News

Oscar-winning filmmaker Ezra Edelman’s Prince project is joining a select list of documentaries with a dubious distinction – fated not to see the light of day. It happened with Lily Tomlin, the 1986 documentary directed by Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill that has rarely been exhibited publicly. And in the 1970s, the Rolling Stones sued to keep director Robert Frank from releasing his documentary C**ksucker Blues, a film that chronicled a drug-fueled Stones concert tour of the U.S.

In the case of The Book of Prince, Edelman’s docuseries on the musician, Netflix scuttled the project under pressure from Prince’s estate, which saw a cut of the series and didn’t like its portrait of the Purple Rainmaker. Edelman sharply criticized that decision in an interview that aired last week on the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast.

On the new edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, hosts...

Swiss documentary film festival Visions du Réel has unveiled the 23rd edition of its industry program, a four-day must-go event for industry professionals, showcasing 28 projects from 28 countries and a record-breaking number of female directors.

While 75% of the selected works are either led or co-led by women, VdR continues its support for voices from the Global South with 40% of the projects including directors and producers from low-capacity countries.

The projects will be presented in four categories: VdR-Pitching with 14 projects in development, VdR-Work in Progress featuring six projects in their final production stages, VdR-Rough Cut Lab where four projects receive expert feedback on their edits, and VdR-Development Lab supporting four projects in early creative and production planning from the Global South.

Backed by the Swiss Development Cooperation, the Lab supports emerging filmmakers from low-production capacity countries with a nine-month mentorship program, financial aid and creative guidance, to help them build global networks...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center

The noir titan Robert Siodmak is subject of a new retrospective.

Film Forum

A celebration of Marlon Brando’s centennial has begun.

Museum of the Moving Image

See It Big! Let It Snow brings 35mm prints of Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala, 1994’s Little Women, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller on Ib Technicolor; John Denver & The Muppets screens Saturday and Sunday.

IFC Center

It’s a Wonderful Life and a 4K restoration of Carrie plays daily; 2001, Spider Baby, Reservoir Dogs, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and Tokyo! show late.

Museum of Modern Art

A dual celebration of Marcello and Chiara Mastroianni begins.

Anthology Film Archives

A look at Robert Frank and his influences begins, while two of Hollis Frampton’s best films screen in Essential Cinema.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: Robert Siodmak, Marlon Brando, Tokyo! & More first appeared on The Film Stage.

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.

The Bikeriders (Jeff Nichols)

Using photographer Danny Lyon’s iconic The Bikeriders’ imagery as a jumping-off point, Jeff Nichols’ latest feature imagines a fictionalized Chicago motorcycle club, the Vandals. Motorcycle club culture might be a distinctly American phenomenon, but Nichols casts two Brits in the lead, with varying returns: Jodie Comer as Kathy narrates the story in a clear Goodfellas conceit, adopting a Midwest accent flashy (and divisive) enough to ensure sustained awards-season chatter; Tom Hardy is Johnny, a truck driver who gets the idea to start a motorcycle club while watching Marlon Brando’s The Wild One. This low-stakes “why not?” starting point for founding the club works early in the film, until, following the Goodfellas trajectory, it all comes crashing down.

CNBC has sketched out an intriguing strategy the network hopes will have it getting bigger by sweating the small stuff.

The business-news outlet, backed by NBCUniversal, plans to launch a new unit devoted to creating content aimed at niches of its audience. The division will be led by Max Meyers, a veteran producer who has supervised programs including “Last Call,” “Squawk Box” and “Fast Money,” and who will take on the role of vice president and senior executive producer of strategic verticals and audience development. Meanwhile, CNBC will launch products aimed at coverage of wealth and women’s leadership, the first built around journalist Robert Frank and the second with senior media and technology correspondent Julia Boorstin. A sports-business vertical launched with Alex Sherman has already gained traction since its debut earlier this year.

Operating in an era when traditional TV viewers are prone to seek news and information from new,...

For his directorial debut, Jack Huston knew exactly how he wanted the movie to look.

“I wanted to make a film that was reminiscent of films that made me fall in love with cinema,” Huston told IndieWire. “The more gritty black-and-white dramas, human stories, adult stories, character studies, pieces.”

That meant that Huston imagined “Day of the Fight” in black and white from the start. The choice, as Huston pointed out, brought a sense of timelessness to the story of Mikey (Michael Pitt), a prizefighter freshly out of prison who spends the day before his last fight reconnecting with his past in 1989 New York City. “I think [black-and-white] gives it a sort of timeless aspect,” Huston said. “I wanted people to be able to access this film at any point. But the black and white was really a tool because I felt it was a metaphor for how he was living...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Museum of the Moving Image

See It Big! Let It Snow brings 35mm prints of Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala, 1994’s Little Women, and McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

Film at Lincoln Center

Mike Leigh’s Secrets & Lies shows on Saturday with an introduction from Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Film Forum

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Wages of Fear play in 4K restorations.

