Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended VIEWINGWes Anderson's latest experimentation in stop-motion, Isle of Dogs, gets its disturbing yet droll first trailer.Valentine, above, is a selection of intimate videos directed by Paul Thomas Anderson of Haim's live sessions of cuts from their latest album, Something to Tell You.We adore Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's most recent film, The Assassin, and highly anticipate this new restoration for his difficult to see 1987 film drama, Daughter of the Nile. Grasshopper Film has bravely made Jean-Marie Straub's 2-minute masterpiece The Algerian War! available for free on their website.Recommended Reading"I began thinking that Mothlight must begin with the unraveling of a cocoon and end with some simulation of candle flame or electric heat (as all moths whose wings were being used in the film had been collected from enclosed...
- 9/27/2017
- MUBI
Scene 32Field of Stone (2007) the first film by Shambhavi Kaul, is a feature-length documentary about the polarizing Harley-Davidson-riding country western singer David Allan Coe, but ten years later, that film looks like an anomaly. The Durham-based filmmaker and daughter of Mani Kaul, the acclaimed director associated with India’s Parallel Cinema movement, is now notable primarily for her experimental found-footage shorts. The first of these, Scene 32 (2009), begins with a wide, overhead shot of salt flats of India’s Kutch district, seemingly preparing the viewer for a landscape film. But unlike James Benning, Peter Hutton, or Tomonari Nishikawa, whose “landscape films” have deservedly gained recognition among film critics interested in the large umbrella of “experimental films,” as while as academics and artists working in a similar mode, Kaul seems unconcerned with duration and movement. After several seconds, she quickly cuts to a shot of the same flats taken from much closer to the ground.
- 5/12/2017
- MUBI
Rabbit holes within rabbit holes, the experimental corners of film festivals are zones to lose yourself into. Freed from conventional narrative requirements, they offer different ways of experiencing cinema—unusual textures and rhythms, raw materials molded into perplexingly new compositions, assertive visions that seem to leave iridescent marks on the viewer's corneas. Striking as they are, these avant-garde works often prove difficult to catch in the whirlwind of multiple film programs, leaving the adventurous cinephile to seek these titles on laptop monitors when they should be watched on the big screen for their full, visceral effect. Which makes this week's retrospective of the New York Film Festival's Projections program (sponsored by our very own Mubi) all the more valuable: a chance for audiences to encounter innovative artists and approaches that, as the festival notes put it, “expand upon our notions of what the moving image can do and be.”It's...
- 10/2/2015
- by Fernando F. Croce
- MUBI
This year, Mubi is sponsoring the New York Film Festival's essential Projections strand, running October 2 - 4, and is bringing to U.S. audiences a stunning collection of highlights from last year's inaugural edition.The New York Film Festival’s Projections section presents an international selection of film and video work that expands upon our notions of what the moving image can do and be. Drawing on a broad range of innovative modes and techniques, including experimental narratives, avant-garde poetics, crossovers into documentary and ethnographic realms, and contemporary art practices, Projections brings together a diverse offering of short, medium, and feature-length work by some of today’s most vital and groundbreaking filmmakers and artists.Our selection includes:Letters To Max (Eric Baudelaire, France)A record of the epistolary encounter between French artist and filmmaker Eric Baudelaire and Maxim Gvinjia, former Foreign Minister of the breakaway Caucasian state of Abkhazia, Letters to Max...
- 9/26/2015
- by Notebook
- MUBI
Fallen Objects. Image: Courtesy of the artistHey Fernando, are you at a film right now? Sneaking away from the festival always feels so wrong, doesn't it? We're here to grind through, to fill every empty moment in our day with yet another film or another few dashed words of writing, and so stepping out of the multiplex to grab a leisurely meal with a friend or to explore a new neighborhood inspires in me nothing but guilt. Luckily, the festival has thought of such things and has given me reasons to get away from the festival center...more films! The Wavelengths section, which curates a more radical type of cinema than the rest of the fest, has often featured video art pieces installed both near and far during the festival (you may recall last year I reported on a wonderful piece in Future Projections, the old name of the Wavelengths...
