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[This story contains spoilers from the third episode of Yellowjackets, “Them’s the Brakes.”]

Yellowjackets just took us on a ride. But what does it mean for the journey?

The third episode in season three, “Them’s the Brakes,” ended with a hallucination sequence that merged the nightmarish dreams of three characters in its 1996-set wilderness timeline: Shauna (Sophie Nélisse), Van (Liv Hewson) and Akilah (Nia Sondaya). These visions included Shauna endlessly swimming to the child she lost, Van nearly burning down with the cabin, Akilah tripping out with an all-knowing llama (voiced by Vincent Pastore) and all of them seeing the ghost of Jackie (played by returning star Ella Purnell), their dead teammate who they feasted on in order to survive.

Co-showrunner Jonathan Lisco, who directed and co-wrote “Them’s the Brakes” with creators Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson, has a lot to say about the episode as he digs into the details of each nightmare, the cultural...

Johnny Depp hasn’t taken a directorial credit on a feature film (his 50-minute music video “Unloveable” doesn’t count) since he presented The Brave in Cannes in 1997, and that did not go well. Given that unhappy experience, you have to wonder what it was about Modi, Three Days on the Wing of Madness — a portrait of Amedeo Modigliani, a painter and sculptor famous for his talent as well as his taste for drugs, debauchery and scandalizing the straights — might have lured the actor to pick up the virtual megaphone again.

Perhaps Depp saw in Modigliani a kindred spirit? After all, Depp too is famous for his talent but also his proclivity for indulgence, which was brought into an especially glaring, unflattering light over the course of his bitter courtroom battle with his ex, Amber Heard. Still, there are many other wild, druggy geniuses or genius-adjacent types he could have...

Two works from the early queer literary canon will see audiobook release this June, narrated by actor Emile Hirsch.

Both were authored by Fritz Peters, an overlooked trailblazer in the 1950s who wrote frank and intimate depictions of homosexuality, spirituality and mental health struggles. The books are the novel “Finistère” and the memoir “Boyhood With Gurdjieff,” hitting audio platforms in time for global pride celebrations.

The recordings mark Hirsch’s first in the space, save voicing a character in “Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans,” the animated film from Guillermo del Toro. Known for films like “Into the Wild” and “Milk,” he will next appear in the holocaust film “‘Bau, Artist at War.”

Despite selling big in his time, Peters’ catalogue had fallen into relative obscurity compared to literati peers like Gore Vidal, Henry Miller and Eudora Welty. Production company Hirsch Giovanni acquired the author’s complete works two years ago and serve as re-release publishers.

"He created magic with this camera." Greenwich Ent. has revealed an official trailer for a documentary film titled Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes, made by an art director turned filmmaker named Sam Shahid. This photography docu is an intimate look at pioneering artist George Platt Lynes, who took radically explicit photographs of the male nude. It reveals Lynes' gifted eye for the male form, his long-term friendships with Gertrude Stein & Alfred Kinsey, and also his lasting influence as one of the first openly gay American artists. From visionary art director Sam Shahid, Hidden Master features a stunning collection of photography from the 1930s-50s, uncovering the life of Lynes less known: his gifted eye for the male form, his friendships, and his enduring effect as one of the first openly gay American artists. Similar to the other doc about the other great photographer Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures.

Between Valentine’s Day and the long Presidents Day weekend, February is the perfect month to scoot out to Palm Springs for some fun in the desert sun.

The Modernism Week festival, which this year runs Feb. 15-25, is the centerpiece of the month’s events. “Modernism Week is the largest gathering of midcentury modern architecture and design enthusiasts in the US,” says Lisa Vossler-Smith, its CEO.

Highlights of its 19th year include tours of The Shag House, which brings to life the midcentury-inspired drawings of artist Josh Agle, better known as Shag; Wexler ’54, a post-and-beam home that represents one of the first collaborations between master architects Donald Wexler and Richard Harrison; and the city’s famous Villa Sierra “That Pink Door” house located near where the movie Don’t Worry Darling filmed. (The four-bedroom, 5,300-square foot Villa Sierra can be booked for stays through Natural Retreats, with some dates available for around $1,770 a night.

If you knew Laurie Frank — and who didn’t? — you know her great heart burst skyward on Nov. 30. Hours earlier, a technicolor rainbow appeared over the Hollywood Hills, Laurie’s Promised Land.

You likely knew she was in the first class at Yale that matriculated women — class of 1973 — and went on to be an accomplished screenwriter, journalist and acclaimed gallerist. In the late ‘70s, she worked at ABC News and directed short films for Saturday Night Live, famously Prose and Cons featuring Eddie Murphy in a spoof on Norman Mailer’s championing of murderer Jack Abbott.

In the mid-1980s, she moved to Los Angeles and co-wrote Making Mr. Right (1987) starring John Malkovich and Ann Magnuson, as well as Love Crimes (1992) and later ventured into collecting and selling art. From 2002 to 2013, she ran Frank Pictures at Bergamot Station, showcasing artists of fame and those undiscovered. The latter was Laurie’s forte.

This material is based on data powered by IMDb, not The A.V. Club grades.Loki (2021)The mercurial villain Loki resumes his role as the God of Mischief in a new series that takes place after the events of “Avengers: Endgame.”Rating: 8.2/10Stars: Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Owen Wilson (Mobius), Sophia Di Martino,...

Graphic: IMDb

This material is based on data powered by IMDb, not The A.V. Club grades.

Loki (2021)

The mercurial villain Loki resumes his role as the God of Mischief in a new series that takes place after the events of “Avengers: Endgame.”

Rating: 8.2/10

Stars: Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Owen Wilson (Mobius), Sophia Di Martino,...

Coriolanus (2014)Caius Martius Coriolanus is a war hero, banished from his home, seeking to come back.Rating: 8.5/10Stars: Tom Hiddleston (Caius Martius Coriolanus), Rochenda Sandall (First Citizen), Mark Stanley (Second Citizen), Dwane Walcott (Third Citizen), Mark Gatiss (Menenius)Avengers: Endgame (2019)After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War (2018), the universe is in ruins.

Graphic: Images: IMDBCoriolanus (2014)

Caius Martius Coriolanus is a war hero, banished from his home, seeking to come back.

Rating: 8.5/10

Stars: Tom Hiddleston (Caius Martius Coriolanus), Rochenda Sandall (First Citizen), Mark Stanley (Second Citizen), Dwane Walcott (Third Citizen), Mark Gatiss (Menenius)

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War (2018), the universe is in ruins.

One could make -- and no doubt some resourceful Marvel Cinematic Universe fans have made -- a video about Loki (Tom Hiddleston) hooking up with different characters in the MCU using footage from Hiddleston's non-Marvel projects. The actor had a tragic affair with Rachel Weisz (Melina Vostokoff in "Black Widow") in "The Deep Blue Sea," played one-half of a pair of vampiric lovers along with Tilda Swinton (the McU's Ancient One) in "Only Lovers Left Alive," and starred as Hank Williams in "I Saw the Light," with the Scarlet Witch herself, Elizabeth Olsen, playing the late country music legend's wife. Hiddleston even had a fling with Elizabeth Debicki (Ayesha in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" films) in "The Night Manager," in addition to a non-zero amount of sexual tension with "Captain Marvel" actor Brie Larson in "Kong: Skull Island."