Metrograph

La Dolce Vita, Permanent Vacation, Death By Hanging, and The Art of the Steal show on 35mm and Lino Brocka’s Bona starts screening; Ed Lachman’s Report from Hollywood and Urban Ghosts begin while Absconded Art, The World Is a Stage, and Crush the Strong, Help the Weak continue.

IFC Center

It’s a Wonderful Life and a 4K restoration of Carrie plays daily; 2001, Spider Baby, Threads, and Alien show late.

Museum of Modern Art

A Robert Frank centennial continues.

Those who’ve seen his films know Ed Lachman as a key collaborator of (naming just some) Todd Haynes, Sofia Coppola, Steven Sodebergh, Paul Schrader, and Pablo Larraín, with whom his latest collaboration, Maria, is now in theaters and soon on Netflix amidst the studio’s awards blitz. Those who attend EnergaCAMERIMAGE know him as a figurehead, no less essential to the festival than any top brass and treated like royalty at any screening, seminar, or party. It was here nearly a decade ago that I spoke to Lachman on the occasion of Carol, and in 2024 he’s been bestowed a lifetime achievement award––equal-parts earned and obligatory. To paraphrase Leonard Cohen on Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize, granting Ed Lachman such honors at a cinematography festival is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being the highest mountain.

As Far from Heaven, his first of numerous Todd Haynes collaborations,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film Forum

The Wages of Fear plays in a 4K restoration, while Labyrinth screens on Sunday.

IFC Center

A 4K restoration of Carrie plays daily; Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Ichi the Killer, Threads, and Alien show late.

Roxy Cinema

Friday brings Bob Saget and Norm MacDonald’s seminal Dirty Work on 35mm, while City Dudes returns on Saturday; Adrian Lyne’s Unfaithful shows on a print Sunday.

Museum of Modern Art

A celebration of Robert Frank’s centennial continues.

Museum of the Moving Image

The Frank Oz series has its final weekend.

Metrograph

Three… Extremes, F for Fake, Practical Magic, Man on Wire, A Terra-Cotta Warrior, and Ozu’s Good Morning show on 35mm; Story By Lillian Lee and Absconded Art begin while The World Is a Stage, My Crazy Uncle (or Aunt), Insomnia, and Crush the Strong, Help the Weak continue.

Mubi has unveiled next month’s streaming lineup, and it’s a major lineup for new releases, including Mati Diop’s Golden Bear-winning Dahomey (alongside more from the director), Andrea Arnold’s Bird, and Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker. Also in the lineup is the new restoration of Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer’s Candy Mountain, along with films from Steven Soderbergh, Alex Ross Pery, Takashi Miike, and more.

Leonardo Goi said in his Berlinale review of Dahomey, “Dahomey begins where Statues Also Die ended, wondering what remains of our identities when the things those cling onto suddenly disappear––then resurface from oblivion. To this, Diop offers no clear answers. But in the heart-shaking passion of that university debate, in those students’ resolute commitment to reappropriate their own narratives, she finds something rarer still: a snapshot of a generation for whom this isn’t just the story of a restitution.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Roxy Cinema

An Adrian Lyne retrospective features Fatal Attraction, Jacob’s Ladder, Lolita, and Foxes on 35mm, while Bob Saget and Norm MacDonald’s seminal Dirty Work plays on a print Saturday.

Bam

A Shelley Duvall retrospective is underway.

Museum of Modern Art

A celebration of Robert Frank’s centennial begins.

Museum of the Moving Image

A Lana Wilson retrospective begins while the Frank Oz series continues.

Film Forum

As an Ealing Studios retrospective continues, The General screens on Sunday.

Metrograph

The Beaver Trilogy, The Machinist, and The Last Metro show on 35mm; a Crystal Mosell and Derrick B. Harden retrospective begins while The World Is a Stage, My Crazy Uncle (or Aunt), Insomnia, and Crush the Strong, Help the Weak continue.

IFC Center

A 4K restoration of The Fall plays daily; Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Ichi the Killer, Threads,...

Cocksucker Blues.In 1957, Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank was on the road. He was finishing two years of cross-country journeys, his wife and two young children in tow, snapping the 28,000 grainy black-and-white pictures that he would distill into the 83 images in his book The Americans. A culture-shifting landmark, with its deglamorized, deeply ambivalent view of the country, The Americans was a bracing and poetic antidote to the clarity and sentimentality of the images in magazines like Life, Vogue, and Fortune, where Frank worked as a freelancer after coming to the United States in 1947. “If you dig out-of-focus pictures, intense and unnecessary grain, converging verticals, a total absence of normal composition, and a relaxed, snapshot quality,” noted Popular Photographer editor James Zanutto, “then Robert Frank is for you.” The same year, Jack Kerouac published his own American odyssey, On the Road, a jazz-like literary improvisation quickly acclaimed by the New York Times...

