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Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSAn Inconvenient Truth.Participant, the socially conscious production company, has closed, which filmmaker Julie Cohen called “devastating news to anyone who cares about documentaries.” Their twenty-year track record includes many nonfiction films, such as An Inconvenient Truth (2006), but also narrative features like Spotlight (2015) and Roma (2018).New data suggests that Hollywood production has gradually rebounded after last year’s WGA and SAG strikes, though not to the levels of the “peak TV” streaming bubble.The Archival Producers Alliance has drafted best practices for the use of generative AI in documentary, cautioning against the “danger of forever muddying the historical record.”In PRODUCTIONMartin Scorsese is reportedly developing a Frank Sinatra biopic, to star Leonardo DiCaprio as the crooner and Jennifer Lawrence as Ava Gardner.

Museum of the Moving Image is pleased to announce the complete lineup for the 13th edition of First Look, the Museum's festival of new and innovative international cinema, which will take place in person March 13–17, 2024. Each year, First Look offers a diverse slate of major New York premieres, work-in-progress screenings and sessions, gallery installations, and fresh perspectives on the art and process of filmmaking. This year's festival introduces New York audiences to more than three dozen works from around the world. The guiding ethos of First Look is openness, curiosity, and discovery, aiming to expose audiences to new art, artists to new audiences, and everyone to different methods, perspectives, interrogations, and encounters. For five consecutive days the festival takes over MoMI's two theaters, as well as other rooms and galleries throughout the Museum—with in-person appearances and dialogue integral to the experience. Each night concludes with one of five...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSWe’re thrilled to introduce Notebook’s email newsletter, the Weekly Edit: a mix of our latest essays, interviews, and festival coverage, with a few archival gems to boot. Learn more and sign up here.REMEMBERINGThe Cow.This weekend brought devastating news that Dariush Mehrjui, the landmark Iranian filmmaker, and his wife and screenwriting partner Vahideh Mohammadifar were found murdered in their home. A lifelong enemy of state censorship, Mehrjui helped kick off the Iranian New Wave with his second feature, The Cow (1969), which was denied an export permit when it was originally completed. “Despite the fact that the film was funded by the Ministry of Culture and Arts, the Pahlavi regime preferred not to have the film’s portrayal of rural Iranian village life color the nation’s desired image of modernity on the world stage,...

As Jessica Kingdon made eight trips to China to shoot her first feature “Ascension,” a meditational look at China’s factory life and consumer society, she didn’t imagine a large audience for the result. “I thought it would be more niche,” she said in a recent interview with IndieWire over Zoom. “It’s not conventional. There are no characters. I didn’t expect so many people to find that enjoyable.”

But something clicked. MTV Documentary Films acquired the movie last summer and launched a successful awards campaign that resulted in “Ascension” getting nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar. Suddenly, Kingdon’s audacious immersion into this widely misunderstood side of China’s impact on the global economy became the seminal documentary on the subject for Western viewers.

That’s significant in part because as “Ascension” lingers in its settings, which range from a fabric shop that makes “Keep America Great...

April (2012)Over the course of ten programs across five days in Barcelona this January, curators Francisco Algarín Navarro and Carlos Saldaña presented a career-spanning series devoted to American experimental filmmakers Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler. The series was curated to coincide with the release of a brand-new book, Illuminated Hours. Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, focused on the pair’s early years; meeting and struggling to understand the elusive medium of film. As is the case for all Lumière publications, it is a beautiful object, complete with full-color stills and archival documents. The bulk of the book consists of extensive interviews with Dorsky and Hiler conducted by Navarro and Saldaña, and features texts by curator Mark McElhatten among many others, and incorporates excerpts from prior interviews, including one I conducted with Hiler for Ultra Dogme last year. Illuminated Hours is currently only available in Spanish, with an English language version slated for later this year.

The 11th annual First Look festival at the Museum of the Moving Image released its star-studded lineup February 7.

The festival, which is set to take place March 16–20 at the MoMI museum in Astoria, Queens, will open with the New York City premiere of Camera d’Or winner “Murina.” Director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović was honored with the title at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival for Best First Feature, and the film is executive produced by Martin Scorsese.

“Murina” is a coming-of-age story set in a scenic coastal Croatian town. Also on March 16, Tsai Ming-Liang’s ode to Hong Kong, “The Night,” will host its New York premiere. Closing Night selection and 2021 Locarno Grand Prix winner “The Balcony Movie” finishes off the festival.

