The Silence (1963) dir. Ingmar Bergman The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) dir. Anthony Minghella Thirst(1949) dir. Ingmar Bergman Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) dir. Céline Sciamma Persona (1966) dir. Ingmar Bergman Mulholland Drive (2001) dir. David Lynch La Pointe-Courte (1955) dir. Agnès Varda
I’ve participated in animator’s MAP, I chose Mulholland Dr. to animate, because I love this movie! Music: Foster The People - Pumped Up Kicks This is not commercial project.
BEYOND FEST ANNOUNCES ITS FULL SLATE FOR THE RETURN OF LA’S BIGGEST GENRE FILM FESTIVAL
Beyond Fest announces the first physical genre festival of the year with week-long drive-in residence including world premieres of Christopher Landon’s from Blumhouse FREAKY, Adam Egypt Mortimer’s ARCHENEMY, and Jim Cummings’ THE WOLF OF SNOW HOLLOW.
Los Angeles, CA – Friday, September 18th, 2020 - Beyond Fest, the highest-attended genre film festival in the US, is excited to announce its complete slate of 2020 programming comprising of seven nights of double-bill features including three world premieres, one North American Premiere, and two US premieres of unadulterated cinematic excess. Following a sold-out Summer residence with the American Cinematheque at the Mission Tiki Drive-In, Beyond Fest returns to the socially-distanced safety of the drive-in Friday, October 2nd - Thursday, October 8th to generate funds for the 501c3 non-profit film institution.
With a diverse slate celebrating all corners of genre cinema, Beyond Fest is proud to open with a double-barreled-double-bill curated by director Jim Cummings including the World Premiere of his electric werewolf tale, THE WOLF OF SNOW HOLLOW, paired with Joe Dante’s classic, THE BURBS. Closing night honors are bestowed upon Blumhouse and Beyond Fest alumni Christopher Landon for the World Premiere of their gloriously outrageous body-swap-slasher FREAKY, billed with a special rep screening of TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL selected by the director himself.
Festival alumni are celebrated as agitator-extraordinaire Adam Egypt Mortimer returns to conquer Beyond Fest with the World Premiere of his newest Spectrevision mindmelt, ARCHENEMY, Steven Kostanski blasts his OTT midnight vibes with the North American Premiere of PSYCHO GOREMAN, and Bryan Bertino brings the terror, unleashing THE DARK AND THE WICKED for its US theatrical bow.
“We covet the theatrical experience above all and following the overwhelming success of our drive-in program we never hesitated in keeping Beyond Fest a physical experience” said Beyond Fest Co-Founder, Christian Parkes. “We specifically wanted to give COVID-19 a resilient middle finger and provide a safe, communal respite for filmmakers and film fans to celebrate the best genre cinema on the biggest screens possible.”
Other hotly anticipated titles making their West Coast debuts include Rose Glass’ stunning first feature SAINT MAUD, alongside her selection of Rob Reiner’s MISERY, Moorhead and Benson’s latest genre-melting, time-bending, head trip SYNCHRONIC, Justin Simien’s satirical Sundance stunner BAD HAIR, and the US Premiere of medieval-gothic-horror, THE RECKONING, from longtime agent provocateur, Neil Marshall.
A timely dissolution of the American Dream is given center stage as the Maestro David Lynch is saluted with a triple bill consisting of three of his finest features: BLUE VELVET, LOST HIGHWAY, and MULHOLLAND DRIVE.
“In a year that has seen the world turn upside-down, it’s good to see some things never change” Head Programmer Evrim Ersoy added. “Beyond Fest stands tall with an eclectic slate of programming that will challenge audiences and transform the drive-in experience into something never before done.”
Finally, Beyond Fest celebrates Brandon Cronenberg with a special pre-festival event featuring the West Coast Premiere of his stunning body-horror, POSSESSOR UNCUT, paired with John Frakenheimer’s sci-fi classic SECONDS as picked by Brandon himself. This special warm-up event is scheduled the week before the festival opens on Thursday September 24th, 2020.
See below for the full lineup of newly announced feature film titles for Beyond Fest 2020. Tickets will be on sale via Eventbrite on September 18th at 9 AM PST. Visit BeyondFest.com and the American Cinematheque for details. Full lineup below
Attn NYC: @FilmLinc’s FREE Summer 50th Mixtape: Free Double Features is awesome. ️️
FREE DOUBLE FEATURES
June 27 – Cléo from 5 to 7 (6pm) and The Portrait of a Lady (9pm) July 11 – Two English Girls (6pm) and Mulholland Dr. (8:45pm) July 18 – Come Drink with Me (6pm) and The Assassin (8pm) July 25 – The Leopard (6pm) and Happy as Lazzaro (9:30pm) August 1 – Stalker (6pm) and High Life (9:15pm) August 8 – School Daze (6pm) and Sorry to Bother You (8:30pm) August 15 – Nocturama (6pm) and Burning (8:45pm) August 22 – demonlover (6pm) and Elle (8:45pm) August 29 – Velvet Goldmine (6pm) and Her Smell (8:30pm) September 5 – Three Times (6pm) and Moonlight (8:30pm) September 11 – Audience Choice! (Voting to launch June 27.)
