Screen Anarchy

[Still from Olga’s Eyes] Having been a shorts filmmaker for most of my filmmaking life, I know exactly how difficult it is to get coverage at festivals for short films. When I’m able, I like to return the favor. While at the 44th annual Hawaii International Film Festival, I took in the Out for Blood shorts program. I’m happy to report that it was a very well-programmed block with a number of standouts, so let’s get to it. The first short in the program was Binge, co-directed by Sam David Zhang and Rohit Relan. A microshort at three minutes, it’s basically a harrowing moment within a larger scene, and is perhaps a short proof of concept. The short stars Clayton Farris (MaXXXine) as a man…

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Jem Cohen makes a gentle inquiry to human connections while presenting it within the bigger picture; in this case, the universe.

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Women are not believed. This has been true for decades (if not centuries) and it has allowed men to perpetrate terrible crimes, almost in plain sight, without remorse or consequences. I realise this is something of a blanket statement (yes, I know it is not all men). But it is enough men, that even when we do scream (literally or figuratively) at the top of our lungs, too often nothing is done to prevent further violence. We’re also aware of the expectations upon us to behave certain ways both in private and public, and how that puts us in grave danger. Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut Woman of the Hour melds these two threads together in a true crime story. Anyone with access to Netflix or…

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September in the Netherlands means that the Camera Japan Festival is visiting again, first in Rotterdam and a week later in Amsterdam. Primarily it’s a film festival, but music and food always have an important role as well. Often there are workshops tied in to several of the titles playing there, for example a whiskey tasting event will accompany a drama about Japanese craft whiskeys. It’s therefore a shame that the harbor of Rotterdam doesn’t have any pearl oysters in it, because Polish director Chris Ludz’ gentle-with-a-bite Japanese family drama All the Songs We Never Sang is good enough to have a pearl diving event attached to it. In it, we follow 17-year-old Natsumi, who travels to a Japanese island community to live with her…

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Grace returns to the small town she grew up in to settle her father’s estate. She learns that her brother, David, has gone missing. In fact, a lot of people from this small town are also missing. There is rumour that David was going to a commune deep into the mountains. No one knows exactly where it is, but one of Grace’s former teachers Mr. Green might. She follows this lead which takes them deep into the Australian wilderness. Together they venture out into the forest, unsure of what they will find out there.    UK ex-pat and Australian transplant Joseph Sims-Dennett (Bad Behaviour, Observance) is back with their third film, Baal, a mystery horror flick shot in and around the Blue Mountains in the…

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Raven Banner has announced the launch of pre-sales for their Special Edition of Steven Kostanski’s small creature feature Frankie Freako.    An instant hit on the festival circuit, pleasing fans wherever it played, you can pre-order either the Special Edition Blu-ray/CD combo pack, or, if you really want to feel vintage, get Frankie Freako on Limited Edition VHS.    Links for both editions are in the official announcement below.    Fasten Your Freakbelts for a Fully Freak’d Out Physical Release Party!!!   Raven Banner has just launched pre-sales for their Special Edition of Steven Kostanski’s FRANKIE FREAKO. The 2-Disc release is a Blu-Ray/CD combo loaded with bonus features as well as the full film score by Blitz//Berlin. Plus it comes with a book of illustrations…

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For film actor Rutger Hauer, the bravado of his early Dutch films as Turkish Delight, Soldier of Orange and the thoughtful villainy of Blade Runner were his signature as an actor. In the 1982 science fiction film made by Ridley Scott, Rutger Hauer played the role of ‘replicant’ Roy Batty. Hauer said much later, in 2012, about it: ‘I saw the future but I didn’t know what I was looking at yet’. And the future in Blade Runner takes place – twist of fate – in 2019, the year the actor passed away. ‘I saw the future’. It is almost the same sentence that Rutger Hauer came up with the night before filming for his character Roy, a sentence that will remain in film forever:…

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Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, and Jamie Bell star in Andrew Haigh’s acclaimed 2023 drama.

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In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week: Gore Verbinski’s music videos. Gore Verbinski has had an erratic career, going from big blockbusters to weird passion projects. With genres that run the gamut from comedy, to horror, to swashbuckler, even dipping his stylistic toes into animation. Still, there are many visual and thematic throughlines in his oeuvre, some of which also showed up in his music video days. By looking at three music videos, I want to highlight three different Verbinski-isms. Over the course of his career several images return. One of those is creepy crawlies, like pill bugs (Rango) or crabs (Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End) or mice (Mouse Hunt) carrying…

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Regional film festivals are the unsung heroes of the film circuit. They bring smaller titles to a local audience that might not otherwise get to see them, and they can also bring the larger films with their stars, directors, and producers, to help shine a light on the industry. It gives audiences a chance to engage with films large and small, fiction and non-fiction, live action and animated, as well as the people who make them. SCAD Savannah Film Festival has been doing that for nearly 30 years, in its beautiful corner of Georgia. Being a university-run festival means that there is a focus on education and enlightenment as much as entertainment. And the festival teams have outdone themselves this year, with a range of…

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