The boy band golden era and its biggest stars — ‘NSync, the Backstreet Boys, and New Kids on the Block — will be the subject of a new documentary on Paramount+.
As The Wrap notes, the yet-untitled documentary, which just got the green light, will purportedly examine the highs and lows of boy band superstardom, as well as the era these groups helped define. There will be interviews with key figures, including band members, and access to music and archival footage.
The movie will be directed by Tamra Davis, whose credits include...
As The Wrap notes, the yet-untitled documentary, which just got the green light, will purportedly examine the highs and lows of boy band superstardom, as well as the era these groups helped define. There will be interviews with key figures, including band members, and access to music and archival footage.
The movie will be directed by Tamra Davis, whose credits include...
- 10/2/2023
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
Greenwich Entertainment has acquired the U.S. distribution rights to the documentary feature Kenny Scharf: When Worlds Collide. The film is slated to debut in theaters and on digital platforms across the country on April 23.
The docu, which marks the directorial debut feature from Max Basch and Malia Scharf, made its world premiere last year at SXSW. Made over 11 years, the docu takes a look at the life of artist Kenny Scharf and features interviews and rare archival footage with Scharf, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Ed Ruscha, Dennis Hopper, Yoko Ono, Kaws, Marilyn Minter, and Jeffrey Deitch.
When Scharf arrived in New York City in the early 1980s, he quickly befriended Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. This trio changed the face of the art world with their works. While Basquiat and Haring both died tragically young, Scharf lived through cataclysmic shifts in New York City and the art world.
The docu, which marks the directorial debut feature from Max Basch and Malia Scharf, made its world premiere last year at SXSW. Made over 11 years, the docu takes a look at the life of artist Kenny Scharf and features interviews and rare archival footage with Scharf, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Ed Ruscha, Dennis Hopper, Yoko Ono, Kaws, Marilyn Minter, and Jeffrey Deitch.
When Scharf arrived in New York City in the early 1980s, he quickly befriended Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. This trio changed the face of the art world with their works. While Basquiat and Haring both died tragically young, Scharf lived through cataclysmic shifts in New York City and the art world.
- 2/23/2021
- by Dino-Ray Ramos
- Deadline Film + TV
Totally and tragically unconventional, Peggy Guggenheim moved through the cultural upheaval of the 20th century collecting not only not only art, but artists. Her sexual life was -- and still today is -- more discussed than the art itself which she collected, not for her own consumption but for the world to enjoy.
Her colorful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp and countless others. Guggenheim helped introduce the world to Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and scores of others now recognized as key masters of modernism.
In 1921 she moved to Paris and mingled with Picasso, Dali, Joyce, Pound, Stein, Leger, Kandinsky. In 1938 she opened a gallery in London and began showing Cocteau, Tanguy, Magritte, Miro, Brancusi, etc., and then back to Paris and New York after the Nazi invasion, followed by the opening of her NYC gallery Art of This Century, which became one of the premiere avant-garde spaces in the U.S. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo where she moved in 1947. Since 1951, her collection has become one of the world’s most visited art spaces.
Featuring: Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Vasil Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Jean Miro, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Kurt Schwitters, Gino Severini, Clyfford Still and Yves Tanguy.
Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Director and Producer)
Lisa Immordino Vreeland has been immersed in the world of fashion and art for the past 25 years. She started her career in fashion as the Director of Public Relations for Polo Ralph Lauren in Italy and quickly moved on to launch two fashion companies, Pratico, a sportswear line for women, and Mago, a cashmere knitwear collection of her own design. Her first book was accompanied by her directorial debut of the documentary of the same name, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012). The film about the editor of Harper's Bazaar had its European premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, going on to win the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the fashion category for the Design of the Year awards, otherwise known as “The Oscars” of design—at the Design Museum in London.
"Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" is Lisa Immordino Vreeland's followup to her acclaimed debut, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel". She is now working on her third doc on Cecil Beaton who Lisa says, "has been circling around all these stories. What's great about him is the creativity: fashion photography, war photography, "My Fair Lady" winning an Oscar."
Sydney Levine: I have read numerous accounts and interviews with you about this film and rather than repeat all that has been said, I refer my readers to Indiewire's Women and Hollywood interview at Tribeca this year, and your Indiewire interview with Aubrey Page, November 6, 2015 .
Let's try to cover new territory here.
First of all, what about you? What is your relationship to Diana Vreeland?
Liv: I am married to her grandson, Alexander Vreeland. (I'm also proud of my name Immordino) I never met Diana but hearing so many family stories about her made me start to wonder about all the talk about her. I worked in fashion and lived in New York like she did.
Sl: In one of your interviews you said that Peggy was not only ahead of her time but she helped to define it. Can you tell me how?
Liv: Peggy grew up in a very traditional family of German Bavarian Jews who had moved to New York City in the 19th century. Already at a young age Peggy felt like there were too many rules around her and she wanted to break out. That alone was something attractive to me — the notion that she knew that she didn't fit in to her family or her times. She lived on her own terms, a very modern approach to life. She decided to abandon her family in New York. Though she always stayed connected to them, she rarely visited New York. Instead she lived in a world without borders. She did not live by "the rules". She believed in creating art and created herself, living on her own terms and not on those of her family.
Sl: Is there a link between her and your previous doc on Diana Vreeland?
Liv: The link between Vreeland and Guggenheim is their mutual sense of reinvention and transformation. That made something click inside of me as I too reinvented myself when I began writing the book on Diana Vreeland .
Can you talk about the process of putting this one together and how it differed from its predecessor?
Liv: The most challenging thing about this one was the vast amount of material we had at our disposal. We had a lot of media to go through — instead of fashion spreads, which informed The Eye Has To Travel, we had art, which was fantastic. I was spoiled by the access we had to these incredible archives and footage. I'm still new to this, but it's the storytelling aspect that I loved in both projects. One thing about Peggy that Mrs. Vreeland didn't have was a very tragic personal life. There was so much that happened in Peggy's life before you even got to what she actually accomplished. And so we had to tell a very dense story about her childhood, her father dying on the Titanic, her beloved sister dying — the tragic events that fundamentally shaped her in a way. It was about making sure we had enough of the personal story to go along with her later accomplishments.