The First Look festival features “new and innovative international cinema.” Spotlight screenings include the New York premiere of “Zero Fucks Given,” starring Adèle Exarchopoulos as a flight attendant in crisis,...

Revisiting last year's introduction when putting together 2021's favorites, it is with a shock to realize how little has changed in the wildly disrupted world of cinema under the shroud of the pandemic. The urge to copy-and-paste the whole shebang is quite tempting indeed.What can we say about this year, 2021? We got a little more used to long-term instability. Cinemas and festivals re-opened, only for some to close again. We, like many, ventured carefully out into the world to finally see films again with audiences, all kinds: nervous ones, uproarious ones, spartan ones, and delighted ones. It was an experience both anxious and joyous. We also doubled down on the challenges, but also the pleasures, of home viewing: of virtual cinemas and virtual festivals, of straight to streaming premieres, of trying to capture a social joy in semi-isolation by connecting with others over experiences shared and disparate.The long...

Back in the Park (2019), courtesy of Ernie GehrEvaluating Mark McElhatten’s recent Carte Blanche screening series at the Museum of Modern Art in terms of pure numbers wouldn’t necessarily be a wrongheaded approach. Eleven feature-length works, 41 shorts, and two excerpts from longer features were programmed in this exceptional series, which certainly lives up to the intensity of McElhatten’s esteemed reputation as a curator—but focusing on such data would be missing the overall point. The breadth of selected titles—which varied between established auteurs and eclectic avant-garde obscurities—feels like an afterthought in terms of the more interpersonal objectives the series sought to accomplish.When McElhatten introduced any of the works, he forwent any (perceived or not) rigidly academic jargon and never attempted to reiterate history; instead, he characterized these titles in earnest terms, speaking to their base impact outside of any ostensibly needed analytical context. Their inclusions,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Fox Maxy's Maat Means Land (2020) MoMA has announced the lineup and schedule for “To The Lighthouse,” a thrilling carte blanche program by curator Mark McElhatten featuring new films by Nathaniel Dorsky, Ernie Gehr, Jodie Mack, Dani and Sheilah ReStack, and more, along with older films by Rivette, Joseph H. Lewis, Claire Denis, and Marguerite Duras.An essential annual list, Filmmaker Magazine's 25 new faces of film for 2021 includes Kate Gondwe (the founder of Dezda Films), filmmaker Fox Maxy, Omnes Films (the collective behind Tyler Taormina's Ham on Rye), and others. A24 and Emma Stone’s production company, Fruit Tree Banner, have come together to back Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw The TV Glow. The film, a follow-up to Schoenbrun's debut from this year, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, follows...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Melvin Van Peebles. (Courtesy of Shadow & Act)We're deeply saddened by the news that the great Melvin Van Peebles has died. A filmmaker, director, novelist, playwright, and composer, Van Peebles was a pioneer of independent cinema, best known for his films Watermelon Man (1970) and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971). In an official statement, Van Peebles' son, filmmaker Mario Van Peebles, states: "He was a pioneer, a maverick and one cool cat." Exiled Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi has published an open letter to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, discussing the struggles faced by refugees whose films are censored, banned, and restricted from being shown to the Academy. Ghobadi proposes "a refugee team of filmmakers; they can have their works viewed by a jury and eventually one movie can be chosen from the refugee team.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSFilmmaker Bertrand Mandico has illustrated the 70th anniversary cover of Cahier du Cinéma, entitled "Gloria, angel of the history of the cinema." The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center have announced the lineup for the 50th edition of New Directors/New Films. Screenings will take place from April 28-May 8 through the MoMA and Flc virtual cinemas, and in-person screenings at Flc through May 13. The lineup of 27 features and 11 shorts includes Theo Anthony's All Light, Everywhere, Andreas Fontana's Azor, Alice Diop's We (Nous), and Jane Schoenbrun's We’re All Going to the World’s Fair. Recommended VIEWINGAnother Gaze's free streaming project, Another Screen, has announced two new programmes: Hands Tied, about hands, and Eating the Other, about gendered notions of eating. The first official trailer for Mamoru Hosoda's Belle, which...

