The Human Rights Watch Film Festival is on at New York‘s Film Society of Lincoln Center and IFC Center through June 21. “Two of the fest’s strongest narratives concern crusading reformers crashing against entrenched forces in Latin America,” writes the Voice‘s Alan Scherstuhl. “Claudia Paz y Paz, elected attorney general of Guatemala in 2010, and Antanas Mockus, the Bogotá mayor whose anti-corruption, anti-violence campaign for the presidency of Colombia inspired chants of ‘We are pacifists, and we are united!'” The campaigns are chronicled in Joey Boink’s Burden of Peace and Andreas Dalsgaard’s Life Is Sacred, respectively. Scherstuhl also recommends Hajooj Kuka’s Beats of the Antonov, François Verster’s The Dream of Shahrazad, Ayat Najafi’s No Land’s Song, Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe’s (T)ERROR and Laurent Bécue-Renard’s Of Men and War, “a vital doc that lets us sit in on the therapy sessions of young vets living with PTSD.”
In the L, Elise Nakhnikian spotlights Paul Cowan and Amer Shomali’s The Wanted 18 (2014), which “tells a true story with the deadpan surrealism of a classic fable.”
Other, non-HRWFF recommendations from the L: Aaron Cutler on Claude Sautet’s Les choses de la vie (1970; through Thursday at Lincoln Plaza), Elina Mishuris on Douglas Sirk‘s Magnificent Obsession (1954, June 19 at MoMA), Scout Tafoya on Joseph Losey‘s The Damned (1963, tonight at BAM), Samantha Vacca on Roy Andersson‘s You, the Living (2007, tonight and June 26 at the Museum of Arts and Design), Justin Stewart on Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961, tomorrow at BAM), Jeremy Polacek on Frederick Wiseman‘s Hospital (1969, Sunday at the Museum of the Moving Image), Henry Stewart on John Boorman‘s Excalibur (1981, Sunday at Anthology Film Archives; and by the way, for Boorman‘s just told the BFI about “the films that made me fall in love with cinema”) and Jordan Cronk on Jean-Luc Godard‘s Every Man for Himself (1980, Tuesday at the French Institute Alliance Français).
The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced the return of its series of Free Talks (first come, first serve):
- Julie Taymor (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Monday, June 15.
- Alan Rickman (A Little Chaos), Tuesday, June 16.
- Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy and Yana Novikova (The Tribe), Wednesday, June 17.
- Matthew Heineman (Cartel Land), Tuesday, June 30.
- Joshua Oppenheimer (The Look of Silence), Thursday, July 16.
For more NYC recommendations, see Time Out New York.
Los Angeles. Dennis Cozzalio is thrilled that “this week, in celebration of the razor-sharp, hyperkinetic cinematic hall-of-mirrors that is the oeuvre of this wonderful filmmaker, the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles running a four-day tribute called The Atomo-Vision of Joe Dante, each night hosted by Dante himself, which will be a rare and welcome opportunity to see some of his peak achievements on the big screen.” Through Sunday.
San Francisco. New Filipino Cinema 2015 is on at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts through Sunday. Jonathan Keifer in the SF Weekly: “YBCA’s fourth annual installment of this special festival reliably collects some of the most dynamic and diverse independent cinema in the world.”
Chicago. In the Reader, Drew Hunt and Ben Sachs present a guide to the Chicago African Diaspora Film Festival, running from today through Thursday.
Philadelphia. Drew Lazor rounds up local screenings in the City Paper.
Obedience, an installation in 15 rooms by Saskia Boddeke and Peter Greenaway, is on view at the Jewish Museum in Berlin through September 13
Bristol. Masters of Iranian Cinema is a short season running at Watershed from today through Monday. At Conversations about Cinema, Nariman Massoumi, Senior Lecturer in Film and TV at Bath Spa University, writes about the three films on the program: Bahram Beizai’s Bashu, the Little Stranger (1989), Abbas Kiarostami‘s Where Is My Friend’s House? (1987) and Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Gabbeh (1995).
London. With the Marilyn Monroe season on at BFI Southbank through June, programmer Geoff Andrew argues that John Huston‘s The Misfits (1961) turned out “terrific despite the odds.”
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