World War II alone was such a huge part of her story, opening an important art gallery in London, where she showed Kandinsky and other important artists for the first time. The amount of material to distill was a tremendous challenge and I hope we made the right choices.
Sl: How did you learn make a documentary?
Liv: I learned how to make a documentary by having a good team around me. My editors (and co-writers)Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frédéric Tcheng were very helpful.
Research is fundamental; finding as much as you can and never giving up. I love the research. It is my "precise time". Not just for interviews but of footage, photographs never seen before. It is a painstaking process that satisfies me. The research never ends. I was still researching while I was promoting the Diana Vreeland book. I love reading books and going to original sources.
The archives in film museums in the last ten years has changed and given museums a new role. I found unique footage at Moma with the Elizabeth Chapman Films. Chapman went to Paris in the 30s and 40s with a handheld camera and took moving pictures of Brancusi and Duchamps joking around in a studio, Gertrude Stein, Leger walking down the street. This footage is owned by Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art. In fact he is taking a sabbatical this year to go through the boxes and boxes of Chapman's films. We also used " Entre'acte" by René Clair cowritten with Dadaist Francis Picabia, "Le Sang du poet" of Cocteau, Hans Richter "8x8","Gagascope" and " Dreams That Money Can Buy" produced by Peggy Guggenheim, written by Man Ray in 1947.
Sl: How long did it take to research and make the film?
Liv: It took three years for both the Vreeland and the Guggenheim documentary.
It was more difficult with the Guggenheim story because there was so much material and so much to tell of her life. And she was not so giving of her own self. Diana could inspire you about a bandaid; she was so giving. But Peggy didn't talk much about why she loved an artist or a painting. She acted more. And using historical material could become "over-teaching" though it was fascinating.
So much had to be eliminated. It was hard to eliminate the Degenerate Art Show, a subject which is newly discussed. Stephanie Barron of Lacma is an expert on Degenerate Art and was so generous.
Once we decided upon which aspects to focus on, then we could give focus to the interviews.
There were so many of her important shows we could not include. For instance there was a show on collages featuring William Baziotes , Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell which started a more modern collage trend in art. The 31 Women Art Show which we did include pushed forward another message which I think is important.
And so many different things have been written about Peggy — there were hundreds of articles written about her during her lifetime. She also kept beautiful scrapbooks of articles written about her, which are now in the archives of the Guggenheim Museum.
The Guggenheim foundation did not commission this documentary but they were very supportive and the film premiered there in New York in a wonderful celebration. They wanted to represent Peggy and her paintings properly. The paintings were secondary characters and all were carefully placed historically in a correct fashion.
Sl: You said in one interview Guggenheim became a central figure in the modern art movement?
Liv: Yes and she did it without ego. Sharing was always her purpose in collecting art. She was not out for herself. Before Peggy, the art world was very different. And today it is part of wealth management.
Other collectors had a different way with art. Isabelle Stewart Gardner bought art for her own personal consumption. The Gardner Museum came later. Gertrude Stein was sharing the vision of her brother when she began collecting art. The Coen sisters were not sharing.
Her benevolence ranged from giving Berenice Abbott the money to buy her first camera to keeping Pollock afloat during lean times.
Djuana Barnes, who had a 'Love Love Love Hate Hate Hate' relationship with Peggy wrote Nightwood in Peggy's country house in England.
She was in Paris to the last minute. She planned how to safeguard artwork from the Nazis during World War II. She was storing gasoline so she could escape. She lived on the Ile St. Louis with her art and moved the paintings out first to a children's boarding school and then to Marseilles where it was shipped out to New York City.
Her role in art was not taken seriously because of her very public love life which was described in very derogatory terms. There was more talk about her love life than about her collection of art.
Her autobiography, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict (1960) , was scandalous when it came out — and she didn't even use real names, she used pseudonyms for her numerous partners. Only after publication did she reveal the names of the men she slept with.
The fact that she spoke about her sexual life at all was the most outrageous aspect. She was opening herself up to ridicule, but she didn't care. Peggy was her own person and she felt good in her own skin. But it was definitely unconventional behavior. I think her sexual appetites revealed a lot about finding her own identity.
A lot of it was tied to the loss of her father, I think, in addition to her wanting to feel accepted. She was also very adventurous — look at the men she slept with. I mean, come on, they are amazing! Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and she married Max Ernst. I think it was really ballsy of her to have been so open about her sexuality; this was not something people did back then. So many people are bound by conventional rules but Peggy said no. She grabbed hold of life and she lived it on her own terms.
Sl: You also give Peggy credit for changing the way art was exhibited. Can you explain that?
Liv: One of her greatest achievements was her gallery space in New York City, Art of This Century, which was unlike anything the art world has seen before or since in the way that it shattered the boundaries of the gallery space that we've come to know today — the sterile white cube. She came to be a genius at displaying her collections...
She was smart with Art of the Century because she hired Frederick Kiesler as a designer of the gallery and once again surrounded herself with the right people, including Howard Putzler, who was already involved with her at Guggenheim Jeune in London. And she was hanging out with all the exiled Surrealists who were living in New York at the time, including her future husband, Max Ernst, who was the real star of that group of artists. With the help of these people, she started showing art in a completely different way that was both informal and approachable. In conventional museums and galleries, art was untouchable on the wall and inside frames. In Peggy's gallery, art stuck out from the walls; works weren't confined to frames. Kiesler designed special chairs you could sit in and browse canvases as you would texts in a library. Nothing like this had ever existed in New York before — even today there is nothing like it.
She made the gallery into an exciting place where the whole concept of space was transformed. In Venice, the gallery space was also her home. Today, for a variety of reasons, the home aspect of the collection is less emphasized, though you still get a strong sense of Peggy's home life there. She was bringing art to the public in a bold new way, which I think is a great idea. It's art for everybody, which is very much a part of today's dialogue except that fewer people can afford the outlandish museum entry fees.
