Questlove shared the love this Valentineβs Day.
Brazil is sending a queer love story to the Oscars.
Private Desert (Deserto Particular), Brazilβs submission for this yearβs Academy Awards, tells a love story between a gender nonbinary youth and a disgraced ex-cop in a society that doesnβt accept them.
The filmβs director, Aly Muritaba, sat down for a post-screening Q&A at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens on November 20.
Muritaba began by answering whether Brazilβs right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro, would appreciate the film. βI believe Bolsonaro would not be happy, especially with his history of homophobia,β he said via a translator.
He said the film received funding before Bolsonaroβs administration. But now that he is in power, Muritaba said LGBT art has faced more βcensorship.β In response to Bolsonaroβs crackdown, Muritaba said the film is βfighting fascism with love.β
Muritaba — who identifies as a straight, cis man β discussed how he had aimed to be respectful and authentic to the experiences of his characters. He said he consulted with many trans women and made sure to have the actor who played the nonbinary lead be nonbinary themselves. He said LGBT people worked in front and behind the camera. βThe [LGBT] community was present all the way,β he said.
Muritaba was asked about how his previous job as a prison guard informed his storytelling. βListen to people,β the director said.
Throw the βseeing is believingβ axiom to the wind.
Experimental documentarian Theo Anthony explores implicit biases with video evidence and the limitations and pitfalls of the surveillance state in his new film All Light, Everywhere.
The film weaves together the philosophical musings of Renaissance physicists, a Baltimore community meeting, a brief history of early interplanetary photography, an inner-city classroom film project and other disparate subjects to tell his story.
Even the experimental form in which the film is presented lends to his thesis. The documentary often presents the same event from different points of view and at different production and editing stages. The audience experiences not just the moving image, but the process by which the moving image was created.
But the centerpiece that holds the different threads together is police body cameras.
βWhat I found in body cameras was this really compelling confrontation of political, philosophical questions around image making,β said Anthony at a post-screening Q&A at DCTV in Lower Manhattan.
Anthonyβs crew had ample access to the plant of the leading police body camera manufacturer, Axon, and a police training seminar on the use of body cameras. He said he wanted to present that footage as a fly on the wall and wasnβt interested in βgotchaβ or manipulative journalism.
Anthony explained that although the devices are βmeant to present the world as it is,β they carry their own inherent biases and uphold existing power structures.
He said the film was meant to demonstrate contradictions in the moving image and how one single truth is difficult to glean from video surveillance footage. He invoked his βfavorite physicistβ Neils Bohr with the quote, βOpposites are not contradictory but complementary,β to illuminate his point.
Anthonyβs previous project, Rat Film (2016), also employed nonconventional storytelling methods. The film is a socio political examination of the city of Baltimore told through the focal point of a rat infestation. Anthony said he spent five years researching, filming and editing All Light, Everywhere. He said he intends to take a break from documentary for his next project.
Thereβs nothing ado with Winnie the Pooh.
Disneyβs Winnie the Pooh is a delightful little production following AA Milneβs beloved characters as they go about doingβ¦well, they donβt do much at all.
As our characters confront mundane and innocuous situations, they come up with solutions with profound yet kid-friendly implications. Tigger and Piglet have a stick racing competition. Which stick won? The brown one! How to determine the winner then? Everyone wins! Itβs philosophy for your five-year old.
Winnie and friends are voiced and brought to life by puppeteers. The movement of the puppets is limited, and it sometimes feels as if you are watching humans lug around giant stuffed animals. Initially, this was distracting, but eventually, I came to see just the characters on the stage.
The production is light on musical numbers, action and Christopher Robinβs presence, so children may have a tough time staying engaged by singing along, getting excited by the story of relating to their kid proxy on stage. But the meandering anthropomorphic animals are fun and whimsical enough they left nary a fidgeting kid in the audience.
Disneyβs Winnie the Pooh is a great family outing with little kids, albeit for ones with a high degree of patience and appreciation for the simpler things in life.
For JR, itβs all about the process.Β
French street artist JR presented and screened his documentary Paper & Glue at MoMA on Nov 8.
Thereβs a scene in the film where JR speaks with a prisoner about what art is all about. The process, they conclude. The film unveils the street artistβs process as he enlists armies of artisans and regular residents to create his iconic photo visuals glued on the faces of buildings and other surfaces, from the favelas of Brazil to the wall at the US/Mexican border to tenement housing in Paris to a maximum security prison yard in California.
The film is more about the children scurrying up the steps of a Rio favela, gluing photographs of residentsβ eyes around the neighborhood or the antics of the Parisian tenement dwellers, whose likenesses are plastered across the city, than it is about the impresario behind it all. JR tells the story from the sideline as his subjects/collaborators take center stage. Their process is spontaneous, moving, thought provoking and just plain fun.
In a surprise appearance, Oscar-nominated actor Bradley Cooper introduced JR at the screening, highlighting the social impact of JRβs work and his friendship with the artist. JR then took the podium and discussed how Cooperβs friendly advice has always been helpful in his artistic process.
The after party, hosted a few blocks away at the restaurant Michaelβs, boasted an A-list crowd. Beck, Ari Melber, Ayman Mohyeldin and magician David Blaine were among the guests.
Blaine performed card tricks for some of the partygoers, including MSNBC president Rashida Jones and also yours truly. He had me pick a card from a deck as he was shuffling and it somehow ended up under my wristwatch!
Paper & Glue comes off the heels of JRβs Oscar-nominated documentary Faces Places, which he made with French New Wave legend Agnes Varda. JRβs latest hits theaters Nov 12.
Who is Shuroo? A healer. A grifter. A mystic. A false prophet.
The enigmatic character at the center of the indie film, The Shuroo Process, embodies a bit of all of the above. He guides, or misguides, a diverse group of disillusioned people in a spiritual self-improvement retreat in the Catskills. We follow a journalist, played by Fiona Dourif, as she attempts to put her disarrayed life back together on the retreat.
βThis is about the duality of how a lot of people live life,β said director Emrhy Cooper at the filmβs premiere on closing night of the Big Apple Film Festival in Times Square. βPeople want to help you, but they also want to take advantage of you.β
The film marks Cooperβs feature debut. But heβs no film set novice. Cooper has been acting for over a decade, most notably starring in the StyleHaul series Vanity alongside Denise Richards.
However, he credits his wherewithal to step behind the camera for his first feature to an entirely different art form β ballet.
βI grew up as a ballet dancer, so I have a lot of discipline. I know you have to work very hard for what you do. I was never under any illusion it was going to be easy,β he said.
Cooper directed many first time and young actors in the film. Complicating matters was the remote Catskills location, which lacked reliable wifi and experienced some βbipolarβ weather. Cooper said, βEveryone did a great job under the circumstances.β
He sang praise for one of the filmβs more seasoned actors, Brad Dourif, best known for voicing the Chucky doll in Childβs Play and his Oscar nominated role in One Flew over the Cuckooβs Nest. He also happens to be the father of the lead actress in The Shuroo Process.
βHeβs one of the best character actors of our generation. Brad is in the league with Jack Nicholson,β said Cooper. βEvery single take was good; it was almost hard to choose which one to use in the final film.β
The cast, crew and guests gathered in a private after party room at Chez Josephine, a nearby restaurant. The party was intimate and full of friends celebrating.
The Shuroo Process stars Fiona Dourif, Donal Brophy, Tommy Dorfman, Cooper, Rainey Qualley, Olivia Sui, Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Jeff Hephner and Cornelia Guest. It comes to theaters and on demand on November 24.
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