Whatever it is I am saying, I alwaysneed a leaf or a flower, if not anentire field.—Mary OliverFull Bloom is a series, written by Patrick Holzapfel and illustrated by Ivana Miloš, that reconsiders plants in cinema. Directors have given certain flowers, trees or herbs special attention for many different reasons. It’s time to give them the credit they deserve and highlight their contributions to cinema, in full bloom.Above: Ivana Miloš, What Did the Lady... (2021), monotype collage and gouache on paper, 33 x 24 cm.Caught up in our daily lives, we tend to forget about the existence of trees. Especially those growing close to us. I remember taking a large chestnut tree standing in front of my parents' apartment in a small city in Germany for granted. Sometimes I would marvel at the many blackbirds gathering in its crown but mostly I was just too busy with whatever was...

The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.In 1878, Eadward Muybridge stood atop Nob Hill in San Francisco and took a panoramic picture of the city. It was the same year that he captured a horse in motion, but this was a different type of temporal photograph. He’d developed a new method that mimicked the experience of the human eye rotating 360 degrees, creating a seamless panorama of the city, a still moving picture. This is one place to start a primer on San Francisco on film, at the very beginning. Two decades before the Lumières premiered their first actualities, Muybridge was capturing a portrait of San Francisco in time. As I began researching this primer, Muybridge seemed like a key precedent for many 20th century Bay Area filmmakers. He was an innovator that developed a new technology parallel...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe cover for the new issue of Cahiers du Cinema is a patchwork tribute to the erratic year of 2020. Frederick Wiseman's City Hall also tops the Cahiers list of this year's top ten films. Actress and screenwriter Daria Nicolodi, best known for co-writing Dario Argento's Suspiria and appearing in a number of Argento's Giallo classics like Deep Red and Inferno, has died. Recommended VIEWINGAnthology Film Archives is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a showcase of video tributes from a wide range of artists, filmmakers, and scholars, including Bette Gordon, Abel Ferrara, Nathaniel Dorsky, and Michael Snow. They've also made available a free recreation of their inaugural program from November 30, 1970, featuring films by Georges Méliès, Joseph Cornell, Jerome Hill and Harry Smith. The curators of the Museum of Modern Art and the Berlinale...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThis year, Mubi is proud to be partnering with the Locarno Film Festival to unveil A Journey in the Festival's History, a selection of 20 classic films from previous editions of the event, each hand-picked by past alumni. Directors including Lucrecia Martel, Lav Diaz, Miguel Gomes, and many others have chosen individual films from the festival’s rich history, from Michael Haneke’s haunting debut feature, The Seventh Continent to Kidlat Tahimik's The Perfumed Nightmare and Marguerite Duras' India Song. The Opening Night film of the New York Film Festival is Steve McQueen's Lover's Rock, one of five films McQueen directed for his Small Axe anthology. The festival will also be premiering two additional Small Axe films, Mangrove and Red, White and Blue. And at the top: The official poster for Wong Kar-wai's Blossoms Shanghai,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSLuther Price's Sodom (1989)Experimental filmmaker Luther Price, best known for his reappropriation of found footage into vivid, often graphic and controversial painted images, has died. A number of available films, as well as a Q&a with Price, can be found here.Kirill Serebrennikov is set to direct a limited series based on the life of Andrei Tarkovsky. Due to the impact of the ongoing health crisis, the dates for next year's Oscars and BAFTA ceremonies have been pushed to April of 2021. Recommended VIEWINGThe official trailer for House of Hummingbird, Kim Bora's portrait of youth in 1990's Korea. Read our interview with Kim here.For GQ, martial artist Scott Adkins thoroughly breaks down fight scenes from movies like Ip Man, The Bourne Supremacy, and Rush Hour.A new short by David Lynch, The Story of a Small Bug,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Nobuhiko Obayashi in his "humble workspace." (Photograph by Aiko Masubichi for Mubi.) We're devastated by the loss of three great titans within the last week, each totally singular and significant to the history of movies: Bruce Baillie, avant-garde filmmaker and founder of Canyon Cinema and the San Francisco Cinematheque, the prolific pacifist and green-screen master Nobuhiko Obayashi (whose penultimate film Hanagatami was featured on Mubi in January of 2019), and Pan-African cinema pioneer Sarah Maldoror, known for her portraits of women's role in African liberation struggles. The Cannes Film Festival, which earlier announced plans to postpone the festival until the end of June to early July, has confirmed that this will no longer be possible, and that the festivities can no longer take place in their "original form." Recommended VIEWINGThis Long Century, a digital...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Museum of the Moving Image

“No Joke: Absurd Comedy as Political Reality” commences with Xavier: Renegade Angel, Starship Troopers and more.

“See It Big! Ghost Stories” continues.

The Greek feature Electra plays this Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center

Restorations of Le Professeur and Sergei Parajanov shorts play as part of the 57th New York Film Festival’s final weekend.