Sl: What do you think made her so prescient and attuned ?
Liv: She was smart enough to ask Marcel Duchamp to be her advisor — so she was in tune, and very well connected. She was on the cutting edge of what was going on and I think a lot of this had to do with Peggy being open to the idea of what was new and outrageous. You have to have a certain personality for this; what her childhood had dictated was totally opposite from what she became in life, and being in the right place at the right time helped her maintain a cutting edge throughout her life.
Sl: The movie is framed around a lost interview with Peggy conducted late in her life. How did you acquire these tapes?
Liv: We optioned Jacqueline Bogard Weld’s book, Peggy : The Wayward Guggenheim, the only authorized biography of Peggy, which was published after she died. Jackie had spent two summers interviewing Peggy but at a certain point lost the tapes somewhere in her Park Avenue apartment. Jackie had so much access to Peggy, which was incredible, but it was also the access that she had to other people who had known Peggy — she interviewed over 200 people for her book. Jackie was incredibly generous, letting me go through all her original research except for the lost tapes.
We'd walk into different rooms in her apartment and I'd suggestively open a closet door and ask “Where do you think those tapes might be?" Then one day I asked if she had a basement, and she did. So I went through all these boxes down there, organizing her affairs. Then bingo, the tapes showed up in this shoebox.
It was the longest interview Peggy had ever done and it became the framework for our movie. There's nothing more powerful than when you have someone's real voice telling the story, and Jackie was especially good at asking provoking questions. You can tell it was hard for Peggy to answer a lot of them, because she wasn't someone who was especially expressive; she didn't have a lot of emotion. And this comes across in the movie, in the tone of her voice.
Sl: Larry Gagosian has one of the best descriptions of Peggy in the movie — "she was her own creation." Would you agree, and if so why?
Liv: She was very much her own creation. When he said that in the interview I had a huge smile on my face. In Peggy's case it stemmed from a real need to identify and understand herself. I'm not sure she achieved it but she completely recreated herself — she knew that she did not want to be what she was brought up to be. She tried being a mother, but that was not one of her strengths, so art became that place where she could find herself, and then transform herself.
Nobody believed in the artists she cultivated and supported — they were outsiders and she was an outsider in the world she was brought up in. So it's in this way that she became her own great invention. I hope that her humor comes across in the film because she was extremely amusing — this aspect really comes across in her autobiography.
Sl: Finally, what do you think is Peggy Guggenheim's most lasting legacy, beyond her incredible art collection?
Liv: Her courage, and the way she used it to find herself. She had this ballsiness that not many people had, especially women. In her own way she was a feminist and it's good for women and young girls today to see women who stepped outside the confines of a very traditional family and made something of her life. Peggy's life did not seem that dreamy until she attached herself to these artists. It was her ability to redefine herself in the end that truly summed her up.
About the Filmmakers
Stanley Buchtal is a producer and entrepreneur. His movies credits include "Hairspray", "Spanking the Monkey", "Up at the Villa", "Lou Reed Berlin", "Love Marilyn", "LennoNYC", "Bobby Fischer Against the World", "Herb & Dorothy", "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child", "Sketches of Frank Gehry", "Black White + Gray: a Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe", among numerous others.
David Koh is an independent producer, distributor, sales agent, programmer and curator. He has been involved in the distribution, sale, production, and financing of over 200 films. He is currently a partner in the boutique label Submarine Entertainment with Josh and Dan Braun and is also partners with Stanley Buchthal and his Dakota Group Ltd where he co-manages a portfolio of over 50 projects a year (75% docs and 25% fiction). Previously he was a partner and founder of Arthouse Films a boutique distribution imprint and ran Chris Blackwell's (founder of Island Records & Island Pictures) film label, Palm Pictures. He has worked as a Producer for artist Nam June Paik and worked in the curatorial departments of Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, Mfa Boston, and the Guggenheim Museum. David has recently served as a Curator for Microsoft and has curated an ongoing film series and salon with Andre Balazs Properties and serves as a Curator for the exclusive Core Club in NYC.
David recently launched with his partners Submarine Deluxe, a distribution imprint; Torpedo Pictures, a low budget high concept label; and Nfp Submarine Doks, a German distribution imprint with Nfp Films. Recently and upcoming projects include "Yayoi Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots", "Burden: a Portrait of Artist Chris Burden", "Dior and I", "20 Feet From Stardom", "Muscle Shoals", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Rats NYC", "Nas: Time Is Illmatic", "Blackfish", "Love Marilyn", "Chasing Ice", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Cutie and the Boxer"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: the Radiant Child", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Wolfpack, "Meru", and "Station to Station".
Dan Braun is a producer, writer, art director and musician/composer based in NYC. He is the Co-President of and Co-Founder of Submarine, a NYC film sales and production company specializing in independent feature and documentary films. Titles include "Blackfish", "Finding Vivian Maier", "Muscle Shoals", "The Case Against 8", "Keep On Keepin’ On", "Winter’s Bone", "Nas: Time is Illmatic", "Dior and I" and Oscar winning docs "Man on Wire", "Searching for Sugarman", "20 Ft From Stardom" and "Citizenfour". He was Executive Producer on documentaries "Kill Your Idols", (which won Best NY Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004), "Blank City", "Sunshine Superman", the upcoming feature adaptations of "Batkid Begins" and "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" and the upcoming horror TV anthology "Creepy" to be directed by Chris Columbus.
He is a producer of the free jazz documentary "Fire Music", and the upcoming documentaries, "Burden" on artist Chris Burden and "Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots" on artist Yayoi Kusama. He is also a writer and consulting editor on Dark Horse Comic’s "Creepy" and "Eerie 9" comic book and archival series for which he won an Eisner Award for best archival comic book series in 2009.
He is a musician/composer whose compositions were featured in the films "I Melt With You" and "Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child and is an award winning art director/creative director when he worked at Tbwa/Chiat/Day on the famous Absolut Vodka campaign.