Tragically, Hiddleston did not romance Owen Wilson during the film they...

A24 is getting into the theater business with the purchase of the Off-Broadway venue Cherry Lane Theatre for the purchase price was $10 million, according to a deed filed on Friday.

Cherry Lane Theatre is the longest continuously running theater in New York City’s West Village. It features a 179-seat mainstage and a 60-seat studio theater. The space will reportedly be maintained as a place for live theater.

The studio behind “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “Uncut Gems,” “Hereditary” and “Lady Bird” raised a $225 million equity round in March of last year, with plans to use the money to produce and distribute films while also continuing to develop initiatives beyond just big-screen cinema.

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The Cherry Lane Theatre was first established as a playhouse in 1923, courtesy of Evelyn Vaughn, William Rainey, Reginald Travers and Edna St. Vincent Millay. The theater would...

After conquering the independent film and TV world, A24 is venturing into live theater. The production and distribution company has bought the Cherry Lane Theatre, one of the oldest Off-Broadway venues in New York City.

According to a deed filed Friday in the New York City Department of Finance, the venue was purchased for $10 million by a corporation called the Cherry Lane Venue; said corporation’s stated address is the same as A24’s New York offices. The deal comes after the venue’s longtime owner, actor Angelina Fiordellisi, attempted to sell to the Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation in 2021, before the sale fell through due to price disagreements. A24’s interest in the property was first reported last November.

A source with knowledge of the deal told IndieWire that A24 will keep the newly acquired venue in the live theater business, as opposed to using it for film screenings or premieres.

Independent film studio A24 has purchased a small Off-Broadway venue, the Cherry Lane Theatre.

The theater, which is located in New York City’s West Village, was purchased for just over $10 million, according to a deed filed Friday. Cherry Lane Theatre is the longest continuously running off-Broadway theater in New York and features a 179-seat mainstage and a 60-seat studio theater.

A person with knowledge of the deal told The Hollywood Reporter that A24 plans to keep the space as a venue for live theater.

The purchase comes after the studio, which is behind this awards season’s The Whale and Everything Everywhere All at Once, raised a $225 million equity round in March 2022, with plans to use the capital to continue to produce and distribute films but also “continue to develop high-quality initiatives beyond the screen.” New York-based venture capital firm Stripes was the lead investor in that round.

A...

Andy Warhol (Paul Bettany) filming Jean-Michel Basquiat (Jeremy Pope) in Anthony McCarten’s The Collaboration, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah Photo: Jeremy Daniel

In the second instalment with Anthony McCarten we discuss A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical, starring Will Swenson and Mark Jacoby as Diamond (now and then respectively), directed by Michael Mayer and The Collaboration with Jeremy Pope (terrific in Elegance Bratton’s impressive The Inspection) as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paul Bettany as Andy Warhol and Erik Jensen as Bruno Bischofberger, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah.

Michael Stewart and Defacement, Pablo Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein, Ernst Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait, Alexander Hall’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s White Noise, and an imagined production of Anthony’s play The Two Popes with Whitney Houston playing and a Warhol on the wall of the Pope’s quarters inhabiting the “same sort of eerie.

Nine. That’s the number of Doctor Who episodes that Wilfred Mott has appeared in so far. Just nine. And he was nearly in none.

Bernard Cribbins, a legend who spent seven decades acting and entertaining after joining a theatre club in Oldham as Assistant Stage Manager aged 14, was cast in “Voyage of the Damned” as Stan, selling newspapers from a kiosk as the aliens of the starship Titanic beam down and away again. It was intended as a cameo appearance only, but Howard Attfield was ill. Due to return as Donna Noble’s dad Geoff, Attfield filmed some scenes for Series 4 opener “Partners in Crime” before retiring from the role. He died shortly afterwards.

Behind the scenes, there had been hope that Attfield would have been able to act in the Sontaran two-parter, but his condition deteriorated and his wife said he could not carry on. It was at this point,...

Pat Carroll, a veteran actress known for her voice role as Ursula in Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” and whose career as an entertainer spanned seven decades, died Saturday in Cape Cod, Mass. while recovering from pneumonia. She was 95 years old.

Carroll’s death was confirmed by her representative, Derek Maki. Maki stated that Carroll died with her best friend by her side.

Born on May 5, 1927 in Shreveport, La., Patricia Ann Carroll’s family relocated to Los Angeles when she was five years old. There she began acting in local productions at a young age, before attending Catholic University of America and later enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II.

Carroll’s first role came in 1947 in the film “Hometown Girl.” She became a regular presence on variety shows over the next three decades. Carroll earned an Emmy Award in 1956 for her work on “Sid Caesar’s House.

Pat Carroll, an Emmy-winning actress who appeared on “Laverne & Shirley” and was the voice of Ursula in Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” has died at the age of 95 from pneumonia, her daughter Tara Karsian announced on her Facebook page.

“It is with a heavy heart that I write that my mother, Pat Carroll, has passed away at the grand old age of 95,” Karsian announced. “We ask that you honor her by having a raucous laugh at absolutely anything today (and everyday forward) because besides her brilliant talent and love, she leaves my sister Kerry and I with the greatest gift of all, imbuing us with humor and the ability to laugh… even in the saddest of times.”

Carroll made her onscreen debut in the 1948 film “Hometown Girl,” and subsequently made a mark in television. She won an Emmy in 1956 for her work on “Caesar’s Hour” and starred as a...

Comedian and actress Pat Carroll, a television pioneer and an Emmy, Drama Desk and Grammy winner, died at her home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts on July 30, while recovering from pnuemonia.

A frequent film actress and television guest star and series regular starting in the late 1940s, her work was seen on the Jimmy Durante Show, The Danny Thomas Show, Laverne & Shirley, ER and many other shows. She voiced Ursula in The Little Mermaid, and voiced several cartoon series.

Patricia Ann Carroll was born May 5, 1927 in Shreveport, Louisiana. Her family moved to Los Angeles when she was five years old, and she soon began acting in local productions. She graduated from Immaculate Heart High Schol and then attended Catholic University of America after enlisting in the US Army.

Carroll’s acting career started in 1947 with the film Hometown Girl. In 1956, Carroll won an Emmy Award for her work on Sid Caesar’s House,...

What does Jack Harlow want to say? It’s an unresolved question at the heart of his second major-label album, Come Home the Kids Miss You, a fifty-minute affair that unfurls with buffered surfaces and seductive vibes. He imagines himself as the Most Interesting Man Alive, frequently touts his appeal with the opposite sex and pens several entries for your favorite streaming service’s curated playlists. Pharrell Williams, Drake, Justin Timberlake, Lil Wayne, and Snoop Dogg (via an uncredited cameo on “Young Harleezy”) fête the pop-rap heir apparent. Yet Harlow...

by Earl Jackson

In 1969, Masahiro Shinoda released “Double Suicide”, his version of Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s bunraku (puppet) play, “The Love Suicides Amajima” [心中天網島]. The film was striking in its use of the black-hooded puppeteers, the kuroko, to move the actors and change the deliberately artificial sets. The film was a hit with the international art film crowd in that it proved that Japanese avant-garde narrative cinema was not limited to Hiroshi Teshigahara’s adaptations of Kobo Abe novels. In later years, it would serve as a viewer-friendly introduction to the New Wave because, unlike the more difficult works of Kiju Yoshida or Nagisa Oshima, “Double Suicide” -to repurpose Gertrude Stein’s judgment of James Joyce – was the experimental film that anyone could understand.

