ALISTAIR BANKS GRIFFIN, “TWO GATES OF SLEEP”

By Brandon Harris

American independent films of the narrative variety are rarely hard art films. But in the case of Alastair Banks Griffin’s Two Gates of Sleep, which bowed at last year’s Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes before finding its way to AFI Fest last Fall, one should be ready to enter a long-take heavy, unspeakably gorgeous dirge that is sure of its influences and even more sure that it has something deeply resonant to express to you. It’s the type of movie that, as the cliche goes, requires the audience to “do some work,” that isn’t going to bend over backwards to entertain you, that’s going to leave your questions unanswered and your desires for exposition or denouement unfulfilled. It tells the story of a pair of backwoods brothers (Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene’s Brady Corbett and Tiny Furniture’s David Call) in the rural American South who choose to bury their dead mother (Karen Young) in a pine box of their own making after she dies from some unexplained ailment in a field near their home.

Griffin, a native Southerner and prodigious cinephile making his directorial debut, did the festival rounds in 2008 with his short film Gauge. It was there that he met the producers of his most recent film, Sean Durkin, Josh Mond and Antonio Campos of Borderline Films, who were at NYFF ’08 with Campos’ startling feature debut Afterschool. After discovering a mutual appreciation for austere narratives with young, untraditional protagonists, they banded together to make Two Gates of Sleep, which features the most impressive work yet from Borderline’s house cinematographer/young d.p. of the moment Jody Lee Lipes, who like Durkin and Campos was featured among our 25 New Faces in Independent Film. Two Gates of Sleep opens on Friday at the ReRun GastroPub Theater in Dumbo, Brooklyn.

Filmmaker: Watching your film for a second time recently, it strongly recalls the work of both William Faulkner and Terrence Malick to me.

Griffin: They are big influences. There were some other influences that went into the genesis of the film … Read the rest

JORGE MICHEL GRAU, “WE ARE WHAT WE ARE”

By Brandon Harris

In We Are What We Are, first time Mexican helmer Jorge Michel Grau creates a deeply unsettling portrait of contemporary Mexican urban life which steady grows into many things all at once: a sincere family drama, an earnest exploration of the moral implications of cannibalism and a ribald satire of the seemingly intractable political and economic corruption that is haunting present day Mexico. All moody nighttime vistas and grim, claustrophobic interiors, Grau’s film manages both social commentary and grisly, bone-chilling terror the old-fashioned way, but it still manages to have a depth of human feeling that isn’t the stock and trade of this type of genre fare.

A graduate of Mexico’s state-operated Centro de Capacitacion Cinematographica, Grau worked as a producer and production manager on Mexican features, documentaries and education programs for television before his directorial breakthrough. We Are What We Are bowed at last year Director’s Fortnight in Cannes before premiering stateside at last fall’s New York Film Festival. It opens domestically from IFC this friday.

Filmmaker: Your film builds very gradually, with a sort of slow burn rhythm that is popular on the festival circuit, but still somewhat unusual for the horror genre. How would you describe your approach to and inspirations from the universe of horror films?

Grau: I grew up watching horror films. What I wanted to deal with in this film was the disintegration of a family within a framework borrowed from the horror genres, but actually this is the experience of living in Mexico City. You can be living inside your home and outside of you; you’re surrounded by a situation that’s pretty much like that of a horror film. There are quite a number of cinematic references within the film to the genre of horror films or a cinema of violence,because that’s what I’m interested in. One of the obvious references in the film is to Guillermo Del Toro’s first film Cronos. That’s my approach to horror films, that’s the why I choose to shoot the film the … Read the rest

FREDERICK WISEMAN, “BOXING GYM”

By Brandon Harris

This year the Museum of Modern Art’s Film Department launched a year long retrospective of a prominent octogenarian documentarian. On opening night of the series, with the filmmaker present, the curator of the series asked during a Q&A, “do you think you’ve mellowed a bit with age?”

Frederick Wiseman responded, “why does one have to mellow?”

In fact, at eighty, he hasn’t at all. Yes his films have grown a touch more lyrical and perhaps one could even say tender as he enters his sixth decade as our country and perhaps the world’s most vital documentarian. Since bursting on the scene with 1967′s Titicut Follies, there really hasn’t been anyone else to surface in world cinema with a remotely similar body of work. With a cutting wit and a bullshit meter that rivals few others, Frederick Wiseman is a machine of a man, a workaholic chronicler of the systems and yes (everyone says this) institutions of modern American life who for over forty years has probably been most happy operating sound equipment as a camera person tracks the wistful lives of his subjects to his discretion. He doesn’t do stages and galas and self-reflection so well, he’d rather be out in this amazing country of ours filming a hospital or military base or small town or, as was the case in his magisterial three and a half hour 2006 six film, a State Legislature.

Boxing Gym, his newest film and thirty-eighth as a director,  trolls the hallways, ringsides and training mats of Lord’s Gym, glimpsing fleeting moments of banters and the rigors of preparation for violence as boxers both young and old, male and female hone their own application of the sweet science. Less interested in the systems that contain these personalities than in some of his other films, Wiseman meditates on the rituals of the sport, on the sheer physicality of its practice, and on the gentle comraderie of its practitioners. After having screened at this year’s recently concluded New York Film Festival, it opens tomorrow.

