News

Italy’s Minerva Pictures has unveiled a slew of sales on its EFM slate including for Taavi Vartia’s Finnish survival thriller Ice Skater and Stefano Sardo’s erotic thriller Close To Me.

Ice Skater was acquired by Spain’s Inopia, Cis’s Magic Films, Latin America’s Clube Filmes, and by Foxx Vision for the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Now in post, Ice Skater stars Norwegian actress Thea Sofie Loch Næss as a woman who finds herself stranded on an ice floe in the Arctic Sea.

Close To Me, which is co-distributed with Tvco, was acquired for German-speaking countries by Splendid,...

Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu will be the special guest at the 56th edition of documentary festival Visions du Réel, which runs April 4 – 13 in Nyon, Switzerland. There will be a retrospective of all Porumboiu’s feature films, and he will deliver a masterclass.

“Imbued with dark humor, Corneliu Porumboiu’s films play with the absurdity integral to Romanian society, which threw off the yoke of communism with the fall of Nicolae Ceausescu and the revolution of 1989, instantly supplanting it with unbridled capitalism,” the festival said in a statement.

Porumboiu has released 13 films (including six shorts), during a career that spans almost 20 years. He made a name for himself on the international scene with his first feature length film, “12:08 East of Bucharest,” winner of the prestigious Caméra d’Or at Cannes in 2006. His feature films, which include “Police, Adjective” (2009) and “The Treasure” (2015), were also praised by critics and earned awards at Cannes,...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Beatles ’64 (David Tedeschi)

While Andrei Ujică’s Twst / Things We Said Today, which premiered on the fall festival circuit this year, took a more avant-garde approach to Beatlemania in the United States, the David Tedeschi-directed, Martin Scorsese-produced Beatles ’64 is a far more straightforward and therefore fan-pleasing documentary about the Fab Four. Capturing their February 7, 1964 descent upon NYC, the neatly-assembled, restored archival footage shot by Albert and David Maysles is the finest part of the documentary, while present-day talking heads memories from Paul McCartney (speaking on how their lyrics attempted to make a universal yet personal connection), Ringo Starr, and especially David Lynch provide welcome context. The Mulholland Dr. director remarked about seeing Beatles in a boxing ring, waxing poetic about...

Andrei Ujica had already established himself as a master of non-fiction storytelling through two previous films that unearthed history hidden within archives. Both Videograms of a Revolution and The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu uncovered political revelations by combing through hours of state-controlled footage from his native Romania. So it’s no surprise that his latest documentary opts for a similar all-archival approach.

This time the setting is 1960s America, and the subjects are everyday people living through profound cultural changes. The backdrop is that iconic weekend in August 1965 when the Beatles played their famous show at Shea Stadium in New York. Ujica assembles snippets from amateur home videos, newsreels, and even radio broadcasts to immerse us in the period. Through these vivid yet fragmented glimpses, he transports viewers back directly to experience that unforgettable moment in music history.

But Ujica aims to shed light on more than just Beatlemania. His...

Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujică’s Twst / Things We Said Today exists in the world of Beatlemania. It uses archival footage from the lead-up to the Beatles concert at Shea Stadium in August of 1965, following animated cut-outs of young men and women from around New York as they experience the excitement taking over the city. Ujică spends the first half of his documentary firmly within the circle of the Beatles, the latter half around the city––specifically at the World’s Fair, with the film sputtering as it continues forward. But when it’s encircling the most-famed band of all time and the city’s heatwave surrounding them, it excels, drawing in the viewer to the special moments on the outskirts of the Twst‘s central event.

Ujică’s documentary follows two teenagers who give voiceovers explaining their experiences during the weekend leading up to the concert. They’re sketched as near-shadows,...

The 28th Ji.hlava Intl. Documentary Film Festival, which runs Oct. 25 – Nov. 3, will offer 340 films, of which 129 are world premieres, 23 international premieres and 11 European premieres.

The program includes a retrospective of Swiss filmmaker Anne Marie Miéville’s work and a showcase of films by Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang.

The festival will be attended by U.S. director Kirsten Johnson, the creator of this year’s festival trailer, Italian director Roberto Minervini, Spanish filmmaker Albert Serra and Romanian director Andrei Ujică.

Marek Hovorka, the festival’s director, said: “The program of Ji.hlava shows the extraordinary power of documentary film. Documentary filmmakers replace the literalness of reality with playfulness and originality of thought. They show us the world as we could hardly see it ourselves – unless, like them, we would like to spend long years with a camera in those places.

“Dialogue has been important to Ji.hlava since its beginning,...

Leading documentary festival IDFA has added more than 100 films to the program of its 37th edition, which runs from Nov. 14 to 24 in Amsterdam, as it unveiled the first titles for the Signed, Best of Fests and Paradocs selections, as well as the Short Documentary and the Youth Documentary sections.

The Signed section includes Radu Jude’s found-footage documentary “Eight Postcards from Utopia,” showing the commercials from Romania’s transition to a capitalist democracy, and impressionist desktop film “Sleep #2,” capturing live stream recordings of Andy Warhol’s grave. Mati Diop’s “Dahomey” examines questions of repatriation of African artefacts from Europe.

Several renowned directors push the boundaries of music film in this year’s program. Andrei Ujică revisits 1965 in “Twst – Things We Said Today,” offering a poetic look at the Beatles as they captivate New York while the Watts riots erupt in Los Angeles. Kevin Macdonald’s “One to One: John & Yoko...