I screened the amorphous Madeline’s Madeline twice in preparation for my interview with Dp Ashley Connor; on the second go-around, I realized I’d be as nonplussed on a third or forth. I didn’t write any questions because I couldn’t. But perhaps an improvised approach was truer to the spirit of Madeline’s Madeline, which refuses to be pinned down. One of New York’s most prolific working DPs, Connor’s fervent demand for a higher standard of nuance, diversity, and inclusivity in the film industry naturally formed the backbone and throughline of our oscillating conversation which features, amongst other things, Nathaniel Dorsky’s Devotional Cinema, Grand […]...

I screened the amorphous Madeline’s Madeline twice in preparation for my interview with Dp Ashley Connor; on the second go-around, I realized I’d be as nonplussed on a third or forth. I didn’t write any questions because I couldn’t. But perhaps an improvised approach was truer to the spirit of Madeline’s Madeline, which refuses to be pinned down. One of New York’s most prolific working DPs, Connor’s fervent demand for a higher standard of nuance, diversity, and inclusivity in the film industry naturally formed the backbone and throughline of our oscillating conversation which features, amongst other things, Nathaniel Dorsky’s Devotional Cinema, Grand […]...

Binary StarsWhen I was in college, I learned a particular story about the concept of the aesthetic. It was a drama that featured a lot of now-familiar players: Kant, Hegel, and Marx; Nietzsche and Heidegger; Benjamin and Adorno; Jameson and Eagleton; Kristeva and Derrida. Despite the myriad ups and downs of the very concept of art, its relative or absolute autonomy, or its capacity or incapacity for social critique, there remained a general set of constants. One of them was the idea that art, as a space somewhat set apart from the needful things of daily life and especially the instrumentalist thinking of the marketplace, might offer, if not a possible glimpse of a future utopia, at least a clearing for contemplation. Today, an aesthetician is not necessarily a theorist. He or she is also someone who specializes in the treatment of skin. This may seem somehow frivolous, but the connection is real,...

How would you program this year's newest, most interesting films into double features with movies of the past you saw in 2018?Looking back over each year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition, now in its 11th edition, of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2018—in cinemas or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2018 to create a unique double feature. Together, the two films form a snapshot of the year's viewings—not limited just to the latest releases—that were important to them.All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2018 fantasy double feature.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSJia Zhangke's In the Qing Dynasty, a project the auteur has been preparing since as early as 2007, is set to begin shooting in Spring 2019.

Jia Zhangke's historical epic In The Qing Dynasty, to be produced by Johnnie To, will have action by Ching Siu Tung. pic.twitter.com/LZsHboTw54— Asian Film Strike (@AsianFilmStrike) April 27, 2017 Recommended Viewinga neon-lit trailer for Harmony Korine's highly-anticipated The Beach Bum, which will be released in March of 2019. For GQ, Nicolas Cage provides a candid self-analysis of his personal favorite characters he has played in his singular acting career, from Castor Troy to Charlie Kaufman (with nods to German Expressionism and Fritz Lang!).Nuri Bilge Ceylan's latest, The Wild Pear Tree, has been selected as the Turkish entry for the Foreign Language award at the 91st Academy Awards next year.

Below you will find an index of our coverage from the Toronto International Film Festival (Tiff) in 2018, as well as our favorite films.Top Picksdaniel KASMANFeatures:1. What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire? (Roberto Minervini)2. High Life (Claire Denis)3. Monrovia, Indiana (Frederick Wiseman)4. Green Book (Peter Farrelly)5. aKasha (hajooj kuka)6. Rojo (Benjamin Naishtat)7. Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)8. Belmonte (Federico Veiroj)9. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)10. Hidden Man (Jiang Wen)Shorts:1. Blue (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)2. Arena (Björn Kämmerer)3. Polly One (Kevin Jerome Everson)4. Colophon (Nathaniel Dorsky)5. Please step out of the frame. (Karissa Hahn)6. Wall Unwalled (Lawrence Abu Hamdan)7. Ada Kaleh (Helena Wittmann)8. Alitplano (Malena Szlam)9. Norman Norman (Sophy Romvari)10. Hoarders without Borders, 1.0 (Jodie Mack)Kelley DONG1. "I Do Not Care If We Go Down In History As Barbarians" (Radu Jude)2. High Life (Claire Denis)3. Our Time (Carlos Reygadas)4. Our Body (Han Ka-Ram)5. A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended Viewinga light and bright start: here's the first trailer for Andrew Bujalski's marvelous workplace comedy Support the Girls. We cannot recommend this movie enough.The ecstatic first trailer for writer-director Josephine Decker's avidly anticipated Sundance hit, Madeline's Madeline. Andrei Tarkovsky's sophomore masterpiece needs no further introduction—here's the trailer for the sublime restoration of Andrei Rublev (1966) by Janus Films. Finally, the long awaited restoration for one of the most seminal films of the 1970s is here: Barbara Loden's Wanda, which by our estimation is a zenith of independent cinema.Yet another restoration we're thrilled by: Kevin Brownlow & Andrew Mollo's sly alternate history It Happened Here (1965). Here's a refreshed version of the original trailer.Furthering the topic of restorations, here's Martin Scorsese in conversations with Italian filmmakers Jonas Carpignano,...