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.NEWSPoison.Former talk show host and current digital media emperor Conan O’Brien will host the 97th Academy Awards. He has previously hosted the Primetime Emmy Awards and the White House Correspondents dinner, twice apiece, as well as the Fifth Annual NFL Honors ceremony in 2016.Director Todd Haynes is set to head the jury of the 75th Berlin International Film Festival in February. Haynes’s feature film debut, Poison (1991), won the festival’s Teddy Award.The UK arthouse theater chain Curzon Cinemas has been sold to the New York investment company Fortress for $5 million as part of a foreclosure auction of assets owned by Cohen Realty Enterprises. The Curzon group reportedly believes that Fortress is “more likely to invest...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film at Lincoln Center

The new 4K restoration of Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is now playing.

Bam

Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer’s Candy Mountain begins screening in a new restoration. (Watch our exclusive trailer debut.)

Museum of the Moving Image

Monsters Inc. and What About Bob? play in a Frank Oz retrospective; Chantal Akerman’s American Stories: Food, Family and Philosophy screens on Sunday; The Texas Chain Saw Massacre shows throughout the weekend.

Metrograph

The Decameron, Fellini Satyricon, In America, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Legend of Suram Fortress, Corpse Bride, All the President’s Men, The Candidate, We Won’t Grow Old Together, Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, and Momma’s Man show on 35mm; an Azazel Jacobs series and Follow the Money: Kimberly Reed Selects begin; The Phantom of Ester Krumbachová, Rabbit on the Moon,...

MoMA’s Bulle Ogier retrospective was occasion upon occasion for discovery, and even then it was great fortune to encounter Candy Mountain, a 1987 road picture directed by legendary photographer Robert Frank and screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer starring Kevin J. O’Connor, Tom Waits, Joe Strummer, and Dr. John, with the legendary French actress in a small, pivotal supporting role. Replete with cold, pale colors and a thoroughly comfortable vibe, it’s also, from the 2024’s vantage, more than a little melancholy for introducing sequestered communities that very likely don’t exist today.

But all’s been preserved in a 2K restoration which Film Movement’s releasing on October 25 in celebration of Frank’s centenary, and we’re pleased to debut the trailer. Here’s the synopsis: “New York City, 1980s. A struggling, deadbeat musician named Julius has fallen on hard times. With no guitar, band or paying gigs, he cooks up a...

Happy Campers director Amy Nicholson with Anne-Katrin Titze: “There are times when you get lucky and you get magic.”

I first met Amy Nicholson in 2013 when I was on the jury of the inaugural First Time Fest with Gay Talese, the B-52’s Fred Schneider, and Killer Films’ Christine Vachon. Amy’s documentary, Zipper: Coney Island's Last Wild Ride, won our Outstanding Achievement in Editing Award (by John Young and Jonah Moran): “Fast-paced editing that captures, in a balanced way, a story about humanity in an age of greed. The editing works like the Zipper itself, connecting the ride with the story of Coney Island.”

Amy Nicholson often places the people side-by-side, Wes Anderson style.

In Happy Campers, a highlight of the 14th edition of Doc NYC, we are taken to the Inlet View Rv Park campground on Chincoteague Island in Virginia. Nicholson often places the people side-by-side, Wes Anderson style,...

Documentary festival IDFA, which runs Nov. 8 to 19 in Amsterdam, has revealed its first 50 titles, including the top 10 Chinese films selected by Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing, IDFA’s Guest of Honor.

The festival has also revealed the films playing in two of the three Focus programs: Fabrications, which probes the difference between reality and realism, and 16 Worlds on 16, an homage to 16mm film.

Wang’s selection will take the viewer “on a contemplative journey into contemporary Chinese cinema,” according to the festival. “The films and their politics are subtle in their film language, representing a wave of filmmaking rarely shown internationally.”

The selection (see below), which covers films produced since 1999, includes Lixin Fan’s 2009 film “Last Train Home,” which was supported by IDFA’s Bertha Fund. The film documents the millions of migrant factory workers that travel home for Spring Festival each year.

Fabrications explores the relationship of trust between documentary film and audiences,...

Anne Frank continues to resonate as perhaps the most famous symbol of Jewish suffering and persecution in the face of the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust during World War II. It was her teenage diary, after all, that remains perhaps the most vivid description of what it was like to live under Nazi occupation – specifically in Amsterdam between 1942 and ’44, while her family was in hiding and she wrote her famed remembrance of being sheltered out of view until a betrayal led to their being discovered.

