Festival Circuit 2019

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DarkImbecile
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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#301 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Aug 06, 2019 3:46 pm

Black Hat wrote:
Tue Aug 06, 2019 3:30 pm
DI: Yes that poster. I noticed Tel too and was wondering if that's where they got this dumb idea from. Nobody outside of the most pretentious American film industry types give a shit about a festival you can get to on horseback, but brilliant of NYFF to draw inspiration from it. It fits right in with the mission of Film Society or whatever they're trying to rebrand themselves as these days. Man do I have a lot of thoughts about that fiasco but 'tis unwise to speaketh outloud, alas.
Hey guys, I've been graduated to a pretentious American film industry type!

In all seriousness, no one but hardcore cinephiles and film industry types give a shit about any of these festivals, and Telluride is one of the half-dozen most high-profile in the world, so I'm not sure what you're trying to get at there.

Also, based on what you wrote, I don't think you clicked on the link, because I wasn't talking about this year's Telluride poster.

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#302 Post by Black Hat » Tue Aug 06, 2019 4:08 pm

I did click, but it went to another thread on the forum which then linked to Tel's website.

You're mostly right, but NYFF is meant (aspires) to be a public event far more than most of the others. What's happened with TIFF (sold out mostly) and NYFF (struggles at time to give away tickets) the last decade is an interesting study.

And let's just say as a person who deeply cares about film at Lincoln Center I think they have room for improvement.

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#303 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Aug 06, 2019 4:23 pm

Black Hat wrote:
Tue Aug 06, 2019 4:08 pm
I did click, but it went to another thread on the forum
The poster I was trying to point you to was in the spoiler box.

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#304 Post by Black Hat » Tue Aug 06, 2019 4:32 pm

HA!!! Throw in somebody yodeling "youwho is there anybody out there?" and we'd have the perfect Telluride poster.


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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#306 Post by colinr0380 » Fri Aug 09, 2019 3:44 am

Even more excitingly that HP Lovecraft adaptation of The Color Out Of Space starring Nicolas Cage is Richard Stanley's return to fiction feature filmmaking after the notorious mid-90s Island of Dr Moreau debacle.

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#307 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Aug 13, 2019 10:13 am

New announcements for Toronto, including films from Kore-eda, Malick, Hawley, Andrews, Shults, Andersson, Loach, and more

Not going to lie: lots of heartbreaking news in here for me re: Telluride. I’m going to have to go lie down for a while.

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#308 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue Aug 13, 2019 12:49 pm

Final Telluride Speculation: Most of the melodrama in my previous post was rooted in Toronto's initial listing of Malick's A Hidden Life as a North American premiere, which would probably have cost me my last best chance to see maybe my favorite living filmmaker in person, but after about an hour they updated it to denote a Canadian premiere, so: much happier now! Still bummed about missing out on several other really intriguing titles, the new Kore-eda especially, but this should still be an exciting and diverse festival.

Confirmed? (in order of interest):
A Hidden Life (Malick)
Parasite (Bong)
Motherless Brooklyn (Norton)
Uncut Gems (Safdie Bros.)
Marriage Story (Baumbach)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Sciamma)
The Climb (Covino)
Dolor y Gloria (Almodovar)
First Cow (Reichardt)
Waves (Shults)
Verdict (Gutierrez)
Ford vs. Ferrari (Mangold)
The Two Popes (Merielles)
The Aeronauts (Harper)
Varda By Agnès (Varda)
Judy (Goold)

Major Eliminated Possibilities:
About Endlessness (Andersson)
Atlantique (Diop)
Bacurau (Dornelles / Mendonça Filho)
Liberté (Serra)
Lucy in the Sky (Hawley)
Synonyms (Lapid)
The Traitor (Bellocchio)
The Truth (Kore-eda)
Vitalina Varela (Costa)
Wasp Network (Assayas)
Wild Goose Lake (Diao)
Young Ahmed (Dardennes)
Zombi Child (Bonello)

10 Remaining Most Wanted:
1917 (Mendes)
Ad Astra (Gray)
Antlers (Cooper)
Dry Run (Haynes)
Little Joe (Hausner)
Little Women (Gerwig)
Nomadland (Chloe Zhao)
Queen + Slim (Matasoukas)
The Report (Scott Z. Burns)
Waiting for Barbarians (Ciro Guerra)

