Screen Anarchy

By one estimate, more than 550,000 people have lost their lives to the opioid epidemic over the first quarter of the 21st century.   That number doubles or even triples when it includes those who’ve fallen prey to opioid addiction and managed to survive. Add family, friends, and kin, and the number grows exponentially.    In the end, the human toll might be incalculable, but the Sackler family, the founders of Purdue Pharma and OxyContin, have paid settlements totaling at least $7B. Unsurprisingly, the Sacklers remain one of the wealthiest families in the United States, their reputations partially laundered via funds deposited into addiction programs, often, if not primarily, in rural states, counties, and localities like the devastated community depicted in writer-director Adam Meeks’ sensitive,…

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Laura Carreira talks about translating lived research into formal precision, articulating a contemporary vision of social realism shaped by migrant labour, algorithmic control and structural precarity.

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After breaking the mysterious “One Wish Willow” to win his crush’s heart, a hopeless romantic finds himself getting exactly what he asked for but soon discovers that some desires come at a dark, sinister price.

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Spanish filmmaker Ian de la Rosa will unveil his debut feature Iván & Hadoum in the Panorama section of the Berlin International Film Festival. Set against the stark, plastic-covered greenhouses of Almería, the film traces a love story that unfolds through breath, skin and silence. Iván & Hadoum is an exploration of desire as corporeal experience. De la Rosa has described the relationship between his protagonists as “underground” and “almost palpable,” built on gestures rather than declarations. Words, in this universe, tend to articulate obstacles, social, familial and professional, while affection is transmitted through glances and proximity. The director’s camera frequently lingers at breathing distance, crafting what he calls an “emotional 3D,” inviting viewers not merely to observe but to inhabit the lovers’ fragile space….

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Kate Hallett and Herman Tømmeraas star in writer/director Emma Higgins’ completely unhinged, uniquely stylish, and intense thriller.

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Imprint Films brings a Shaw Brothers double feature filled with sex and swordplay.

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Perhaps the most cozy short film on the festival circuit this year, My Knitting Circle puts on the kettle for a cup of tea and surveys the fibrous wares and spinning equipment of Itsy-Bitsy Yarn Store. A small group of friends gather to make clothes, tell stories, share laughs, and bathe in the short-days of limited natural light from the shops big windows. Their hands move linear fabric across smooth needles with intention and grace. While I personally do not knit or crochet, in the same way I do not gamble or smoke, on screen, the craft (surprisingly) provides a similar tactile energy and visual rhythms as those more sinful activities so often take up space on the big screen. Precise, but not too showy,…

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A slice of weird, and fingers-crossed wonderful, for you today.   This Friday, the web series Art Show! With Captain Skinner, launches on YouTube, and we thought you should know. At first glance it looks a little bit like the set up of Mystery Science Theater 3000, with premise taken from art icon Bob Ross and their show, with a dash of Pee Wee’s Playhouse thrown into the mix?    The new trailer will be found below the official announcement.    ART SHOW! WITH CAPTAIN SKINNER follows the misadventures of a doomed PBS-style television series. As Skinner and his tiny crew (including the stop motion animated Space Cowboy) attempt to produce a television series in outer space, their efforts are constantly thwarted by – well –…

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Art-world satires come (The Square); art-world satires go (Velvet Buzzsaw). Few, if any, art-world satires leave any impression whatsoever beyond the transient or the ephemeral.   Writer-director Cathy Yan’s (Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, Dead Pigs) latest film, The Gallerist, falls comfortably (or maybe uncomfortably) into this soon-to-be forgotten, memory-holed category.   Undoubtedly slick, undeniably stylish, and almost as tedious, stale, and vapid as the self-serving, narcissistic art-world characters at its center, The Gallerist delivers an empty fistful of shocks, thrills, and distractions of the blackly comic, shallow, hollow kind. But for its frenetic, rapid-fire 94-minute running time, The Gallerist almost makes you forget it has nothing new, novel, or original to say about the art world denizens it…

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A mysterious boat returns to a village 30 years after vanishing. Two men join the crew, hoping for better fortune. After one voyage, they find themselves transported back in time, mistaken for the original crew.

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