It was a woman named Miep Gies, however, who provided a first-hand aural witness’s account of those hiding out in what came to be known as the Secret Annex. It’s her tale that’s told in “A Small Light,” a powerful eight-part limited series from NatGeo that premieres with a pair of installments on May 1 and streams the next day on Disney+. It...

In the old days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and music was primarily heard through vinyl discs on a rotating machine with a needle, you’d go down to your local record shop and purchase an album. Then you’d go back home, slap the platter on your player and listen intently. More often than not, these albums would have a picture of the artist or group on the front, staring joyously or moodily back at you. These were the people making the sounds you heard. All very simple. Ask your grandparents about it.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSThis week, we’re remembering the iconoclastic, anti-capitalist filmmaker Jean-Marie Straub, who has died at the age of 89. In the course of revisiting Christopher Small’s Straub-Huillet Companion column, we were moved by this quotation from Straub, from a 1974 edition of Jump Cut:The revolution is like God’s grace, it has to be made anew each day, it becomes new every day, a revolution is not made once and for all. And it’s exactly like that in daily life. There is no division between politics and life, art and politics. I think one has no other choice, if one is making films that can stand on their own feet, they must become documentary, or in any case they must have documentary roots. Everything must be correct,...

It’s always fun and games until someone bites another person’s finger off.

To be fair, Maren — the young hero of Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, one half of its red-hot killer couple, our tour guide of ’80s Rust-Belt America and the role that officially confirms actor Taylor Russell as a best-of-generation contender — has sampled human flesh before. Her tastes first manifested themselves when she was three years old, we’re told, and her father (Andre Holland) has been shepherding Maren around from city to city, state to state ever since.

Moonage Daydream, a film about David Bowie, opens with “Hallo Spaceboy,” a deep cut from his 1995 album Outside. It’s clear from the use of this song that Brett Morgen isn’t making a traditional documentary about the Thin White Duke.

“I was completely trolling,” admits Morgen.

But the use of a relatively obscure industrial track from later in Bowie’s career illustrates what the director is trying to achieve. He’s looking to tell the story of Bowie’s work as an experience or a feeling, full of “chaos” and “fragmentation,” rather than a chronological, visual biography. This is something that many music documentaries don’t attempt.

Morgen says there are plenty of books and other documentaries about David Bowie that tell this version of the story.

“What can I offer that you can’t get in Wikipedia? It’s an experience. It’s something intangible. What’s great...

The Rolling Stones have been doing Rolling Stones documentaries for nearly as long as they’ve been a band, and given their early goes, it’s impressive they’ve kept at it. The first, Charlie Is My Darling (1966), was shelved for decades due to legal fights and various shenanigans; The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus (1968), a trainwreck of poor planning, was also shelved for years. Jean Luc-Godard’s brilliant but befuddling docufiction One Plus One (Sympathy For The Devil) got consigned to the art film circuit that same year,...

Ed Lachman and New York remember Robert Frank: "Robert was the truest of poets but without words...his heart, mind and eye will always be missed...." Photo: Ed Bahlman

Robert Frank died on September 9, in Inverness, Nova Scotia, at the age of 94. He was the director of Me And My Brother on Julius and Peter Orlovsky, co-written by Sam Shepard; an infamous Rolling Stones documentary; Candy Mountain with Rudy Wurlitzer, and the short Pull My Daisy with Alfred Leslie, written by Jack Kerouac. Robert Frank, best known for his photography book The Americans, has been the subject of two recent documentaries.

The last time I saw Robert Frank and his wife June Leaf, was on June 1. They were sitting on the bench pictured here on Bleecker Street ... Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

There is Laura Israel’s Don't Blink: Robert Frank, shot by Edward Lachman and Lisa Rinzler, featuring archival footage of Allen Ginsberg,...

Track my film passions of the past year and the result is this list. These are the films that wowed and moved me, that turned me into a rabid champion, that gave me hope that brilliant cinematic storytelling — and a rebel spirit — is alive and well. It turned out to be a strong year for women directors (five), romances (three), World War II dramas (two), Angelina Jolie movies (two), animation (one), and documentaries (one).

See More:The Best Movies of 2017, According to IndieWire Critic Eric Kohn 12. “The Breadwinner” (GKids)

Directed by Nora Twomey of Cartoon Saloon (“The Secret of Kells”) and executive produced by Angelina Jolie, Irish-Canadian “The Breadwinner” is based on Deborah Ellis’s Ya novel about 11-year-old Parvana (voiced by Canadian actress Saara Chaudry), a strong-willed Afghan girl who disguises herself as a boy in order to provide for her family and save her father under threat from the Taliban.

In 1983, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, along with Media Study/Buffalo, created a touring retrospective of avant-garde films, primarily feature-length ones and a few shorts, which they called “The American New Wave 1958-1967.” To accompany the tour, a hefty catalog was produced that included notes on the films, essays by film historians and critics, writings by major underground film figures and more.