John Northrup (Co-Producer) began his career in documentaries as a French translator for National Geographic: Explorer. He quickly moved into editing and producing, serving as the Associate Producer on "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012), and editing and co-producing "Wilson In Situ" (2014), which tells the story of theatre legend Robert Wilson and his Watermill Center. Most recently, he oversaw the post-production of Jim Chambers’ "Onward Christian Soldier", a documentary about Olympic Bomber Eric Rudolph, and is shooting on Susanne Rostock’s "Another Night in the Free World", the follow-up to her award-winning "Sing Your Song" (2011).
Submarine Entertainment (Production Company) Submarine Entertainment is a hybrid sales, production, and distribution company based in N.Y. Recent and upcoming titles include "Citizenfour", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Dog", "Visitors", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Muscle Shoals", "Blackfish", "Cutie and the Boxer", "The Summit", "The Unknown Known", "Love Marilyn", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Chasing Ice", "Downtown 81 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Wild Style 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Good Ol Freda", "Some Velvet Morning", among numerous others. Submarine principals also represent Creepy and Eerie comic book library and are developing properties across film & TV platforms.
Submarine has also recently launched a domestic distribution imprint and label called Submarine Deluxe; a genre label called Torpedo Pictures; and a German imprint and label called Nfp Submarine Doks.
Bernadine Colish has edited a number of award-winning documentaries. "Herb and Dorothy" (2008), won Audience Awards at Silverdocs, Philadelphia and Hamptons Film Festivals, and "Body of War" (2007), was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. "A Touch of Greatness" (2004) aired on PBS Independent Lens and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Her career began at Maysles Films, where she worked with Charlotte Zwerin on such projects as "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", "Toru Takemitsu: Music for the Movies" and the PBS American Masters documentary, "Ella Fitzgerald: Something To Live For". Additional credits include "Bringing Tibet Home", "Band of Sisters", "Rise and Dream", "The Tiger Next Door", "The Buffalo War" and "Absolute Wilson".
Jed Parker (Editor) Jed Parker began his career in feature films before moving into documentaries through his work with the award-winning American Masters series. Credits include "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart", "Annie Liebovitz: Life Through a Lens", and most recently "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides".
Other work includes two episodes of the PBS series "Make ‘Em Laugh", hosted by Billy Crystal, as well as a documentary on Met Curator Henry Geldzahler entitled "Who Gets to Call it Art"?
Credits
Director, Writer, Producer: Lisa Immordino Vreeland
Produced by Stanley Buchthal, David Koh and Dan Braun Stanley Buchthal (producer)
Maja Hoffmann (executive producer)
Josh Braun (executive producer)
Bob Benton (executive producer)
John Northrup (co-producer)
Bernadine Colish (editor)
Jed Parker (editor)
Peter Trilling (director of photography)
Bonnie Greenberg (executive music producer)
Music by J. Ralph
Original Song "Once Again" Written and Performed By J. Ralph
Interviews Featuring Artist Marina Abramović Jean Arp Dore Ashton Samuel Beckett Stephanie Barron Constantin Brâncuși Diego Cortez Alexander Calder Susan Davidson Joseph Cornell Robert De Niro Salvador Dalí Simon de Pury Willem de Kooning Jeffrey Deitch Marcel Duchamp Polly Devlin Max Ernst Larry Gagosian Alberto Giacometti Arne Glimcher Vasily Kandinsky Michael Govan Fernand Léger Nicky Haslam Joan Miró Pepe Karmel Piet Mondrian Donald Kuspit Robert Motherwell Dominique Lévy Jackson Pollock Carlo McCormick Mark Rothko Hans Ulrich Obrist Yves Tanguy Lisa Phillips Lindsay Pollock Francine Prose John Richardson Sandy Rower Mercedes Ruehl Jane Rylands Philip Rylands Calvin Tomkins Karole Vail Jacqueline Bograd Weld Edmund White
Running time: 97 minutes
U.S. distribution by Submarine Deluxe
International sales by Hanway...
Her colorful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp and countless others. Guggenheim helped introduce the world to Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and scores of others now recognized as key masters of modernism.
In 1921 she moved to Paris and mingled with Picasso, Dali, Joyce, Pound, Stein, Leger, Kandinsky. In 1938 she opened a gallery in London and began showing Cocteau, Tanguy, Magritte, Miro, Brancusi, etc., and then back to Paris and New York after the Nazi invasion, followed by the opening of her NYC gallery Art of This Century, which became one of the premiere avant-garde spaces in the U.S. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo where she moved in 1947. Since 1951, her collection has become one of the world’s most visited art spaces.
Featuring: Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Vasil Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Jean Miro, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Kurt Schwitters, Gino Severini, Clyfford Still and Yves Tanguy.
Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Director and Producer)
Lisa Immordino Vreeland has been immersed in the world of fashion and art for the past 25 years. She started her career in fashion as the Director of Public Relations for Polo Ralph Lauren in Italy and quickly moved on to launch two fashion companies, Pratico, a sportswear line for women, and Mago, a cashmere knitwear collection of her own design. Her first book was accompanied by her directorial debut of the documentary of the same name, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012). The film about the editor of Harper's Bazaar had its European premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, going on to win the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the fashion category for the Design of the Year awards, otherwise known as “The Oscars” of design—at the Design Museum in London.
"Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" is Lisa Immordino Vreeland's followup to her acclaimed debut, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel". She is now working on her third doc on Cecil Beaton who Lisa says, "has been circling around all these stories. What's great about him is the creativity: fashion photography, war photography, "My Fair Lady" winning an Oscar."
Sydney Levine: I have read numerous accounts and interviews with you about this film and rather than repeat all that has been said, I refer my readers to Indiewire's Women and Hollywood interview at Tribeca this year, and your Indiewire interview with Aubrey Page, November 6, 2015 .
Let's try to cover new territory here.
First of all, what about you? What is your relationship to Diana Vreeland?