“Twst — Things We Said Today,” the latest work of cinematic magic from the Romanian director and screenwriter Andrei Ujica, is both elaborately crafted and a heck of a lot of fun. With its title aptly referring to the 1964 Beatles song that McCartney described as a “future nostalgia,” the all-archival documentary leisurely begins with the band’s arrival in NYC for their August ’65 concert at Shea Stadium, and then propels fast and furiously forward, zig-zagging back in time and through multiple spaces.

The film is culled from nearly 100 hours of 8mm home movies (sourced from Ebay) and another 100-plus hours of 16mm news footage shot around the weekend of August 13-15, 1965, mostly by the “Big Three”. It also deftly juxtaposes the Beatles (trailed by paparazzi and forced to endure carnivalesque press conferences) with their obsessed female fandom (likewise pursued by reporters attempting to understand this newfangled “Beatlemania”). Additionally, “Twst” is...

John! Paul! George! Ringo! In the summer of 1965, it was all about the Beatles, readying for their gig at New York’s Shea Stadium. But “Twst – Things We Said Today,” premiering at the Venice Film Festival, is not another “pop-music documentary.” The film premieres an exclusive clip below.

“It just doesn’t interest me as a genre. Instead, I wanted to capture what was in the air back then. That generation wasn’t politized yet and the social rights movement was only starting,” director Andrei Ujică says.

He couldn’t help but be fascinated by the frenzy of Beatlemania, however, sweeping the nation.

“Music has the power to create ecstatic feelings. The Beatles weren’t the first – before, people talked about ‘Lisztomania’ [directed toward Hungarian composer Franz Liszt] and when Sinatra was singing, women would faint by the rows,” Ujică says.

“Because of new technology, the Beatles could reach a much bigger audience,...

Italy’s Minerva Pictures has boarded Giovanni Dota’s High Stakes – A Night on the Ward which plays in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori sidebar.

The Italian comedy is set in a Naples hospital and centres on two nurses who bet their Christmas vacation whether a desperately ill patient will survive the night.

The film stars Carlo Buccirosso and Lino Musella. It is produced through Italian International Film with Rai Cinema. I Wonder Pictures is handling Italian distribution.

It plays in the Venetian Nights section of the Giornate degli Autori.

Giovanni Dota worked as an assistant director on Gomorrah. His...

Following the Main Slate announcement, the 62nd New York Film Festival has unveiled its Spotlight section. Taking place September 27-October 14, the festival has added North American premieres of Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me, Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, and Andrei Ujică’s Beatles doc Twst / Things We Said Today. Additional highlights include Jean-Luc Godard’s final film Scenarios, Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galen Jackson’s Rumours, Pablo Larraín’s Maria, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez, Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, and, as previously announced, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer as the Spotlight Gala.

See the Spotlight lineup below and learn more here.

Spotlight Gala

Queer

Luca Guadagnino, 2024, U.S./Italy, 135m

Written in the early 1950s yet not published until 1985, William S. Burroughs’s Queer has come to be considered a canonical work in the career of the Beat Generation author and a cornerstone of transgressive gay literature.

Film at Lincoln Center unveiled its Spotlight section including Pablo Larraín’s Maria with Angelina Jolie as legendary opera singer Maria Callas in her final days; the North American premieres of Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me; Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, Andrei Ujică’s Beatles documentary Twst / Things We Said Today and the U.S. premiere of doc Elton John: Never Too Late, with an appearance by the legendary musician.

Jacques Audiard’s Cannes Jury Prize winner Emilia Pérez joins new works by Jacques Audiard, Petra Costa, Jesse Eisenberg, Jean-Luc Godard, Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Jackson, Scott McGehee and David Siegel, Walter Salles, Brett Story and Stephen Maing.

NYFF calls Spotlight a showcase of the fall’s most notable films — a selection of literary adaptations, portraits of musical artists, Cannes award winners, works dealing with political and historical realities, and the final film of Jean-Luc Godard,...

Pablo Larraín’s Venice selection Maria starring Angelina Jolie and TIFF world premiere Elton John: Never Too Late featuring an appearance by John and co-directors R.J. Cutler and David Furnish will receive their US premieres in New York Film Festival’s (NYFF) Spotlight programme.

The section showcases what NYFF programmers regard as the fall season’s most notable films and includes the North American premiere of Alex Ross Perry’s indie rock band documentary and Venice world premiere Pavements, and Twst/Things We Said Today, Andrei Ujică’s archival film about the Beatles’ sold-out 1965 Shea Stadium concert that also gets...

New work from Jacques Audiard, Pablo Larraín, Jesse Eisenberg, R.J. Cutler, Petra Costa, Walter Salles, Leos Carax and more will play in the 62nd New York Film Festival’s Spotlight section, joining the previously announced Spotlight Gala U.S. premiere of Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.” The final film by Jean-Luc Godard will also be featured in this section, alongside a documentary about the late French iconoclast.

Audiard’s musical “Emilia Pérez” won the Cannes Jury Prize and Best Actress, shared among stars Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz and Zoe Saldaña, and will play at this year’s NYFF. Angelina Jolie stars in Larraín’s “Maria” as legendary opera diva Maria Callas in her final days. Eisenberg directed and costars alongside Kieran Culkin in “A Real Pain,” playing cousins who make a pilgrimage to the hometown of their grandmother who survived the Holocaust. “Rumours,” a sci-fi political satire directed by Guy Maddin,...

The 2024 New York Film Festival (September 27-October 14) has added more to its already-buzzy lineup, with the latest selections in its Spotlight section announced today. The NYFF Spotlight gala this year, as previously named, will be the U.S. premiere of Luca Guadagnino’s Venice competition title “Queer.”