The retrospective was created at a time when financially viable independent filmmaking was on the rise, such as films made by John Sayles, Wayne Wang and Susan Seidelman. According to the co-curators of the retrospective, Melinda Ward and Bruce Jenkins, the objective of the tour was to:

provide a more adequate picture than conventional history affords us of a rare period of American cinematic invention and thereby prepare a coherent critical and historical context for the reception of the new work by the current generation of independent filmmakers.

Dee Rees is a tall woman of fierce charisma. She’s the kind of director who talks fast, ideas coming so quickly that those less inclined can barely keep up. And yet her output has been slow: After Focus Features snapped up her breakout 2011 feature debut “Pariah” at Sundance, it was four years before HBO Film’s Emmy and DGA-award-winning 2015 biopic “Bessie.”

“There’s an assumption that men who do small personal movies can leap to deliver larger things,” said “Bessie” producer Shelby Stone. “It’s much harder for women.”

Finally, we get to see Rees fulfill her promise with “Mudbound,” a Sundance triumph that set the 2017 festival sales record with its $12.5 million sale to Netflix, and opened AFI Fest November 9 after wowing crowds at seven film festivals.

When Rees received the Sundance Next Fest Vanguard Award in August, her presenter, “Pariah” star Kim Wayans, said it best: “The introverted,...

BAMcinématek pays screen tribute to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright - True West: Sam Shepard on Film Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Sam Shepard, who died on July 27, 2017 at the age of 73, will be honored by BAMcinématek in New York with True West: Sam Shepard on Film.

Wim Wenders' Don’t Come Knocking and Paris, Texas (BAFTA Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Shepard); Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff (Best Actor in a Supporting Role Oscar nomination for Shepard's portrayal of Chuck Yeager); Graeme Clifford's Frances; Daniel Petrie's Resurrection; Terrence Malick's Days Of Heaven; Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, co-written by Shepard; Robert Altman's adaptation of Fool For Love; Robert Frank's Me And My Brother (text by Shepard, poems by Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky); Shirley Clarke's video of Shepard's Tongues performed by Joseph Chaikin, and Far North, directed by Sam Shepard will be screened.

Tony Sokol Aug 1, 2017

Sam Shepard has sadly passed at the age of 73. We bid farewell to a great playwright, author and actor.

Playwright, author, and actor Sam Shepard, who spearheaded the Off Broadway movement, and starred in such films as The Right Stuff, Mud and Midnight Special, died on the 27th of July, the theatre public relations firm Boneau/Bryan-Brown announced. Shepard was 73 years old. Known for such plays as Buried Child, which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, Curse Of The Starving Class and A Lie Of The Mind, Shepard’s 1969 science fiction play The Unseen Hand influenced Richard O'Brien's stage musical The Rocky Horror Show.

Shepard wrote 44 plays as well as books of short stories and essays. Besides his 1979 work Buried Child, his plays, True West and Fool For Love were also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. 11 of Shepard’s plays won Obie Awards including Chicago and...

Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Oscar-nominated actor, died Sunday at the age of 73.

Shepard, who suffered from Als in recent years, died at his home in Kentucky from complications from the disease, his rep told The Hollywood Reporter.

The winner of 13 Obie Awards, Shepard won his first six for plays he penned between 1966 and 1968. After his success on the off-Broadway stage, Shepard segued to screenwriting with credits on films like Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriske Point and Robert Frank's Me and My Brother.

During this time, Shepard also...

Megan McGill Mar 20, 2017

Fancy some graphic novels that don't involve a Marvel or DC hero? Try some of these...

You don't need to tell comic book and graphic novel fans that there's a whole lot more than superheroes out there. However, if you're just starting to dabble, might we make a few recommendations...?

Sweet Tooth

Put Mad Max in some plaid, make him feel a little Wolverine circa X-Men: Origins, add some creepy Wes Anderson stop-motion animals, and you’ll get Sweet Tooth, the post-apocalyptic story of human-animal hybrids in rural Nebraska. You may be familiar with Jeff Lemire’s other work on Animal Man and Green Lantern, or his acclaimed graphic novel Essex County, but for me, Sweet Tooth really is something special. Running from 2009 to 2013, this forty-issue arc centres around Gus, a young boy with antlers living with his strictly religious father in a world infected by some sort of plague.

Set in the post-wwii South, “Mudbound” is the story of two farming families battling both with an unforgiving landscape and the region’s deeply ingrained racism. To create the look of the film, cinematographer Rachel Morrison and director Dee Rees explored the work of the great photographers who captured the era. Morrison then worked with natural light and the landscape to craft the look of this powerful drama.

Read More: ‘Mudbound’ Review: Dee Rees Enters the Big Leagues With Sweeping Period Epic — Sundance 2017

It’s one of the most gorgeously shot films to play at Sundance in years, and if the film’s yet-to-be named distributor does decide to make an awards push with the film, Rachel Morrison could be the first woman to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography. Morrison was unable to be in Park City for the “Mudbound” premiere because she’s shooting “Black Panther” with director Ryan Coogler,...

