His name might not be as synonymous with the development of cinematic grammar as Alice Guy-Blaché, Orson Welles, or Jean-Luc Godard, but experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage’s ripples are still felt in contemporary cinema. From The Act of Seeing With One’s … Continue reading Sunday Streams — BRAKHAGE
With the 46th annual Telluride Film Festival opening next weekend (Aug. 30–Sept. 2), now seems like a fine time to dig into TFF’s past and highlight a few recent masterpieces. Let’s start with 2017’s First Reformed, a movie whose righteous … Continue reading Sunday Streams — FIRST REFORMED
On August 1, 2019, D(onn) A(lan) Pennebaker, Penny to most, died. He was 94. A true titan of cinema, Pennebaker leaves behind a plethora of work, almost all of it falling under the category of Direct Cinema. His purpose was … Continue reading Sunday Streams — D. A. Pennebaker
History, by its very nature, is reductive. There’s simply too much to consider, too many players to figure, and too many stories to remember. To the victor go the spoils the saying goes. And when the history of cinema was … Continue reading Sunday Streams — BE NATURAL
I have Varda on the mind. And not just because she passed away earlier this year at the age of 90. Or that I just wrote about one of her best films, Vagabond. Or that the Alamo Drafthouse Sloans Lake’s Femme Club is dedicating their July screenings to the great filmmaker; I have Varda on the mind because few filmmakers have occupied my mental real estate quite like the diminutive Belgian. Her final film, Varda by Agnès, has yet to make it to U.S. theaters, but I still think of her 2106 documentary, Faces Places (Visages Villages) as the perfect swan song. … Continue reading Sunday Streams — FACES PLACES
The Japanese New Wave (1956–1976) doesn’t get near the love the French New Wave does in cinephile circles, but that doesn’t make the work any less significant. A key entry, Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no Sōretsu) from 1969, was recently restored by Cinelicious in 2017 and will screen at the Alamo Drafthouse Littleton on June 16, 4p. For those not in the area, Funeral Parade of Roses is currently streaming on Kanopy. Mixing documentary and narrative, Funeral Parade is a kaleidoscopic and subversive look at Tokyo’s underground “gay-boy” culture. Writer/director Toshio Matsumoto loosely uses Oedipus Rex as his structure while also … Continue reading Sunday Streams — FUNERAL PARADE OF ROSES
With the fourth round of the 2019 French Open underway, this weekend seems like the perfect time to re-visit one of 2018’s lesser-seen, but exquisitely constructed, documentaries, John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection (L’empire de la perfection). Directed by Julien Faraut, In the Realm of Perfection was first filmed in 1984 by Gil de Kermadec, France’s first national technical director of tennis. De Kermadec’s goal to analyze tennis in motion and with McEnroe nearing perfection, de Kermadec found a worthy subject. While it seems logical that In the Realm of Perfection would have played theaters in early June to coincide … Continue reading Sunday Streams — JOHN MCENROE: IN THE REALM OF PERFECTION
