their Bill Morrison exhibition. David Ehrlich of The Playlist interviews Mia Hansen-Løve about her new film Eden, as well as her next project. In a web exclusive piece for Sight & Sound, Michael Pattison writes on experimental films from the London Film Festival and 25Fps in Zagreb:

"All art is by its very nature experimental. In the face of an increasingly standardised narrative cinema, one defining feature of the experimental mode might be miscellany. Festival programmes celebrating ‘experimental cinema’ subsequently accommodate everything from the impenetrably personal to the familiarly abstract.

More than most, when housed together, such works demand an omnivorously receptive sensibility: preferences are fine, but one’s sustained appreciation of this genre seemingly depends upon how long one is able to keep an open mind.

"Of the many ironic things that characterize Alex Ross Perry’s third feature, Listen Up Philip, perhaps the most ironic is the film’s title," suggests Michael Pattison at Grolsh Film Works. "New York-based author Philip Lewis Friedman (Jason Schwartzman) isn’t listening to anyone: not his long-suffering girlfriend Ashley (Elisabeth Moss), not the creative writing students he’s supposed to be teaching upstate at Lambert College, not even his mentor Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce), an older, more experienced novelist who divides his own time between NYC and the remote country home to which he voluntarily exiled himself years ago." We've got more reviews and the trailer. » - David Hudson...

"Of the many ironic things that characterize Alex Ross Perry’s third feature, Listen Up Philip, perhaps the most ironic is the film’s title," suggests Michael Pattison at Grolsh Film Works. "New York-based author Philip Lewis Friedman (Jason Schwartzman) isn’t listening to anyone: not his long-suffering girlfriend Ashley (Elisabeth Moss), not the creative writing students he’s supposed to be teaching upstate at Lambert College, not even his mentor Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce), an older, more experienced novelist who divides his own time between NYC and the remote country home to which he voluntarily exiled himself years ago." We've got more reviews and the trailer. » - David Hudson...

"It’s not HBO, it’s (French) TV," begins Adam Nayman in Cinema Scope, "and it’s also paradoxically the best movie that Bruno Dumont has made since L’humanite (1999)—a good point of comparison because Li’l Quinquin is basically a remake, give or take." "Is it Dumont’s best?" Michael Pattison asks in a conversation in the Notebook, to which Neil Young replies that "my gut reaction is to say yes, with the obvious caveat that Quinquin benefited massively from being such a volte-face…. There are moments of humor dotted through even Dumont’s ostensibly dourest efforts (I’m thinking of the hands poking out of the doors in Hors Satan proffering David Dewaele his grub) with the possible exception of Camille Claudel 1915. Not many guffaws in that one." We've got more reviews and the trailer. » - David Hudson...

"It’s not HBO, it’s (French) TV," begins Adam Nayman in Cinema Scope, "and it’s also paradoxically the best movie that Bruno Dumont has made since L’humanite (1999)—a good point of comparison because Li’l Quinquin is basically a remake, give or take." "Is it Dumont’s best?" Michael Pattison asks in a conversation in the Notebook, to which Neil Young replies that "my gut reaction is to say yes, with the obvious caveat that Quinquin benefited massively from being such a volte-face…. There are moments of humor dotted through even Dumont’s ostensibly dourest efforts (I’m thinking of the hands poking out of the doors in Hors Satan proffering David Dewaele his grub) with the possible exception of Camille Claudel 1915. Not many guffaws in that one." We've got more reviews and the trailer. » - David Hudson...

Below you will find our total coverage of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, including a round up on experimental short films, reviews, and the festival-spanning dialog between our two main critics at Tiff. More interviews will be added to the index as they are published.

Correspondences

Between Fernando F. Croce and Daniel Kasman

#1

Fernando F. Croce on Pedro Costa's Horse Money, Lisandro Alonso's Jauja, and Olivier Assayas' Clouds of Sils Maria

#2

Daniel Kasman on Pedro Costa's Horse Money, Peter Ho-Sun Chan's Dearest, Roy Andersson's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, Takashi Miike's Over Your Dead Body, and Sono Sion's Tokyo Tribe

#3

Fernando F. Croce on Sono Sion's Tokyo Tribe, Jessica Hausner's Amour Fou, Johnnie To's Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2, and Abel Ferrara's Pasolini

#4

Daniel Kasman on Alexandre Larose's brouillard passage #14, Friedl vom Gröller's...

The following exchange took place between critics Michael Pattison and Neil Young over email between 4 and 8 August, not long after Li’l Quinquin screened at Wrocław’s New Horizons International Film Festival—following its world-premiere at Cannes earlier this year, and now playing at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Set in a village in northern France and originally made in four parts for transmission on French television, Bruno Dumont’s latest work is 200 minutes in length and chronicles an unorthodox murder investigation conducted by Capt Van der Weyden (Bernard Pruvost) under the watchful eyes of a rambunctious kid known only by his nickname, Li'l Quinquin (Alane Delhaye).

Spoiler Warning: this exchange reveals and discusses significant plot details of Li’l Quinquin

Michael Pattison: You remarked on Twitter earlier that you were still thinking about Li’l Quinquin a day after seeing it—that, having slept on it, the film...

Pedro Costa's "long-awaited Horse Money (Cavalo Dinheiro) presents an associative hotchpotch of memories pertaining to the experiences of displaced Cape Verdians now living in Portugal," writes Michael Pattison in Keyframe. "Following on from Colossal Youth (Juventude Em Marcha, 2006), it again features his regular performer Ventura—this time a trembling bag of nerves moving from one eerily quiet room to the next of something resembling a mental hospital. Exquisite compositions and delicately delivered dialogue build to a cumulative tone-poem on the traumas felt today by an exiled people still coming to terms with the prolonged fallout of imperialism." We collect further reviews and post a half-hour Q&A with Costa. » - David Hudson...

Pedro Costa's "long-awaited Horse Money (Cavalo Dinheiro) presents an associative hotchpotch of memories pertaining to the experiences of displaced Cape Verdians now living in Portugal," writes Michael Pattison in Keyframe. "Following on from Colossal Youth (Juventude Em Marcha, 2006), it again features his regular performer Ventura—this time a trembling bag of nerves moving from one eerily quiet room to the next of something resembling a mental hospital. Exquisite compositions and delicately delivered dialogue build to a cumulative tone-poem on the traumas felt today by an exiled people still coming to terms with the prolonged fallout of imperialism." We collect further reviews and post a half-hour Q&A with Costa. » - David Hudson...

J.P. Sniadecki's The Iron Ministry premiered in competition in Locarno last week and, in a dispatch to the House Next Door, Michael Pattison notes that "the focus is upon the claustrophobic clutter of China's economy-class train carriages that rattle along one of the largest rail networks in the world. Filming between 2011 and 2013, Sniadecki perhaps had too much material for his own good, and the process of trimming it all into a cohesive whole has resulted in something at once suitably chaotic and frustratingly unwieldy—but it's sometimes a marvelous and frequently alarming snapshot of the country's militantly upheld class divide." We've got more reviews and the trailer. » - David Hudson...