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#309 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat Aug 17, 2019 1:00 pm


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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#310 Post by yoloswegmaster » Mon Aug 19, 2019 6:52 am

Schedule for Venice:

8/28
PELIKANBLUT (Gebbe)
THE PERFECT CANDIDATE (Al Mansour)
THE TRUTH (Kore-eda)

8/29
AD ASTRA (Gray)
MADRE (Sorogoyen)
MARRIAGE STORY (Baumbach)
THE MAYOR OF RIONE SANITÀ (Martone)
SOLE (Sironi)
VERDICT (Ribay Gutierrez)

8/30
EMA (Larraín)
AN OFFICER AND A SPY (Polanski)
SEBERG (Andrews)
QIQIU (BALLOON) (Tseden)

8/31
ADULTS IN THE ROOM (Costa-Gavras)
JOKER (Phillips)
REVENIR (Palud)
WASP NETWORK (Assayas)

9/1
THE LAUNDROMAT (Soderbergh)
NO. 7 CHERRY LANE (Yonfan)

9/2
THE KING (Michôd)
MARTIN EDEN (Marcello)
THE PAINTED BIRD (Marhoul)
RIALTO (Burns)

9/3
ABOUT ENDLESSNESS (Andersson)
GUEST OF HONOUR (Egoyan)
MOFFIE (Hermanus)
ATLANTIS (Vasyanovych)

9/4
BABYTEETH (Murphy)
GLORIA MUNDI (Guédiguian)
MOSUL (Carnahan)
SATURDAY FICTION (Lou)

9/5
A HERDADE (Guedes)

9/6
LA MAFIA NON È PIÙ QUELLA DI UNA VOLTA (Maresco)
WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS (Guerra)

9/7
THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY (Capotondi)

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#311 Post by FrauBlucher » Mon Aug 26, 2019 5:15 pm


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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#312 Post by DarkImbecile » Thu Aug 29, 2019 11:16 am

This year, I’ve been dealing with unrelenting bullshit from a new job I hate, grappling with growing despair about the world at large, trying to manage parenting two small children while buying, remodeling, and selling houses, and seeing less than half as many theatrical release movies as I have each of the last several years. But today, all that can be forgotten, because today I get to turn off my work phone/email, ignore my family, and totally and unhealthily compartmentalize everything of actual significance in my life to hang out in Telluride and watch movies for four days straight!

The best of this year’s lineup looks pretty great; I’ve bolded my priorities, but I’m open to being persuaded/dissuaded by those who’ve seen or have insight into any of these. As usual, I’ll do my best to throw up capsule reviews as I see the roughly 16-17 features I can usually fit into the weekend.
46th Telluride Film Festival is proud to present the following new feature films to play in its main program, the SHOW:

• THE AERONAUTS (d. Tom Harper, U.S. – U.K., 2019)

• THE ASSISTANT (d. Kitty Green, U.S., 2019)

• THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM (d. Daniel Gordon, Australia, 2019)

BEANPOLE (Kantemir Balagov, Russia, 2019)

• THE CLIMB (d. Michael Angelo Covino, U.S., 2019)

• COUP 53 (d. Taghi Amirani, U.K., 2019)

• DIEGO MARADONA (d. Asif Kapadia, U.K., 2019)

• FAMILY ROMANCE, LLC (d. Werner Herzog, U.S. – Japan, 2019)

FIRST COW (d. Kelly Reichardt, U.S., 2019)

• FORD v FERRARI (d. James Mangold, U.S., 2019)

• JUDY (d. Rupert Goold, U.K.-U.S., 2019)

A HIDDEN LIFE (d. Terrence Malick, U.S. – Germany, 2019)

• THE HUMAN FACTOR (d. Dror Moreh, U.K., 2019)

• INSIDE BILL’S BRAIN (d. Davis Guggenheim, U.S., 2019)

• THE KINGMAKER (Lauren Greenfield, U.S., 2019)

• LYREBIRD (d. Dan Friedkin, U.S., 2019)

MARRIAGE STORY (d. Noah Baumbach, U.S., 2019)

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (d. Edward Norton, U.S., 2019)

