SOMEWHERE TO DISAPPEAR

“This film is about men, Alec Soth and the dream to disappear”

Somewhere to Disappear is a documentary by young filmmakers Laure Flammarion and Arnaud Uyttenhove which explores the inner urgency to run away. For two years Flammarion and Uyttenhove followed world-renowned photographer Alec Soth on his journey across America. For his project Broken Manual, Soth travelled across the States documenting people who have retreated from society, runaways  who have chosen to escape in search of themselves and a different life.

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Author : Federica Mascagni

05/26/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

MOURIR AUPRЀS DE TOI (TO DIE BY YOUR SIDE)

Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side) is a short stop-motion animation created by Spike Jonze and Simon Cahn, with original handmade felt characters by  Olympia Le-Tan, whose work as a designer revolves around recreating classic book titles as fabulous handbags.

As the night falls, in an old Parisian bookshop the characters of book covers on the shelves wake up. Mina (Dracula’s bride) and the skeleton of Macbeth fall in love…

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Author : Federica Mascagni

05/19/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

APICHATPONG WEERASETHAKUL: PRIMITIVE

 Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Primitive  will open at the New Museum in New York on May 19.

It will be the first New York show devoted to the work of the internationally acclaimed Thai artist and filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His most recent film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall Past Lives won the Palme d’Or Prize at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

Primitive (2009) is his most ambitious project to date: a multi-platform work consisting of an installation of seven videos and related pieces. In conjunction with the exhibition, Weerasethakul will also be in residency at the New Museum, participating in a series of public screenings and conversations.

The exhibition will be on view from May 19 through July 3, 2011.

 http://www.newmuseum.org/

Author : Federica Mascagni

05/16/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

THE FUTURE ACCORDING TO MIRANDA JULY

We don’t need too many words to describe Miranda July: she is simply awesome.  Filmmaker, artist, writer, performer, in 2005 she directed her first long feature film: Me and You and Everyone We Know, a little jewel which won four awards at Cannes and the Jury Award at The Sundance Festival. Since then, she’s written a collection of short stories, No One Belongs Here More Than You, created the online project learningtoloveyoumore, a storytelling website that remains online as part of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and made an interactive sculpture garden for the 2009 Venice Biennale. Now she is back with a new movie, The Future, which was presented  at the Sundance and the Berlin Festivals and will be on general released from July 29. In the film July casts herself as one-half of a couple whose lives are turned upside down by the imminent arrival of a new pet, the cat Paw-Paw…

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Author : Federica Mascagni

05/11/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

BEAUTIFUL DARLING, CANDY

Needless to say who Candy Darling was. She is was  symbol of a liberation of sexes that came much more later.  A piooner , An invented creature, a mix of Kim Novak and Marilyn Monroe . Candy was maybe the first example of living work of art.

Beautiful Darling is a documentary that premiered last week in Us and that we hope to see soon in Europe. For those who loved her madly and for those who will.

http://www.beautifuldarling.com/

Author : Redazione

05/06/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

SWOON+CAT SOLEN+THE LEVI’S FILM WORKSHOP

The Levi’s Film Workshop is a temporary venue in Los Angeles for collaboration and creative production that promotes the craft of filmmaking and makes training available to the public for free. Housed inside the Geffen Contemporary at The Museum of Contemporary Art, the film workshop was launched in conjunction with MOCA’s Art in the Streets exhibition, the first graffiti and street art retrospective from a major U.S. museum.

Levi’s is working with a number of collaborators from the art and film world on the project. Among them, graffiti artist Swoon and director Cat Solen made the short film you can watch below, which illustrates the  construction of Swoon’s amazing installation at MOCA.

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Author : Federica Mascagni

05/04/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

LARS VON TRIER. MELANCHOLIA

“No more happy endings” says Lars von Trier. Indeed, according to the Danish director, Melancholia, his latest film, is “a beautiful movie about the end of the world”.

Von Trier, known  for his female-centric parables and the investigation of controversial subject matters which he explored in films like Dogville, Manderlay and Antichrist, has directed a science fiction drama with psychological connotations. The story follows a group of people trying to cope with the death of the Earth as a large foreign body threatens a deadly collision. Two sisters  find their relationship challenged as the universe around them spectacularly unravels…

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Author : Federica Mascagni

04/27/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

APOCALYPTIC LOVE: BELLFLOWER

Described an apocalyptic love story, Evan Glodell’s impressive feature debut Bellflower  is a contemporary  tale of romance and friendship.