But new to the NYFF mix are Alex Ross Perry’s “anti-biodoc” (the festival’s words) “Pavements,” about the iconic indie rock band Pavement. That film also premieres in Venice in the Horizons section. A North American premiere of “Holy Motors” director Leos Carax’s self-reflexive short film collage “It’s Not Me,” which bowed in Cannes, also comes to NYFF this fall. Notably, one more “last film” by Jean-Luc Godard, who died in September 2022, “Scénarios” will play NYFF after screening in Cannes. The New Wave master completed the film the day before he died by assisted suicide. “Trailer of the Film That Will Never Exist: ‘Phony Wars,...

The 2024 New York Film Festival has announced the lineup for its Spotlight section, including Pablo Larraín’s Maria, starring Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas in her final days, as well as the U.S. premiere of R.J. Cutler and David Furnish’s documentary Elton John: Never Too Late.

The section will also feature the North American premiere of Alex Ross Perry’s anti-biodoc about the rock band Pavement, titled Pavements; Twst/Things We Said Today, Andrei Ujica’s archival film about the Beatles’ 1965 Shea Stadium concert; and Jacques Audiard’s Cannes winner Emilia Pérez.

Additional films in the Spotlight slate include the Jesse Eisenberg-directed A Real Pain, starring Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as cousins who attempt to reconnect on a pilgrimage to the Polish hometown of their Holocaust survivor grandmother; Brett Story and Stephen Maing’s immersive documentary Union about the day-to-day struggles of the Amazon Labor Union and...

What a difference a year makes.

After being the first major film festival to navigate the choppy waters of programming huge world premieres at a time when most actors were on strike last year, the Venice Film Festival is back for its 81st edition with a lineup of showy projects. This time, stars like George Clooney, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman, and Lady Gaga can actually come out to the Lido to support them.

Focusing on the 21 competition titles (down two from last year), the most expected entrants were Luca Guadanigno’s “Queer,” Pablo Larrain’s “Maria,” and Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” (his first English-language feature). Led by Daniel Craig, Jolie, and Tilda Swinton, respectively, each film arrives with awards hopes baked in already — especially considering the filmmakers’ track records with directing Oscar-nominated performances. While “The Room Next Door” furthers Almodóvar’s long-running relationship with distributor Sony Pictures Classics,...

The Beatles are getting some attention at this year’s Venice Film Festival, which unveiled its 2024 lineup on Tuesday.

The legendary band, who dominated the music industry for an entire decade from 1960, has earned spots in the prestigious fest’s documentary section in different capacities. Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards’ doc One to One: John & Yoko focuses on the intense and public relationship between the two artists, while Things We Said Today from Romania’s Andrei Ujica, on the other hand, is a look at the band’s famous and first North American tour – a film that was supposed to be ready 10 years ago.

On John Lennon’s official website, Macdonald’s feature documentary from Mercury Studios is described as “a moving look at the couple’s life upon their entry into a transformative 1970’s New York, exploring their musical, personal, artistic, social, and political world.” Macdonald himself said: “I...

Just a day after New York Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival made major announcements, Venice Film Festival is here with their full lineup ahead of the festival taking place August 28 through September 7.

Highlights include Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud, Alex Ross Perry’s Pavements, Harmony Korine’s Baby Invasion, Pablo Larraín’s Maria, Takeshi Kitano’s Broken Rage, Errol Morris’ Separated, Lav Diaz’s Phantosmia, Thomas Vinterberg’s Families Like Ours, Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April, and more.

Check out the lineup below with a hat tip to Cineuropa.

Competition

The Room Next Door – Pedro Almodóvar

Campo di battaglia – Gianni Amelio

Leurs enfants après eux – Ludovic & Zoran Boukherma

The Brutalist – Brady Corbet

Jouer avec le feu – Delphine & Muriel Coulin

Vermiglio – Maura Delpero

Iddu (Sicilian Letters) – Fabio Grassadonia & Antonio Piazza

Queer – Luca Guadagnino

Love – Dag Johan Haugerud...

Venice Film Festival has revealed the programme for its 81st edition, featuring a 21-strong Competition that includes new films from Todd Phillips, Pedro Almodovar, Luca Guadagino, Pablo Larrain, Brady Corbet and Justin Kurzel.

Scroll down for full line-up

The selection was unveiled by festival president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco and artistic director Alberto Barbera. It marked Buttafuoco’s first time at the annual press conference, after replacing Roberto Cicutto in October 2023.

Further filmmakers in Competition include Wang Bing, Luis Ortega, Dea Kulumbegashvili, Dag Johan Haugerud, Athina Rachel Tsangari and Walter Salles.

The line-up also includes Jon Watt’s Wolfs, starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney,...

A growing list of 300 film professionals, including Martin Scorsese, Olivier Assayas, Joanna Hogg, and Radu Jude, have signed an open letter calling for the contract of outgoing Berlinale Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian to be reinstated and extended beyond 2024.

Late last week, Chatrian released a statement via the Berlinale website announcing his intention to step down following next year’s edition of the German festival. In his statement, Chatrian pointed to the German Ministry for Culture and Media’s decision to scrap the Berlinale’s dual management structure as the main catalyst for his departure.

Last month, German Culture Minister Claudia Roth announced that she wants the Berlinale to be placed back under the control of a single director. Roth is reported to have told a meeting on Thursday of the supervisory board of federal cultural events in Berlin (Kbb), which oversees the festival, that her conclusion was the film should be led by one person.

Martin Scorsese, Radu Jude, Joanna Hogg, Claire Denis, Bertrand Bonello, M. Night Shyamalan, Kristen Stewart, Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Margarethe von Trotta are among the international filmmakers and talents who have signed an open letter in support of Carlo Chatrian whose mandate as artistic director of the Berlinale will come to an end next year. The number of signatories has now exceeded 400 names and keeps growing.