- 9/14/2015
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
The 22nd annual Chicago Underground Film Festival presents five days of devastating celluloid provocations on May 13-17 at the Logan Theatre.
The fest kicks off on May 13 with the incredibly haunting short film Echoes by Jaimz Asmundson and the Filipino romantic crime drama Ruined Heart: Another Lovestory Between a Criminal and a Whore by the single-named director Khavn.
Highlights of the fest include the new slacker-ific comedy by Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn, L for Leisure; the Spanish socio-political documentary Speculation Nation by Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat; the pastoral friendship drama For the Plasma by Bingham Bryant & Kyle Molzan; and the joyful pop doc Living Stars by Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn.
There are also loads of un-missable short films, such as the gritty modern film noir Bite Radius by Spencer Parsons; and amazing new films by Jennifer Reeder (Blood Below the Skin), Zachary Epcar (Under the Heat Lamp...
The fest kicks off on May 13 with the incredibly haunting short film Echoes by Jaimz Asmundson and the Filipino romantic crime drama Ruined Heart: Another Lovestory Between a Criminal and a Whore by the single-named director Khavn.
Highlights of the fest include the new slacker-ific comedy by Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn, L for Leisure; the Spanish socio-political documentary Speculation Nation by Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat; the pastoral friendship drama For the Plasma by Bingham Bryant & Kyle Molzan; and the joyful pop doc Living Stars by Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn.
There are also loads of un-missable short films, such as the gritty modern film noir Bite Radius by Spencer Parsons; and amazing new films by Jennifer Reeder (Blood Below the Skin), Zachary Epcar (Under the Heat Lamp...
- 5/11/2015
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
This year’s student-run Milwaukee Underground Film Festival runs four days on April 30-May 3 at the Union Theater on the campus of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and at the Microlights Cinema.
The fest kicks off on April 30 with two films by one of this year’s jurors, Marika Borgeson: The Starry Messenger, which used the sun as it’s only developing agent; and the work-in-progress Excerpt From Arcanam Terra Lacrimarum; plus films by other artists selected by Borgeson.
On the following afternoon, May 1, there will be a presentation by this year’s other two jurors, Kelly Gallagher and Ben Balcom, which will include their own films, plus others selected from the Uwm Archives.
The rest of the festival features an explosion of terrific experimental films, including work by Lori Felker, Turn on the Hill; Zachary Epcar, Under the Heat Lamp an Opening; Mike Olenick, Beautiful Things; Josh Weissbach, Model Fifty-One Fifty-Six; Clint Enns,...
The fest kicks off on April 30 with two films by one of this year’s jurors, Marika Borgeson: The Starry Messenger, which used the sun as it’s only developing agent; and the work-in-progress Excerpt From Arcanam Terra Lacrimarum; plus films by other artists selected by Borgeson.
On the following afternoon, May 1, there will be a presentation by this year’s other two jurors, Kelly Gallagher and Ben Balcom, which will include their own films, plus others selected from the Uwm Archives.
The rest of the festival features an explosion of terrific experimental films, including work by Lori Felker, Turn on the Hill; Zachary Epcar, Under the Heat Lamp an Opening; Mike Olenick, Beautiful Things; Josh Weissbach, Model Fifty-One Fifty-Six; Clint Enns,...
- 4/30/2015
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The Ann Arbor Film Festival celebrates its epic 53rd annual edition on March 24-29 with a colossal selection of experimental short films and features.
Feature film highlights include the documentary Speculation Nation by regular collaborators Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat, which examines the recent Spanish housing crisis; a new ethnographic doc by Ben Russell, Greetings to the Ancestors, which plunges deep into the culture of South Africa; and Jenni Olson’s grand California study The Royal Road.
