The new March issue of the Brooklyn Rail is up, featuring Max Nelson‘s preview of the Anthology Film Archives series Kissing the Moon: Films and Videos by Stephen Dwoskin; Ricky D’Ambrose on Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills (for more, see the Cannes roundup, and more recently, Scott Foundas (Voice), J. Hoberman (Artforum, “builds in intensity to a tumultuous climax”), Stuart Klawans and Eric Snider (Indiewire), Steve Macfarlane (L), and Keith Uhlich (Time Out New York, 4/5), plus Larry Rohter‘s profile in the New York Times and Daniel Walber‘s interview at Film.com); José Miguel Palacios on Pablo Larraín‘s No (again, Cannes, but also December‘s roundup), and Cynthia Lugo‘s conversation with Su Friedrich about Gut Renovation.
Craig Keller has put together a new issue of NoBudge Notes, a guide to new films available via Kentucker Audley‘s platform, as a downloadable PDF.
In other news. “World premieres of new dramas starring Adam Driver and Naomi Watts, a nonfiction look at director Michael Haneke and a documentary about African oil-drilling executives produced by Brad Pitt are to be among the films in competition at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival,” reports Steven Zeitchik for the Los Angeles Times. The festival, running from April 17 through 28, has unveiled a total of 46 of what’ll ultimately 89 features in its 2013 lineup: 12 in the World Narrative and 12 in the World Documentary competition sections, plus 22 in the noncompetitive Viewpoints section. Along with Zeitchik, Jake Coyle (AP) and Dave Itzkoff (New York Times) pluck out several highlights while Anne Thompson chats up Tribeca Enterprises chief creative officer Geoff Gilmore, new artistic director Frederick Boyer, director of programming Genna Terranova, and programmer Cara Cusumano.
Meantime, the San Francisco International Film Festival, running from April 25 through May 9, has announced ten titles that’ll be competing for the New Directors Prize and twelve films lined up for the Golden Gate Awards Documentary Feature Competition.
And AFI Fest has announced that this year’s edition will be held from November 7 through 14 and issued a call for submissions.
New York. “The early 1970’s was the heyday of the concert film,” writes Melissa Anderson for Artforum. “Between 1970 and 1973, Woodstock, Gimme Shelter, and Wattstax, to name just a few iconic examples of the genre, opened theatrically in the US. Released in 1971 but rarely screened since, Right On! showcases a different kind of concert (though one staged without an audience): twenty-eight spoken-word pieces by hip-hop forerunners the Original Last Poets, whose electric performances rival, if not surpass, those by Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger, and Isaac Hayes in the films above.” At MoMA from today through Tuesday. Related: “Forty-two years ago—March 6, 1971 to be precise—BAM was one of three venues in the NYC region to take part in a three-day festival of poetry, New Black Poets in America 1971.”
“From 2002 to 2004 the French filmmaker Emmanuelle Demoris lived in a slum of Alexandria, Egypt called Mafrouza,” begins Aaron Cutler in Moving Image Source. “She had originally come as part of a trip through the Middle East to film people sharing their thoughts about the afterlife, but became so intrigued by Mafrouza residents that she changed her project into telling their stories, which soon included her own. A visit became an extended stay, and material for one potential film evolved into five realized ones, which will be screening at New York’s Museum of Modern Art March 6–10, with a public Modern Mondays talk between Demoris and this writer on March 11. The films were shot by Demoris herself, whose only crew members were her translators. They were completed between 2007 and 2011, and are collectively called Mafrouza.” On Sunday at UnionDocs, Demoris and Cutler will present and discuss Georges Franju’s The Blood of the Beasts (1949) and Jean-Daniel Pollet’s L’Ordre (1973).
Following a screening of Maurice Pialat’s L’enfance nue (1968) tomorrow evening at 92Y Tribeca, Miriam Bale will moderate a panel discussion with Thomas Beard (Light Industry), Richard Brody (New Yorker), Emily Gould (Emily Books), A.S. Hamrah (n+1) and Choire Sicha (Awl).
Milan. “Apichatpong Weerasethakul presents Primitive, a project he started in 2009 and which is being shown in its entirety in a display specially designed for the spaces of HangarBicocca.” Opening Friday.
Hong Kong. “Para Site proudly presents It May Be That Beauty Has Strengthened Our Resolve, a group exhibition featuring works by Philippe Grandrieux, Lü Yue, Masao Adachi, Patrizio di Massimo, and Mladen Stilinović.” Opening Friday.
In the works. Deadline‘s Mike Fleming Jr. took the entire Internet by surprise yesterday when he reported that Jon Stewart will be taking a 12-week hiatus from The Daily Show this summer to direct a screenplay he’s adapted from Then They Came For Me: A Family’s Story of Love, Captivity and Survival, Maziar Bahari’s account of his “harrowing ordeal of leaving London in June 2009 to cover Iran’s presidential elections. With a pregnant fiance left behind, the BBC journalist expected to be away for a week. Instead, he spent the next 118 days in Iran’s most notorious prison being brutally interrogated by a man he knew only by one thing: he smelled of Rosewater.” Scott Rudin will produce; and John Oliver will guest host The Daily Show for eight of those 12 weeks. The NYT‘s Dave Itzkoff, by the way, points us to Stewart’s Daily Show interview with Bahari.
For Artinfo, Sam Gaskin talks with Christopher Doyle, who’s “been in Beijing working on a film he can’t yet talk about with his favorite new leading man, Ai Weiwei. ‘Ai Weiwei is the Tom Hanks of Chinese cinema,’ he says. ‘Ai Weiwei is so fucking beautiful on film because he’s so solid, he doesn’t give a shit. He is the great male star of the future of Chinese cinema. Please quote me…. Beijing was great fun,’ he continues. ‘I’m not sure if he’s pissed, but he fucking shaved my head.’ It’s true that Doyle doesn’t have his usual foppish flop of silver hair. ‘I’m not sure if he’s saying fuck you for fucking me up or if he’s saying it was a pleasure to work together, let me share something from my world.'”
Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, and Zach Galifianakis are all slated to star in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s comedy Birdman, reports the Playlist‘s Kevin Jagernauth.
“Sam Mendes will not be directing the next James Bond film,” reports the Telegraph‘s Alice Vincent. “The Skyfall director was offered the opportunity by Bond producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, but has turned it down. Mendes told Empire magazine the decision not to accept their offer had been ‘very difficult,’ but cited theatre and other professional commitments that ‘need my complete focus over the next year and beyond.'”
Obit. “Ric Menello passed away at the age of 60 last week,” writes Adam Cook in the Notebook. “Menello is known for co-writing Two Lovers and Lowlife with James Gray, and for directing this. Take a look at the Ditmas Park Corner blog’s remembrance of Menello.”
Viewing. Ray Pride‘s got the new trailer for Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig‘s delightful Frances Ha.
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