As we reported last week, Chatrian had been expected to stay on beyond 2024, and was surprised to learn that the German body which oversees the festival, Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin (Kbb), announced that it would no extend his contract. The org had previously said it would abandon the model of having an executive director and an artistic director and return instead to having a single director, following the next edition. The festival’s executive director Mariëtte Rissenbeek will also be leaving her post after the next edition.

24 feature projects, including four documentary and three animation films, received funding

Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes and Danish director Charlotte Sieling have both received co-production support for projects from Eurimages’ third round of funding for 2022.

Some €6.7m sum has been awarded to 24 feature projects including four documentary and three animation films.

Gomes has received €500,000 for Grand Tour, about an engaged couple travelling from Burma to China in 1918. The film is a co-production between Portugal’s Uma Pedra No Sapato, Italy’s Vivo Film, France and Germany.

Also receiving €500,000 is Titanic Ocean, the feature debut from Greek director Konstantina Kotzamani whose shorts have been screened at Cannes,...

More than 90 film professionals in Romania have requested that the head of the Romanian Film Center (Cnc), Anca Mitran, steps down, after an interview in which she said that in recent years Romanian filmmakers have been making art films instead of films for the audience, and that documentaries are not meant to be screened in movie theaters, according to Film New Europe.

The first to protest were a handful of documentary filmmakers, including Alexandru Solomon, Andrei Ujica and Andrei Dascalescu, and film editor Dana Bunescu, who launched an open letter signed by Alexander Nanau, Radu Jude, Calin Peter Netzer, Radu Muntean and Stere Gulea, among others.

According to the signatories, Mitran is “attacking” Romanian art films while expressing her regret that films like those made under the Communist regime are not being made anymore.

She is also inaccurate, they said, when she said that documentaries are not popular in Romania.

International documentary film festival IDFA has revealed the first films selected for its 34th edition, which runs Nov. 17-28 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. These are the program curated by the event’s guest of honor, the German filmmaker, media artist and writer Hito Steyerl, and a selection of four films directed by Armenia’s Artavazd Pelechian, who will receive IDFA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Both helmers will attend the festival in person.

With her curated program of 14 titles, Steyerl offers a window into her world of film and media art. Helping us to understand her own body of work, Steyerl presents a lineup of dissident filmmakers who, each in their own way, have shaped the art of political documentary cinema.

Selected films include “Videograms of a Revolution,” the cult masterpiece by Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, in a nod to Steyerl’s long-held admiration of Farocki, who she has written about,...

Leading documentary festival Idfa has selected a diverse lineup for Idfa Forum, the festival’s co-production and co-financing market, which will be entirely online this year, as will the rest of the industry program. Among the 63 projects to pitch at Idfa Forum, there is a strong representation of female pitch teams.

In the Forum, women make up 64% of the producers and directors; in the DocLab Forum, the market’s new media strand, 46% are women. The entire Forum selection includes projects from 45 different production and co-production countries.

Many of the projects center on women. “How to Build a Library,” directed by Maia Lekow and Christopher King, follows two women as they transform a dilapidated, junk-filled library in downtown Nairobi into a vibrant space for the city’s residents.

“Queen of Chess,” directed by Bernadett Tuza-Ritter, tells the story of the relationship and mind games of Judit Polgar, the greatest female chess player of all time,...

The forum will take place online from November 16 to 20.

New works from The Trial director Maria Ramos and The Other Side Of Everything filmmaker Mila Turajlić are among the 63 projects selected for Idfa Forum, the Dutch documentary festival’s co-production and co-financing market.

The online forum will take place from November 16 to 20.

Ramos will pitch her new investigative project Justice Under Suspicion, focusing on state rule in present-day Brazil. Her 2018 documentary The Trial debuted at Berlin, winning awards at IndieLisboa and Madrid documentary festivals.

Turajlić will present a rough cut of Serbia-France co-pro The Labudovic Reels, constructed from archive footage...

The Dutch gathering’s Forum will take place online from 16-20 November and will host a total of 63 new projects. The International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (Idfa) has announced the 63 projects selected to be pitched at the 28th edition of the Idfa Forum, the festival’s co-production and co-financing market. Traditionally, the section welcomes both established filmmakers and new voices to the international stage. Notable filmmakers in the selection include Maria Ramos, pitching the new investigative project Justice Under Suspicion, on state rule in present-day Brazil, and Andrei Ujica with his new found-footage project Things We Said Today, revolving around daily life in New York during the summer of 1965, when The Beatles first came to town. Alongside the established names are emerging directors and producers ready to join the pitch line-up. Among them are Meena Nanji and Zippy Kimundu with the project Testament, tracing the colonial atrocities of Kenya; and...

Harun Farocki – the director whose perspicacious cinematic essays analyzed the new media world – died in July 2014. With his radical way of looking at things Farocki strove to endow images with their own form of self-will, to expose their political and cultural coding. The Goethe-Institut Los Angeles and Los Angeles Filmforum join to present a free eight-screening series of some of Farocki’s masterworks, running on Wednesday nights from January 14 to March 4.

Farocki lived and worked in Berlin as a filmmaker, artist and writer. His essay and observational films question the production and perception of images, decoding film as a medium and examining how audiovisual culture is related to history, politics, technology and war. His projects have been shown in festivals and solo, group and retrospective exhibitions worldwide at important events and international institutions, including the 2010 São Paulo Biennial, Documenta X and Xxii in Kassel, Tate Modern in London, MacBa in Barcelona, Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Jeu de Paume in Paris.