In 2021, Ryusuke Hamaguchi takes up the challenge of integrating classical theater with contemporary cinema again, in his use of Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya” in his film “Drive My Car”. At first glance,...

Julie Bowen has a message for Harry Styles: Just let me adore you. On Friday, Jan. 14, the Modern Family star visited The Ellen DeGeneres Show and sat down with guest host Adam DeVine to discuss why she's retired from dating entirely…unless Harry would like to give her a call. In the interview, Julie described her current relationship status as "very single"—she split from husband Scott Phillips in 2018—and now has a new pal in her life instead: a dog named Gertrude Stein. "That dog, that was my retirement gift to me," she said. "I was like, 'I'm done. I'm done.'" She also...

Journalists are the heroes in “The French Dispatch,” so expect film critics to be a little bit biased in their embrace of Wes Anderson’s latest. It flatters the field, after all, just not in the way that Pulitzer-centric mega-scoop sagas “All the President’s Men” or “Spotlight” may have done before. Anderson is more of a miniaturist, albeit one whose vision grows more expansive — and more impressive — with each successive project.

Here, the Texas-to-Paris transplant sets out to honor The New Yorker and its ilk, re-creating the joy of losing oneself in a 12,000-word article (or three) on the big screen while relocating the entire affair to his adoptive home. Set in the fictional city of Ennui-sur-Blasé — a cross between Paris and frozen-in-time Angoulême (where most of the exteriors were shot) — the film offers an expat’s-eye view of France, packaged as a series of clips from the eponymous publication.

Considered lost for nearly five decades until their rediscovery in 2019, filmmaker Ronald Chase's Cathedral (1971) and Parade (1972) are two of the earliest films about gay lives made after the Stonewall riots of June 28, 1969. The former is an ethereal dedication to gay sexuality, and the latter a talking-head documentary short about San Francisco's first Gay Pride Parade to be organized with permits. Viewed together, the two films form a holistic portrait of the sensuality, spirituality, and solidarity central to the gay rights movement in the aftermath of the Stonewall riots. Filmed in the St. Chapel in Paris, Chase's Cathedral "[refuses] to see touch, affection, and sensuality only in pornographic terms." The film's display of delicate shadows cast across white sheets invokes a strong sense of spiritual consecration tied to the condemned act. Beneath the superimposed veils of light through church windows, Chase films heavenly bodies entangled with one another in their most intimate form.

Netflix’s new movie Finding ‘Ohana is a family film you’ve got to put on your must-watch list.

“Sometimes you see a description of a movie and know, or at least hope, that it’s going to be fun. When I saw the promotions for Netflix’s latest family film Finding ‘Ohana describe it as ‘The Goonies but in Hawai’i’ my immediate thoughts was ‘yes this idea is perfect, I hope they do it well.’ The good news is that Finding ‘Ohana doesn’t just live up to its great premise, it surpasses it, giving us a truly Hawaiian movie with thrills, laughs, loving homages, and an incredible amount of heart.”

Read more at The Mary Sue.

From Oscar Wilde to Gertrude Stein, here are twenty celebrated writers from history with eccentricities.

“When it comes to cranking out literary treasures, celebrated authors have turned to some strange strategies to find their muse.

Elsa Raven, a character actress whose memorable turns were highlighted by her role as the “Save The Clock Tower” lady in the original Back to the Future, died Tuesday at home in Los Angeles. Her death was confirmed by her agent, David Shaul.

Raven, whose real name was Elsa Rabinowitz, was born September 21, 1929, in Charleston, Sc, the fourth child of Louis and Rosalie Rabinowitz. She started her acting career on stage in New York City, where she also assisted Joseph Papp in bringing the Free Shakespeare Festival to Central Park.

Her career included many character actress roles. Beyond Back to the Future, she also played the realtor who sold the house in The Amityville Horror, John Malkovich’s landlady in In the Line of Fire, Gertrude Stein in The Moderns and the mother who lost her son in Fearless.

"I think there will be a day when we wish we still had many of his structures still standing." A teaser trailer is available for an intriguing documentary film titled Goff, the feature directorial debut of filmmaker Britni Harris. It's not often we see films about architects, which already makes this unique. Bruce Goff was an American architect from the Midwest known as an Organic architect, best known for his eccentric designs that flew in the face of conventional architecture. His design philosophy came from the abstract term called, “continuous present,” coined by Gertrude Stein, which he described as living the past and present in one continuous stream. Goff thought that was the ideal of architecture, architecture that had no conventional beginning, middle or end but continued. Though well regarded in his time by Frank Lloyd Wright and cited as an influence by both Frank Gehry and Philip Johnson, Goff...

Epix’s two-part docuseries Laurel Canyon, directed by Alison Elwood, explores the musical community which nestled into the wooded area right outside the Sunset Strip. Chris Hillman, the first member of The Byrds, moved in after creating folk rock. The Monkees’ Mickey Dolenz threw ping pong tournaments next door to Alice Cooper. Frank Zappa planted his freak flag on the corner of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Lookout Mountain. And Michelle Phillips and John Phillips moved onto Lookout Mountain in 1965.

Their band, The Mamas and the Papas, practically invented the Southern California hippie sound, and Michelle was the catalyst. After hearing John Sebastian strum a tune which would become a major hit for his band The Lovin’ Spoonful, Michelle saw the direction the New Journeymen–the band she was in with her husband and other future Papa Denny Doherty–should go. Both sonically and geographically.

Michelle finished up John Phillips’ song...

Depending on how you do the math, Joan Shelley has made around 10 LPs with various collaborators, including the trio Maiden Radio. She was a shared secret until 2015, when she released the evanescent Over and Even under her own name, but her most recent LP — a self-titled set produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, with drum colors by Spencer Tweedy — spread the word of her talent out yonder. Her new record, Like the River Loves the Sea, one the year’s most beautiful, finds the Kentucky-rooted singer-songwriter ranging further afield. She recorded the songs in Reykjavik,...

Ernest Hemingway’s memoir “A Moveable Feast” could soon be coming to the small screen.

Village Roadshow Entertainment Group (Vreg), Mariel Hemingway, John Goldstone, and Marc Rosen have closed a deal to produce a series based on the book, which was originally published in 1964. Alix Jaffe, Vreg’s executive vice president of television, will oversee the project along with Jillian Apfelbaum, executive vice president of content, and Adam Dunlap, vice president of television. Scribner’s published the book in the Us and Jonathan Cape published in the U.K.

“A Moveable Feast” details Hemingway’s life as a young expatriate journalist in Paris in the 1920s while he was married to his first wife, Hadley Richardson. Famous figures including F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, and James Joyce are also featured in the book.

“‘A Moveable Feast’ has been my favorite book since I was 11 years...

Ernest Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast is in the works for the small screen. Village Roadshow Entertainment Group, along with Oscar-nominated actress Mariel Hemingway, the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, John Goldstone (Get Carter) and Marc Rosen (Sense8), have closed a deal to produce a television series based on the book. A search is underway for a writer.