The struggle for racial equality in America, the careers of cinematographers, directors, and photographers, the immigration crisis, music as celebration and grief, and strange conspiracies — these were just a few of the places and stories that this year’s documentary offerings brought us. With 2016 wrapping up, we’ve selected 20 features in the field that most impressed, so check out our list below and, in the comments, let us know your favorites.

13th (Ava DuVernay)

Following the stunning Selma, which conveyed a present-tense urgency sorely lacking in many biopics and radically distributed screen-time away from Dr. King to communicate the collectivity inherent to any reform movement, Ava DuVernay has shifted her rhetorical approach, but her anger remains. Whereas Selma was emotive and explosive, 13th is lucid and level-headed, gradually and methodically making a case that black incarceration is actually just a reconfigured and rebranded form of slavery. Sticking to conventional but...

The film-maker and war photographer is refreshingly prickly in this fine documentary

With its punchy soundtrack, snappy editing and confrontational attitude, this documentary about the seminal photographer Robert Frank brilliantly captures the essence of the man. Influenced by the Beat writers and by fellow photographers Walker Evans and Louis Faurer, Frank is best known for his seminal book The Americans. But he also forged a parallel career as an experimental film-maker. This bracing documentary portrait finds the artist, now in his 90s, as refreshingly prickly and uncompromising as ever.

Continue reading...

On Tuesday, Americans go to the voting booth to determine what kind of country they want theirs to be. Months of the most polarized, and polarizing, presidential campaign in recent memory have left many of us with battle fatigue and gnawing pangs of cynicism and nausea. To quote Thomas McGuane, in the opening line of his 1973 novel “92 in the Shade”: “Nobody knows, from sea to shining sea, why we are having all this trouble with our republic.”

Our filmmakers might have a clue. And a little distance brings perspective. The American Film Festival just celebrated its seventh annual survey of new (and mostly) independent cinema made in the U.S.A., as assembled for and viewed by eager European audiences in Wroclaw, Poland. Though not without some escapist and experimental tangents, the selections couldn’t help but offer a provocative composite of work that serves as a kind of state of the union address.

A total of 145 feature documentaries were submitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for consideration for the 89th Academy Awards.

Out of those films the members of the Academy’s documentary branch will select a shortlist of 15 features that will be announced in December, and the five nominations will be announced on January 24.

Read More: Documentary, Now: Three Rock Stars Who Run the Fast-Changing Non-Fiction World

Among the titles included in the list are Ava DuVernay’s “13th,” the Sundance Documentary Grand Jury Prize winner “Weiner” by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg, Raoul Peck’s Toronto Film Festival Audience Award winner “I Am Not Your Negro,” the visually stunning “Voyage of Time: The Imax Experience” by Terrence Malik and Otto Bell’s “The Eagle Huntress.”

Read More: Oscars 2017: 10 Documentary Shorts Vie for Nominations

This year Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees’ film “Amy” about British singer Amy Winehouse...

The 5th Annual Key West Film Festival has announced its official 2016 lineup, including the opening night film, “20th Century Women,” directed by Mike Mills and starring Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig and Billy Crudup. As part of the festival’s signature Critics Focus program, MTV’s Chief Film Critic Amy Nicholson will present and lead a conversation around the film, alongside David Fear, Senior Film/TV Editor of Rolling Stone.

Director of Programming Michael Tuckman said of Nicholson’s pick, “I could not be more thrilled with Amy Nicholson’s choice of ’20th Century Women’ to kick off our 5th Anniversary edition of festival. Annette Bening’s performance is Oscar-deserving and the rich depth of the balance of the leading cast is Altman-esque in its quality. Amy’s discussion after the film will bring a cunning critic’s eye to this fabulous film for audiences.”

Read More: ’20th Century...

"Steady as a preacher, free as a weed," goes the Lady Antebellum tune that gives filmmaker Andrea Arnold's teenage-island-of-misfit-toys road movie its title. You can see why those two things might be aspirations for Star (newcomer Sasha Lane), the teenager we first meet digging through the trash for food, grubby kid siblings in tow. Stability and liberation aren't things she comes across a lot. Her life is a wreck, her residence is a parody of Southern trashiness (ants on the counter, handsy stepdad in the living room, Dixie flag...

Don’T Blink – Robert Frank Screens September 23rd – 25th at 7:30pm at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood).