Screenings In memory of filmmaker Harun Farocki

Wednesday nights from January 14 to March 4 at 7:00 pm

Where: At the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, 5750 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 100, Los Angeles, CA 90036

Tickets: Free admission, but RSVP needed, by email to

rsvp@losangeles.goethe.org or by phone at 323.525.3388

Parking: $1 validated parking (for events only) on weekdays after 6:00 pm and all day on weekends in the Wilshire Courtyard West underground garage-P1.

For more event information visit Here

Screening on Wednesday, January 14th 2015, 7:00 pm

Leben: Brd (How to Live in the Frg)

1990, 88 min. color, German with English subtitles. Digital .

The author assembles a genre picture of the contemporary Frg with shots of scenes where life is rehearsed, ability/durability is tested. Wherever one looks, people appear as actors playing themselves; they take on roles. A play in the theater of life made up of training courses, fitness tests for things and people. Be it in birth preparation classes for expectant parents or in practice runs for sales talks, on the military training ground or during role-plays for educational purposes. Everywhere the incessant effort to be prepared for the emergency of "reality" can be felt.

"How To Live In The Frg" assembles out of a wealth of details a picture of a society in which childbearing and dying, crying and taking care of people, crossing streets and killing are taught and learned in state or private institutions, indeed have to be learned. The real mechanical ballet is not danced by machines but by people, who move to a music that feeds on bombastic phrases from the realms of social work, bureaucracy and therapy. All together, the collected scenes appear to support the view that a mentality of insurance and providing for the future prevails in the Frg, a country in which happiness as well as misery are supposed to be disciplined by means of social techniques and freed from any measure of unpredictability. And yet

"How To Live In The Frg" goes beyond such an interpretation. The participants in the games, tests, and therapy sessions are not degraded into pieces of evidence for some theory or other. They retain, to varying degrees, something of their dignity. This is a result of Farocki's working method: he has edited the scenes in such a way that even the most nonsensical occurrences as it were explain themselves.

Wednesday, January 21st 2015, 7:00 pm

Erkennen und Verfolgen (War at a Distance)

2003, 58 min. color and b/w. German with English subtitles, Digital.

In 1991, when images of the Gulf War flooded the international media, it was virtually impossible to distinguish between real pictures and those generated on computer. This loss of bearings was to change forever our way of deciphering what we see. The image is no longer used only as testimony, but also as an indispensable link in a process of production and destruction. This is the central premise of "War at a Distance", which continues the deconstruction of claims to visual objectivity Harun Farocki developed in his earlier work. With the help of archival and original material, Farocki sets out in effect to define the relationship between military strategy and industrial production and sheds light on how the technology of war finds applications in everyday life. (Antje Ehmann)

Nicht löschbares Feuer (Inextinguishable Fire)

1969, 25 min., B/W, German with English subtitles, Digital.

"When we show you pictures of napalm victims, you'll shut your eyes. You'll close your eyes to the pictures. Then you'll close them to the memory. And then you'll close your eyes to the facts." These words are spoken at the beginning of an agitprop film that can be viewed as a unique and remarkable development. Farocki refrains from making any sort of emotional appeal.

His point of departure is the following: "When napalm is burning, it is too late to extinguish it. You have to fight napalm where it is produced: in the factories." Resolutely, Farocki names names: the manufacturer is Dow Chemical, based in Midland, Michigan in the United States. Against backdrops suggesting the laboratories and offices of this corporation, the film then proceeds to educate us with an austerity reminiscent of Jean Marie Straub. Farocki's development unfolds: "(1) A major corporation is like a construction set. It can be used to put together the whole world. (2) Because of the growing division of labor, many people no longer recognize the role they play in producing mass destruction. (3) That which is manufactured in the end is the product of the workers, students, and engineers."

This last thesis is illustrated with an alarmingly clear image. The same actor, each time at a washroom sink, introduces himself as a worker, a student, an engineer. As an engineer, carrying a vacuum cleaner in one hand and a machine gun in the other, he says, "I am an engineer and I work for an electrical corporation. The workers think we produce vacuum cleaners. The students think we make machine guns. This vacuum cleaner can be a valuable weapon. This machine gun can be a useful household appliance. What we produce is the product of the workers, students, and engineers." (Hans Stempel, Frankfurter Rundschau, June 14, 1969)

Wednesday, January 28th 2015, 7:00 pm

Videogramme einer Revolution (Videograms of a Revolution)

Dir. Harun Farocki & Andrei Ujica, 1992, 106 min. color and b/w.Romanian, English and German with English subtitles, Digital.

Wednesday, February 4th 2015, 7:00 pm

Stilleben (Still Life)

1997, 58 min., color and b/w, German with English subtitles. Digital.

Ein Bild (An Image)

1983, 25 min., color, German with English subtitles, Digital.

Wednesday, February 11th 2015, 7:00 pm

Wie man sieht (As You See)

1986, 72 min., color and b/w, German with English subtitles. Digital.

Wednesday, February 18th 2015, 7:00 pm

Bilder der Welt und Inschrift des Krieges (Images of the world and the Inscription War)

1988, 75 min., color and b/w, German with English subtitles. Digital.

Wednesday, February 25th 2015, 7:00 pm

Arbeiter verlassen die Fabrik & Gefängnisbilder (Workers Leaving The Factory)

1995, 36 min., color and b/w, German with English subtitles. Digital.

Gefängnisbilder (Prison Images)

2000, 60 min., color and b/w, German with English subtitles. Digital.

Wednesday, March 4th 2015, 7:00 pm

Schnittstelle (Section/Interface)

1995, 23 min., color and b/w, German with English subtitles. Digital.

Zum Vergleich (In Comparison)

2009, 61 min., color, no dialogue with English intertitles. Digital.

