The purpose of this piece is to draw your attention to some significant experimental film works that emerged in 2021. These are films that mostly played small festivals, such as Prismatic Ground, the new Light Matter festival in Alfred, New York, or Mark McElhatten’s “Carte Blanche” program at MoMA. Others, to my knowledge, have not yet debuted in North America. This piece intends to draw your attention to these films (although you may have already seen some of them), and to make a case on their behalf.I have started writing this piece several times, and each time I have scrapped my introductory remarks. In one draft, I talked about those festivals in some depth. In another, I briefly analyzed the 2021 selections for the New York Film Festival’s Projections program, conjecturing about the prevalence of essay films as part of a backlash against formalism. In another, I talked about Gramsci and hegemony,...
- 12/23/2021
- MUBI
Back in the Park (2019), courtesy of Ernie GehrEvaluating Mark McElhatten’s recent Carte Blanche screening series at the Museum of Modern Art in terms of pure numbers wouldn’t necessarily be a wrongheaded approach. Eleven feature-length works, 41 shorts, and two excerpts from longer features were programmed in this exceptional series, which certainly lives up to the intensity of McElhatten’s esteemed reputation as a curator—but focusing on such data would be missing the overall point. The breadth of selected titles—which varied between established auteurs and eclectic avant-garde obscurities—feels like an afterthought in terms of the more interpersonal objectives the series sought to accomplish.When McElhatten introduced any of the works, he forwent any (perceived or not) rigidly academic jargon and never attempted to reiterate history; instead, he characterized these titles in earnest terms, speaking to their base impact outside of any ostensibly needed analytical context. Their inclusions,...
- 12/22/2021
- MUBI
Metrograph
With her sublime debut All is Forgiven now playing, Mia Hansen-Løve has curated a series populated by the likes of Varda, Rohmer, and Edward Yang.
Museum of Modern Art
A series curated by Mark McElhatten sees India Song screen on Saturday and L’amour Fou this Sunday.
Film Forum
Miraculously rediscovered and restored, the Iranian film Chess of the Wind continues; Harold Lloyd’s For Heaven’s Sake and an Amos Vogel program screen on Sunday.
Roxy Cinema
Prints of Boarding Gate and Demonlover screen throughout the weekend; Irma Vep also plays.
IFC Center
While the 4K restoration of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s masterpiece Cure continues and World of Wong Kar-wai keeps going, El Topo, Natural Born Killers, Mulholland Dr., House, and Hour of the Wolf have showings.
Anthology Film Archives
A series on “Folk Horror” continues.
Museum of the Moving Image
A 90th-anniversary retro of Universal Horror continues, while an Amos Vogel retrospective is underway.
With her sublime debut All is Forgiven now playing, Mia Hansen-Løve has curated a series populated by the likes of Varda, Rohmer, and Edward Yang.
Museum of Modern Art
A series curated by Mark McElhatten sees India Song screen on Saturday and L’amour Fou this Sunday.
Film Forum
Miraculously rediscovered and restored, the Iranian film Chess of the Wind continues; Harold Lloyd’s For Heaven’s Sake and an Amos Vogel program screen on Sunday.
Roxy Cinema
Prints of Boarding Gate and Demonlover screen throughout the weekend; Irma Vep also plays.
IFC Center
While the 4K restoration of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s masterpiece Cure continues and World of Wong Kar-wai keeps going, El Topo, Natural Born Killers, Mulholland Dr., House, and Hour of the Wolf have showings.
Anthology Film Archives
A series on “Folk Horror” continues.
Museum of the Moving Image
A 90th-anniversary retro of Universal Horror continues, while an Amos Vogel retrospective is underway.
- 11/4/2021
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Fox Maxy's Maat Means Land (2020) MoMA has announced the lineup and schedule for “To The Lighthouse,” a thrilling carte blanche program by curator Mark McElhatten featuring new films by Nathaniel Dorsky, Ernie Gehr, Jodie Mack, Dani and Sheilah ReStack, and more, along with older films by Rivette, Joseph H. Lewis, Claire Denis, and Marguerite Duras.An essential annual list, Filmmaker Magazine's 25 new faces of film for 2021 includes Kate Gondwe (the founder of Dezda Films), filmmaker Fox Maxy, Omnes Films (the collective behind Tyler Taormina's Ham on Rye), and others. A24 and Emma Stone’s production company, Fruit Tree Banner, have come together to back Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw The TV Glow. The film, a follow-up to Schoenbrun's debut from this year, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, follows...
- 10/13/2021
- MUBI
The New STYLEThis is the second year that the New York Film Festival has presented Projections, its extensive showcase of experimental film and video that for years had been called Views From the Avant-Garde. The name change (or "rebranding," in the parlance of our ugly times) corresponded, of course, to the departure of longtime programmer Mark McElhatten. Under his stewardship, Views became one of the premiere experimental film festivals in the world, a long weekend of high caliber dispatches from established masters, alongside bracing discoveries by up-and-coming makers whose work somehow caught Mark's eye. His programming partner, Film Comment's Gavin Smith, often brought along selections that complemented Mark's, even as they were out of his usual bailiwick.The Views era was not without its dissenters. Some complained that McElhatten rounded up the usual suspects year after year, sometimes without regard to the relative quality of their latest offerings. Others, most prominently Su Friedrich,...
- 10/2/2015
- by Michael Sicinski
- MUBI
This was an unusual year for avant-garde cinema, at least in terms of its presentation in North America. In New York, the shift from "Views from the Avant-Garde" to "Projections" meant a programming committee, as opposed to the very strong curatorial personality of the departed Mark McElhatten. The Projections group—Aily Nash, Dennis Lim, and Gavin Smith (who was McElhatten’s old programming partner for Views)—made some significant changes, most notably eliminating the overlapping screenings that had made it increasingly impossible to take everything in. Some new names graced the program, although not all of them were particularly welcome. There’s something to be said for an “old guard,” after all. They can light a shot, edit, move a camera and end a film when it ought to end.>> - Michael Sicinski...
- 12/16/2014
- Fandor: Keyframe
This was an unusual year for avant-garde cinema, at least in terms of its presentation in North America. In New York, the shift from "Views from the Avant-Garde" to "Projections" meant a programming committee, as opposed to the very strong curatorial personality of the departed Mark McElhatten. The Projections group—Aily Nash, Dennis Lim, and Gavin Smith (who was McElhatten’s old programming partner for Views)—made some significant changes, most notably eliminating the overlapping screenings that had made it increasingly impossible to take everything in. Some new names graced the program, although not all of them were particularly welcome. There’s something to be said for an “old guard,” after all. They can light a shot, edit, move a camera and end a film when it ought to end.>> - Michael Sicinski...
- 12/16/2014
- Keyframe
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