Being told as a Hemingway origin story, A Moveable Feast is Hemingway’s earliest known work about his years as a poor but ambitious young expat journalist and writer in Paris in the 1920s. The book was first published in 1964 and describes the author’s apprenticeship as a young writer while he was married to his first wife, Hadley Richardson.

The memoir consists of various personal accounts, observations, and stories by Hemingway. Other notable people featured in the book include Sylvia Beach, Hilaire Belloc, Aleister Crowley, John Dos Passos, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald,...

A television adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s memoir “A Moveable Feast” is in the works at Village Roadshow Entertainment Group with Hemingway’s granddaughter Mariel Hemingway, John Goldstone and Marc Rosen set to produce the series, the company said Tuesday.

Like the memoir, first published in 1964, the series will follow the famed author’s years as a poor but ambitious young expat journalist and writer in Paris in the 1920s. It will detail his apprenticeship as a young writer as well as his first marriage, to Hadley Richardson.

The book features appearances by other noteworthy figures of his era, including Sylvia Beach, Hilaire Belloc, Aleister Crowley, John Dos Passos, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Pascin, Ezra Pound, Evan Shipman, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas and Hermann von Wedderkop.

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I Hope I'm Loud When I'm DeadIn "Crone Music," her largest exhibition so far, Franco-British artist and filmmaker Beatrice Gibson presented two new films, I Hope I’m Loud When I’m Dead and Deux Soeurs Qui Ne Sont Pas Soeurs ("Two Sisters Who Are Not Sisters"), in London’s Camden Arts Centre, along with many other side programs related to expanded cinema, poetry and music. As in her previous works, for which she received numerous accolades, including two Tiger awards for best short film at the International Rotterdam Film Festival, in her new films she explores the nature of communal work in the artistic process and the politics of friendship. Usually shot on analogue film, her work was for this occasion transferred to digital and projected in two gallery spaces on impressive screens that occupied the whole wall of the galleries. The third gallery, whose interior was for this reason designed by Dominic Cullinan,...

Picasso began his portrait of the poet Gertrude Stein in the autumn of 1905, completing it in August the following year. Delay was down to the head. For someone of Stein’s stature and charisma, a truly mimetic depiction couldn’t suffice. Picasso’s visit to the Louvre saved the portrait. The Iberian stone masks in exhibition inspired the stylised imagery of Stein’s face, allowing the browns and oranges of her clothing to blend with the background, in which the body seems at home, in place.

Continue reading ‘Your Face’: Tsai Ming-Liang’s Art Installation/Documentary Captures The Power Of Portraiture [Iffr Review] at The Playlist.

Reel-Important People is a monthly column that highlights those individuals in or related to the movies that have left us in recent weeks. Below you'll find names big and small and from all areas of the industry, though each was significant to the movies in his or her own way. Perry Miller Adato (1920-2018) - Documentary Filmmaker. She primarily directed artist-focused biographical documentaries, including the Emmy-nominated Picasso: A Painter's Diary and the American Masters entries Eugene O'Neill: A Glory of Ghosts and Alfred Stieglitz: The Eloquent Eye, plus Georgia O'Keefe and Gertrude Stein: When This You See, Remember Me. She died on September 16. (Nyt) Marty Balin (1942-2018) - Singer, Songwriter, Guitarist. One of the founders...

The first time I can remember a reference to eating marijuana came as a teenager seeing the prescient 1968 satire, “I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!,” in which Peter Sellers transforms into a hippie after inadvertently dosing on pot brownies, its title a reference to the cookbook recipe from one of Gertrude Stein’s fellow avant-gardists.

Some 50 years later, tattooed chef Luke Reyes is preparing an all plant-based, cannabis-infused, seven-course meal at his downtown Los Angeles loft apartment on Spring Street for an invitation-only gathering of about 20, as tables are lined end to end in his living room.

The Massachusetts native, who is about to open his own “non-thc” ramen shop on 9th and Broadway, is chopping up some purslane, a common succulent that is found growing through sidewalk cracks and can be eaten like lettuce. He and his handful of assistants are also hard at work readying his take on tartare,...

Kathy Bates was a 42-year-old stage actress when she was suddenly thrust into move stardom and an Oscar for her work in the film “Misery.” It was highly unusual for an actress with only limited film credits to take on a starring film role and win the industry’s highest honor but Bates accomplished just that.

Prior to “Misery,” Bates was a highly respected stage actress but when her acclaimed theater roles were adapted into film, she was never apart of the transfer. She did get to join the cast of the play “Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” when director Robert Altman filmed the play but in other cases she missed out. In the fall of 1986 Bates saw two of her stage characters adapted to the screen but she was a part of neither: “Crimes of the Heart” (replaced by Diane Keaton) and “night Mother...

E! has slotted a May airdate for Rose McGowan’s limited series Citizen Rose. The three-part special begins at 10 Pm Thursday, May 17, and picks up where January’s two-hour documentary left off, with McGowan set to launch her memoir/manifesto, Brave.

Per E!, the limited series deals with McGowan’s “emotional toll of having to constantly revisit her painful past, all the while launching a book that is one of her proudest achievements. Rose takes her social movement, #rosearmy, global to Berlin, Paris and Rome with friends like fellow survivor, Asia Argento. With the pressure on her at an all-time high, and a confrontation during a book signing, Rose reaches her breaking point and comes face-to-face with a lifetime’s worth of trauma that she’s never dealt with. With Hollywood behind her, Rose journeys to the beautiful place where she grew up as part of the Children of God...

The drama series "Genius", Season 2 "Picasso", stars Antonio Banderas ("Desperado") as the woman-chasing iconic painter, premiering the first of 7 episodes April 24, 2018:

"...the artistic career of 'Pablo Picasso' spanned more than 80 of his 91 years, much of it in his second home of France. His passionate nature and relentless creative drive were inextricably linked to his personal life, which included tumultuous marriages, numerous affairs and constantly shifting political and personal alliances.

"He lived most of his life in the vibrant Paris of the first half of the 20th century and crossed paths with writers and artists including 'Coco Chanel', 'Henri Matisse', 'Marc Chagall', 'Gertrude Stein', 'Georges Braque' and 'Jean Cocteau'..."

Click the images to enlarge and Sneak Peek "Genius: Pablo Picasso"...

As part of the National Geographic anthology period drama series "Genius", Sneak Peek new footage, plus images from "Genius: Pablo Picasso", starring Antonio Banderas ("Desperado") as the iconic painter, in a 7-episode season, premiering April 24, 2018:

"...the artistic career of 'Pablo Picasso' spanned more than 80 of his 91 years, much of it in his second home of France. His passionate nature and relentless creative drive were inextricably linked to his personal life, which included tumultuous marriages, numerous affairs and constantly shifting political and personal alliances.

"He lived most of his life in the vibrant Paris of the first half of the 20th century and crossed paths with writers and artists including 'Coco Chanel', 'Henri Matisse', 'Marc Chagall', 'Gertrude Stein', 'Georges Braque' and 'Jean Cocteau'..."

Click the images to enlarge and Sneak Peek "Genius: Pablo Picasso"...

E!, as a rule, is better known for Kardashians than activism, but the upcoming “Citizen Rose” is a new look for the network. The limited series chronicles actor/activist Rose McGowan’s life in the wake of the revolution that has taken down industry figures like Harvey Weinstein and Louis Ck, which she was instrumental in making happen by speaking out.