The movie follows two friends as they venture out into the world to begin their adult lives. They spend all their free time building flame-throwers and weapons of mass destruction in hopes that a global apocalypse will occur and clear the runway for their imaginary gang “Mother Medusa”, to reign supreme. While waiting for the destruction to commence, one of them meets a young woman and falls hard in love. Quickly integrated into a new group of friends, the guys set off on a journey of betrayal, love, hate, infidelity and extreme violence more devastating and fiery than any of their apocalyptic fantasies…

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Author : Federica Mascagni

04/03/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

DRAGONSLAYER

 

“There’s a bunch of empty pools and a bunch of fucked up houses.  That’s why I’m here.  I’m here to skate.  But besides skating, I want to go see waterfalls. I want to go see rockslides. I want to go fishing. I want to go in a canoe. I want to get lost in the woods… But there’s no woods here, but we’ll find something.”

Dragonslayer is a documentary about skateboarder Josh “Screech” Sandoval. Director Tristan Patterson  followed him  over a year in the suburbs of Fullerton, California.

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Author : Federica Mascagni

03/21/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

FOREVER YOUNG: MY OWN PRIVATE RIVER

Unfinished, the latest show at LA’s Gagosian Gallery, is a collaboration between Gus Van Sant and James Franco. The exhibition features My Own Private River, a long feature film full of unseen footage of River Phoenix from the dailies of Van Sant’s 1991 movie My Own Private Idaho.

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Author : Federica Mascagni

03/14/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

FINISTERRAE: TWO GHOSTS AT THE END OF THE WORLD

Finisterrae is an experimental road movie. The idea of the film is unusual, with an approach based on filming and obtaining images first, and then creating the script afterwards, before finally adding the dialogues.

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Author : Federica Mascagni

03/07/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT REVISITED

Fight for Your Right Revisited is a short film written and directed by Beastie Boys member Adam Yauch (aka MCA). Part music video, part comedy, the short movie is  a continuation of  (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party). It was 1986 when the single and the music video of Fight for Your Right launched the Beastie Boys to stardom and the song became a boy anthem of the ‘80s.

25 years later, Yauch tells what happened to the boys after they left the party.

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Author : Federica Mascagni

02/24/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

ALL FLOWERS IN TIME

Class 1973, Texan director Jonathan Caouette, burst on the scene in 2003 with the cult autobiographical documentary Tarnation.  The film was created from over 20 years of hundreds of hours of old Super 8 footage, VHS videotape, photographs, and answering machine messages to tell the story of his early life and adulthood and the relationship with his mentally ill mother.

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Author : Federica Mascagni

02/14/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

OLIVER PIETSCH: THE ARTIST WHO LOVES CINEMA

Berlin-based video artist Oliver Pietsch produces works of “direction” but also of cut up,  manipulating clips from mainstream cinema or genre-specific and early movies, assembling parts of them in a different order and creating a new narrative. Replacing the original soundtrack, in his videos the music becomes an  essential part of the vision itself, putting an emotional meta-narrative on top of the visual material.

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Author : Federica Mascagni

02/07/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

SOLACE

The collective Institute For Eyes, formed by directors Luke Seomore and Joseph Bull,  has just presented Solace, an installation work displayed as part of  the 8th London Short Film Festival at London’s ICA.

“Solace is a non-narrative piece that captures fragments in the daily lives of a group of East London teenagers, exploring friendship, mortality and human interaction. Through a series of monologues, Solace reveals moments of warmth, teenage isolation and the transition from adolescence into adulthood. The originally composed score pulses and glides through the film, revealing the nuances of the teenagers’ lives; moments of joy, bravado, aggression and vulnerability. These sequences demonstrate the warmth between friends, while exploring the sharp exchanges and cruel nature of teenage life. Directed in a non-conventional style, Solace blurs the line between fiction, documentary and art”.

Since meeting at art college, Seomore and Bull have directed over 20 short documentaries exploring the margins of British society, created art installations, as well as working on numerous music videos for the likes of Wild Beasts, Tricky, Liquid Liquid and The Last Shadow Puppets. In 2009 they co-directed Isolation, a poetic documentary about the drama of soldiers adapting back into society on the return from war.