A subset of Romanian cinema remains deeply informed by Nicolae Ceaușescu's tenure as General Secretary of the nation's Communist Party, a 24-year reign that ended with his execution in 1989. The title of Corneliu Porumboiu's 12:08 East of Bucharest refers to the exact moment at which the dictator attempted to flee the eponymous city, Radu Gabrea’s docudrama Three Days Till Christmas reenacts his last days alive, and Cătălin Mitulescu's The Way I Spent the End of the World tells of two siblings whose respective plans involve escaping the country and assassinating Ceaușescu. The most explicit example is Andrei Ujica's The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu, a three-hour-long documentary composed entirely of archival footage that gives as clear a sense of the authoritarian ruler's public persona (and, given the many mass demonstrations he's shown attending, how the populace was meant to act in his presence) as any layman such as...

Before we unleash the beast that is our annual Top 100 Most Anticipated Films List for 2013, we thought we’d give our readers an eyeful on the projects we’re keeping tabs on for… the 2014 campaign. We’re a little nuts with ours lists, but in the upcoming year we’ll be reporting on several of these films as producers find coin, screenplays are finalized, tech crews are hired, cast come abroad and greenlights are announced. Our countdown begins with…:

100. Prodigal Summer – Dir. Nicole Kassell

99. Stepne – Dir. Maryna Vroda

98. We Are Now Beginning Our Descent – Dir. Pawel Pawlikowski

97. Tree Shade – Dir. Pedro Gonzalez Rubio

96. In Your Name – Dir. Marco Van Geffen

95. Twinkle Twinkle – Dir. Harmony Korine

94. Dead Spy Running – Dir. Adam Wingard

93. Leningrad – Dir. Giuseppe Tornatore

92. The Man Who Sold the World – Dir. Bill Condon

91. Used Guys – Dir. Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris

90. Untitled Freddie Mercury Biopic – Stephen Frears

89. Deux Nuits – Dir.

At least since the 1990s, Austria has commanded a central place within global cinema culture, certainly within that portion of it governed in a semi-official manner by film festivals and arthouses. Like many such European film scenes, many of its members have moved quite easily between fiction and documentary modes (Ulrich Seidl and Michael Glawogger, to cite the most obvious and prolific). Still, the documentary element remains too seldom remarked upon as a spiritual source for the unique, penetrating gaze that characterizes so many of key Austrian films. Generally speaking, fictional features by the likes of Michael Haneke, Jessica Hausner and Michael Schleinzer have drawn more attention from programmers and distributors than the documentaries of Nikolaus Geyrhalter. This is par for the course with nonfiction cinema. But it nevertheless seems worth mentioning here because, in terms of the tone, construction, and global attitude of Geyrhalter’s cinema, his work seems...

Asghar Farhadi's A Separation, Margaret's Anna Paquin (photo), Weekend's Tom Cullen, and The Tree of Life's Terrence Malick and Brad Pitt were some of the winners of the 2012 International Cinephile Society Awards. The honors are announced by "an online group made up of approximately 80 accredited journalists, film scholars, historians and other industry professionals who cover film festivals and events on five continents." And cinephiles they clearly are; some of their choices would put the U.S.-based National Society of Film Critics to shame. [Full list of International Cinephile Society winners and runners-up.] Writer-director Farhadi's Iranian family drama A Separation, which is up for the Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay Academy Awards, won as Best Picture of 2011, in addition to Best Film Not in the English Language, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Ensemble (including Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress runners-up Peyman Moaadi and Shahab Hosseini). Farhadi was also the runner-up for Best Director.

Chris New, Tom Cullen in Andrew Haigh's Weekend Anna Paquin, Terrence Malick: Cinephile Society Winners Best Picture 01. A Separation 02. The Tree of Life 03. Mysteries of Lisbon 04. Certified Copy 05. Weekend 06. Margaret 07. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives 08. Drive 09. Meek's Cutoff 10. Hugo 11. Melancholia Best Director Terrence Malick – The Tree of Life Runner-up: Asghar Farhadi – A Separation Best Film Not In The English Language 01. A Separation 02. Mysteries of Lisbon 03. Certified Copy 04. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives 05. The Skin I Live In 06. Poetry 07. House of Pleasures 08. Le Havre 09. Le Quattro Volte 10. Of Gods and Men Best Actor Tom Cullen – Weekend Runner-up: Peyman Moaadi – A Separation Best Actress Anna Paquin – Margaret Runner-up: Juliette Binoche – Certified Copy Best Supporting Actor Brad Pitt – The Tree of Life Runner-up: Shahab Hosseini – A Separation Best Supporting Actress J. Smith-Cameron – Margaret Runner-up: Jessica Chastain – Take Shelter Best Original Screenplay A Separation – Asghar Farhadi...

In the notes for 1983’s An Image, a fly-on-the-wall dissection of a German Playboy shoot, Harun Farocki explains his method for gaining access to sensitive locations, which involves a kind of dual deception, his backers expecting condemnation, his subjects expecting praise. “I try to do neither” Farocki writes, “nor do I want to do something in between, but beyond both.”

Above: An Image.

This sense of beyond, a restless contemplation lurking beneath a veneer of apparent flatness, is present in all Farocki’s films, with their fundamentally basic depictions of mundane practices and events. They seem, at first glance, to take in these events with complete objectivity, the camera hanging back deferentially, absorbing the action without direct comment. Yet like Frederick Wiseman’s similarly low-key documents, these observations ultimately prove to be sneaky inquisitions on a variety of issues, fundamentally questions of authorship, control and authority, and how these concepts...

