Jessica Rizzo attended the Lightbox Film Center’s recent retrospective of French filmmaker Philippe Garrel’s evocative body of work. Here she traces the arc of his career and recounts highlights from the month-long survey, which included a number of films rarely screened on this side of the Atlantic.
Read MoreSeventeen years after the feature documentary, “Rivers and Tides” debuted, Director Thomas Riedelsheimer brings back to the screen British artist, Andy Goldsworthy and his magical, shamanistic works with nature. Roberta says the new film, “Leaning into the Wind,” is a film poem, and a loving embrace of this unique artist who paints with leaves and with rain and whose humble affect masks a life of hard work, repeated failure (and triumph) collaborating with a tough and changeable Mother, Nature.
Read MoreA short 2016 movie seeks to rewrite art history to include Black artists who have historically been left out of the American art history canon. Roberta says it’s a compelling piece of filmmaking that shows some progress but a lot of work still to come for an equitable inclusion to be achieved.
Read MoreIntrigued by the work of photographer Rosamond Purcell, Michael sees a documentary about the 75-year-old artist, and he is moved and by the images of odd bits of nature and human-made detritus that are her mainstay. He calls Purcell the Diane Arbus of the natural world. The film comes to Lightbox Film Center in March, 2018.
Read MoreThe new biopic about Tom of Finland tells the story of a gay man in post-WWII Finland, who escaped his country’s and family’s rejection of his homosexuality by celebrating gay love in his erotic art. Censored for years, the art of the stylized and beefy gay men nonetheless circulated and “…played an important part in the movement towards gay liberation,” says Michael in his review. This movie, with brilliant acting, was produced in Finland, an appropriate reparation. It brings the important and under-known artist and his struggle and triumph to a new audience. Opening in Philadelphia at the Ritz Bourse, Nov. 24.
Read More“Faces Places” is a road trip movie and a buddy movie made by French artist and activist, JR, and Belgian-born filmmaker, Agnes Varda. The ebullient, energetic 30-something (JR) and introverted 80-something (Varda) make an odd couple, traveling around rural France in JR’s photo studio on wheels, says Michael, in his review of the new documentary. But he also says the movie is beautifully executed, moving and inspirational. The easy camaraderie between the two intense artists is unexpected, and the country people and their stories, as they get photographed and their faces become part of JR’s public oeuvre, are totally heartwarming. Faces Places opens at the Ritz East on November 2.
Read MoreMichael gives us a glowing review of the 12th annual HUMP! film festival, which was composed of twenty-two amateur and DIY pornographic films. Featuring a diverse group of body types, races, genders, sexualities, and ages (all over 18), the group of films challenge commercial pornography. Michael says, “Many of the films are filled with tenderness, sincerity, vulnerability, even humor.”
Read MoreWith the country in state of high turmoil after recent neo-Nazi demonstrations in Charlottesville, VA, and the President’s apologia of the alt-right and attack on peaceful demonstrators, Michael Lieberman’s review of the documentary film, “Whose Streets?,” about Michael Brown’s murder by police in Ferguson, MO, adds relevance to the discussion about institutionalized racism.
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