Author : Federica Mascagni

01/17/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

DANCE, DANCE, OTHERWISE WE ARE LOST

Pina Bausch was one of the most influential figure in European contemporary dance.  Visionary and innovative choreographer, she created  a new paradigm for dance: a  fusion of radical theatre, surreal art, sexual drama and danced body language,  known as Tanztheater.

Pina. Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost is Wim Wenders’s “homage to the famous German choreographer renowned for giving dance a new language, and a deep bow to the beauty she released into the world.”

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Author : Federica Mascagni

01/03/2011
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

THE ART OF ACTING

What is the art of acting? How can you tell a story just through a few gestures or the intensity of a glance? The New York Times celebrates the end of 2010 with Fourteen Actors Acting: A Video Gallery of Classic Screen Types. Conceived not like a traditional portfolio, but like a sort of black and white minifestival, the project is a series of  fourteen, one minute long, silent videos.  Fourteen iconic “scene makers” who defined cinema in 2010 are invited to capture classic cinema types. From Tilda Swinton’s mystic cry to James Franco’s self seduction, from Javier Bardem’s burst of anger to Natalie Portman’s melancholy, the clips portray not only the art, but also the joy and vigor of performance.

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Author : Federica Mascagni

12/27/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

THE FINE ART OF WASTING TIME: THE PROCRASTINATORS

The Procrastinators – episode 1 from Lernert & Sander on Vimeo.

Lernert & Sanders are two Amsterdam-based artists and friends who decided that working alone was getting boring and started collaborating on art related projects. They work on commercials, art movies, documentaries and installations making simple and communicative works, that take little notes from the existing border between contemporary art and commercial projects. In one of their most famous video project, How to explain it to my parents? (2009), the guys teamed up with other artists to create a 9 episode series where this bunch of creative people attempt to explain their work to their parents. If you are used to postpone to tomorrow what you can do today, maybe you can find some relief discovering that you are not alone. The Procrastinators (2010) is a series of 11 episodes each presenting a monologue about procrastination. Artists, writers and filmmakers talk about ‘concentration, focus and the fine art of wasting their time.’ Highly aesthetic, humorous and smart, Lernert & Sanders’ works challenge the media and its viewer, in a simple but very effective way.

www.lernertandsander.com

Author : Federica Mascagni

12/13/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

WASTE LAND

Waste Land is a portrait of Brazilian artist Vik Muniz and the touching story of his experiences with the catadores of the Jardim Gramacho -the world’s biggest open-air garbage site- in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Director Lucy Walker followed the artist’s work for three years. Muniz returned to his native country for a complex project: to live with the world’s poorest people, use garbage to create portraits of the dump-workers, photograph them and put the works up for auction. All the proceeds were donated to the workers. Muniz’s collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage and tell their stories,  reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Waste Land is an uplifting and inspirational film which shows us the amazing power of art to generate change, redemption, human enrichment and alchemy of spirits. Soundtracked by Moby, it won prizes at the Sundance Film Festival 2010 and the Berlin Film Festival where it also received the Amnesty International Award. Don’t miss it!

Author : Federica Mascagni

11/27/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

SHIRLEY AND LOU

We knew that former Velvet Underground front man and art-rock icon Lou Reed is amid a pretty serious foray into photography. Now he is at his directorial debut with the documentary Red Shirley, a poignant  interview with his 100 years old cousin Shirley Novick.

Reed and photographer Ralph Gibson pieced the documentary together from footage shot on the eve of Shirley’s 100th birthday. Fleeing Poland just before the Nazi invasion, as a girl Shirley “the Red” moved to New York, later becoming a fiery unionist. Involved with the nascent civil rights, Jewish, anti-Zionist, communist, she is the living memory of an America that Lou Reed interrogates with respect and deep tenderness. The artist gives us the intimate  portrait of a strong little woman he felt the desire to tell the story and preserve the memory to future generations. As for the music, the film features an original soundtrack by Lou Reed’s band: the Metal Machine Trio.