The Video Essay is a joint project of Mubi and Filmadrid Festival Internacional de Cine. Film analysis and criticism found a completely new and innovative path with the arrival of the video essay, a relatively recent form that already has its own masters and is becoming increasingly popular. The limits of this discipline are constantly expanding; new essayists are finding innovative ways to study the history of cinema working with images. With this non-competitive section of the festival both Mubi and Filmadrid will offer the platform and visibility the video essay deserves. The six selected works will be shown during the dates of Filmadrid on Mubi’s cinema publication, the Notebook. There will also be a free public screening of the selected works during the festival. The selection was made by the programmers of Mubi and Filmadrid.Solar Quadrantby Luis LechosaSolar Quadrant reflects on the gaze of the sun in cinema.

Nathaniel Dorsky's Arboretum Cycle (2017) is playing May 11 - 13, 2018 at Anthology Film Archives in New York and June 14, 2018 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.While welcoming the audience gathered last fall at Anthology Film Archives to see the first four of seven films now known as the Arboretum Cycle, Nathaniel Dorsky noted a break, or at least a modulation, from what had come before: the 24 titles—an apt number—from Triste (1974-1996) through The Dreamer (2016), which he drew together through their concern with “the continuity of the various.” These freely espoused works, mosaics of the full breadth of urban life running typically between a quarter and a third of an hour, have made Dorsky’s reputation as America’s most revered living artist filmmaker. Whether one might care to consider these as a single grand work in progress, at present running to nearly 500 minutes, is a question for...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe great post-war Italian auteur Ermanno Olmi had died at the age of 86. Winner of the Palme d'Or in 1978 for The Tree of the Wooden Clogs, Olmi was making great cinema up until the end. Sam Roberts of the The New York Times remembers.And another mourning that also hits us personally: Pierre Rissient, the ultimate cinephile (and filmmaker in his own right!), has left us. Scott Foundas has penned a most thorough remembrance for IndieWire.Recommended VIEWINGWe're covering the Cannes Film Festival this week and next, and are ever-more excited for the latest film from South Korean director Lee Chang-dong (Poetry), which so happens to be his first film in 8 (!) years.Two of the minds behind the brilliant television series Atlanta, Donald Glover (in his musical alias Childish Gambino) and director Hiro Murai,...

Dani Leventhal's PlatonicThis review, I think, might best be understood as an example of “slow criticism.” This is a term coined by Filmkrant editor Dana Linssen to describe “wayward articles,” ones that have a personal or political element that is somehow not timely. We can imagine that the reverse of this is “fast criticism,” the up-to-the-minute report from a film festival, the 140-character response tweeted out the minute the first press screening is over. These thoughts are not timely. The Whitney Biennial closed on June 11th, and the film program screened its final program on May 21st. So although I expect many of these films to have a life long after their appearance at the Whitney, I am not providing any kind of late-breaking news flash from the film or art world by writing about these works in this forum.But in a way, that is the point. Even...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSFrom Terry Gilliam's Facebook page comes some of the unlikeliest news in the history of cinema: "After 17 years, we have completed the shoot of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Muchas gracias to all the team and believers." We'll believe it when we see it, but boy do we want to see it!In other long-in-making news but from the other side of the film industry, American avant-garde filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky has revealed that he has edited old footage shot on the now-discontinued Kodachrome 16mm film stock into five new films (!), including "a document from the weeks that Stan Brakhage was dying..." Hopefully we will get to see these in the festivals and venues for alternative cinema where Dorsky's fans usually savor his work.The New York Asian Film Festival, the United States's...