Director: Andrei Ujica Rendered in the artistic fashion of a Leni Riefenstahl documentary, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu features a magnificent and poetic montage of archival footage about Romania's fallen ruler nm0147476 autoNicolae Ceausescu[/link]. Autobiography begins on the final day of Ceausescu's life, with television footage of him and his wife undergoing a hastily organized two-hour court session prior to their execution on Christmas Day 1989. From there, director Andrei Ujica's documentary delves into a rich archival array of propagandistic footage with a recurring theme of pomp and circumstance as it chronicles Ceausescu's reign as the Secretary General of the Romanian Communist Party (1965-1989) and Romania's head of state (1967-1989). Ceausescu's reign started off promising with an open policy towards Western Europe and the United States (thus deviating from the other Warsaw Pact states during the Cold War); he even actively and openly condemned the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by the other Warsaw Pact forces.

We perceive documentaries as records of truth; these things happened, the camera recorded them. "The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu" is a record of a lie. Yes, these things happened, and yes, the camera recorded them. But why did they happen and how? And what was going on when the camera wasn't around? Because of its unusual structure, the film doesn't say. But attentive viewers will realize this "autobiography" presents an incomplete view of history.

It comes from the perspective of Nicolae Ceausescu, Communist dictator of Romania from 1967 to 1989. A man with a taste for the spotlight, Ceausescu rarely missed an opportunity for a photo opportunity, and he filled his nation's official archive with hundreds upon hundreds of hours of himself at work and play. The footage is extensive but not comprehensive: lots of speeches and meetings with foreign heads-of-state, occasional travels abroad or hunting expeditions, but no mentions of food...

This week, everyone has an opinion on Steven Soderbergh's latest "Contagion," while "Tanner Hall" disappoints. Figure out what to see by checking out all the reviews published this week on indieWIRE and our Blog Network. “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu” Reverseblog Andrei Ujica has made a documentary without voice-over narration or talking-head commentary of any kind, without introductory titles for principal personages, without scene-setting placards that provide context "Contagion" Leonard ...

Romanian émigré and film essayist Andrei Ujica’s acclaimed Videograms of a Revolution trilogy, which includes the 1992 film of that name as well as his profile of cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, Out of the Present (1995), finally concludes with The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, his genre-bending final chapter, which he fondly calls part of the “new non-fiction” that is taking the world of cinema by storm. Culling through several decades worth of propaganda films from the Romanian National Television and Film Archives, he takes wildly out of context footage and gently stews it together into a three hour epic rumination on Romania’s mid and late Communist periods as told from the decidedly rosy verging on megalomaniacal perspective of the brutal 20th century dictator himself whose filmic autobiography we’re ostensibly watching. Unlike anything else that will find its way to commercial screens the year, the movie is a dazzling historical tour-de-force...

At the start of Andrei Ujica’s epic documentary The Autobiography Of Nicolae Ceausescu, the late Romanian president is seen on video shortly before his 1989 execution, in a small room with his wife by his side, refusing to answer questions about his crimes against his people unless he’s taken in front of the Grand National Assembly. Ceausescu considers his interrogation undignified for someone of his stature—“a masquerade,” he calls it. His captors respond by saying, “It was your masquerade for 25 years.” It’s a bracing moment: the dictator laid low, called to account by the citizens ...

It was a wonderful night celebrating documentary filmmaking at the fourth annual Cinema Eye Honors, held in the beautifully renovated Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, N.Y. on January 18th. Hosted by filmmakers Aj Schnack (Kurt Cobain: About a Son) and Esther Robinson (A Walk Into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory), the nominees comprised of some of the best documentary films of 2010, truly a celebration of nonfiction filmmaking rather than a competition. David Schwartz, the chief curator of the Museum, relayed the thoughts of many filmgoers who say that “the best films at festivals are the documentaries.” The night kicked off with musical accompaniment by the Quavers and an excerpt of Utopia in Four Movements, performed by Sam Green. His excerpt was at both funny and poignant, touching upon a mix of history and comedy, segueing between 1960s ideas of the future world to...

Sunday, December 5th concludes the 5th annual Romanian Film Festival at Tribeca Cinemas in New York City. This year hosts The Romanian Cultural Institute and curator Mihai Chirilov added the moniker “A New Beginning,” in appreciation of the recent success of what has been dubbed the “Romanian New Wave.” This year, Cristi Puiu, arguably the one who started it all with his 2006 debut The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, returns with his second feature Aurora. The three-hour long film premiered earlier this year at the New York Film Festival to resoundingly positive reviews. Also returning from Nyff are Radu Montean’s Tuesday, After Christmas (opening May 25 at Film Forum) and Andrei Ujica’s The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu, which opened the festival. All three were standouts this past May on the Croisette. Bobby Paunescu, producer of “Aurora” and “Lazarescu”, screens his directorial debut Francesca. Rounding out the “Romanian New Wave” roster of attendees is Razvan Radulescu,...

This weekend, December 3-5, Tribeca Cinemas is proud to host the 5th Romanian Film Festival in New York City, featuring a roster of shining stars from past and present. Hosted, as always, by The Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, this year's festival is entitled A New Beginning and will feature the best and most recent films from Romania's unique and critically exalted national body of contemporary cinema. These include works from filmmakers at the forefront of the Romanian New Wave, such as Cristi Puiu, Radu Muntean and Razvan Radulescu, as well as debut features from Constantin Popescu and Bobby Paunescu. For its opening night, the festival will present the highly anticipated new work from Andrei Ujica (Videograms of a Revolution), The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu. The festival will conclude with the landmark Romanian film Carnival Scenes by filmmaker Lucian Pintilie, featuring celebrated Romanian stage and screen actor Victor Rebengiuc...

