Clik here to view.
ND/NF: Character Acting, or the Art of the Eccentric
At the top of his autobiographical show Character Man, now running off-Broadway, Jim Brochu defines the title figure as an actor who exhibits “unusual characteristics or peculiarities.” That could...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ND/NF Interview: Joel Potrykus
Buzzard, the new feature from Joel Potrykus (Coyote, 10; Ape, 12), follows Marty, a dead-eyed bank temp with a penchant for small-time scams. When he's not bilking businesses out of their cash, Marty...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ND/NF Interview: Jennifer Kent
Six years after the untimely death of her husband, Amelia (Essie Davis) walks through The Babadook in a haze of suppressed agony and stress. She’s falling out of touch with her eccentric 6-year-old...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Futures & Pasts: The Bowery & Gangs of New York
The first thing we see after the opening credits of Raoul Walsh’s The Bowery are, I am not kidding you, the words “Nigger Joe’s”—it’s the name of a saloon, hand-painted on the window. Though we are...
View ArticleClik here to view.
News Digest 3/24/14
Joshua Oppenheimer Item of the day: Joshua Oppenheimer will follow up The Act of Killing with The Look of Silence which continues the earlier film’s examination of the Indonesian genocide, this time...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ND/NF Interview: Jessica Oreck
Jessica Oreck’s third feature is a mesmeric journey through the unidentified forests, fields, and cities of an Eastern Europe—still spooky with historical trauma, the pleasures of routine and ritual,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ND/NF Interview: Tom Shoval
Taking place in an Israeli suburban town, Tom Shoval’s debut feature juxtaposes a family melodrama with a psychological thriller haunted by the specters of class struggle and the ongoing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kaiju Shakedown: The Return of Asian Extreme
Kino Lorber recently signed a deal to distribute 90 titles formally with Palisades Tartan’s Asian Extreme label. Tartan was originally a U.K. distributor that expanded to the United States, but in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ND/NF Interview: Ben Rivers and Ben Russell
The title of A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness suggests several things at once: the primitive, the transcendental, a metaphor for cinema. In the triptych by 16mm film heroes Ben Russell and Ben Rivers,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ND/NF Interview: Ramon Zürcher
Building mysteries from the stuff of everyday life, Ramon Zürcher’s The Strange Little Cat consists of a constantly shifting set of contradictions. Set entirely in a small apartment in Berlin during...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Festivals: Berlin
People often forget the etymological roots of the word “festival.” A film festival signifies a technically convivial, joyous occasion, where you may watch, discuss, and (if you’re a distributor) buy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
20,000 Days on Earth & Mistaken for Strangers
There are three constants in documentaries about rock musicians. One: an act may present itself to the camera as being highly serious and level-headed, but it only takes one tiny lapse into...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ND/NF Interview: Albert Serra
"[Story of My Death's] eventual fictional encounter between Casanova and Dracula represents a key moment in European history: the transition from the Age of Enlightenment to that of Romanticism,"...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ND/NF Interview: Vivian Qu
Largely because of the advent of digital cinema, the number of indie film productions in China has grown annually, but indie film festivals have been forced to go underground. Indie music festivals...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Interview: Tilda Swinton
“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety,” Enobarbus says of the iconic pharaoh in Antony and Cleopatra, but he might have been speaking of the perennially surprising Tilda...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Futures & Pasts: Wild Things
In Pierre Bayard’s 1998 Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?: The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery, a closer-than-close reading of Agatha Christie’s 1926 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, psychoanalyst and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ND/NF Notebook: Return to Homs
Regular updates during the Syrian civil war have detailed the shifting fortunes of the major factions, reported on battles for vital territory, tallied the mounting civilian casualties, and charted...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ND/NF: Communal Living
A local dandy, riding home from afternoon tea, finds himself suddenly and uneasily sharing his prize mare with an amorous black stallion. A teenager is ordered to help restrain a man who has...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Interview: Thelma Schoonmaker
While directors, cinematographers, and other manufacturers of the image hog the mystique, there are relatively few “name” editors. Thelma Schoonmaker is one exception who proves the rule. This is in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kaiju Shakedown: The Raid 2
Back in 2009, Gareth Evans and a former cell-phone service technician, Iko Uwais, made a movie about silat, Indonesia’s martial art. It was called Merantau and served as a calling card for both star...
View Article