• OLIVER SACKS: HIS OWN LIFE (d. Ric Burns, U.S., 2018)

PAIN AND GLORY (d. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, 2019)

PARASITE (d. Bong Joon-ho, South Korea, 2019)

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (d. Céline Sciamma, France, 2019)

THE REPORT (d. Scott Z. Burns, U.S., 2019)

• TELL ME WHO I AM (d. Ed Perkins, U.K., 2019)

• THOSE WHO REMAINED (d. Barnabás Toth, Hungary, 2019)

• THE TWO POPES (d. Fernando Meirelles, U.K., 2019)

UNCUT GEMS (d. Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, U.S., 2019)

• VARDA BY AGNÈS (d. Agnès Varda, France, 2019)

VERDICT (d. Raymond Ribay Gutierrez, Philippines, 2019)

WAVES (d. Trey Edward Schultz, U.S., 2019)

Also playing in the main program is COUNTRY MUSIC (d. Ken Burns, U.S., 2019); WOMEN MAKE FILM: A NEW ROAD MOVIE THROUGH CINEMA (d. Mark Cousins, U.K., 2019); and three short films: FIRE IN PARADISE (d. Zack Canepari, Drea Cooper, U.S., 2019), INTO THE FIRE (d. Orlando von Einsiedel, Iraq-U.K., 2019) and LOS AND FOUND (d. Orlando von Einsiedel, Bangladesh-U.K., 2019).

The 2019 Silver Medallion Awards, given to recognize an artist’s significant contribution to the world of cinema, will be presented to Academy Award winning actress Renée Zellweger (with JUDY), Oscar nominated actor Adam Driver (with MARRIAGE STORY and THE REPORT) and Oscar nominated Philip Kaufman (with newly restored THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING). Tribute programs include a selection of clips followed by the presentation of the Silver Medallion, an onstage interview and a screening of the aforementioned films.

Guest Director Pico Iyer, who serves as a key collaborator in the Festival’s program, presents the following revival programs:

• LATE AUTUMN (d. Yasujirō Ozu, Japan, 1960)

• THE MAKIOKA SISTERS (d. Kon Ichikawa, Japan, 1983)

• MR. AND MRS. IYER (d. Aparna Sen, India, 2002)

• UNDER THE SUN (d. Vitaly Mansky, Czech Republic-Russia-Germany-Latvia-North Korea, 2015)

• WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS (d. Mikio Naruse, Japan, 1960)

Additional film revivals include THE WIND (d. Victor Sjöström, U.S, 1928), and a new 35mm print of THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE (d. Victor Sjöström, Sweden, 1921).

Telluride Film Festival annually celebrates a hero of cinema – an organization or individual – that preserves, honors and presents great movies. This year’s Special Medallion award goes to the company that revolutionized sound, Dolby Laboratories.

Backlot, Telluride’s intimate screening room featuring behind-the-scenes movies and portraits of artists, musicians and filmmakers, will screen the following programs:

• 63 UP (d. Michael Apted, U.K., 2019)

• BILLIE (d. James Erskine, U.K., 2019)

• CHULAS FRONTERAS (d. Les Blank, U.S., 1976)

• THE GIFT: THE JOURNEY OF JOHNNY CASH (d. Thom Zimny, U.S., 2019)

• LINDA RONSTADT: THE SOUND OF MY VOICE (d. Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, U.S., 2019)

• NOMAD: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BRUCE CHATWIN (d. Werner Herzog, U.S., 2019)

• SOROS (d. Jesse Dylan, U.S., 2019)

• UNCLE YANCO (d. Agnès Varda, France-U.S., 1967) + BLACK PANTHERS (d. Agnès Varda, France-U.S., 1968)

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#313 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Aug 29, 2019 11:35 am

Enjoy it, buddy.

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#314 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Aug 29, 2019 11:50 am

Great to see that a couple of documentaries are in that line up carried over from Sheffield Doc/Fest a few months back: here is the talk with Asif Kapadia on Maradona and Werner Herzog on his career the day after the premiere of Nomad: In The Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin from there.

