Há Terra!I want to apologize for providing this Wavelengths avant-garde preview a little later than I might've liked. Hell, given that it's been over a week since movies died, I'm not exactly sure how much more kindling I can chuck onto the pyre. But I should remark that compared with previous years' iterations of the Tiff Wavelengths series, 2016 does feel a bit...off. I'm chiefly referring to the experimental short films here. (My second part, addressing the Wavelengths features, will be along in a matter of days.) Make no mistake. There's plenty of great work in this year's programs. But I do feel that the disparity this year between the truly exceptional films and the mediocre-to-not-very-good ones is markedly high.I enjoy films, and more than this, I enjoy enjoying them. I hardly get my kicks by being a nattering nabob of negativity. But programmers have to work with what is available to them,...
- 9/13/2016
- MUBI
![Nathaniel Dorsky in Word Is Out (1977)](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZDdhMmY3NTMtMzNmYy00YTZmLTgzYmItNDE4MTA0YjM4MmI3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzI5NDcxNzI@._V1_QL75_UX500_CR0,99,500,281_.jpg)
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...
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...
- 8/17/2016
- by Liz Calvario
- Indiewire
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...
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...
- 8/17/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
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...
- 8/17/2016
- Keyframe
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...
- 8/17/2016
- Fandor: Keyframe
The Toronto International Film Festival's unleashed another round of lineups for this year's edition (September 8 through 18), including new films by Pedro Almodóvar, Wim Wenders, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Kelly Reichardt, Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, Hong Sang-soo, Emmanuelle Bercot, Walter Hill, Antonio Campos, Joseph Cedar, Philippe Falardeau, James Franco, Ken Loach, Douglas Gordon, Lav Diaz, Jõao Pedro Rodrigues, Ana Vaz, Matías Piñeiro, Angela Schanelec, Wang Bing, Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, installations by Sharon Lockhart and Albert Serra—and more. » - David Hudson...
- 8/16/2016
- Keyframe
The Toronto International Film Festival's unleashed another round of lineups for this year's edition (September 8 through 18), including new films by Pedro Almodóvar, Wim Wenders, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Kelly Reichardt, Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, Hong Sang-soo, Emmanuelle Bercot, Walter Hill, Antonio Campos, Joseph Cedar, Philippe Falardeau, James Franco, Ken Loach, Douglas Gordon, Lav Diaz, Jõao Pedro Rodrigues, Ana Vaz, Matías Piñeiro, Angela Schanelec, Wang Bing, Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, installations by Sharon Lockhart and Albert Serra—and more. » - David Hudson...
- 8/16/2016
- Fandor: Keyframe
The Ann Arbor Film Festival, having survived their half-a-century blowout in 2012, is back with another rip-roarin’ 51st edition in 2013, which will run from March 19-24, screening a mind-boggling amount of experimental short films and a few features.
Highlights of the fest include:
Special presentations by this year’s jurors, including Marcin Gizycki round-up of Polish animation from the 1950s to the present; Laida Lertxundi’s selection of some of her films as well as her biggest influences; and Kevin Jerome Everson’s mini-retrospective of his own films.
There’s also special tributes to Pat O’Neill, including a retrospective of his short films from the ’70s to the present as well as a screening of his 1989 35mm experimental epic Water and Power; Suzan Pitt, with selections of short films from her career; and a screening of Ken Burns’ latest doc The Central Park Five, co-directed with his daughter Sarah Burns and son-in-law David McMahon,...
Highlights of the fest include:
Special presentations by this year’s jurors, including Marcin Gizycki round-up of Polish animation from the 1950s to the present; Laida Lertxundi’s selection of some of her films as well as her biggest influences; and Kevin Jerome Everson’s mini-retrospective of his own films.
There’s also special tributes to Pat O’Neill, including a retrospective of his short films from the ’70s to the present as well as a screening of his 1989 35mm experimental epic Water and Power; Suzan Pitt, with selections of short films from her career; and a screening of Ken Burns’ latest doc The Central Park Five, co-directed with his daughter Sarah Burns and son-in-law David McMahon,...
- 3/19/2013
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The only active director whose career intersects the silent film era, 90-year-old Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira continues to astonish for the relevancy and daring his art represents. This amazing filmmaker, who has made a film a year for the last decade, fashions one of his most sublime achievements with "The Letter" -- a beautiful, sorrowful contemporary translation of Mme de la Fayette's 17th century novel, "Madame de Cleves" -- which was awarded a special jury prize at Cannes.
Deftly transposing the material to the present, Oliveira infuses the work with a visual poetry and musical elegance that, taken with its wit and style, makes this one of the director's most accessible films. In addition to the formal innovations, in particular the use of off-screen narration, Oliveira turns the work into a sharp emotional inquiry, a study into the nature of truth and attraction, longing and heartbreak. Oliveira finds new ways to invent himself, opening the film in a way that appears the work of a much different director. A shot of a backstage dressing room leads to a stage, where a handsome, charismatic performer named Pedro Abrunhosa (played, inventively enough, by the Portuguese star of the same name) is performing a concert.
Deploying the first of his wry intertitles, Oliveira shifts the action to the interiors of an fashionably upscale diamond store where Mme de Chartres (Francoise Fabian) is buying an expensive necklace for her daughter, a "noblewoman" (Chiara Mastroianni). The women come under the watchful gaze of a wealthy man, Monsieur de Cleves (Antoine Chappey) -- clearly infatuated with the gilded, beautiful young woman. In his masterpieces such as "Francisca" or "Valley of Abraham", Oliveira utilized with subtlety and grace a narrator whose voice was a brilliant formal idea, unleashing digressions, character nuance and the power of observation to both comment on and provide analysis of the frequently complicated narrative.