Robert Frank, now 91 years old, is among the most influential artists of the last half-century. His seminal volume, The Americans, published in 1958, records the Swiss-born photographer’s candid reactions to peculiarly American versions of poverty and racism. Today it is a classic work that helped define the off-the-cuff, idiosyncratic elegance that are hallmarks of Frank’s artistry. Director Laura Israel (Frank’s longtime film editor) and producer Melinda Shopsin were given unprecedented access to the notably irascible artist. The assembled portrait is not unlike Frank’s own movies – rough around the edges and brimming with surprises and insights – calling to mind Frank’s quintessential underground movie, the 1959 Beat short, Pull My Daisy (co-directed by Alfred Leslie). Don’t Blink includes clips from Frank’s rarely seen movies, among them Me and My Brother...

Whether you're an A-list celebrity or an average Joe, getting divorced is never easy. And unfortunately, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are going to experience it first-hand sooner rather than later. With both stars having so much success in Hollywood, money is going to play a big role in this pair's split. But even though the duo has been together for more than a decade, how long they were officially married could be what's most important. "So there are a couple of unusual things about this relationship. Number one is they were together much longer than they were married," CNBC wealth editor Robert Frank shared with E! News. "They've only been married for two years so that means...

The BAMcinématek series The Films of Robert Frank features the notorious Rolling Stones documentary Cocksucker Blues (1972) and "includes some 25 moving-image works of varying lengths and genres," notes Amy Taubin, writing for Artforum. "The series as a whole cannot be summarized, nor can the individual films except to say that they share the characteristic of having been made by someone who stubbornly insists on walking out on a high wire without a net. If you’ve not seen Pull My Daisy, it is the classic. But do not miss Conversations in Vermont (1969), Life Dances On (1980) and True Story (2008)—all of them naked in their confusion and anguish about fathering. Best of all is the seemingly casual Paper Route (2002), as close to a perfect movie as you’ll ever see." » - David Hudson...

The BAMcinématek series The Films of Robert Frank features the notorious Rolling Stones documentary Cocksucker Blues (1972) and "includes some 25 moving-image works of varying lengths and genres," notes Amy Taubin, writing for Artforum. "The series as a whole cannot be summarized, nor can the individual films except to say that they share the characteristic of having been made by someone who stubbornly insists on walking out on a high wire without a net. If you’ve not seen Pull My Daisy, it is the classic. But do not miss Conversations in Vermont (1969), Life Dances On (1980) and True Story (2008)—all of them naked in their confusion and anguish about fathering. Best of all is the seemingly casual Paper Route (2002), as close to a perfect movie as you’ll ever see." » - David Hudson...

Mike Birbiglia’s “Don’t Think Twice” (The Film Arcade) is the latest mid-summer hit, joining the recent turnaround in art house fortunes. Following his template for “Sleepwalk With Me,” Birbiglia & Co. boosted box office via frequent appearances at their New York cinema. The already strong film surged to a huge initial $90,000 number with many sold out shows on multiple screens.

Woody Allen’s “Cafe Society” (Lionsgate) continued to improve on the director’s recent performance, and could end up besting two other recent strong openers. “Captain Fantastic” (Bleecker Street) and “Hunt for the Wilderpeople” (The Orchard) continue to have strong expansions; both could end up over $10 million as well.

Asian wide-audience commercial releases are performing well in domestic play, with entries from South Korea, India, the Philippines along with China continuing to deliver strong niche results.

Opening

“Don’t Think Twice” (Film Arcade) – Metacritic: 83; Festivals include: South by Southwest,...

Mid-summer brings the biggest limited opening of 2016, with a return to form by Woody Allen as new distributor Amazon Studios and partner Lionsgate pushed “Café Society” to numbers unseen since last December. It’s not at Allen’s top level, but a huge leap above his last two films as well as anything else so far this year.

For a totally different market, Dinesh D’Souza doc “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party” had a limited opening in Middle America with strong front-loaded initial numbers. The political doc goes wider this Friday and could see a better eventual total —via an entirely different audience—than Allen’s film.

“Hunt for the Wilderpeople” (The Orchard) from New Zealand leads the films in wider release as it continues to build word-of-mouth success. “Captain Fantastic” (Bleecker Street) boasted a decent second weekend expansion and could end up at a...

To help sift through the increasing number of new releases (independent or otherwise), the Weekly Film Guide is here! Below you’ll find basic plot, personnel and cinema information for all of this week’s fresh offerings.

Starting this month, we’ve also put together a list for the entire month. We’ve included this week’s list below, complete with information on screening locations for films in limited release.

See More: Here Are All the Upcoming Movies in Theaters for July 2016

Here are the films opening theatrically in the U.S. the week of Friday, July 15. All synopses provided by distributor unless listed otherwise.

Wide

Ghostbusters

Director: Paul Feig

Cast: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Chris Hemsworth, Bill Murray, Charles Dance, Elizabeth Perkins, Sigourney Weaver

Synopsis: A paranormal researcher (Melissa McCarthy), a physicist (Kristen Wiig), a nuclear engineer (Kate McKinnon) and a subway worker (Leslie Jones...

