Socially Relevant Film Fest Opens Eyes in NY

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Published on Tuesday, 17 March 2015 01:39

Written by Brad Balfour

Destination: Planet Negro

Making its home at the CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Avenue), Tribeca Cinemas (54 Varick Street), and several other theaters across New York City, the SR Socially Relevant Film Festival (March 16 – 22, 2015), focuses on socially relevant films that use art to address controversial issues facing society today. There are over 50 films from 33 countries that address issues such as violence against women, institutionalized racism, the global industrial complex, and urban life in an uncaring, war torn world.

Films include:

• Cotton Road, dir. Laura Kissel
  Cotton Road follows the commodity of cotton from farm to factory, across industrial landscapes, to illuminate the human experiences within a global supply chain.

• Love is the Highest Law, dir. Liliya Anisimova
  A unique, firsthand look into three powerful stories connected through the strength of overcoming the stringent same-sex laws both in Russia and the United States and of love triumphing over hardship.
  
  
• Destination: Planet Negro, dir. Kevin Willmott
  In this slapstick comedy we see a witty satire about influential African-American figures, W.E.B. Du Bois and George Washington Carver. They time warp to the present to discover unbelievable developments like young men with drooping pants and the election of a black president.
  
  
• The Challat of Tunis, dir. Kaouther Ben Hania
  A man on a motorcycle known as The Challat terrorizes the women of Tunisia by slashing their bottoms with a razor. Ten years after these ‘incidents’ a young determined film director decides to investigate the mystery of the Challat of Tunis.
  
  
• All in Her Stride, dir. Fiona Cochrane
  This film depicts elements of Australian actor Leverne McDonnell’s life and documents her facing a terminal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, with discussion of the topic of euthanasia and her death.
  
  
• Lighter Than Orange, dir. Matthias Leupold
  Ten North Vietnamese veterans tell about their memories of the war and Agent Orange as well as the struggles they have faced as a consequence of both.

 The festival’s mission is to deliver films that address a wide range of issues without resorting to crass commercialism or gratuitous violence. SR spans theaters throughout New York, just as it spans hard hitting issues.

To learn more, go to: http://rated.sr/

SR Socially Relevant Film Festival
March 16 - 22, 2015

CUNY Graduate Center
365 5th Ave
New York, NY 10016

Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick St.
New York, NY 10013

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KINO! German Film Fest 2015 Comes to NYC

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 02 March 2015 23:13

Written by Renzo Adler

For over 35 years, KINO! has been the name in bringing daring German cinema to NYC. From April 9th to 16th, 2015, KINO! will exhibit ten feature-length German films at Cinema Village (22 E 12th St, New York, NY). Organized by German Films, the national information and advisory center for German cinema abroad, KINO! opens with the East Coast premiere of Tour De Force from director Christian Zübert. Emphasizing the theme of overcoming obstacles, three of the directors are first time filmmakers and four of the films were directed by women.

Films being shown include:

• About a Girl by Mark Monheim
  A bittersweet coming-of-age drama about the 15-year old Charleen, whose obsessively bleak observations and her capacity for scorn seem unlimited. Her trainee-ship at the local mortuary make the dead look happy to her. A failed suicide by hairdryer lands her at the psychologist’s office where she finds unexpected romance in the form of the class nerd.
  
  
• Beltracchi – The Art of Forgery by Arne Birkenstock
  This feature-length documentary follows Wolfgang Beltracchi, a self-taught and by now incarcerated painter who committed arguably the greatest art crime of the post-War era. For almost 40 years, he hoodwinked the art world not by forging pre-existing artworks but rather by producing canvases that he and his wife, Helene, passed off as previously unknown works by a set of 20th-century masters.

• Flights of Fancy by Christian Bach
  Young Simon faces adulthood with an overabundance of choices to make: will he become an architect like his father, how can he get the attention of Verena, an attractive hospital assistant? His biggest priority is sheltering his schizophrenic father from harming himself and the family, while trying to cling to a semblance of normalcy. When his father’s condition worsens, Simon learns that he can help his father and himself by providing a loving stability and accepting the ‘new’ normal for what it is.  Simon is played by actor Jonas Nay who also stars in the TV series DEUTSCHLAND 83 which Sundance TV is premiering this Spring.

• The King’s Surrender by Phillipp Leinemann
  Violent youth gangs and a police force way out of its depth. When a police operation goes awry and two policemen die, the powder keg threatens to ignite as the SWAT team knows only one goal: revenge - irrespective of the law. Everything starts with young Nassim, an immigrant boy trying too hard to belong. THE KING’S SURRENDER won Best Narrative Feature at the Austin Film Festival in 2014.