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, USA, 2019, 119m With the peerless style and rich perspective on Black America she brought to such acclaimed novels as Beloved,The Bluest Eye, and Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison has earned a reputation as one America’s greatest living writers. Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am is an artful and intimate documentary about Morrison’s life and work—from her working class upbringing in Lorain, Ohio, and her 1970s-era book tours with Muhammad Ali, to the front lines with Angela Davis and her own riverfront writing room—and the countless people she has inspired. Featuring interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Angela Davis, Hilton Als, Fran Lebowitz, and Morrison herself. A Magnolia Pictures release.
Filmmaker in person opening weekend!
June 28
The Plagiarists Peter Parlow, USA, 2019, 76m Co-written by experimental filmmakers James N. Kienitz Wilkins and Robin Schavoir, The Plagiarists is at once a hilarious send-up of low-budget American indie filmmaking and a probing inquiry into race, relationships, and the social uncanny. A young novelist (Lucy Kaminsky) and her cinematographer boyfriend (Eamon Monaghan) are waylaid by a snowstorm on their way to visit a friend in upstate New York and are taken in by the kindly yet enigmatic Clip (Michael “Clip” Payne of Parliament Funkadelic), who puts them up for the night. But an accidental discovery months later recasts in an unnerving light what had seemed like an agreeable evening, stoking resentments both latent and not-so-latent. Exhilaratingly intelligent and distinctively shot on a vintage TV-news camera, The Plagiarists is a work whose provocations are inseparable from its pleasures. A 2019 New Directors/New Films selection. A KimStim release.
Filmmakers in person opening weekend!
July 12
Rojo Benjamín Naishtat, Argentina/Brazil/France/Netherlands/Germany/Belgium/Switzerland, 2018, 109m English and Spanish with English subtitles In mid-’70s Argentina, at the height of that country’s infamous Dirty War, Claudio (Darío Grandinetti) is a well-heeled, cool-headed lawyer living with his wife and teenage daughter in a comfortable provincial suburb. When an innocuous dinner date ends in a startling altercation with a stranger, Claudio’s apparently placid lifestyle is disrupted, and fault lines begin to appear in the frictionless surface of his professional and domestic existence. What follows is a brooding, warm-hued fugue, where political calculations, economic stratagems, and tenuous social mores are played out with slow-burning ferocity against a harmonic bassline of barely repressed indignation and simmering paranoia. A Distrib Films release.
August 2
La Flor Mariano Llinás, Argentina, 2018, 803m (screening in 4 parts) A decade in the making, Mariano Llinás’s follow-up to his 2008 cult classic Extraordinary Stories is an unrepeatable labor of love and madness that redefines the concept of binge-viewing. The director himself appears at the start to preview the six disparate episodes that await, each starring the same four remarkable actresses: Elisa Carricajo, Valeria Correa, Pilar Gamboa, and Laura Paredes. Overflowing with nested subplots and whiplash digressions, La Flor shape-shifts from a B-movie to a musical to a spy thriller to a category-defying metafiction—all of them without endings—to a remake of a very well-known French classic and, finally, to an enigmatic period piece that lacks a beginning (granted, all notions of beginnings and endings become fuzzy after 14 hours). An adventure in scale and duration, La Flor is a marvelously entertaining exploration of the possibilities of fiction that lands somewhere close to its outer limits. An NYFF56 selection. A Grasshopper Film release.
Filmmaker in person opening weekend!
Part 1: 203m / Part 2: 188m / Part 3: 205m / Part 4: 207m
Parts 1 & 2 screen August 2-8 and parts 3 & 4 screen August 9-15; check filmlinc.org for more details.
Piranhas / La paranza dei bambini Claudio Giovannesi, Italy, 2019, 112m Italian with English subtitles The latest from Claudio Giovannesi (Fiore) is this singular coming-of-age story that won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay at the Berlin Film Festival. Newcomer Francesco Di Napoli stars as 15-year-old Nicola, who leads a pack of cocksure hellions captivated by the lifestyle of the local Camorra as they descend into the violent, paranoid world of Naples’s dominant crime group. Based on the novel by Roberto Saviano, who co-wrote the screenplay and mined similar territory in his devastating Gomorrah,Piranhas is a haunting reflection on doomed adolescence. A 2019 Open Roads selection. A Music Box Films release.