“Citizen Rose” is the latest iteration of McGowan’s ongoing campaign to, as she put it bluntly, “try to stop international rapists and child molesters.”

McGowan told reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour Tuesday that she first began filming footage for “Citizen Rose” three years ago, when she also began trademarking “Rose Army” in all its forms.

Read More:Rose McGowan Lines Up Five-Episode E! Documentary Series to ‘Show How We Can Heal Through Art’

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National Geographic has announced who its next “Genius” might be, and the choice moves the ongoing drama series from the world of science to art.

Following its well-received exploration into the life of Albert Einstein, Season 2 will dig into the complex life of artist Pablo Picasso. The artist, who lived from 1881 to 1973, is famed for his skewed looks at the world, which surrounded him created not just a lifetime’s work of unforgettable art – but an entire movement that made us reassess what art could be.

Read More: ‘Genius’: Hear the Song That Foreshadowed Johnny Flynn’s Breakout Role as Young Einstein

“Genius” is executive produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, the latter of whom directed the first episode of Season 1. Executive producer and showrunner Ken Biller will return for Season 2.

There is no official word yet as to who will play Picasso, but in the first season of “Genius,” Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Flynn played the older and younger versions of Einstein (respectively). Producers said they plan to court a similar level of talent for the next season.

Prior to “Genius,” on screen Picasso has been portrayed on screen about 40 times, with portrayers including Marcial Di Fonzo Bo in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” and Anthony Hopkins in the film “Surviving Picasso.”

Also, Picasso mingled with plenty of other historical figures of his time we might look forward to seeing depicted — from the official release:

His passionate nature and relentless creative drive were inextricably linked to his personal life, which included tumultuous marriages, numerous affairs and constantly shifting political and personal alliances. He lived most of his life in the vibrant Paris of the first half of the 20th Century and crossed paths with writers and artists including Ernest Hemingway, Coco Chanel, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Gertrude Stein, Georges Braque, and Jean Cocteau.

“What we were looking for, as with Albert Einstein, was someone who saw the world in a completely different way,” Biller said during a conference call this morning tied to the announcement. “One in scientific realm and one in art realm. This is a declarative statement, that ‘Genius’ is not only about scientists, [but people] who are iconic figures in history who changed the world. Pablo Picasso came to mind among many figures for Season 2.”

Picasso was the first name the producers considered for the project, Biller said, and after discussing several names, “we circled back to that idea and felt that his story, which is rich and emotional and passionate and controversial, would not only allow us to expand the palette, but his life was so turbulent and interesting. It’s a fascinating story.”

Howard said many men and women were considered for the project, and the producers used the success of depicting Albert Einstein’s life as a guide in finding a story subject with similar breadth.

“We wanted to try to live up to an achievement we were very proud of, with Einstein’s life, and we needed to know the drama was there,” Biller said. “Talking to friends, family, and kicking it around, his name stimulates curiosity in people. He’s famous, a household name, but you don’t really know the story of his life – how through the turbulence, he achieved artistic greatness in many ways and over many years.”

Biller said the producers considered a female subject for Season 2, and are “hoping to do a woman for Season 3.”

“Unfortunately the way history works, when you Google ‘geniuses’ online, history doesn’t remember a lot of [women],” Biller said. “The pool from them to choose is smaller. We explored ideas of people in science, politics, the arts. It’s a fun parlor game. There are probably very few people you could mention that we didn’t discuss on some level.”

Biller pointed out that although Season 1 was about Einstein, it spent time on the women characters surrounding him, including his first wife, physicist Mileva Maric.

“We did feel a responsibility to explore this other brilliant scientist we didn’t know, Mileva,” Biller said. “You’ll see also in Picasso’s story that there are many fascinating women in his life who inspired him and were artists in their own right. We will give them their due and explore what it was like to be a woman not only in that time but also in Picasso’s life.”

Given the subject matter, Howard said he expects to be able to play with visuals in Season 2. Like Season 1 of “Genius,” Season 2 will cover different stages of Picasso’s life and include two actors portraying the artist.

“We have no casting in mind yet but we’re hoping to attract that same level of talent to the project,” Biller said.

Biller defended the idea of portraying Einstein’s sexuality. “The idea of seeing Einstein with his pants down wasn’t designed for titillation,” he said. “One of the truths of Einstein is that most of the world didn’t know about was he had many sexual relationships. He was not faithful to his wife. He had an unorthodox view of sexuality and monogamy. If we were going to spend ten hours exploring character, the audience wouldn’t be interested in watching him at a blackboard for ten hours.”

“We’re in heavy development of the show,” he added. “We have some of the same writers from the first season, and some new ones. Our intention is to be in production before the end of this year in the fall.”

The Season 1 finale of “Genius” aired Tuesday, June 20. The 10-episode second season is expected to air in Spring 2018.

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Why so glum, chum? Movies are fun and they need watching.

In the immortal words of Shane Black via Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight, “Life is pain. Get used to it.” These days life has been really painful though, and it’s not so easy to get used to it. Thankfully movies are always here to pick us up when we need it, or bring us down if we’re looking to wallow. This month we’ve made a list of movies that will leave you smiling and feeling good about humanity after you watch them — at least for a little while. Click on their titles to be taken to their Netflix pages.

Pick of the Month: Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

It’s possible that Big Trouble in Little China might be the stupidest movie ever made. It’s about a fast-talking, rock-stupid, man-child truck driver battling Asian mystics over the fate of his...

Emma Watson hit the streets of New York City to honor this year's International Women's Day.  The Beauty and the Beast star and gender rights activist, in partnership with Book Fairies, visited multiple historic sights on Wednesday with one mission in mind: To celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women through the power of literature. Watson documented her day on Twitter, writing, "Today I'm a red-striking ninja book-fairy out to spread some wise women's words" before heading out to the Harriet Tubman Memorial, the Joan of Arc Memorial, the Gertrude Stein statue and the Eleanor Roosevelt Monument.  The 26-year-old British...

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Can a human and a machine love one another? This is the question Humans dedicates itself to not only asking, but to asking in as many ways possible.

The show exists in a setting familiar to most science-fiction fans: a world in which lifelike humanoid machines populate society’s homes and businesses. Like the hosts of Westworld or the replicants of Blade Runner, they’re anatomically identical to humans and nearly blend in with humans. However, unlike hosts and replicants, the “Synths” of Humans do not think, trick, manipulate, feel or lie. That is, except for a select few – Niska, Mia, and a handful of others – who are disrupting expectations due to their “consciousness code.”

The second season of Humans picks up a few months after its first season and opens with Niska (Emily Berrington), perhaps the most intriguing of the conscious Snyths,...

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This review contains spoilers.

1.1 The Original

Like that long awaited locomotive pulling into Tucson for the first time, Westworld is finally here. Many at HBO have anticipated this day with just as much reverence and optimism as the 1880 denizens of that famous railroad town from the Old West, watching anxiously as the smoke clouds plumed beneath the fading Arizona light. Of course, in spite of the dust, horses, gunplay, and even coal-powered engine from that oft-romanticized era, Westworld is not a Western; nay, for all we know it’s not even located in North America.

Rather, this is the culmination of several years’ worth of work, reshoots, ballooning budgets, and the high expectations that come implicit for the prestige network, particularly when it...