Manuela De Laborde's short film As Without So Within, which has played at the Toronto International Film Festival, won the Grand Prix at Zagreb's 25 Fps Festival, competed for the Tiger at Rotterdam, and will next screen at New Directors/New Films, is an utterly remarkably, vividly calm work that blends sculpture and filmmaking into a cosmic exploration of physical material transformed by the flatness of the cinema screen. Using ingenious objects made by De Laborde that variously resemble moon rocks, bones, and additional unidentifiable shapes, and by filming them against black backgrounds, awash in precise colored lighting and at different scales, these strange pieces loom or are dwarfed, come into or go out of focus and perceptibility. Sometimes the film feels like a kind of astronomic research report, tactile and scientific in its observation, even seemingly scanning or plunging deep the molecular makeup of these evocatively recognizable, yet alien shapes.

Parody Twitter accounts — the good ones, anyway — are precise, impatient and always hungry for their next big joke. They blow through social media like a brushfire, burning until they’ve engulfed all of the air in the room, and then they flame out (the good ones, anyway). They are, in many ways, not unlike a certain nominee for President, himself a parody of a Republican candidate. But how can satire survive the age of Donald Trump, a time when everything is absurd and nothing is funny?

The answer, for the film world anyway, arrived in early September. The industry had congregated at the Toronto International Film Festival, as it always does during the week after Labor Day, but this year was different — this year, it felt as though everyone who had traveled there from the United States had been granted a furlough from the impossibly grim soap opera that was unfolding back home.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced the complete lineup for the Projections section of the 54th New York Film Festival. Heading into its third year, the annual celebration will take place October 7 through October 9 and include 44 films in 11 programs with 10 world premieres, five North American premieres and 13 U.S. premieres.

The slate features “experimental narratives, avant-garde poetics, crossovers into documentary and ethnographic realms, and contemporary art practices,” per the festival’s press release. The Projections section will bring together a diverse offering of short, medium, and feature-length work by some of today’s most vital and groundbreaking visual artists.

Read More: Nyff Reveals Main Slate of 2016 Titles, Including ‘Manchester By the Sea,’ ‘Paterson’ and ‘Personal Shopper’

Among the films which will be highlighted is Eduardo Williams’s “The Human Surge,” winner of the top prize in Locarno’s 2016 Filmmakers of the Present section and called “the most ambitious...

As with their Convergence section, the New York Film Festival offers an expanded view of the current cinema with yet another installment in their Projections series, a showcase of recent developments in and classic examples of experimental work from around the globe. These are hard to pin down as fitting particular types, and the only qualifier I can give is that whatever I manage to see from Projections stands as some of the most fascinating, enriching work I encounter at Nyff every given year.

I’m particularly excited about a few things here: two new Nathaniel Dorsky shorts, for one thing, and The Human Surge, a Locarno title and recent Tiff selection that we (positively!) assessed as being “pretty much a film that, by nature, is unlovable.” But that’s a very small pack that stands out, not least of which is because they have individual program slots. Read a...

Today, the Film Society of Lincoln Center announces the lineup for the Projections section of the 54th New York Film Festival, running from September 30 through October 16: "Among the highlights are Eduardo Williams’s The Human Surge, winner of the top prize in Locarno’s 2016 Filmmakers of the Present section; world premieres of new work by visual poets Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, the subjects of last year’s Nyff Retrospective; features including Deborah Stratman’s The Illinois Parables and Dane Komljen’s All the Cities of the North; and the U.S. premiere of Há Terra!, directed by 2015 Kazuko Trust Award winner Ana Vaz." » - David Hudson...

Today, the Film Society of Lincoln Center announces the lineup for the Projections section of the 54th New York Film Festival, running from September 30 through October 16: "Among the highlights are Eduardo Williams’s The Human Surge, winner of the top prize in Locarno’s 2016 Filmmakers of the Present section; world premieres of new work by visual poets Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, the subjects of last year’s Nyff Retrospective; features including Deborah Stratman’s The Illinois Parables and Dane Komljen’s All the Cities of the North; and the U.S. premiere of Há Terra!, directed by 2015 Kazuko Trust Award winner Ana Vaz." » - David Hudson...