Since the late 1980’s, editor Laura Israel has spent much of her time as editor for legendary photographer Robert Frank. One of photography’s most intriguing and influential voices since the 1950s, Frank has become synonymous with avant-garde photography and filmmaking, and his recent work owes a great debt to the work of Israel, a filmmaker in her own right. And now, she’s decided to take a leap behind the camera, and give her collaborator the retrospective he so rightly deserves.

A Swiss-born photographer, Frank first truly burst onto the scene with the 1958 masterwork, The Americans a haunting and in many ways medium-shifting meditation on post-wwii America and the poverty and racism that became widespread therein. A groundbreaking work of photojournalism, this is only the launching pad for this new documentary, entitled Don’t Blink – Robert Frank. Israel uses this collection of photographs as an introduction into the world,...

From its opening minutes, “Don’t Blink — Robert Frank” establishes itself more as a collage than a simple documentary. It starts with quickly strung-together shots of the legendary Robert Frank, now 91 years old, and his apartment. The Mekons‘ “Memphis Egypt” blares in the background. Directed by longtime collaborator Laura Israel, the film is about a […]

The post ‘Don’t Blink — Robert Frank’ Is A Chaotic Look At A Legendary Photographer [Review] appeared first on The Playlist.

Few people are living embodiments of their style. Now that David Bowie and Prince have left us in the same year, even fewer are. Robert Frank, the subject of Laura Israel‘s documentary Don’t Blink – Robert Frank, and his art — striking photographs and film of Americana — reflect one another like those collages of dog owners and their pets. Rather than both having droopy ears or a snooty nose, they crunch like shards of glass beneath boots. Frank and his creations grind against good taste while still being sharp and beautiful. His is an imperfect America, as if Norman Rockwell subjects stepped out of frame for a few drinks and a game of dice, then got lost on their way back home.

Frank is best-known for his 1958 photography collection The Americans, which recorded the photographer’s explorations of social and economic struggle. A documentary about this kind of artist has...

Fledgling NY outfit Grasshopper Film has taken rights to Oliver Laxe’s Morocco-set Western.

New York-based Grasshopper Film has acquired Us rights to Oliver Laxe’s Cannes-winning film Mimosas.

The Arabic language Western, which won the Critics Week Grand Prize at Cannes in May, follows a caravan carrying a dying sheikh who wished to be buried with his loved ones in the Moroccan Atlas Mountains.

The Us deal was negotiated by Ryan Krivoshey, founder and president of Grasshopper Film, with Fiorella Moretti of Paris-based sales agent Luxbox.

Krivoshey commented: “Mimosas is an enigmatic, gorgeous work that will enthrall audiences around the country, much as it did in Cannes. We are extremely excited to be working with Oliver, Fiorella, and the entire Luxbox team on this release.”

Laxe’s feature debut You All Are Captains premiered at Cannes in 2010, winning the Firpresci prize.

Launched earlier this year, Grasshopper Film’s upcoming slate includes Laura Israel’s documentary Don’t Blink...

I saw The Academy of Muses a month ago and have considered it almost every day since then, turning over in my mind the clearly defined ideas, only-half-understood narrative directions, and documentary-narrative distinctions that mark José Luis Guerín‘s first fiction feature since 2007’s In the City of Sylvia. Those who go into it blind won’t initially find much distinction, though: there might instead be the belief they’ve entered an At Berkeley-esque documentary about European academia — until the movie slowly becomes something much more complicated, and then blossoms into full-on drama.

Grasshopper Film — recently of Fireworks Wednesday and Kaili Blues, and soon to release Right Now, Wrong Then and Don’t Blink – Robert Frank — will begin distributing The Academy of Muses stateside this September, and has let us premiere the trailer. A film with as many moving parts probably couldn’t be captured in a two-minute preview, so the strategy, it seems, is one of general mood and feeling, here communicated in the best way: through Guerín’s mixture of verbosity with light-streaked, reflection-heavy images. If what’s seen herein manages to intrigue, the full experience is certain to captivate.

See it below:

Synopsis:

A university professor teaches a class on muses in art and literature as a means of romancing his female students in this breathtaking new film from Jose Luis Guerín, director of the widely heralded In the City of Sylvia. Part relationship drama, part intellectual discourse, the film centers on a philology professor — played by actual philology professor Raffaele Pinto — and the women surrounding him: his wife and students. But as each and every player engages in debates — concerning, among other things, art, the artist’s perspective, and male-female dynamics — Guerín focuses as much attention on the slippery boundary between documentary and fiction, in turn engaging with an evolving narrative, increasingly complex character dynamics, and an endlessly vivid emotional journey.

The Academy of Muses begins a U.S. theatrical run at New York’s Anthology Film Archives on September 2.