Images from Strong Island, courtesy Netflix Yance Ford is an American nonfiction filmmaker whose first feature-length film, Strong Island [2017], was recently released by Netflix. Strong Island follows three generations of the Ford family, with the central focus being the 1992 killing of Yance’s brother William Ford, by a 19-year-old man who never faced charges […]
FESTIVAL REVIEW: ‘DID YOU WONDER WHO FIRED THE GUN?’
In this recorded version, there are still vestiges of the confrontational manner of a live performance—certain lines in the narration stick out that way, for better or for worse, like “this is not a white savior story, this is a white nightmare story,” or, with regards to Harper Lee’s original Mockingbird, “her [story] is liberal—mine is radical.”
CIFF INTERVIEW: DIRECTOR J.P. SNIADECKI, OF “EL MAR LA MAR”
The new film primarily displays landscape footage of the Sonoran desert, while the audio track features interviews with numerous figures that have experienced the location firsthand—including immigrants who had just crossed the border, as well as some patrolmen who consider it their job to stop them.
PREVIEW: 70MM & WIDESCREEN FILM FEST
2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] A second festival of film formats begins at the Somerville Theatre In September 2016 the Somerville Theatre hosted its first annual 70mm and Widescreen Festival, dedicating nearly two weeks to film screenings projected via high-resolution analog formats. And for evidence of its apparent success, one need only take […]
CIFF CAPSULE: “ABACUS — SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL”
The punchline to those lone criminal charges—as it’s told in this film by Hoop Dreams [1994] director Steve James—is that Abacus didn’t even contribute to the crisis.
CIFF CAPSULE: “MAINELAND”
While accommodating on a technical level, they meet the foreign students with typical condescension: signs for “English-only common spaces,” classes that begin with “so where are you from” conversations, that whole routine.
GUIDED TOUR: ON KOGONADA’S “COLUMBUS”
One specific visual composition recurs constantly throughout Columbus [2017], a movie that mostly consists of dialogue scenes between one man and one woman. That recurring shot, in a way, is a three-hander: the man and the woman usually take up the right and the left sides of the foreground—often blocked so that we’re seeing […]
“HE REALLY BELIEVES IN THE SOCIAL MISSION OF FILM”: LOUIS BLACK ON RICHARD LINKLATER
A South by Southwest founder discusses his new American Masters doc about the noted Texas filmmaker
GOOD TIMES, GREAT FACES: ON THE SAFDIE BROTHERS’ REALITY FEATURES
“I wanted to do a movie that takes place in this milieu—about the American criminal, about the prison ethos in America, about what’s going on in America in 2017. And the only other person I want to be in it is Buddy Duress.”
MIDNIGHT UPDATE: LATE-NIGHT CINEMA IN BOSTON CONTINUES TO EXPAND
As in that last example, the choice to have two films per weekend has allowed Anastasio to book faux double features, with closely linked films separated by 24 hours. “They would make for great double features,” Anastasio said about the films he pairs together for specific weekends.