NEWSPoster for Abbas Kiarostami's The ReportIt's been a devastating series of days for film lovers. First, Heaven's Gate director Michael Cimino passed away at 77, silencing one of American cinema's most importance visionaries. Then, Palme d'Or-winning Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami has died at the age of 76. It is very hard—very—to imagine cinema without these voices.Some good news from the much-criticized Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences: they are increasing the scope of their voting pool. Included in the roster, but strangely as writers and not directors, are such international luminaries as Mia Hansen-Løve, Jia Zhangke, and Takeski Kitano (Kiarostami was also added, as a director).With so much death in the news, let's celebrate a birth. Specifically, the 100th anniversary of Olivia de Havilland's birth. Farran Nehme Smith has penned a lovely homage for Sight & Sound:She continued to work all the way up to 1988, and her life has been full,...

Andrew Bujalski's turned in a terrific piece on Sylvester Stallone's Rocky franchise for the New Yorker. Also in today's roundup: Interviews with Todd Haynes, Gregg Turkington, Woody Harrelson, Tom Dicillo and David Shapiro, plus pieces on Thelma & Louise, Alfred Hitchcock, Julien Duvivier in the 30s, Michael Haneke's Code Unknown, Aleksey German and Frederick Wiseman. And Nathaniel Dorsky in San Francisco, Manoel de Oliveira in Vienna, Elvis Costello and D.A. Pennebaker on Bob Dylan, and a new podcast focuses on Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men (1976) and Tom McCarthy's Spotlight. » - David Hudson...

Andrew Bujalski's turned in a terrific piece on Sylvester Stallone's Rocky franchise for the New Yorker. Also in today's roundup: Interviews with Todd Haynes, Gregg Turkington, Woody Harrelson, Tom Dicillo and David Shapiro, plus pieces on Thelma & Louise, Alfred Hitchcock, Julien Duvivier in the 30s, Michael Haneke's Code Unknown, Aleksey German and Frederick Wiseman. And Nathaniel Dorsky in San Francisco, Manoel de Oliveira in Vienna, Elvis Costello and D.A. Pennebaker on Bob Dylan, and a new podcast focuses on Alan J. Pakula's All the President's Men (1976) and Tom McCarthy's Spotlight. » - David Hudson...

Youth On The MARCHThere are 48 individual films screening in the Wavelengths section of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The relative importance of this section, amidst the vast array of offerings in this relatively huge festival, depends on your taste in movies, of course, to say nothing of your specific objectives. If you’re coming to Toronto to try to score a hot tip in this year’s Oscar race, well . . . I feel sorry for you on a number of levels. But Wavelengths is unlikely to be your jam. Originally conceived exclusively as a showcase for experimental and non-narrative films (hence the section’s title, a direct tribute to avant-garde master and Toronto native son Michael Snow), Wavelengths now encompasses the edgier, less commercial side of art cinema. This is the first of two preview essays, and my aim is to cover everything in the section. These are the...

Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.Above: the first trailer for controversial Hungarian Holocaust drama Son of Saul, a prizewinner at Cannes.You may have noticed that the first round of the Toronto International Film Festival's program has been revealed. We're particularly excited about news films by Johnnie To and Terence Davies.The 72nd Venice Film Festival lineup has been unveiled, and includes new films by Martin Scorsese, Marco Bellocchio, Jerzy Skolimowski, Aleksandr Sokurov, Frederick Wiseman, and more. The jury has also been announced: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Hou Hsaio-hsien, Lynne Ramsay and others, all led by Alfonso Cuarón.Above: A film still from Prelude, a new film by Nathaniel Dorsky that will premiere during the New York Film Festival's retrospective of the director.David Davidson's Toronto Film Review is featuring an epic compendium of "interviews with cinephile directors,...

Above: the trailer for Miguel Gomes's new films, Arabian Nights, premiering soon in Cannes.For those lucky enough to attend the Venice Biennale, aside from a chance to see an exhibit by Albert Serra, curator Okwui Enwezor's show All the World's Futures includes work by Chris Marker, including Crush Art, Untitled 06, above. We'll be in Cannes and therefore miss the Museum of Modern Art's essential "Japan Speaks Out! Early Japanese Talkies" series, but Nick Pinkerton at Artforum has it covered."Actors appeared on the screen as if molded out of a liquid silver set aflame": Femina Ridens has a lovely report from the first ever Nitrate Picture Show.Above: the trailer, with English subtitles, for Johnnie To's new musical, titled Office.A tantalizing but also frustrating tease for Quentin Tarantino's upcoming The Hateful Eight arrives in the form of some behind the scenes and publicity images.

