From The Film Talk: A Podcast on the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky

From our friends at The Film Talk, a special look at the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, and why you should clear the 3.5 hours to see Andrei Rublev on the big screen. The podcast also includes an interview with filmmaker Dmitry Trakovsky, who made the documentary Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky, which will screen at the Film [...]

Closing Night at Human Rights Watch: The Yes Men Fix the World

The Human Rights Watch 20th International Film Festival closed last week with a righteous guffaw.
The Yes Men Fix the World left a packed Walter Reade Theater in tears of laughter… and social awareness. The documentary drew its comic prowess from the hysterical deformity of corporate America’s moral compass.  And while it’s [...]

This weekend, HRWIFF presents: “Youth Producing Change”

“I guess I just want people to know what it’s like.”
It’s a sentiment that I heard repeatedly from the filmmakers of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival’s Youth Producing Change.
The program is somewhat, well, as advertised: it showcase young people (around senior-age in high school) who have made projects demonstrative of human rights issues in [...]

Doing it, Digitally: A Chat with Glenn Kenny on Steven Soderbergh’s Girlfriend Experience

Steven Soderbergh has had what some would call a bipolar career, starting off with his widely acknowledged indie Sex, Lies and Videotape and ending up somewhere around Ocean’s 13 (a three-quel, not a thirteen-quel, thankfully), by way of Erin Brokovich. But even with his mainstream films, Soderbergh has burned the candle at both ends, continuing [...]

Don’t Call It “Quirky”: Jim Jarmusch hashes out The Limits of Control with YFF

Both devotees and the merely curious gathered last Thursday, April 30 for the Young Friends of Film special event “An Evening with Jim Jarmusch.” The event boasted a chat & reception with Jarmusch following the screening of his new film The Limits of Control.  Film Comment editor Gavin Smith issued an ominous yet invigorating disclaimer [...]

A new lens on Satyajit Ray’s Days and Nights in the Forest

Friend-of-the-filmlinc-blog Kevin Lee has created these fascinating video pieces about Satyajit Ray’s Days and Nights in the Forest, featuring commentary by director Preston Miller. Check them out and then join us for a screening of Days and Nights in the Forest Sun Apr 26: 4 or Mon Apr 27: 6:30.
Part I: Introduction
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On the Edge: New Chinese independent cinema in context

Under the control of the state, Chinese filmmakers are often deprived the freedoms that artists in other countries take for granted. “The act of making a film has to be approved at each step,” documentary filmmaker Jian Yi told NPR in an interview last year. “If it’s a sensitive film, it’s difficult to get that [...]

Filmmaker Mitch McCabe brings us an up-close view of the quest to stay forever young

The daughter of a plastic surgeon, award-winning filmmaker Mitch McCabe has a particularly personal connection to the multi-billion dollar industry she investigates in her new documentary film Youth Knows No Pain. Before the film premieres at the Film Society on Tuesday April 28th at 6:30 as part of Independents Night, the filmlinc blog interviewed the [...]

New Directors/New Films video diary: the New Voices have a Mid-August Lunch

For their very first film festival experience, New Voices Melanie Shaw, Jay Felty and Eric Yue pack light, journey to Lincoln Center, and solicit plenty of seasoned advice from NYU professor Antonio Monda, the Film Society’s Richard Peña and even New Director Gianni Di Gregorio.

Teaming Up: An interview with Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden

Though I was excited when I heard I would get to interview Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, the filmmakers behind such ND/NF films as Gowanus, Brooklyn, Young Rebels and Half Nelson (which screens Friday at 3, with a conversation with the filmmakers Sunday at 12), but I was slightly disappointed when I found out the [...]