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#315 Post by FrauBlucher » Thu Aug 29, 2019 3:45 pm

‘Me time’ is oh so important. Enjoy and looking forward to seeing your highlights

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#316 Post by zedz » Thu Aug 29, 2019 4:26 pm

DarkImbecile wrote:
Thu Aug 29, 2019 11:16 am
This year, I’ve been dealing with unrelenting bullshit from a new job I hate, grappling with growing despair about the world at large, trying to manage parenting two small children while buying, remodeling, and selling houses, and seeing less than half as many theatrical release movies as I have each of the last several years. But today, all that can be forgotten, because today I get to turn off my work phone/email, ignore my family, and totally and unhealthily compartmentalize everything of actual significance in my life to hang out in Telluride and watch movies for four days straight!

The best of this year’s lineup looks pretty great; I’ve bolded my priorities, but I’m open to being persuaded/dissuaded by those who’ve seen or have insight into any of these. As usual, I’ll do my best to throw up capsule reviews as I see the roughly 16-17 features I can usually fit into the weekend.
46th Telluride Film Festival is proud to present the following new feature films to play in its main program, the SHOW:

• THE AERONAUTS (d. Tom Harper, U.S. – U.K., 2019)

• THE ASSISTANT (d. Kitty Green, U.S., 2019)

• THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM (d. Daniel Gordon, Australia, 2019)

BEANPOLE (Kantemir Balagov, Russia, 2019)

• THE CLIMB (d. Michael Angelo Covino, U.S., 2019)

• COUP 53 (d. Taghi Amirani, U.K., 2019)

• DIEGO MARADONA (d. Asif Kapadia, U.K., 2019)

• FAMILY ROMANCE, LLC (d. Werner Herzog, U.S. – Japan, 2019)

FIRST COW (d. Kelly Reichardt, U.S., 2019)

• FORD v FERRARI (d. James Mangold, U.S., 2019)

• JUDY (d. Rupert Goold, U.K.-U.S., 2019)

A HIDDEN LIFE (d. Terrence Malick, U.S. – Germany, 2019)

• THE HUMAN FACTOR (d. Dror Moreh, U.K., 2019)

• INSIDE BILL’S BRAIN (d. Davis Guggenheim, U.S., 2019)

• THE KINGMAKER (Lauren Greenfield, U.S., 2019)

• LYREBIRD (d. Dan Friedkin, U.S., 2019)

MARRIAGE STORY (d. Noah Baumbach, U.S., 2019)

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (d. Edward Norton, U.S., 2019)

• OLIVER SACKS: HIS OWN LIFE (d. Ric Burns, U.S., 2018)

PAIN AND GLORY (d. Pedro Almodóvar, Spain, 2019)

PARASITE (d. Bong Joon-ho, South Korea, 2019)

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (d. Céline Sciamma, France, 2019)

THE REPORT (d. Scott Z. Burns, U.S., 2019)

• TELL ME WHO I AM (d. Ed Perkins, U.K., 2019)

• THOSE WHO REMAINED (d. Barnabás Toth, Hungary, 2019)

• THE TWO POPES (d. Fernando Meirelles, U.K., 2019)

UNCUT GEMS (d. Josh Safdie, Benny Safdie, U.S., 2019)

• VARDA BY AGNÈS (d. Agnès Varda, France, 2019)

VERDICT (d. Raymond Ribay Gutierrez, Philippines, 2019)

WAVES (d. Trey Edward Schultz, U.S., 2019)

Also playing in the main program is COUNTRY MUSIC (d. Ken Burns, U.S., 2019); WOMEN MAKE FILM: A NEW ROAD MOVIE THROUGH CINEMA (d. Mark Cousins, U.K., 2019); and three short films: FIRE IN PARADISE (d. Zack Canepari, Drea Cooper, U.S., 2019), INTO THE FIRE (d. Orlando von Einsiedel, Iraq-U.K., 2019) and LOS AND FOUND (d. Orlando von Einsiedel, Bangladesh-U.K., 2019).

The 2019 Silver Medallion Awards, given to recognize an artist’s significant contribution to the world of cinema, will be presented to Academy Award winning actress Renée Zellweger (with JUDY), Oscar nominated actor Adam Driver (with MARRIAGE STORY and THE REPORT) and Oscar nominated Philip Kaufman (with newly restored THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING). Tribute programs include a selection of clips followed by the presentation of the Silver Medallion, an onstage interview and a screening of the aforementioned films.

