NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2020 (April 28-May 9, 2021)

[Chris Knipp]

APPLES (Christos Nikou 2020)

In Athens, there is a pandemic of amnesia. The protagonist and his woman friend try to put lives and identities together in the aftermath. "Weird Wave" origins but with a warm and humanistic feeling that gives pleasure.

[Chris Knipp]

ROCK BOTTOM RISER (Fern Silva 2021)

A short but rich experimental documentary about Hawaii that is both passionate and witty. He is particularly interested in the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) threatening sacred indigenous land but he ranges wide. He is a FSC-Harvard fellow with degrees from MassArt and Bard who teaches at Bennington.

[Chris Knipp]

NATÁLIA MAZARIM IN MADALENA

Preview of ND/NF film from Brazil, Madiano Marcheti's 'Madalena':

From Film at Lincoln Center:

In this hauntingly oblique yet vivid moral drama, set in a rural Brazilian town, three characters’ lives are affected in different ways by the death of Madalena, a local trans woman whose body is found in one of the vast soybean fields that stretch across the region. For cisgender Luziane (Natália Mazarim) and Cristiano (Rafael de Bona), a bar hostess and a wealthy soy farm scion, respectively, her death occasions vastly different kinds of rupture, while for Bianca (Pâmella Yule), a trans woman and friend of the deceased, it is a more tragically matter-of-fact instance of increasing violence perpetrated on their community. Director Madiano Marcheti’s almost sidelong approach—with Madalena providing the film’s structuring absence—is a provocative challenge to conventional narrative and a rebuke to formulaic depictions of trauma.

Playing on May 1 at 9pm and May 9 at 12:30pm at Film at Lincoln Center.

Playing virtually nationwide from 5/2 - 5/7 in our Virtual Cinema!

[Chris Knipp]

MADALENA (Madiano Marcheti 2021)

Crabwise followup of three people differently connected to a murdered trans woman found in a soya field in Brazil's Centro Oeste region, an assured and memorable feature debut.

[Chris Knipp]

RADIOGRAPH OF A FAMILY (Fiorouzeh Khosrovani 2021)

Growing up in a divided family during the Iranian revolution, which made me miss PERSEPOLIS with its lively self-interrogation. The filmmaker reconstructs her parents relationship, his liberalism, her militant Islamist takeover, through reconstructed photographs, invented scenes and staged dialogues, not realistically. The effect is stylish, but one is left with more questions than answers.

[Chris Knipp]

SHORT VACATION (Kwon Min-pyo & Seo Han-sol 2021)

Four Korean junior high girls in the same class and photography club go out on the subway with plastic cameras seeking images of "the end of the world." Almost absolutely nothing happens but hanging out, which is the object: to tune in to the dial tone of teen life now.

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Somewhat surprisingly but gratifyingly, in a private review Mike D'Angelo rates this a for him enthusiastic 71/100 (May 26, 2021) and hopes it gets US distribution. That would be nice.

[Chris Knipp]

WE'RE ALL GOING TO THE FAIR (Jane Schoenbrun 2021)

Ostensibly a less melodramatic look at online obsessions and online obsessives. But the main character still comes off as pretty disturbed.

[Chris Knipp]

LIBORIO (Nino Martinez Sosa 2021)

Film from the Dominican Republic about a legendary faith healer believed to have been transformed in a hurricane. It starts out on the wrong foot for me - with the hurricane, which lasts four minutes. Too much, too soon, and yet not enough, and what follows seems simplistic and as naïve as its characters. Lacks stylistic flair.

[Chris Knipp]

NOUS (US) (Alice Diop 2021)

Despite her Senegalese parents, documentary filmmaker Alice Diop identifies as French. Filming the varieties of population along the RER B line that goes through and beyond Paris, she questions the idea of multicultural union, but is hopeful, saying, "'We' is what happens when 'I' opens up" and finding commonality with an older white French writer.

[Chris Knipp]

BEBIA, À MON SEUL DÉSIR (Juja Dobrachkous 2021)


Story of a f--cked up Georgian fashion model home for a funeral is overwhelmed by its own ambition. Everyone in this family is a jerk.