Author : Federica Mascagni

11/15/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

NEVER LET ME GO

Never Let Me Go has truly intriguing credits. The movie, directed by Mark Romanek, is a cinematographic transposition of Kazuo Ishiguro‘s acclaimed novel. Beach author and 28 Days Later/Sunshine screenwriter Alex Garland penned the adaptation for the big screen. As for Romanek, he is one of the most celebrated music videos director. He made videos for Michael Jackson, Beck, Nine Inch Nails, Madonna, Red Hot Chili Peppers among the others, and some of his works are in the permanent video collection of MoMA. After the indie thriller One Hour Photo (2002), Never Let Me Go is his second full-length feature film.

The movie is an emotional and dramatic thriller about a group of children who spent their childhood at a seemingly idyllic English boarding school, who as they “grow into young adults, they find that they have to come to terms with the strength of the love they feel for each other, while preparing themselves for the haunting reality that awaits them.” The film stars Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield in the leading roles. Defined as a sci-film with a soul, Never Let Me Go promises to be a poignant story of love, loss and hidden truths.

Author : Federica Mascagni

10/23/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

THE KID IS BACK: HARMONY KORINE

Harmony Korine is one of the most provocative, independent and iconic director working today. He met photographer Larry Clark by chance, while skating in Washington Square Park, in New York, and  wrote for him the script of Kids (1995),  a groundbreaking film about 24 hours in the sex and drug filled lives of several Manhattan teenagers during the AIDS crisis. Kids, while controversial, jumpstarted Korine’s career. As a director, his varied body of work includes Gummo (1997), Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) and Trash Humpers (2009).

Now he is working on a short movie called God’s Joke. The film will be financed by crowd-funding through Cinema Reloaded, an interested project hosted by the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Check it out and don’t miss your chance to become a co-producer!

Author : Federica Mascagni

10/11/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

ESSENTIAL KILLING

A man wanders in a desert of snow. The man is an Afghan fugitive, maybe a Taliban, captured by American forces in Kabul, who finds himself transported to a nameless European country. He manages to escape into the vast frozen woodland, a world away from the desert home he knew, forced into extreme survival mode. Essential killing, by awarded Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, is a provocative thriller, almost entirely without dialogue, where time and space are dilated. Skolimowski, director, scriptwriter, and actor, who had his artistic training with Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski, has always been a witness of two different worlds and cultures, constantly balanced between Eastern and Western culture. With Essential killing, he made a film about the struggle to survive and the primitive instincts which help to stay alive.

The movie received the Special Prize of the Jury at the Venice Film Festival and an intense Vincent Gallo in the role of the prisoner won the Coppa Volpi as best actor. Yes, he didn’t show up at the ceremony to receive the prize, but this is another story…

Author : Federica Mascagni

09/28/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

DON’T SHINE AWAY

Young and talented , Garth Davis is one of the most awarded and highly sought after Aussie director. He made commercials for many important international brands and in 2008, his Schweppes “Burst” spot won a prized Gold Lion at Cannes. More interested in storytelling than in visual style, with a careful attention to the characters and a strong cinematic sensibility,  he conceives his spots like intense and catching short movies. Fascinated by the world of the underdogs and the unique stories of common people, Garth Davis evokes the lyrical aspects of everyday life and the power of imagination to transform things.

In RIDE, skateboarding legend Steve Berra (The Berrics) joins Mexican skaters Jesus Gonzalez, Eder Martinez, Mario Saenz, Angel Santiago and American Luis Tolentino for this Burn Ignite film, shot on location in Mexico City.
The film was created alongside two short-form documentaries, one featuring Jess Kimura and the all girl hardcore snowboarding film collective Peep Show, the other is a portrait that celebrates the electric lyrics and gritty beat artistry of rapper/poet Julius Wright, aka Lyrical God.

Author : Federica Mascagni

09/19/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

IT’S WILDERNESS DOWNTOWN!

I know, everybody is talking about this, but The Wilderness Downtown is a must-see video.

For sure the Canadian Indie rock band of the moment, the Arcade Fire, keeps an eye on the world of  moving images and pushes the limits on the relationship with new media. Recently they asked the celebrated and visionary director Terry Gilliam (former Monty Python) to film their concert at the Madison Square Garden in a live webcast happening.