It’s been five years since an American film topped the annual poll of venerable British film mag Sight & Sound, but now in 2010 The Social Network has earned the rare distinction, for an American studio film, becoming listed as the best film of the year.

According to Guy Lodge at incontention.com, the full lists are only available in the print magazine right now, but will be online Dec. 7. Alsoworth mentioning is that this year’s Best Picture list is a Top 12, due to numerous ties.

1. The Social Network (David Fincher)

2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

3. Another Year (Mike Leigh)

4. Carlos (Olivier Assayas)

5. The Arbor (Clio Barnard)

6. Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik)

6. I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino)

8. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica)

8. Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard)

8. Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman)

8. Poetry (Lee Chang-dong)

8. A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)

The Social Network, received...

Andrei Ujica gave Cannes, Tiff and Nyff cinephiles The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (read our review), and now Radu Gabrea, the Romanian director who has recently made Red Gloves and Gruber's Journey, will start working to a docu-drama about the last days in Ceauşescu's life. Most probably the shooting will take place on January – February 2011, while the release is set for 2012. The Last Days of Ceauşescu recently received the biggest grant in the documentary section of this year's National Center for Cinema contest: 696.087 lei (more than 161.000 euro), while the entire budget is likley to be around 465.000 euro. Tudor Şerban and Orion Film are the producers, while the director of photography will be Alexandru Macarie. The Last Days of Ceauşescu is based on a story by Grigore Cartianu, editor-in-chief at Adevărul Daily Newspaper. Gabrea, mentioned that he wouldn't have to make any casting for the two dictators, because he already selected...

If you read In Contention and Awards Daily as I'm assuming a good hefty percentage of Film Experience readers, being Oscar obsessed, do, then you already know that The Social Network has landed its first major top ten list and #1 placement. Presumable many more will follow. It's that type of movie, both highbrow and mainstream enough to capture a good cross section of critical hosannas.

"One Top Ten list isn't cool. Do you know what's cool?Hundreds of Top Ten lists."

Sight and Sound's Top 10

1. The Social Network (David Fincher)

2. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

3. Another Year (Mike Leigh)

4. Carlos (Olivier Assayas)

5. The Arbor (Clio Barnard)

6. (Tie) Winter's Bone (Debra Granik) and I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino)

8. (Tie) The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica), Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard), Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman), Poetry ♥ (Lee Chang-dong), and A Prophet (Jaques Audiard)

"Sight and...

The Cinema Eye Honors, devoted to highlighting the best of the year's nonfiction films, have flipped for Lixin Fan's fantastic "Last Train Home," which follows a family of migrant workers as they struggle to stay connected while living separated by hundreds of miles. "Last Train Home" received the most nominations -- seven -- while Banksy's "Exit Through The Gift Shop" and Afghanistan documentary "Armadillo" each received six. The award ceremony will take place on January 18 at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, and will be broadcast on the Documentary Channel.

Nonfiction Feature Filmmaking

Armadilllo

Directed by Janus Metz

Produced by Sara Stockmann and Ronnie Fridthjof

Exit Through The Gift Shop

Directed by Banksy

Produced by Jaimie D'Cruz

Last Train Home

Directed by Lixin Fan

Produced by Mila Aung-Thwin and Daniel Cross

Marwencol

Directed by Jeff Malmberg

Produced by Jeff Malmberg, Tom Putnam, Matt Radecki, Chris Shellen...

Few have ever seen a film like Andrei Ujica’s The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu, and even fewer have seen it presented in such a way—as an art form. It is important to pay attention to the title. Director Andrei Ujica aims to make a film where former President of Romania Nicolae Ceauşescu (1918-1989) tells his own story. While Documentary filmmakers have tried for years to reach “authenticity” and “objectivity” (arguably in vain), Ujica looks for subjectivity—specifically Ceauşescu’s. The result is a three-hour piece that can most easily be compared to a political travelogue than any other documentary. We are treated to long “scenes” of Ceauşescu and his fellow politicians touring volcanoes, giving public speeches, Romanian Nationalist parades, courtrooms, political rallies, volleyball games and many more of the like. The only material that would be considered “exciting” is that of his faux-trial that was filmed during the...

0537 The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (Andrei Ujica, Romania)

Andrei Ujica has a simple, ingenious idea for this documentary on Romanian Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu: tell the man’s political story only through frictionless public appearance. The Autobiography, as per its clever title, is constructed entirely of such appearances, party congresses, international press conferences, tours through bakeries, markets, carnivals, building sites, trips to other Communist nations (including China and North Korea), and more. It’s a three-hour film and spans the entirety of his leadership of Romania, from the death of the previous leader in the late 1960s to the fall of the government at the end of the 1980s. Through this simple organizational technique what we have is a film almost entirely stripped of specific ideas of what Ceausescu’s policies or leadership was like both inside his country and in his relationship to the outside world. We get, instead,...

The Vancouver International Film Festival is my baby. In its 29th year, this is the event I look forward to every year. The lists I've kept through the year come out and I eagerly look through the list of titles in search of those little gems and every year Viff responds with a huge assortment of titles. This year's festival is no different.

Some of the titles we're most eagerly anticipating include Tsumetai Nettaigyo’s Cold Fish (trailer), Gareth Edwards’ Monsters (trailer, review), Jo Sung-Hee’s apocalyptic road movie End of Animal, Carl Bessai’s Repeaters (trailer) and Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats (trailer, review).

There's loads more so be sure to check the titles (so far) after the break. Many more to be announced in the coming days.

Canadian Images

Altitude (Kaare Andrews), B.C.

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A weekend getaway aboard a small plane turns deadly for a rookie pilot and four teenage friends.