August 16
What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? Roberto Minervini, Italy/USA/France, 2018, 123m Italian-born, American South–based filmmaker Roberto Minervini’s follow-up to his Texas Trilogy is a portrait of African-Americans in New Orleans struggling to maintain their unique cultural identity and to find social justice. Shot in very sharp black and white, the film is focused on Judy, trying to keep her family afloat and save her bar before it’s snapped up by speculators; Ronaldo and Titus, two brothers growing up surrounded by violence and with a father in jail; Kevin, trying to keep the glorious local traditions of the Mardi Gras Indians alive; and the local Black Panthers, trying to stand up against a new, deadly wave of racism. This is a passionately urgent and strangely lyrical film experience. An NYFF56 selection. A KimStim release.
August 23
Genesis Philippe Lesage, Canada, 2018, 130m French with English subtitles Following his autobiographical 2015 narrative debut The Demons, Philippe Lesage continues to chronicle the life of young Felix (Édouard Tremblay-Grenier), now diverging to capture the romantic trials and tribulations of two Quebecois teen siblings. While the charismatic, Salinger-reading Guillaume (Théodore Pellerin) wrestles with his sexual identity at his all-boys boarding school, the more ostensibly grown-up Charlotte (Noée Abita) discovers the casual cruelty of the adult world that awaits her post-graduation. Lesage and his young actors depict the aches of becoming oneself with nuance, honesty, and compassion, and the result is one of the most beautiful coming-of-age stories in years. A 2019 New Directors/New Films selection. A Film Movement release.
August 30
The Load Ognjen Glavonić, Serbia/France/Croatia/Iran/Qatar, 2018, 98m Serbian with English subtitles Ognjen Glavonić’s wintry road movie concerns a truck driver (Leon Lucev) tasked with transporting mysterious cargo across a scorched landscape from Kosovo to Belgrade during the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. A companion piece to the director’s 2016 documentary Depth Two,The Load is a work of enveloping atmosphere that puts a politically charged twist on the highway thrillers it recalls: Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear and William Friedkin’s retelling, Sorcerer. The streamlined premise gives way to a slow-dawning reckoning, in which implications of guilt and complicity slowly but surely sink in. A 2019 New Directors/New Films selection. A Grasshopper Film release.
September 6
Say Amen, Somebody George T. Nierenberg, USA, 1982, 101m One of the most acclaimed music documentaries of all time, Say Amen, Somebody is George T. Nierenberg’s exuberant, funny, and deeply moving celebration of 20th-century American gospel music. With unrivaled access to the movement’s luminaries, Thomas Dorsey and Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith, Nierenberg masterfully records their fascinating stories alongside earth-shaking, show-stopping performances by the Barrett Sisters, the O’Neal Twins, and others. As much a fascinating time capsule as it is a peerless concert movie, Say Amen, Somebody returns to Film at Lincoln Center in a gorgeous 4K restoration by Milestone Films, with support from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. An NYFF20 selection. A Milestone Films release.
New releases are organized by Dennis Lim and Florence Almozini.
I keep repping for Daniels, especially leading up to their possible feature film breakthrough Everything Everywhere All at Once. I’d never actually seen their prior feature film, so I watched it last night. Daniels does the specific thing -they start with some unnaturalistic conceit or gimmick that 1. is designed to create interesting visuals effects challenges and possibilities, the results of which make your eyes pop out; 2. is a formal element that determines the progress and structure of the narrative by acting as the inciting event and mode of resolution; and 3. is modal in the themes of the work in that there is an underlying unresolved issue that the conceit forces people to face and the relationship to which is key to a psychological coming to terms. Often, this will lead to cosmic or earth shattering consequences and usually the gimmick itself illuminates broken symmetries and then abets reunification in someway.
In my favorite thing of theirs, Interesting Ball, the conceit is a ball bouncing inexorably down towards the ocean that causes magical realist events to happen to everyone is encounters, demonstrating specifically loneliness an alienation that progress towards radical resolution, ending with a universalist message that our separateness is an illusion, even though the various individual resolutions are comically on the nose, absurd, and often deadly. This determines the structure, which is like a master line of dominoes setting off one by one parallel lines of dominoes that all culminate together.
InPosibilia, the conceit is all of the branching paths of the same argument which essentially follow the same verbal path but show different emotional states and status changes are available to you all at once, as if you were editing it. You are free to follow any path, click back-and-forth between paths, and observe how things happen, but eventually they’ll collapse into one visual set piece were the versions reunite using a common YouTube trick that nonetheless is very effective. This is a very optimistic one, positing all the choices in a relationship related to Brownian motion forcing people apart as being ultimately less important than the force that tends to pull the relationship together. If you don’t want the interactive, you can watch a run-through here.