The Wilderness Downtown is an experimental interactive film created by writer and director Chris Milk in collaboration with the band and Google, featuring the song We Used to Wait as a soundtrack to this techno-emotional experience. The short film was built using HTML5, Google Maps, an integrated drawing tool and it uses multiple browser windows as the user moves around the screen. The film asks you to plug in the address of the house where you grew up and it aims to develop a feeling of nostalgia combining the music experience with images and technology.

Check it out!

www.thewildernessdowntown.com

Author : Federica Mascagni

09/03/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

LIFE IS NOT A FAIRY TALE: LA BELLE ENDORMIE, A NEW MOVIE BY CATHERINE BREILLAT


La Belle Endormie is the new movie written and directed by Catherine Breillat. The French director is known for films focusing on desire, sexuality, intimacy, gender conflict and sibling rivalry. She has often been the subject of controversy for her explicit depictions of sexuality and violence. Since the beginning of her career, Breillat has depicted passion as strongly linked with suffering and has considered female sexuality as a means to explore women’s demons and the dark sides of their souls.  Through her movies she wants to affirm the value of diversity. Details »

Author : Federica Mascagni

08/31/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

WHEN YOU’RE STRANGE

When You’re Strange is the first feature documentary about The Doors written and directed by independent  film-maker Tom DiCillo.

The film puts together an accurate portrayal of the band using only original and archival footage – much of it previously unseen – shot between their formation in 1965 and Morrison’s 1971 death in Paris. The first sequences are taken from HWY, the short 35mm art film shot in 1969 by Morrison himself, that stars the singer as a bearded drifter storming across the desert in a growling car.

The cinéma vérité of When You’re Strange allows an intimate view into the band’s musical collaboration and their offstage lives, representing  a  fascinating time: musically, socially and politically. Iconic and influential, theatrical and mysterious,  through their music and language, through Morrison’s charisma and blatant sexuality, The Doors lighted a fire in a generation of youth who was fiercely anti-establishment and anti-convention in the turbulent and conflict ridden America of the Vietnam War era.

The documentary is narrated by the only man for the job: Johnny Depp . A soundtrack has also been released which chronicles The Doors’ six landmark albums with studio versions of classic tracks mixed with legendary live cuts including performances from The Ed Sullivan Show and The Isle Of Wight Festival.

Enjoy the movie and let’s play the music loud!

Author : Federica Mascagni

08/08/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

NOTRE JOUR VIENDRA

Notre Jour Viendra is the first feature film by French director Romain Gavras. Son of the celebrated Constantinos Costa-Gavras, Romain  is well known for his truly provocative music videos for The Last Shadow Puppets, Simian Mobile Disco and Justice. In 2008 he also made the well received tour documentary A Cross the Universe following Justice on their tour across North America. Most recently he directed the controversial video for M.I.A’s new track Born Free. Details »

Author : Federica Mascagni

07/29/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

WAITING FOR SOMEWHERE

It will be presented in September at the Venice Film Festival, Somewhere, the new movie written and directed by Sofia Coppola.

After the so called trilogy “of the restless youth”, which comprises The Virgin Suicides (1999), Lost in Translation (2003) and Marie Antoinette (2006), her latest work tells the story of a jaded actor portrayed by Stephen Dorff who is forced to reevaluate his life when his eleven years old daughter, played by Elle Fanning, arrives unexpectedly. Once again, Sofia Coppola’s cinema is a poetical and intimate reflection on life and the complexity of the human relationships.

Just as Lost in Translation was inspired by Coppola’s experiences while married to Spike Jonze, Somewhere is said to feature autobiographical hints of the director’s childhood relationship with her father, Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola. Details »

Author : Federica Mascagni

07/23/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN

BANSKY: EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

Exit through the gift shop è il primo film di Bansky in veste di regista.

Artista irriverente e provocatorio che ha sempre raccontato con ironia e profondità il nostro tempo attraverso lavori e interventi apparsi sui muri di mezzo mondo, dalla striscia di Gaza alla metropolitana di Londra, Bansky definisce il film come “la storia di un uomo che decide di filmare il non-filmabile, fallendo miseramente. E’ un racconto di vita quotidiana e di un bramoso, viscerale vandalismo.  Tutto all’interno della pellicola è vero specialmente nei momenti in cui tutti mentono”. Details »

Author : Federica Mascagni

07/11/2010
Category: / THE SECRET SCREEN