Short film highlights include the much anticipated new film by Jennifer Reeder, Blood Below the Skin, a narrative following a week in the dramatic and romantic lives of three teenage girls; a new music video by Mike Olenick called Beautiful Things with music by The Wet Things; new animations by Don Hertzfeldt, World of Tomorrow, and Lewis Klahr, Mars Garden; plus new experimental work by Vanessa Renwick, Peggy Ahwesh and Zachary Epcar.
Special...
Feature film highlights include the documentary Speculation Nation by regular collaborators Bill Brown and Sabine Gruffat, which examines the recent Spanish housing crisis; a new ethnographic doc by Ben Russell, Greetings to the Ancestors, which plunges deep into the culture of South Africa; and Jenni Olson’s grand California study The Royal Road.
Short film highlights include the much anticipated new film by Jennifer Reeder, Blood Below the Skin, a narrative following a week in the dramatic and romantic lives of three teenage girls; a new music video by Mike Olenick called Beautiful Things with music by The Wet Things; new animations by Don Hertzfeldt, World of Tomorrow, and Lewis Klahr, Mars Garden; plus new experimental work by Vanessa Renwick, Peggy Ahwesh and Zachary Epcar.
Special...
- 3/24/2015
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
With so few events during which to premiere new and important avant-garde films in North America—among them, the recently wrapped Wavelengths section of the Toronto International Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Fest, and the San Francisco Cinematheque's Crossroads series—the shift that has occurred at this year's New York Film Festival is one well worth noting. This weekend, the inaugural Projects program will debut. Previously known as "Views from the Avant-Garde" and programmed by Mark McElhatten and Gavin Smith (though last year's titanic program was done by McElhatten alone), this sidebar more akin to a festival-inside-a-festival of film and video works has been re-named "Projections" and in its first year is programmed by a returned Smith, Film Society of Lincoln Center's Director of Programming Dennis Lim, and Aily Nash.
The section encompasses 13 programs over a single weekend during the festival, including a handful of feature length films and numerous shorts,...
The section encompasses 13 programs over a single weekend during the festival, including a handful of feature length films and numerous shorts,...
- 10/4/2014
- by Daniel Kasman
- MUBI
What follows is a highly selective, unavoidably partial guide to the Wavelengths section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, which kicks off today. Perhaps it seems that “selective” and “partial” are synonymous enough to produce redundancy when placed within the same sentence, and in most instances I would agree with this objection. In the first case, "selective," I will note that, of the 28 shorts and features that I was able to preview from the Wavelengths section (impeccably curated, as always, by the perspicacious Andréa Picard), I have chosen to highlight the fifteen that I personally found most aesthetically and intellectually bold, invigo(u)rating, troubling, critical-verbiage-thwarting, or otherwise worthy of hearty recommendation. This in no way implies that the other works were somehow lacking, only that I could not see my way through to them at this particular time and place. A different set of viewing circumstances (the ones you’re about to embark upon,...
- 9/10/2014
- by Michael Sicinski
- MUBI
From intriguing documentaries to award-winning coprodcutions, Mexican cinema is present at Tiff this year with several offers. Take a look here.
Tiff Docs
"The Years of Fierro"
Dir. Santiago Esteinou
Wavelengths
"Jauja"
Dir. Lisandro Alonso
Contemporary World Cinema
"Sand Dollars"
Directors: Israel Cárdenas & Laura Amelia Guzmán
Tiff Docs
"Night Noon"
Dir. Shambhavi Kaul...
Tiff Docs
"The Years of Fierro"
Dir. Santiago Esteinou
Wavelengths
"Jauja"
Dir. Lisandro Alonso
Contemporary World Cinema
"Sand Dollars"
Directors: Israel Cárdenas & Laura Amelia Guzmán
Tiff Docs
"Night Noon"
Dir. Shambhavi Kaul...
- 9/7/2014
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
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