To paraphrase Shakespeare: Oh brave new-but-kinda-old world, that has such creatures in it!

The premiere of HBO’s Westworld introduces us to a slightly futuristic world where people can slap down serious cash in order to frolic in a vast amusement park full of androids. The setting is the American Old West, which means that well-heeled patrons can have their fill of saloon girls, town-square shootouts and the like. Oh, and the androids don’t know they’re androids, or that they’re controlled by a team of scientists located in a futuristic hub near the park. They merely believe...

Tickled is a very smart documentary investigating our collective failures at the macro level. The legal system, the school system and our community ecosystem have “leakages.” Our failure has been forgetting we are linked and responsible for each other’s well-being, as the Dalai Lama and other spiritual leaders teach. We haven’t tried hard enough nor succeeded enough, and we know this because individuals responsible for causing damage continue to hoodwink and exploit others and perpetuate cycles of violence. In other words, Tickled, debuting at Sundance this year, explores narratives that stain our global conscience today. At onset it might seem a film about tickling does not merit this mature provocation, but New Zealander documentarians David Farrier and Dylan Reeve, filming in New Zealand and the U.S., present the “tickling game” as an exposé of our failures in keeping each other safe.

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Totally and tragically unconventional, Peggy Guggenheim moved through the cultural upheaval of the 20th century collecting not only not only art, but artists. Her sexual life was -- and still today is -- more discussed than the art itself which she collected, not for her own consumption but for the world to enjoy.

Her colorful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp and countless others. Guggenheim helped introduce the world to Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and scores of others now recognized as key masters of modernism.

In 1921 she moved to Paris and mingled with Picasso, Dali, Joyce, Pound, Stein, Leger, Kandinsky. In 1938 she opened a gallery in London and began showing Cocteau, Tanguy, Magritte, Miro, Brancusi, etc., and then back to Paris and New York after the Nazi invasion, followed by the opening of her NYC gallery Art of This Century, which became one of the premiere avant-garde spaces in the U.S. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo where she moved in 1947. Since 1951, her collection has become one of the world’s most visited art spaces.

Featuring: Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Vasil Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Jean Miro, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Kurt Schwitters, Gino Severini, Clyfford Still and Yves Tanguy.

Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Director and Producer)

Lisa Immordino Vreeland has been immersed in the world of fashion and art for the past 25 years. She started her career in fashion as the Director of Public Relations for Polo Ralph Lauren in Italy and quickly moved on to launch two fashion companies, Pratico, a sportswear line for women, and Mago, a cashmere knitwear collection of her own design. Her first book was accompanied by her directorial debut of the documentary of the same name, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012). The film about the editor of Harper's Bazaar had its European premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, going on to win the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the fashion category for the Design of the Year awards, otherwise known as “The Oscars” of design—at the Design Museum in London.

"Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" is Lisa Immordino Vreeland's followup to her acclaimed debut, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel". She is now working on her third doc on Cecil Beaton who Lisa says, "has been circling around all these stories. What's great about him is the creativity: fashion photography, war photography, "My Fair Lady" winning an Oscar."

Sydney Levine: I have read numerous accounts and interviews with you about this film and rather than repeat all that has been said, I refer my readers to Indiewire's Women and Hollywood interview at Tribeca this year, and your Indiewire interview with Aubrey Page, November 6, 2015 .

Let's try to cover new territory here.

First of all, what about you? What is your relationship to Diana Vreeland?

Liv: I am married to her grandson, Alexander Vreeland. (I'm also proud of my name Immordino) I never met Diana but hearing so many family stories about her made me start to wonder about all the talk about her. I worked in fashion and lived in New York like she did.

Sl: In one of your interviews you said that Peggy was not only ahead of her time but she helped to define it. Can you tell me how?

Liv: Peggy grew up in a very traditional family of German Bavarian Jews who had moved to New York City in the 19th century. Already at a young age Peggy felt like there were too many rules around her and she wanted to break out. That alone was something attractive to me — the notion that she knew that she didn't fit in to her family or her times. She lived on her own terms, a very modern approach to life. She decided to abandon her family in New York. Though she always stayed connected to them, she rarely visited New York. Instead she lived in a world without borders. She did not live by "the rules". She believed in creating art and created herself, living on her own terms and not on those of her family.

Sl: Is there a link between her and your previous doc on Diana Vreeland?

Liv: The link between Vreeland and Guggenheim is their mutual sense of reinvention and transformation. That made something click inside of me as I too reinvented myself when I began writing the book on Diana Vreeland .

Can you talk about the process of putting this one together and how it differed from its predecessor?

Liv: The most challenging thing about this one was the vast amount of material we had at our disposal. We had a lot of media to go through — instead of fashion spreads, which informed The Eye Has To Travel, we had art, which was fantastic. I was spoiled by the access we had to these incredible archives and footage. I'm still new to this, but it's the storytelling aspect that I loved in both projects. One thing about Peggy that Mrs. Vreeland didn't have was a very tragic personal life. There was so much that happened in Peggy's life before you even got to what she actually accomplished. And so we had to tell a very dense story about her childhood, her father dying on the Titanic, her beloved sister dying — the tragic events that fundamentally shaped her in a way. It was about making sure we had enough of the personal story to go along with her later accomplishments.

World War II alone was such a huge part of her story, opening an important art gallery in London, where she showed Kandinsky and other important artists for the first time. The amount of material to distill was a tremendous challenge and I hope we made the right choices.

Sl: How did you learn make a documentary?

Liv: I learned how to make a documentary by having a good team around me. My editors (and co-writers)Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frédéric Tcheng were very helpful.

Research is fundamental; finding as much as you can and never giving up. I love the research. It is my "precise time". Not just for interviews but of footage, photographs never seen before. It is a painstaking process that satisfies me. The research never ends. I was still researching while I was promoting the Diana Vreeland book. I love reading books and going to original sources.

The archives in film museums in the last ten years has changed and given museums a new role. I found unique footage at Moma with the Elizabeth Chapman Films. Chapman went to Paris in the 30s and 40s with a handheld camera and took moving pictures of Brancusi and Duchamps joking around in a studio, Gertrude Stein, Leger walking down the street. This footage is owned by Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art. In fact he is taking a sabbatical this year to go through the boxes and boxes of Chapman's films. We also used " Entre'acte" by René Clair cowritten with Dadaist Francis Picabia, "Le Sang du poet" of Cocteau, Hans Richter "8x8","Gagascope" and " Dreams That Money Can Buy" produced by Peggy Guggenheim, written by Man Ray in 1947.

Sl: How long did it take to research and make the film?

Liv: It took three years for both the Vreeland and the Guggenheim documentary.

It was more difficult with the Guggenheim story because there was so much material and so much to tell of her life. And she was not so giving of her own self. Diana could inspire you about a bandaid; she was so giving. But Peggy didn't talk much about why she loved an artist or a painting. She acted more. And using historical material could become "over-teaching" though it was fascinating.

So much had to be eliminated. It was hard to eliminate the Degenerate Art Show, a subject which is newly discussed. Stephanie Barron of Lacma is an expert on Degenerate Art and was so generous.

Once we decided upon which aspects to focus on, then we could give focus to the interviews.