Guest Director Pico Iyer, who serves as a key collaborator in the Festival’s program, presents the following revival programs:

• LATE AUTUMN (d. Yasujirō Ozu, Japan, 1960)

• THE MAKIOKA SISTERS (d. Kon Ichikawa, Japan, 1983)

• MR. AND MRS. IYER (d. Aparna Sen, India, 2002)

• UNDER THE SUN (d. Vitaly Mansky, Czech Republic-Russia-Germany-Latvia-North Korea, 2015)

• WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS (d. Mikio Naruse, Japan, 1960)

Additional film revivals include THE WIND (d. Victor Sjöström, U.S, 1928), and a new 35mm print of THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE (d. Victor Sjöström, Sweden, 1921).

Telluride Film Festival annually celebrates a hero of cinema – an organization or individual – that preserves, honors and presents great movies. This year’s Special Medallion award goes to the company that revolutionized sound, Dolby Laboratories.

Backlot, Telluride’s intimate screening room featuring behind-the-scenes movies and portraits of artists, musicians and filmmakers, will screen the following programs:

• 63 UP (d. Michael Apted, U.K., 2019)

• BILLIE (d. James Erskine, U.K., 2019)

• CHULAS FRONTERAS (d. Les Blank, U.S., 1976)

• THE GIFT: THE JOURNEY OF JOHNNY CASH (d. Thom Zimny, U.S., 2019)

• LINDA RONSTADT: THE SOUND OF MY VOICE (d. Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman, U.S., 2019)

• NOMAD: IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BRUCE CHATWIN (d. Werner Herzog, U.S., 2019)

• SOROS (d. Jesse Dylan, U.S., 2019)

• UNCLE YANCO (d. Agnès Varda, France-U.S., 1967) + BLACK PANTHERS (d. Agnès Varda, France-U.S., 1968)
The only of the new films I've seen - Beanpole, Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Parasite - are all great, and they're all on your list, so enjoy!

Chulas Fronteras is a gorgeous film. Is it screening with Del Mero Corazon? They're both short, and natural companions that are often programmed together, and Del Mero Corazon is possibly even more gorgeous. (I saw the new restorations of both last year, and they looked very nice.)
Last edited by zedz on Thu Aug 29, 2019 4:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#317 Post by FrauBlucher » Thu Aug 29, 2019 4:53 pm


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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#318 Post by jlnight » Thu Aug 29, 2019 5:27 pm

London Film Festival 2019.

The Treasures selection is the one I always look for. That's where we saw The Last Movie. I've never even heard of Queen of Diamonds or Say Amen Somebody.

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#319 Post by domino harvey » Thu Aug 29, 2019 5:28 pm

I only know Say Amen, Somebody because Ebert loved it and gave it such an effusive review that it stuck in the back of my mind

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#320 Post by Grand Wazoo » Thu Aug 29, 2019 7:49 pm

jlnight wrote:
Thu Aug 29, 2019 5:27 pm
London Film Festival 2019.
I can only assume MichaelB will be first in line for Fanny Lye Deliver'd!

Also for anyone who can attend, please go see Lingua Franca. Isabel is a friend, so I'm biased, but I'm so excited for her opportunity there as the first Filipino and first Trans director ever in the main competition.

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#321 Post by beamish14 » Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:43 am

jlnight wrote:
Thu Aug 29, 2019 5:27 pm
London Film Festival 2019.

The Treasures selection is the one I always look for. That's where we saw The Last Movie. I've never even heard of Queen of Diamonds or Say Amen Somebody.

I just saw the AMPAS' restoration of Queen of Diamonds at the Hammer. One of those great films that made a splash at festivals during the 90's, but was never widely viewed (see also Dadetown and American Job). Nina Menkes is a really interesting filmmaker who's often compared to
Chantal Ackerman because of the sparse dialogue, use of repetitive motifs in her films, and proudly feminist bent, and her works are often about characters
living in the fringes of American society. Queen of Diamonds is, I think, less than 50 shots and is under 80 minutes long, but it's really quite demanding.

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#322 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Aug 30, 2019 11:27 am

Thanks for the feedback, zedz! I love that Beanpole poster, and that’s definitely a big priority.