Shifting around with time and space, Oliveira uses text superimposed over a blank screen to compress and underline the key narrative developments, the marriage of the aristocrat Cleves to the beautiful young woman. Just as important, Oliveira knits together the two narrative threads contrasting the fates of Mme. Cleves, who doesn't love her husband, and the man she is desperately attracted to, the magnetic Pedro. Following the death of her mother (who realized her daughter's furtive attraction to Pedro and warned her against consummating it), Mme Cleves now confides to her childhood friend, a nun (Oliveira regular Leonor Silveira). As the film moves toward the seemingly inevitable, the acknowledgment of Pedro and Mme. Cleves' mutual attraction, Oliveira beautifully upsets the natural order.
What transforms "The Letter" into a vivid, essential viewing experience is not just the beautifully constructed emotional interplay, the inventive narration, the depth of feeling for his characters, but the way every time, for instance, Oliveira resumes the action following the narration, he finds an image (a brooding, devastating shot inside the cemetery, Mme. Cleves stationed behind an iron fence) that yields a particularly resonant character or emotional detail, a fresh and exciting perspective. Oliveira constantly undermines narrative expectations without compromising the depth of emotion, the hard feelings, the unbearable pain of unrequited love
"The Letter" showcases the vitality of a particular brand of European art movie, complex, rueful and finally, one that is deeply moving. The scenes between Mastroianni and Lenoir are both perfectly underplayed and powerfully etched, demonstrating how great acting and auteurism aren't incompatible. Filmmaking this good is rare, and proper attention must be paid.
THE LETTER
A French/Spanish/Portuguese coproduction
Gemini Films, Wanda Films and Madragoa Filmes
Credits: Producer: Paulo Branco; Director/writer: Manoel de Oliveira; Based on the novel by: Mme. de la Fayette; Cinematographer: Emmanuel Machuel; Editor: Valerie Loiseleux; Sound: Jean Paul Mugel; Production design: Ana Vaz Da Silva; Costumes: Judy Shrewsbury; Cast: Mme. de Cleves: Chiara Mastroianni; Pedro: Pedro Abrunhosa; Mme. de Cleves: Antoine Chappey; the nun: Leonor Silveira; Mme. de Chartres: Francoise Fabian...
Deftly transposing the material to the present, Oliveira infuses the work with a visual poetry and musical elegance that, taken with its wit and style, makes this one of the director's most accessible films. In addition to the formal innovations, in particular the use of off-screen narration, Oliveira turns the work into a sharp emotional inquiry, a study into the nature of truth and attraction, longing and heartbreak. Oliveira finds new ways to invent himself, opening the film in a way that appears the work of a much different director. A shot of a backstage dressing room leads to a stage, where a handsome, charismatic performer named Pedro Abrunhosa (played, inventively enough, by the Portuguese star of the same name) is performing a concert.
Deploying the first of his wry intertitles, Oliveira shifts the action to the interiors of an fashionably upscale diamond store where Mme de Chartres (Francoise Fabian) is buying an expensive necklace for her daughter, a "noblewoman" (Chiara Mastroianni). The women come under the watchful gaze of a wealthy man, Monsieur de Cleves (Antoine Chappey) -- clearly infatuated with the gilded, beautiful young woman. In his masterpieces such as "Francisca" or "Valley of Abraham", Oliveira utilized with subtlety and grace a narrator whose voice was a brilliant formal idea, unleashing digressions, character nuance and the power of observation to both comment on and provide analysis of the frequently complicated narrative.
Shifting around with time and space, Oliveira uses text superimposed over a blank screen to compress and underline the key narrative developments, the marriage of the aristocrat Cleves to the beautiful young woman. Just as important, Oliveira knits together the two narrative threads contrasting the fates of Mme. Cleves, who doesn't love her husband, and the man she is desperately attracted to, the magnetic Pedro. Following the death of her mother (who realized her daughter's furtive attraction to Pedro and warned her against consummating it), Mme Cleves now confides to her childhood friend, a nun (Oliveira regular Leonor Silveira). As the film moves toward the seemingly inevitable, the acknowledgment of Pedro and Mme. Cleves' mutual attraction, Oliveira beautifully upsets the natural order.
What transforms "The Letter" into a vivid, essential viewing experience is not just the beautifully constructed emotional interplay, the inventive narration, the depth of feeling for his characters, but the way every time, for instance, Oliveira resumes the action following the narration, he finds an image (a brooding, devastating shot inside the cemetery, Mme. Cleves stationed behind an iron fence) that yields a particularly resonant character or emotional detail, a fresh and exciting perspective. Oliveira constantly undermines narrative expectations without compromising the depth of emotion, the hard feelings, the unbearable pain of unrequited love
"The Letter" showcases the vitality of a particular brand of European art movie, complex, rueful and finally, one that is deeply moving. The scenes between Mastroianni and Lenoir are both perfectly underplayed and powerfully etched, demonstrating how great acting and auteurism aren't incompatible. Filmmaking this good is rare, and proper attention must be paid.
THE LETTER
A French/Spanish/Portuguese coproduction
Gemini Films, Wanda Films and Madragoa Filmes
Credits: Producer: Paulo Branco; Director/writer: Manoel de Oliveira; Based on the novel by: Mme. de la Fayette; Cinematographer: Emmanuel Machuel; Editor: Valerie Loiseleux; Sound: Jean Paul Mugel; Production design: Ana Vaz Da Silva; Costumes: Judy Shrewsbury; Cast: Mme. de Cleves: Chiara Mastroianni; Pedro: Pedro Abrunhosa; Mme. de Cleves: Antoine Chappey; the nun: Leonor Silveira; Mme. de Chartres: Francoise Fabian...
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