Filmmaker: Do you watch much boxing? When did the … Read the rest

JAMIE STUART’S “NYFF 48″

Jamie Stuart’s NYFF 48 is the latest in his annual cinematic trips to the New York Film Festival, “a 13-minute impressionistic juxtaposition of modern film’s evolution and man’s progress.” Turn your lights out, crank your speakers and watch. With appearances by David Fincher, Clint Eastwood, Olivier Assayas, Joe Dante, Charles Ferguson, Frederick Wiseman, and others.

The 720p file can be downloaded here. Visit Jamie at Mutiny Company.… Read the rest

TRAILERING JAMIE STUART’S “NYFF 48″

Jamie Stuart’s video of the 48th New York Film Festival will be live next week. For now, a trailer….

Download this trailer here in Quicktime.… Read the rest

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

Like a bitch-slap to those who have accused it of excessive reverence for French fare over the past 48 years, the 2010 New York Film Festival is bookended and centered on American movies—oddly enough, all from the big studios. David Fincher‘s The Social Network (pictured above) opens the event September 24; Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter is the October 10 Closing Night selection; and Julie Taymor’s The Tempest, the Centerpiece.

I’ve seen none of them, but early reviews of The Social Network have been very positive, not surprising from the director of Se7en and Fight Club. Evaluations of Hereafter have been much less flattering, but then, it’s Clint Eastwood, and even a PSA would be worth a look. Critics have been hard on The Tempest, but what else would you expect with a film by Taymor? Hopefully it surpasses Titus and Frida. Perhaps Broadway suits her better than Alice Tully Hall.

The so-called Main Slate of 28 features (twelve more titles and discussions are part of a Special Events sidebar, though how the two sections are differentiated is beyond me) includes three more titles from the U.S. (Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff and two docs, Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job and Michael Epstein’s Lennon NYC), all non-studio. Add to that two films from the UK (Mike Leigh’s Another Year and Patrick Keiller’s Robinson in Ruins) and you get you a total of eight English-language pictures. From France, five. No one is guilty of francophilia; anglophilia, if anything.

Whether that’s a commentary on the quality and sources of contemporary film production or the mindset of the selection committee in touch with the zeitgeist is something I can’t answer. That half the choices are from the US, the UK, and France combined (and that such a high proportion were in Cannes, so in a way preselected by that festival’s programmers) might indicate limited outreach, but that’s to be decided after we’ve seen the films.

Although there are some fine movies in the selection, it appears that the NYFF has an … Read the rest

NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL By John Magary

Whither primary sources? Here’s what I have in front of me, in case you’re interested: on the desktop sits the laptop, the phone, the book, the headphones. On the laptop’s desktop, the news, the blog, the review, the video, the work. On the phone, the music, the number, the same review as on the laptop, a different source of news, and some text. I’ve got headphones in. I’m tuned in to everything. There’s this feeling that something’s being lost, and so I wonder: what’s everyone else thinking? I cross-check my own opinion with reviewers or reviewer-aggregates, I navigate, looking for commentary or interviews, anything to make the experience more “special,” I call, I comment, I search. I do just about everything but sit in the dark and let the goddamn movie I just saw sink in.

The notion of steady work as a paid film critic, the kind of work that existed maybe a few years ago, is officially “quaint.” It’s bad enough out there to make one envy the sick-making whirligig that is the independent film industry for its intrigue and glamour, even if that glamour’s about as convincing as tinsel on a Christmas tree in mid-January. For the young ones, writing on film can only be a hobby, a passion certainly but also an unpaid and under-read time-suck. Press screenings look more and more like carousels for the smart and poor, turning round in the wafting carnival aroma of one more free screening in the morning, one more free cup of coffee, one more chance to dent and be dented.

Don’t get me wrong: there are worse ways to spend your time.

But that this carousel’s not only turning but sinking is a hard feeling to shake. Forgive the nail-biting, but to a worrywart like myself—a worrywart filmmaker, no less, whose investment in the future of cinema is more than theoretical—it’s hard not to notice that the theaters are getting emptier, the conversations are dwindling, the gap between independent film and studio slop is, incredibly, stretching even wider. Depending on your capacity for optimism, moviegoing’s always typified either … Read the rest

NYFF 46 FILM SERIES

Here Jamie Stuart examines the New York Film Festival with a irreverent brand of narrative/reporting that features the indie stars attending the festival while weaving a twisted tale starring Stuart himself.

… Read the rest

NYFF46 PART 4

In Jamie Stuart‘s final episode from his New York Film Festival series, Mickey Rourke reflects on the bad time in his career while Jamie learns the present is the best place to be.

Running time: 9:00.

Download the short here by right clicking and choosing Save Target or Save Link. (63.5MB)

Please visit Jamie’s site at www.mutinycompany.com.

To see all the videos in this series please go to
http://filmmakermagazine.com/nyff46.php. … Read the rest

NYFF46 PART 3

Jamie Stuart drops a bomb in this episode from his New York Film Festival series. With special appearances by Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Clint Eastwood and many more.

Running time: 7:48.

Download the short here by right clicking and choosing Save Target or Save Link. (69M)

Please visit Jamie’s site at www.mutinycompany.com.

To see all the videos in this series please go to
http://filmmakermagazine.com/nyff46.php. … Read the rest