Liv: I am married to her grandson, Alexander Vreeland. (I'm also proud of my name Immordino) I never met Diana but hearing so many family stories about her made me start to wonder about all the talk about her. I worked in fashion and lived in New York like she did.
Sl: In one of your interviews you said that Peggy was not only ahead of her time but she helped to define it. Can you tell me how?
Liv: Peggy grew up in a very traditional family of German Bavarian Jews who had moved to New York City in the 19th century. Already at a young age Peggy felt like there were too many rules around her and she wanted to break out. That alone was something attractive to me — the notion that she knew that she didn't fit in to her family or her times. She lived on her own terms, a very modern approach to life. She decided to abandon her family in New York. Though she always stayed connected to them, she rarely visited New York. Instead she lived in a world without borders. She did not live by "the rules". She believed in creating art and created herself, living on her own terms and not on those of her family.
Sl: Is there a link between her and your previous doc on Diana Vreeland?
Liv: The link between Vreeland and Guggenheim is their mutual sense of reinvention and transformation. That made something click inside of me as I too reinvented myself when I began writing the book on Diana Vreeland .
Can you talk about the process of putting this one together and how it differed from its predecessor?
Liv: The most challenging thing about this one was the vast amount of material we had at our disposal. We had a lot of media to go through — instead of fashion spreads, which informed The Eye Has To Travel, we had art, which was fantastic. I was spoiled by the access we had to these incredible archives and footage. I'm still new to this, but it's the storytelling aspect that I loved in both projects. One thing about Peggy that Mrs. Vreeland didn't have was a very tragic personal life. There was so much that happened in Peggy's life before you even got to what she actually accomplished. And so we had to tell a very dense story about her childhood, her father dying on the Titanic, her beloved sister dying — the tragic events that fundamentally shaped her in a way. It was about making sure we had enough of the personal story to go along with her later accomplishments.
World War II alone was such a huge part of her story, opening an important art gallery in London, where she showed Kandinsky and other important artists for the first time. The amount of material to distill was a tremendous challenge and I hope we made the right choices.
Sl: How did you learn make a documentary?
Liv: I learned how to make a documentary by having a good team around me. My editors (and co-writers)Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frédéric Tcheng were very helpful.
Research is fundamental; finding as much as you can and never giving up. I love the research. It is my "precise time". Not just for interviews but of footage, photographs never seen before. It is a painstaking process that satisfies me. The research never ends. I was still researching while I was promoting the Diana Vreeland book. I love reading books and going to original sources.
The archives in film museums in the last ten years has changed and given museums a new role. I found unique footage at Moma with the Elizabeth Chapman Films. Chapman went to Paris in the 30s and 40s with a handheld camera and took moving pictures of Brancusi and Duchamps joking around in a studio, Gertrude Stein, Leger walking down the street. This footage is owned by Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art. In fact he is taking a sabbatical this year to go through the boxes and boxes of Chapman's films. We also used " Entre'acte" by René Clair cowritten with Dadaist Francis Picabia, "Le Sang du poet" of Cocteau, Hans Richter "8x8","Gagascope" and " Dreams That Money Can Buy" produced by Peggy Guggenheim, written by Man Ray in 1947.
Sl: How long did it take to research and make the film?
Liv: It took three years for both the Vreeland and the Guggenheim documentary.
It was more difficult with the Guggenheim story because there was so much material and so much to tell of her life. And she was not so giving of her own self. Diana could inspire you about a bandaid; she was so giving. But Peggy didn't talk much about why she loved an artist or a painting. She acted more. And using historical material could become "over-teaching" though it was fascinating.
So much had to be eliminated. It was hard to eliminate the Degenerate Art Show, a subject which is newly discussed. Stephanie Barron of Lacma is an expert on Degenerate Art and was so generous.
Once we decided upon which aspects to focus on, then we could give focus to the interviews.
There were so many of her important shows we could not include. For instance there was a show on collages featuring William Baziotes , Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell which started a more modern collage trend in art. The 31 Women Art Show which we did include pushed forward another message which I think is important.
And so many different things have been written about Peggy — there were hundreds of articles written about her during her lifetime. She also kept beautiful scrapbooks of articles written about her, which are now in the archives of the Guggenheim Museum.
The Guggenheim foundation did not commission this documentary but they were very supportive and the film premiered there in New York in a wonderful celebration. They wanted to represent Peggy and her paintings properly. The paintings were secondary characters and all were carefully placed historically in a correct fashion.
Sl: You said in one interview Guggenheim became a central figure in the modern art movement?
Liv: Yes and she did it without ego. Sharing was always her purpose in collecting art. She was not out for herself. Before Peggy, the art world was very different. And today it is part of wealth management.
Other collectors had a different way with art. Isabelle Stewart Gardner bought art for her own personal consumption. The Gardner Museum came later. Gertrude Stein was sharing the vision of her brother when she began collecting art. The Coen sisters were not sharing.
Her benevolence ranged from giving Berenice Abbott the money to buy her first camera to keeping Pollock afloat during lean times.
Djuana Barnes, who had a 'Love Love Love Hate Hate Hate' relationship with Peggy wrote Nightwood in Peggy's country house in England.
She was in Paris to the last minute. She planned how to safeguard artwork from the Nazis during World War II. She was storing gasoline so she could escape. She lived on the Ile St. Louis with her art and moved the paintings out first to a children's boarding school and then to Marseilles where it was shipped out to New York City.
Her role in art was not taken seriously because of her very public love life which was described in very derogatory terms. There was more talk about her love life than about her collection of art.
Her autobiography, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict (1960) , was scandalous when it came out — and she didn't even use real names, she used pseudonyms for her numerous partners. Only after publication did she reveal the names of the men she slept with.
The fact that she spoke about her sexual life at all was the most outrageous aspect. She was opening herself up to ridicule, but she didn't care. Peggy was her own person and she felt good in her own skin. But it was definitely unconventional behavior. I think her sexual appetites revealed a lot about finding her own identity.