The National Film Preservation Foundation has launched a new blog, Access Alley. To celebrate, they've posted Josef Berne's "playful feature-length variety revue," Catskill Honeymoon (1950). Also in today's roundup: An interview with Agnès Varda, Karl Ove Knausgaard on Lars von Trier's The Idiots and Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, a look at Saul Bellow's film criticism and Samuel Fuller on John Ford. Locarno will honor Marco Bellocchio, the New York Film Festival will devote a dual retrospective to Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Assassin is coming to the States—and more. » - David Hudson...

The National Film Preservation Foundation has launched a new blog, Access Alley. To celebrate, they've posted Josef Berne's "playful feature-length variety revue," Catskill Honeymoon (1950). Also in today's roundup: An interview with Agnès Varda, Karl Ove Knausgaard on Lars von Trier's The Idiots and Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, a look at Saul Bellow's film criticism and Samuel Fuller on John Ford. Locarno will honor Marco Bellocchio, the New York Film Festival will devote a dual retrospective to Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Assassin is coming to the States—and more. » - David Hudson...

Seeking the Monkey KingIt is all too fitting that a film series focusing on “3D in the 21st Century” should feature the work of Ken Jacobs. More than any other single avant-garde filmmaker, Jacobs has explored the pulsating, tremulous frontier where images hit the eyes, and a great deal of his exploration over the last 30+ years—beginning with his experiments with the Pulfrich filter and his development of the dual projection “Nervous System”—has involved three-dimensional illusionism, that ambiguous perceptual space where flatness and depth wrestle in the optical mind. Historically, aesthetically, and technologically, it would make no sense to consider cinema in three dimensions without including Jacobs’ contributions.But there’s more at stake in Jacobs’ presence in the Bam’s 3D series. No mere formalist, Jacobs has been a tireless artistic whistleblower, documenting and cataloging the ugliest aspects of American culture. From blackface and animal torture in Star Spangled to Death,...

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

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

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

December

The Revolutions in 16mm series at the Viennale culminated early in the festival with a night dedicated to American poet filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky, who premiered two new works, February and Avraham, as well as showed Summer and December for the first time since their debut last spring in San Francisco's Crossroads series.

Those familiar with Dorsky's films since his notable shift in style in the mid to late 2000s (most emblematically with 2006's Song and Solitude) know that describing his films and indeed even differentiating them is a challenge so counter-intuitive that its very difficulty points at what makes these films as silent encounters in dark rooms so precious. No doubt like many, I can certainly enumerate the plenteous and beloved revelations and motifs across the films of the artist's last two decades, including these new ones: clouded suns, foliage verdant and crepuscular, a San Francisco made of dancing,...

The latest issue of video magazine The Seventh Art talks to Atom Egoyan, Joe Berlinger, Evan Calder Williams, and Force Majeure director Ruben Östlund (see above for a 10 minute teaser for that interview). For his blog, David Bordwell shares further observations on Jean-Luc Godard's Adieu au langage:

"As far as I can tell, Godard hasn’t used the converging-lens method to create 3D during shooting. Instead of “toeing-in” his cameras, he set them so that the lenses are strictly parallel. He and his Dp Fabrice Aragno apparently relied on software to generate the startling 3D we see onscreen.

This reminds me that postproduction has long been a central aspect of Godard’s creative process. Of course he creates marvelous shots while filming, but ever since Breathless (À bout de souffle, 1960), when he yanked out frames from the middle of his shots, he has always made post-shooting work more than simply trimming and polishing.

In his book Devotional Cinema, Nathaniel Dorsky attributes the success of the medium’s greatest works to an expression of the “material of the cinema itself, the cinematic qualities that are deeply akin to our own metabolism.” It’s a theory appropriately reflected in the filmmaker’s own output as he has spent the better part of five decades employing the component elements of 16mm stock to modulate the otherwise unstable constituents of the outside world. “Like our hands, the trees, the drama of the seasons, and the warming and expiring heavens,” he continues, “the basic elements of film must partake in the beauty of the deepest practicality.” >> - Jordan Cronk...

In his book Devotional Cinema, Nathaniel Dorsky attributes the success of the medium’s greatest works to an expression of the “material of the cinema itself, the cinematic qualities that are deeply akin to our own metabolism.” It’s a theory appropriately reflected in the filmmaker’s own output as he has spent the better part of five decades employing the component elements of 16mm stock to modulate the otherwise unstable constituents of the outside world. “Like our hands, the trees, the drama of the seasons, and the warming and expiring heavens,” he continues, “the basic elements of film must partake in the beauty of the deepest practicality.” >> - Jordan Cronk...