There were so many of her important shows we could not include. For instance there was a show on collages featuring William Baziotes , Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell which started a more modern collage trend in art. The 31 Women Art Show which we did include pushed forward another message which I think is important.

And so many different things have been written about Peggy — there were hundreds of articles written about her during her lifetime. She also kept beautiful scrapbooks of articles written about her, which are now in the archives of the Guggenheim Museum.

The Guggenheim foundation did not commission this documentary but they were very supportive and the film premiered there in New York in a wonderful celebration. They wanted to represent Peggy and her paintings properly. The paintings were secondary characters and all were carefully placed historically in a correct fashion.

Sl: You said in one interview Guggenheim became a central figure in the modern art movement?

Liv: Yes and she did it without ego. Sharing was always her purpose in collecting art. She was not out for herself. Before Peggy, the art world was very different. And today it is part of wealth management.

Other collectors had a different way with art. Isabelle Stewart Gardner bought art for her own personal consumption. The Gardner Museum came later. Gertrude Stein was sharing the vision of her brother when she began collecting art. The Coen sisters were not sharing.

Her benevolence ranged from giving Berenice Abbott the money to buy her first camera to keeping Pollock afloat during lean times.

Djuana Barnes, who had a 'Love Love Love Hate Hate Hate' relationship with Peggy wrote Nightwood in Peggy's country house in England.

She was in Paris to the last minute. She planned how to safeguard artwork from the Nazis during World War II. She was storing gasoline so she could escape. She lived on the Ile St. Louis with her art and moved the paintings out first to a children's boarding school and then to Marseilles where it was shipped out to New York City.

Her role in art was not taken seriously because of her very public love life which was described in very derogatory terms. There was more talk about her love life than about her collection of art.

Her autobiography, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict (1960) , was scandalous when it came out — and she didn't even use real names, she used pseudonyms for her numerous partners. Only after publication did she reveal the names of the men she slept with.

The fact that she spoke about her sexual life at all was the most outrageous aspect. She was opening herself up to ridicule, but she didn't care. Peggy was her own person and she felt good in her own skin. But it was definitely unconventional behavior. I think her sexual appetites revealed a lot about finding her own identity.

A lot of it was tied to the loss of her father, I think, in addition to her wanting to feel accepted. She was also very adventurous — look at the men she slept with. I mean, come on, they are amazing! Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and she married Max Ernst. I think it was really ballsy of her to have been so open about her sexuality; this was not something people did back then. So many people are bound by conventional rules but Peggy said no. She grabbed hold of life and she lived it on her own terms.

Sl: You also give Peggy credit for changing the way art was exhibited. Can you explain that?

Liv: One of her greatest achievements was her gallery space in New York City, Art of This Century, which was unlike anything the art world has seen before or since in the way that it shattered the boundaries of the gallery space that we've come to know today — the sterile white cube. She came to be a genius at displaying her collections...

She was smart with Art of the Century because she hired Frederick Kiesler as a designer of the gallery and once again surrounded herself with the right people, including Howard Putzler, who was already involved with her at Guggenheim Jeune in London. And she was hanging out with all the exiled Surrealists who were living in New York at the time, including her future husband, Max Ernst, who was the real star of that group of artists. With the help of these people, she started showing art in a completely different way that was both informal and approachable. In conventional museums and galleries, art was untouchable on the wall and inside frames. In Peggy's gallery, art stuck out from the walls; works weren't confined to frames. Kiesler designed special chairs you could sit in and browse canvases as you would texts in a library. Nothing like this had ever existed in New York before — even today there is nothing like it.

She made the gallery into an exciting place where the whole concept of space was transformed. In Venice, the gallery space was also her home. Today, for a variety of reasons, the home aspect of the collection is less emphasized, though you still get a strong sense of Peggy's home life there. She was bringing art to the public in a bold new way, which I think is a great idea. It's art for everybody, which is very much a part of today's dialogue except that fewer people can afford the outlandish museum entry fees.

Sl: What do you think made her so prescient and attuned ?

Liv: She was smart enough to ask Marcel Duchamp to be her advisor — so she was in tune, and very well connected. She was on the cutting edge of what was going on and I think a lot of this had to do with Peggy being open to the idea of what was new and outrageous. You have to have a certain personality for this; what her childhood had dictated was totally opposite from what she became in life, and being in the right place at the right time helped her maintain a cutting edge throughout her life.

Sl: The movie is framed around a lost interview with Peggy conducted late in her life. How did you acquire these tapes?

Liv: We optioned Jacqueline Bogard Weld’s book, Peggy : The Wayward Guggenheim, the only authorized biography of Peggy, which was published after she died. Jackie had spent two summers interviewing Peggy but at a certain point lost the tapes somewhere in her Park Avenue apartment. Jackie had so much access to Peggy, which was incredible, but it was also the access that she had to other people who had known Peggy — she interviewed over 200 people for her book. Jackie was incredibly generous, letting me go through all her original research except for the lost tapes.

We'd walk into different rooms in her apartment and I'd suggestively open a closet door and ask “Where do you think those tapes might be?" Then one day I asked if she had a basement, and she did. So I went through all these boxes down there, organizing her affairs. Then bingo, the tapes showed up in this shoebox.

It was the longest interview Peggy had ever done and it became the framework for our movie. There's nothing more powerful than when you have someone's real voice telling the story, and Jackie was especially good at asking provoking questions. You can tell it was hard for Peggy to answer a lot of them, because she wasn't someone who was especially expressive; she didn't have a lot of emotion. And this comes across in the movie, in the tone of her voice.

Sl: Larry Gagosian has one of the best descriptions of Peggy in the movie — "she was her own creation." Would you agree, and if so why?

Liv: She was very much her own creation. When he said that in the interview I had a huge smile on my face. In Peggy's case it stemmed from a real need to identify and understand herself. I'm not sure she achieved it but she completely recreated herself — she knew that she did not want to be what she was brought up to be. She tried being a mother, but that was not one of her strengths, so art became that place where she could find herself, and then transform herself.

Nobody believed in the artists she cultivated and supported — they were outsiders and she was an outsider in the world she was brought up in. So it's in this way that she became her own great invention. I hope that her humor comes across in the film because she was extremely amusing — this aspect really comes across in her autobiography.

Sl: Finally, what do you think is Peggy Guggenheim's most lasting legacy, beyond her incredible art collection?

Liv: Her courage, and the way she used it to find herself. She had this ballsiness that not many people had, especially women. In her own way she was a feminist and it's good for women and young girls today to see women who stepped outside the confines of a very traditional family and made something of her life. Peggy's life did not seem that dreamy until she attached herself to these artists. It was her ability to redefine herself in the end that truly summed her up.

About the Filmmakers

Stanley Buchtal is a producer and entrepreneur. His movies credits include "Hairspray", "Spanking the Monkey", "Up at the Villa", "Lou Reed Berlin", "Love Marilyn", "LennoNYC", "Bobby Fischer Against the World", "Herb & Dorothy", "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child", "Sketches of Frank Gehry", "Black White + Gray: a Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe", among numerous others.