• The Lies of the Victors by Christoph Hochhäusler
  A riveting political thriller about Fabian Groys, the rising young star of a Berlin-based political news magazine, who discovers a slush fund behind the placement of sick army veterans into industrial waste jobs. The film deftly explores the grey area where investigative journalism meets the murky world of political lobbyists.

• The Pasta Detectives by Neele Leana Vollmar
  Based on a wildly popular German children’s book (available in English in the US as The Spaghetti Detectives), The Pasta Detectives revolves around Rico (10), a self-described “lowly gifted child.” When he meets Oskar, who is quick to say he’s “highly gifted”, life jumps into higher gear for Rico. When a serial child kidnapper, Mr. 2000, takes Oskar, Rico turns detective. Rico must now use his heightened skills of observation and unravel the clues that will rescue his friend.

• Schmitke by Ŝtepán Altrichter
  Julius Schmitke is a fifty-seven-year-old German wind turbine engineer, who travels to the Czech side of the Ore Mountains to fix one of his old models. Ever a believer in the power of engineering and rationality, he finds himself unable to analyze the forces at work. His colleague disappears, strange things happen, and Schmitke starts to "feel" the spirit of the forest around him.

• To Life! by Uwe Janson
  Two German stars face each other in this moving drama, with Hannelore Elsner playing Ruth, a Jewish former cabaret singer and the young, aimless Jonas (Max Riemelt, next season of SENSE8) who drives her to an elder care center. Jonas resembles Viktor, a young man she used to love, and despite many obstacles, they form a deep connection. Ruth gets a new lease on life, while Jonas comes to terms with his own health and mortality.

• Who Am I – No System is Safe by Baran bo Odar
  Who Am I – No System is Safe is a timely cyber thriller from director Baran bo Odar featuring rising star Tom Schilling as Benjamin, a socially awkward nobody who leaps to fame and recognition in the world of underground hacking and, with new-found friends, undertakes a spree of pranks and online criminal acts that have violent and, ultimately, deadly consequences. The director is in pre-production for the action thriller Sleepless Nights starring Jamie Foxx and Michelle Monaghan.

These films go from dizzying highs to despairing lows, all while showing the ingenuity of German filmmakers. KINO continues to bring German cinema at its most exciting.

To learn more, go to: http://www.kinofestivalnyc.com/

KINO!
April 9 - 16, 2015

Cinema Village
22 E 12th St.
New York, NY 10003

Rendez-vous with French Cinema is Back at Film Society

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Published on Thursday, 26 February 2015 10:16

Written by Jack Angstreich

This year’s Rendezvous with French Cinema series at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which runs from March 6th through the 15th, will surely prove as inordinately popular as it has in previous years. The notable directors featured this time around include Benoit Jacquot, André Téchiné, Jean-Paul Civeyrac and Cédric Kahn — certainly an impressive collection of cineastes.

Jacquot’s moving 3 Hearts, the opening night selection, about an unusual romantic triangle involving a tax inspector who falls in love with two sisters, will undoubtedly prove to be one of the most remarkable films in the series. The director displays an enviable confidence in his highly cinematic unfolding of this eccentric, suspenseful narrative, which surprises with a texture of almost novelistic density. Jacquot is invaluably assisted here by the superbly accomplished control over lighting, framing and camera-movement achieved by his cinematographer, Julien Hirsch, as well as with a memorably portentous, original score by Bruno Coulais, but the seamless — and, at times, invigoratingly original — editing and scene-construction seem to be all the director’s own. Equally assured are the characteristically nuanced performances the filmmaker has elicited from his inestimable ensemble of actors, each of whom can be seen at their rare best here: Benoit Poelvoorde, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Chiara Mastroianni, and the eternally glamorous Catherine Deneuve. If the expectations generated by this ambitious work prove perhaps slightly too outsized by the time the narration attains its conclusion, 3 Hearts is nonetheless a consistently absorbing experience (I should add that the use of the digital format here is almost uniformly exquisite).

Also remarkable is the chilling Next Time I'll Aim for the Heart, a dramatization of the events concerning the crimes of Frenchserial killer Franck Neuhart, directed by Cedric Auger, a former writer for Cahiers du Cinéma. The filmmaker displays a striking command of the medium, mesmerizingly evoking, through formal means, the phenomenology of a psychopathic murderer, while resisting any reductive explanation of his acts. Here, too, the cast is superb, featuring Guillaume Canet in the enigmatic lead role, and the lovely Ana Girardot as the protagonist's touchingly hapless young housekeeper and girlfriend. As has become gratifyingly common in commercial features very recently, the adaptation by the cinematographer to the digital format here is perfectly assured.