This said, Swiss Army Man is a bit of a head scratcher. From this point, there are spoilers for the movie. The movie is about your prototypical man trapped on a desert island (Paul Dano), about to commit suicide because he is so alone, who notices a body wash up on shore (Daniel Radcliffe) which appears to be dead, but actually has enough farting power to use as a JetSki to get back to dry land. He attempts to cross the woods back to civilization from the beach carrying the body with him. The conceit is that the body can do various outrageous things once the main character has accidentally unlocked the abilities as well as talk to him, although he is 100% naïve and needs to be instructed on the meaning of everything. As they progress through the woods, the kind of gross talents are used to survive and overcome threats, while increasingly the body’s questions surround the woman on the unlock scene of a cell phone who we presume to be the dead body’s s/o.
They stall somewhat in the woods, partially because they are blocked by a threshold guardian bear, but mostly to resolve the identity of the woman. This involves building sets, and constructing a fantasy version of their courtship, and Paul Dano dressing up as her (oddly, not completely unattractive). We slowly find out that the woman (Sarah) is actually on Dano’s cell phone and that they do not have a relationship, he just would see her on the bus and never talk to her, but she it’s so central to his failures that he has creepily stolen her image. The pretenders kiss unlocking a final power, overcome the bear, and get to civilization, only to realize they were mere yards from Sarah’s backyard, and things in 3 seconds go 0 to 60 cringe, the kind that makes the local news, as Sarah (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) says what the fuck about seven times. He steals the body back to the ocean in a small action set piece, and the body FartSki’s off as Dano is arrested, and everyone looks on with disbelief.
if you squint it has the same plot as Mulholland Drive: A person who is severely alienated imagines that they can talk to a person who is, in fact, dead but it’s really just a projection of a part of themselves. This projection has amnesia, and allows the main character to become active in their environment and move toward their goal more effectively because they have to help this new friend, however much of the goal surrounds discovering the lie that the main character is telling to themselves. They play act a script, where he takes the female role an the dead person takes on the male role and, eventually, act on the gay subtext, after which there is an extremely awkward scene where all the principles in the lie are present, and what’s left of the delusions are completely shattered. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the Justin Theroux part, and the ad looks like Cookie. The main difference is that the suicide of the main character takes place on the other side of the film, which somehow makes it more optimistic.
Trigger warning - bodily fluids and effluvia for gross out laughs.
I liked this movie, though elements of it really confused me. I understand magical realism enough that you can’t really focus on the difference between something really happening and it being a psychological artifact, but this movie ending the way it did made me wonder where the ground was. Was he really on the island to begin with? That really does not make much sense. Did he succeed in committing suicide in the beginning, so this is another Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge iteration? Probably not. However it made me realize I really like TFW people in a fallen state build a simulacrum of an environment they used to inhabit, and use that “stage” to resolve their psychological problems. Maybe its a “We are like the spider. We weave our life & move along it. We are like the dreamer who dreams & then lives in the dream,” Upanishads type deal, maybe it’s an echo of memory thing like fallen world sci-fi/fantasy or the Langoliers, or maybe I just like staginess as a quality. Who knows.
But the majority of this movie works as a quarantine movie: learning to do new things and modeling how you would do the things you’re missing out on while slowly going crazy talking to yourself creates a mind that wilts at contact with the outside world (yes, I know the movie was from the before times). The unnatural gimmick here is equivalent to asking yourself though questions and physical self actualization leading to eventual confrontation with the world - this is fine - it’s just that the ending seems like it’s supposed to be uplifting but I can’t quite figure out how.
I keep thinking about this and the ending only works as a double absurdist fakeout. The “setting the symbol of naive hope/potential free because I have integrated it” doesn’t work straight because he’s in handcuffs and more a social exile than before. The “fly, be free” said to the dead bird as he throws it out the window and it falls to the ground Mel Brooks single fakeout isn’t it because everyone else can see it fly. It’s that the world is so absurd it actually follows his rules, his logic. Everyone but him (including the audience) is struggling to understand how it makes any sense but he has used the power of his own reality to morph the plot into a happy ending. Epistemology in the Trump era. Only thing that works.
Regarding Mulholland Drive, one thing to note is that this has a similar narrative order but a different plot order, and I considered whether that had any impact on how the ending lands. The ripping of the Band-Aid off occurs in roughly the same place in those movies, but much earlier in the MD chronology. Dead end. Still an interesting point of comparison as both concern people who are not “seen” which causes them to withdraw from the world. They then “invent” someone to see them but in the self dialogue within the fantasy they loose their ability to repress the intolerable knowledge. It’s just that this movie ends suggesting that, given magical realist logic, the fantasy actually happened, and everyone else is wrong. There’s nothing to do but stand on the beach and re-order their worldviews around this dude.