David Koh is an independent producer, distributor, sales agent, programmer and curator. He has been involved in the distribution, sale, production, and financing of over 200 films. He is currently a partner in the boutique label Submarine Entertainment with Josh and Dan Braun and is also partners with Stanley Buchthal and his Dakota Group Ltd where he co-manages a portfolio of over 50 projects a year (75% docs and 25% fiction). Previously he was a partner and founder of Arthouse Films a boutique distribution imprint and ran Chris Blackwell's (founder of Island Records & Island Pictures) film label, Palm Pictures. He has worked as a Producer for artist Nam June Paik and worked in the curatorial departments of Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, Mfa Boston, and the Guggenheim Museum. David has recently served as a Curator for Microsoft and has curated an ongoing film series and salon with Andre Balazs Properties and serves as a Curator for the exclusive Core Club in NYC.

David recently launched with his partners Submarine Deluxe, a distribution imprint; Torpedo Pictures, a low budget high concept label; and Nfp Submarine Doks, a German distribution imprint with Nfp Films. Recently and upcoming projects include "Yayoi Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots", "Burden: a Portrait of Artist Chris Burden", "Dior and I", "20 Feet From Stardom", "Muscle Shoals", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Rats NYC", "Nas: Time Is Illmatic", "Blackfish", "Love Marilyn", "Chasing Ice", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Cutie and the Boxer"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: the Radiant Child", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Wolfpack, "Meru", and "Station to Station".

Dan Braun is a producer, writer, art director and musician/composer based in NYC. He is the Co-President of and Co-Founder of Submarine, a NYC film sales and production company specializing in independent feature and documentary films. Titles include "Blackfish", "Finding Vivian Maier", "Muscle Shoals", "The Case Against 8", "Keep On Keepin’ On", "Winter’s Bone", "Nas: Time is Illmatic", "Dior and I" and Oscar winning docs "Man on Wire", "Searching for Sugarman", "20 Ft From Stardom" and "Citizenfour". He was Executive Producer on documentaries "Kill Your Idols", (which won Best NY Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004), "Blank City", "Sunshine Superman", the upcoming feature adaptations of "Batkid Begins" and "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" and the upcoming horror TV anthology "Creepy" to be directed by Chris Columbus.

He is a producer of the free jazz documentary "Fire Music", and the upcoming documentaries, "Burden" on artist Chris Burden and "Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots" on artist Yayoi Kusama. He is also a writer and consulting editor on Dark Horse Comic’s "Creepy" and "Eerie 9" comic book and archival series for which he won an Eisner Award for best archival comic book series in 2009.

He is a musician/composer whose compositions were featured in the films "I Melt With You" and "Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child and is an award winning art director/creative director when he worked at Tbwa/Chiat/Day on the famous Absolut Vodka campaign.

John Northrup (Co-Producer) began his career in documentaries as a French translator for National Geographic: Explorer. He quickly moved into editing and producing, serving as the Associate Producer on "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012), and editing and co-producing "Wilson In Situ" (2014), which tells the story of theatre legend Robert Wilson and his Watermill Center. Most recently, he oversaw the post-production of Jim Chambers’ "Onward Christian Soldier", a documentary about Olympic Bomber Eric Rudolph, and is shooting on Susanne Rostock’s "Another Night in the Free World", the follow-up to her award-winning "Sing Your Song" (2011).

Submarine Entertainment (Production Company) Submarine Entertainment is a hybrid sales, production, and distribution company based in N.Y. Recent and upcoming titles include "Citizenfour", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Dog", "Visitors", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Muscle Shoals", "Blackfish", "Cutie and the Boxer", "The Summit", "The Unknown Known", "Love Marilyn", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Chasing Ice", "Downtown 81 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Wild Style 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Good Ol Freda", "Some Velvet Morning", among numerous others. Submarine principals also represent Creepy and Eerie comic book library and are developing properties across film & TV platforms.

Submarine has also recently launched a domestic distribution imprint and label called Submarine Deluxe; a genre label called Torpedo Pictures; and a German imprint and label called Nfp Submarine Doks.

Bernadine Colish has edited a number of award-winning documentaries. "Herb and Dorothy" (2008), won Audience Awards at Silverdocs, Philadelphia and Hamptons Film Festivals, and "Body of War" (2007), was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. "A Touch of Greatness" (2004) aired on PBS Independent Lens and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Her career began at Maysles Films, where she worked with Charlotte Zwerin on such projects as "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", "Toru Takemitsu: Music for the Movies" and the PBS American Masters documentary, "Ella Fitzgerald: Something To Live For". Additional credits include "Bringing Tibet Home", "Band of Sisters", "Rise and Dream", "The Tiger Next Door", "The Buffalo War" and "Absolute Wilson".

Jed Parker (Editor) Jed Parker began his career in feature films before moving into documentaries through his work with the award-winning American Masters series. Credits include "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart", "Annie Liebovitz: Life Through a Lens", and most recently "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides".

Other work includes two episodes of the PBS series "Make ‘Em Laugh", hosted by Billy Crystal, as well as a documentary on Met Curator Henry Geldzahler entitled "Who Gets to Call it Art"?

Credits

Director, Writer, Producer: Lisa Immordino Vreeland

Produced by Stanley Buchthal, David Koh and Dan Braun Stanley Buchthal (producer)

Maja Hoffmann (executive producer)

Josh Braun (executive producer)

Bob Benton (executive producer)

John Northrup (co-producer)

Bernadine Colish (editor)

Jed Parker (editor)

Peter Trilling (director of photography)

Bonnie Greenberg (executive music producer)

Music by J. Ralph

Original Song "Once Again" Written and Performed By J. Ralph

Interviews Featuring Artist Marina Abramović Jean Arp Dore Ashton Samuel Beckett Stephanie Barron Constantin Brâncuși Diego Cortez Alexander Calder Susan Davidson Joseph Cornell Robert De Niro Salvador Dalí Simon de Pury Willem de Kooning Jeffrey Deitch Marcel Duchamp Polly Devlin Max Ernst Larry Gagosian Alberto Giacometti Arne Glimcher Vasily Kandinsky Michael Govan Fernand Léger Nicky Haslam Joan Miró Pepe Karmel Piet Mondrian Donald Kuspit Robert Motherwell Dominique Lévy Jackson Pollock Carlo McCormick Mark Rothko Hans Ulrich Obrist Yves Tanguy Lisa Phillips Lindsay Pollock Francine Prose John Richardson Sandy Rower Mercedes Ruehl Jane Rylands Philip Rylands Calvin Tomkins Karole Vail Jacqueline Bograd Weld Edmund White

Running time: 97 minutes

U.S. distribution by Submarine Deluxe

International sales by Hanway...

The Ifp Marcie Bloom Fellowship in Film has announced four fellows for the 2015-2016 fellowship year: Alik Barsoumian (New York University), Antoneta Kusijanovic (Columbia University), Julie O’Leary (Columbia University) and Susanna Locascio (Columbia University). Since 2007, this intimate mentorship has become a staple of the New York independent film community. Past fellows have hailed from schools including Nyu, Columbia, Yale, Wesleyan, Harvard, Bard College and the University of Chicago, among others. Once a month, the four fellows will spend an evening with a guest -- from the cream of Gotham's indie filmmaking crop -- at Marcie Bloom’s Upper West side apartment. The fellowship is an "intimate, casual environment we imagine to be reminiscent of Gertrude Stein's Parisian salons of the 1920s and 1930s," Bloom has said. The idea is to "foster ideas, hopes, inspiration, and provide real-life contact with some of the very people the fellows aspire to become.