Syndromes and a Century
Apichatpong Weerasethakul has almost single-handedly brought Thai cinema to international prominence with a series of enigmatic experimental narrative films. A graduate of the film program of School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Weerasethakul is one of the most rigorously formal filmmakers working today, making him a staple on the festival circuit as well as […]
Spike Lee: She's Gotta Have It
Following on the success of Stranger Than Paradise, She’s Gotta Have It (1986) provided American independent filmmaking with even greater momentum, adding to the consensus that a bonafide movement had begun. Like Jarmusch, Brooklyn-based Spike Lee was a NYU film-school grad, whose 60-minute thesis film, Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983), won a Student […]
New York Top Ten Art Shows
1. What is Painting? (MoMA). Curator Anne Umland's feminist-inflected exhibit provides an alternate reading of the challenges to painting’s authority over the past forty years. It begins with an assassination attempt, Vija Celmin’s "Gun With a Hand" (1964), and takes us step by step into the present, as represented Wade Guyton’s Warhol-inspired "Untitled" (2006) and […]
River's Edge
River’s Edge (1987) was produced on a budget of $1.8 million by the independent producing team of Midge Sanford and Sarah Pillsbury, who were also responsible for John Sayles’s Eight Men Out (1988) and Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan (1985). Based on a true incident in California in which a group of teenagers covered up […]
Boys Don't Cry
When Hilary Swank won an Academy Award for her extraordinary performance in Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry (1999), it guaranteed that the film would reach a much wider and more mainstream audience despite its controversial subject matter. The film’s commercial success accomplished Peirce’s goal of raising consciousness about hate-crimes in this country by dramatizing the […]
Jean-Isidore Isou (1925-2007): Venom and Eternity
It is sometimes hard to remember that there was a time when Bosley Crowther routinely used to attack any novel or daring new film release, such as Cassavetes’ Shadows, or that Hilton Kramer had the final say about what passed as art in the New York Times. So it takes a certain cultural adjustment now […]
A Skeptical View of YouTube
Last week a number of folks on the "filmies" listserv tried to goad me into uploading my early films on YouTube as a way of gaining additional visibility. Karina Longworth at SpoutBlog only yesterday wrote: "Right now, YouTube is the closest thing we have to a comprehensive online archive of 20th century culture." Since virtually everyone seems […]
Film and Video at the 52nd Venice Biennale
Jerry Saltz, the New York Magazine art critic, whose columns also appear on artnet, apparently boycotted the openings of Documenta and Venice this year. In his most recent column he suggests that these large international exhibitions are “outmoded," arguing that biennial culture leads to “copycat behavior in a sphere that prides itself on independent thinking." […]