A lot of it was tied to the loss of her father, I think, in addition to her wanting to feel accepted. She was also very adventurous — look at the men she slept with. I mean, come on, they are amazing! Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and she married Max Ernst. I think it was really ballsy of her to have been so open about her sexuality; this was not something people did back then. So many people are bound by conventional rules but Peggy said no. She grabbed hold of life and she lived it on her own terms.
Sl: You also give Peggy credit for changing the way art was exhibited. Can you explain that?
Liv: One of her greatest achievements was her gallery space in New York City, Art of This Century, which was unlike anything the art world has seen before or since in the way that it shattered the boundaries of the gallery space that we've come to know today — the sterile white cube. She came to be a genius at displaying her collections...
She was smart with Art of the Century because she hired Frederick Kiesler as a designer of the gallery and once again surrounded herself with the right people, including Howard Putzler, who was already involved with her at Guggenheim Jeune in London. And she was hanging out with all the exiled Surrealists who were living in New York at the time, including her future husband, Max Ernst, who was the real star of that group of artists. With the help of these people, she started showing art in a completely different way that was both informal and approachable. In conventional museums and galleries, art was untouchable on the wall and inside frames. In Peggy's gallery, art stuck out from the walls; works weren't confined to frames. Kiesler designed special chairs you could sit in and browse canvases as you would texts in a library. Nothing like this had ever existed in New York before — even today there is nothing like it.
She made the gallery into an exciting place where the whole concept of space was transformed. In Venice, the gallery space was also her home. Today, for a variety of reasons, the home aspect of the collection is less emphasized, though you still get a strong sense of Peggy's home life there. She was bringing art to the public in a bold new way, which I think is a great idea. It's art for everybody, which is very much a part of today's dialogue except that fewer people can afford the outlandish museum entry fees.
Sl: What do you think made her so prescient and attuned ?
Liv: She was smart enough to ask Marcel Duchamp to be her advisor — so she was in tune, and very well connected. She was on the cutting edge of what was going on and I think a lot of this had to do with Peggy being open to the idea of what was new and outrageous. You have to have a certain personality for this; what her childhood had dictated was totally opposite from what she became in life, and being in the right place at the right time helped her maintain a cutting edge throughout her life.
Sl: The movie is framed around a lost interview with Peggy conducted late in her life. How did you acquire these tapes?
Liv: We optioned Jacqueline Bogard Weld’s book, Peggy : The Wayward Guggenheim, the only authorized biography of Peggy, which was published after she died. Jackie had spent two summers interviewing Peggy but at a certain point lost the tapes somewhere in her Park Avenue apartment. Jackie had so much access to Peggy, which was incredible, but it was also the access that she had to other people who had known Peggy — she interviewed over 200 people for her book. Jackie was incredibly generous, letting me go through all her original research except for the lost tapes.
We'd walk into different rooms in her apartment and I'd suggestively open a closet door and ask “Where do you think those tapes might be?" Then one day I asked if she had a basement, and she did. So I went through all these boxes down there, organizing her affairs. Then bingo, the tapes showed up in this shoebox.
It was the longest interview Peggy had ever done and it became the framework for our movie. There's nothing more powerful than when you have someone's real voice telling the story, and Jackie was especially good at asking provoking questions. You can tell it was hard for Peggy to answer a lot of them, because she wasn't someone who was especially expressive; she didn't have a lot of emotion. And this comes across in the movie, in the tone of her voice.
Sl: Larry Gagosian has one of the best descriptions of Peggy in the movie — "she was her own creation." Would you agree, and if so why?
Liv: She was very much her own creation. When he said that in the interview I had a huge smile on my face. In Peggy's case it stemmed from a real need to identify and understand herself. I'm not sure she achieved it but she completely recreated herself — she knew that she did not want to be what she was brought up to be. She tried being a mother, but that was not one of her strengths, so art became that place where she could find herself, and then transform herself.
Nobody believed in the artists she cultivated and supported — they were outsiders and she was an outsider in the world she was brought up in. So it's in this way that she became her own great invention. I hope that her humor comes across in the film because she was extremely amusing — this aspect really comes across in her autobiography.
Sl: Finally, what do you think is Peggy Guggenheim's most lasting legacy, beyond her incredible art collection?
Liv: Her courage, and the way she used it to find herself. She had this ballsiness that not many people had, especially women. In her own way she was a feminist and it's good for women and young girls today to see women who stepped outside the confines of a very traditional family and made something of her life. Peggy's life did not seem that dreamy until she attached herself to these artists. It was her ability to redefine herself in the end that truly summed her up.
About the Filmmakers
Stanley Buchtal is a producer and entrepreneur. His movies credits include "Hairspray", "Spanking the Monkey", "Up at the Villa", "Lou Reed Berlin", "Love Marilyn", "LennoNYC", "Bobby Fischer Against the World", "Herb & Dorothy", "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child", "Sketches of Frank Gehry", "Black White + Gray: a Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe", among numerous others.
David Koh is an independent producer, distributor, sales agent, programmer and curator. He has been involved in the distribution, sale, production, and financing of over 200 films. He is currently a partner in the boutique label Submarine Entertainment with Josh and Dan Braun and is also partners with Stanley Buchthal and his Dakota Group Ltd where he co-manages a portfolio of over 50 projects a year (75% docs and 25% fiction). Previously he was a partner and founder of Arthouse Films a boutique distribution imprint and ran Chris Blackwell's (founder of Island Records & Island Pictures) film label, Palm Pictures. He has worked as a Producer for artist Nam June Paik and worked in the curatorial departments of Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, Mfa Boston, and the Guggenheim Museum. David has recently served as a Curator for Microsoft and has curated an ongoing film series and salon with Andre Balazs Properties and serves as a Curator for the exclusive Core Club in NYC.
David recently launched with his partners Submarine Deluxe, a distribution imprint; Torpedo Pictures, a low budget high concept label; and Nfp Submarine Doks, a German distribution imprint with Nfp Films. Recently and upcoming projects include "Yayoi Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots", "Burden: a Portrait of Artist Chris Burden", "Dior and I", "20 Feet From Stardom", "Muscle Shoals", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Rats NYC", "Nas: Time Is Illmatic", "Blackfish", "Love Marilyn", "Chasing Ice", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Cutie and the Boxer"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: the Radiant Child", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Wolfpack, "Meru", and "Station to Station".
