The Boston International Festival of Women’s Cinema was founded in 1993 by Marianne Lampke, Connie White, and Anne Marie Stein. At the time, Lampke and White were the owners and operators of the Brattle Theatre, and Stein was the executive director of the Boston Film/Video Foundation. The festival continued until its 11th and final […]
IMAGES OF DEPARTURE: ON “PHANTOM THREAD”
In Louise Glück’s poem “The Garden,” we are shown an image of tenderness: Look at her, touching his cheek to make a truce, her fingers cool with spring rain; in thin grass, bursts of purple crocus— even here, even at the beginning of love her hand leaving his face makes an image of departure. […]
BUGGIN’ OUT ALL OVER AGAIN: ON THE BUGS BUNNY FILM FESTIVAL AT THE BRATTLE
Rarely does one go to a film festival in the hopes of watching something they’ve seen before. And yet that’s often the case with the Brattle Theatre’s Bugs Bunny Film Festival, an early-February hallmark that begins its 23rd annual iteration this week. For as long as I’ve been attending, the format has remained more or […]
THROWBACK: REVISITING ROCK AGAINST RACISM
Mass Hip-Hop Archive breaks critical positive gem out the vault
THIS AIN’T NORMAL: NEW BOSTON DOC ABOUT STREET VIOLENCE LIFTS AUTHENTIC VOICES
This Ain’t Normal is a profound film that brings the audience into the homes of young men in their neighborhoods, and has them explain the multilayered, complex social and economic issues that drive gun violence so high.
FAMILY PHOTOS: AN INTERVIEW WITH YANCE FORD, DIRECTOR OF “STRONG ISLAND”
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.