So the plan for the first day of Telluride is to catch a chunk of Mark Cousins’ epic 14-hour Women Make Film, then Portrait of a Lady on Fire and the world premiere of Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn. There are a lot of longer (~2.5+ hours) features here this year, and the scheduling is brutal...

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#323 Post by domino harvey » Fri Aug 30, 2019 11:48 am

Take a cue from Harry Knowles and just wear adult diapers. In fact, announce your intent and say your special rank in public and you may make some new friends

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#324 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:00 pm

That would definitely make some of the lines shorter

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Re: Festival Circuit 2019

#325 Post by DarkImbecile » Sat Aug 31, 2019 2:48 pm

The first day of this festival was quite the rollercoaster.

I almost never walk out of any screening anywhere, much less a festival screening, but my first of the day — which was meant to be about a third of Mark Cousins’ 14-hour documentary Women Make Film — was such a disaster that I walked out after less than an hour. The film was seemingly rushed to the festival in only a semi-finished state, as the first 3-5 minutes ran with some audio from the film clips but not the Tilda Swinton voiceover track, which necessitated stopping and restarting the whole thing, then adjusting the mix of that narration track on the fly to make it audible, after which there were still syncing issues and instances of the two tracks stepping on one another in a muddled jumble. If that wasn’t enough, the video itself started cutting out for half a second about 15 minutes into the second attempt, once every few minutes at first but eventually every 30 seconds or so, resulting in the film being stopped again. It’s unfair to judge what I did see of the project given the compromised circumstances, but at this point I was far from impressed with the ponderous narration, overly rigid structure, and lack of justification for the “road trip through the cinema of women” framing conceit, so I used the opportunity to escape and — without another screening until 5pm — spend the afternoon playing board games. Given that these longer-form Friday openers have been highlights of the last two festivals, and that I’d never seen a technical issue of any sort at the festival — much less the total derailing of a screening — this was about as disheartening a start as possible. I rode the gondola back into town with a member of the festival’s Board of Governors who said he hadn’t seen a presentation error in nearly three decades of attending, to give a sense of how out of the ordinary this whole sequence of events was.

The benefit of this calamitous start, however, was that it made it easy to get into our next film of the day, Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. It’s going to come off as hyperbolic and hasty and probably unfair, but I’m not going to sugarcoat my immediate reaction, which is that this is the best film I’ve ever seen, and I don’t say that lightly at all. Flawless, jaw-dropping artistry from start to finish, visually and aurally breathtaking, and built around two crushingly note-perfect performances working from characters and dialogue written with as much resonance and meaning as I’ve experienced in any work of art. I almost don’t want to write about it, I had such an emotional and personal response to both the core story and characters and the sheer beauty of more compositions and shots than I can count. The film functions as a masterful articulation of (and itself serves an ideal example of) the fragile impermanence of the brief appearances of beauty in our lives, and I felt genuine gratitude and humility at having experienced it. I can’t recommend it highly enough, and I’m hopeful that I see Sciamma — who was unable to attend the North American premiere screening due to flight delays but should be here later this weekend —to thank her for her masterwork in person.

I didn’t really feel like it was fair to see anything else immediately after that — my festival partner and I couldn’t stop openly crying as we walked down the busy main street after they finally kicked us out of the theater — but we ultimately picked the World Premiere of Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn to be the inevitable sacrificial lamb to live in the shadow of the Sciamma... and it was actually pretty solid! An enjoyably entertaining detective story rooted in
SpoilerShow
Robert Caro’s The Power Broker as much as Jonathan Lethem’s source novel,
with an enjoyable score blending jazz and Thom Yorke, Norton’s film manages to walk several difficult lines with mostly passable success. Foremost among those risky chances that actually work out would be Norton’s own lead performance, which treats the protagonists condition respectfully while still using it as a plot and tone device. Not great, but not a disappointment either.

This morning I’ve already caught Diego Maradona, Asif Kapadia’s typically engrossing, cinematic, and high-quality documentary follow-up to Amy and Senna focusing on the career peak and downfall of the Argentine soccer legend, which I can heartily recommend, and am sitting down to Uncut Gems. Aiming to catch Beanpole, Marriage Story, and Parasite to close out the day.

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