Dan Braun is a producer, writer, art director and musician/composer based in NYC. He is the Co-President of and Co-Founder of Submarine, a NYC film sales and production company specializing in independent feature and documentary films. Titles include "Blackfish", "Finding Vivian Maier", "Muscle Shoals", "The Case Against 8", "Keep On Keepin’ On", "Winter’s Bone", "Nas: Time is Illmatic", "Dior and I" and Oscar winning docs "Man on Wire", "Searching for Sugarman", "20 Ft From Stardom" and "Citizenfour". He was Executive Producer on documentaries "Kill Your Idols", (which won Best NY Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004), "Blank City", "Sunshine Superman", the upcoming feature adaptations of "Batkid Begins" and "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" and the upcoming horror TV anthology "Creepy" to be directed by Chris Columbus.
He is a producer of the free jazz documentary "Fire Music", and the upcoming documentaries, "Burden" on artist Chris Burden and "Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots" on artist Yayoi Kusama. He is also a writer and consulting editor on Dark Horse Comic’s "Creepy" and "Eerie 9" comic book and archival series for which he won an Eisner Award for best archival comic book series in 2009.
He is a musician/composer whose compositions were featured in the films "I Melt With You" and "Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child and is an award winning art director/creative director when he worked at Tbwa/Chiat/Day on the famous Absolut Vodka campaign.
John Northrup (Co-Producer) began his career in documentaries as a French translator for National Geographic: Explorer. He quickly moved into editing and producing, serving as the Associate Producer on "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012), and editing and co-producing "Wilson In Situ" (2014), which tells the story of theatre legend Robert Wilson and his Watermill Center. Most recently, he oversaw the post-production of Jim Chambers’ "Onward Christian Soldier", a documentary about Olympic Bomber Eric Rudolph, and is shooting on Susanne Rostock’s "Another Night in the Free World", the follow-up to her award-winning "Sing Your Song" (2011).
Submarine Entertainment (Production Company) Submarine Entertainment is a hybrid sales, production, and distribution company based in N.Y. Recent and upcoming titles include "Citizenfour", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Dog", "Visitors", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Muscle Shoals", "Blackfish", "Cutie and the Boxer", "The Summit", "The Unknown Known", "Love Marilyn", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Chasing Ice", "Downtown 81 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Wild Style 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Good Ol Freda", "Some Velvet Morning", among numerous others. Submarine principals also represent Creepy and Eerie comic book library and are developing properties across film & TV platforms.
Submarine has also recently launched a domestic distribution imprint and label called Submarine Deluxe; a genre label called Torpedo Pictures; and a German imprint and label called Nfp Submarine Doks.
Bernadine Colish has edited a number of award-winning documentaries. "Herb and Dorothy" (2008), won Audience Awards at Silverdocs, Philadelphia and Hamptons Film Festivals, and "Body of War" (2007), was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. "A Touch of Greatness" (2004) aired on PBS Independent Lens and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Her career began at Maysles Films, where she worked with Charlotte Zwerin on such projects as "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", "Toru Takemitsu: Music for the Movies" and the PBS American Masters documentary, "Ella Fitzgerald: Something To Live For". Additional credits include "Bringing Tibet Home", "Band of Sisters", "Rise and Dream", "The Tiger Next Door", "The Buffalo War" and "Absolute Wilson".
Jed Parker (Editor) Jed Parker began his career in feature films before moving into documentaries through his work with the award-winning American Masters series. Credits include "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart", "Annie Liebovitz: Life Through a Lens", and most recently "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides".
Other work includes two episodes of the PBS series "Make ‘Em Laugh", hosted by Billy Crystal, as well as a documentary on Met Curator Henry Geldzahler entitled "Who Gets to Call it Art"?
Credits
Director, Writer, Producer: Lisa Immordino Vreeland
Produced by Stanley Buchthal, David Koh and Dan Braun Stanley Buchthal (producer)
Maja Hoffmann (executive producer)
Josh Braun (executive producer)
Bob Benton (executive producer)
John Northrup (co-producer)
Bernadine Colish (editor)
Jed Parker (editor)
Peter Trilling (director of photography)
Bonnie Greenberg (executive music producer)
Music by J. Ralph
Original Song "Once Again" Written and Performed By J. Ralph
Interviews Featuring Artist Marina Abramović Jean Arp Dore Ashton Samuel Beckett Stephanie Barron Constantin Brâncuși Diego Cortez Alexander Calder Susan Davidson Joseph Cornell Robert De Niro Salvador Dalí Simon de Pury Willem de Kooning Jeffrey Deitch Marcel Duchamp Polly Devlin Max Ernst Larry Gagosian Alberto Giacometti Arne Glimcher Vasily Kandinsky Michael Govan Fernand Léger Nicky Haslam Joan Miró Pepe Karmel Piet Mondrian Donald Kuspit Robert Motherwell Dominique Lévy Jackson Pollock Carlo McCormick Mark Rothko Hans Ulrich Obrist Yves Tanguy Lisa Phillips Lindsay Pollock Francine Prose John Richardson Sandy Rower Mercedes Ruehl Jane Rylands Philip Rylands Calvin Tomkins Karole Vail Jacqueline Bograd Weld Edmund White
Running time: 97 minutes
U.S. distribution by Submarine Deluxe
International sales by Hanway...
- 11/18/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Germany’s Constantin Film and Nicky Weinstock’s La-based Invention Studios are teaming on The Baby Shower, an R-rated comedy about four women on a weekend getaway gone wrong. Based on Jenni Ross’ original screenplay, the femme film will be rewritten by Legally Blonde, The House Bunny and Expendabelles co-scripter Karen McCullah. Tamra Davis (Billy Madison, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child) is directing. Billed as a hilarious and affectionate twist on the baby…...
- 7/15/2015
- Deadline
Today in history, August 12, 1988, Jean-Michel Basquiat died of a heroin overdose at his art studio in New York City. He was just 27 years old. Basquiat's life unfolds on screen in 2 films of note: most recently, director Tamra Davis' 2009 documentary, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, which, in short, follows a rare interview that Davis shot with Basquiat 20+ years ago, chronicling the meteoric rise and fall of the young artist. In New York City of the 1970s, he covered the city streets with his graffiti tag 'Samo.' In 1981 he put paint on canvas for the first time. And by 1983 he had become an artist with "rock star status,"...
- 8/12/2013
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child is Tamra Davis’ extraordinary close-up look at the artist. Davis and Basquiat were friends, and she filmed an extensive interview with him in 1986, two years before he died. More than two decades later, she used that interview as the centerpiece for a film as colorful and lively as the 80’s SoHo it brings back to life. It’s rare for a film to immerse us so thoroughly and intimately in an artist’s life and work. If you missed it during its theatrical run last year, it’s easier than ever to catch now. The film will…...
- 4/12/2011
- James on ScreenS
Although it's an unfortunate turn of phrase given the era, the best way to describe the documentary "Blank City" is still as something of a gateway drug when it comes to the late '70s, early '80s underground film scene in New York. It's easy to tell this since it's obvious French director Celine Danhier recreates her own experience of discovering the no-budget avant garde movement known as "No Wave" cinema in her documentary, presenting one snippet of rare footage after another, teasing the audience with clips of Michael Holman's self-descriptive "Vincent Gallo as Flying Christ" and Charlie Ahearn's groundbreaking hip-hop flick "Wild Style" and having such personalities as Deborah Harry and Steve Buscemi talk about what a wild and crazy time it was.
It's the shortcoming of "Blank City" that it isn't as adventurous in mirroring the era the film documents, settling into a style where...
It's the shortcoming of "Blank City" that it isn't as adventurous in mirroring the era the film documents, settling into a style where...
- 4/8/2011
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
I’ve received a few emails from readers asking about a Shadow And Act Top 10 Black Films Of 2010 list, just like all the other annual Best Of lists that pop up around this time of the year. But, as long time readers of this blog will know, I’m averse to lists in general; and even if I weren’t, looking over the list of “black films” that were released in theaters (specifically) this year, there just weren’t enough of them to warrant a Top 10 list. Or I should say, there weren’t enough that were so strong that I feel compelled to come up with a Top 10 list. Frankly, most (though not all) of the “black films” released in theaters this year were mediocre. Some were just horrible! The key words here are “released in theaters.”
Of course, this is all one person’s opinion.
All that said…...
Of course, this is all one person’s opinion.
All that said…...
- 12/21/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
After viewing 101 contenders for Best Feature Documentary for the 83rd Academy Awards, the Documentary Branch has revealed the final 15 contenders shortlist for nomination consideration.
This list is in alphabetical order: Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer Alex Gibney, director (Es Productions LLC) Enemies of the People Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, directors (Old Street Films) Exit through the Gift Shop Banksy, director (Paranoid Pictures) Gasland Josh Fox, director (Gasland Productions, LLC) Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont, directors (White Pine Pictures) Inside Job Charles Ferguson, director (Representational Pictures) The Lottery Madeleine Sackler, director (Great Curve Films) Precious Life Shlomi Eldar, director (Origami Productions) Quest for Honor Mary Ann Smothers Bruni, director (Smothers Bruni Productions) Restrepo Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, directors (Outpost Films) This Way of Life Thomas Burstyn, director (Cloud South Films) The Tillman Story Amir Bar-Lev, director (Passion...
This list is in alphabetical order: Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer Alex Gibney, director (Es Productions LLC) Enemies of the People Rob Lemkin and Thet Sambath, directors (Old Street Films) Exit through the Gift Shop Banksy, director (Paranoid Pictures) Gasland Josh Fox, director (Gasland Productions, LLC) Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould Michele Hozer and Peter Raymont, directors (White Pine Pictures) Inside Job Charles Ferguson, director (Representational Pictures) The Lottery Madeleine Sackler, director (Great Curve Films) Precious Life Shlomi Eldar, director (Origami Productions) Quest for Honor Mary Ann Smothers Bruni, director (Smothers Bruni Productions) Restrepo Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger, directors (Outpost Films) This Way of Life Thomas Burstyn, director (Cloud South Films) The Tillman Story Amir Bar-Lev, director (Passion...
- 11/18/2010
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
Well, not here exactly, but if you have a Netflix account, you Can watch it now, just a few clicks away, because it’s just been added as an Instant Watch title. So, no need to wait for the DVD…
Previously profiled on this blog… Tamra Davis’ Sundance selection, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, which, in short, centers on a rare interview that Davis shot with Basquiat 20+ years ago, chronicling the meteoric rise and fall of the young artist, with interviews including Julian Schnabel, Fab 5 Freddy, and countless others.
The film played in theaters earlier this year, in a limited release, making just over $250,000 in ticket sales.
So, head on over to Netflix now, or soon, and watch the film, whether directly online, or with one of several players connected to your TV.
Here’s the trailer again, as well as the first 3 minutes of it – both below:
The...
Previously profiled on this blog… Tamra Davis’ Sundance selection, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, which, in short, centers on a rare interview that Davis shot with Basquiat 20+ years ago, chronicling the meteoric rise and fall of the young artist, with interviews including Julian Schnabel, Fab 5 Freddy, and countless others.
The film played in theaters earlier this year, in a limited release, making just over $250,000 in ticket sales.
So, head on over to Netflix now, or soon, and watch the film, whether directly online, or with one of several players connected to your TV.
Here’s the trailer again, as well as the first 3 minutes of it – both below:
The...
- 11/17/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ***
In the mid-1980s, filmmaker Tamra Davis videotaped an interview with painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. When he died in 1988 at the age of 27, she put the footage away and kept it there until recently. That footage is the raison d'être for Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, a feature-length documentary about Basquiat and his turbulent life.
Born to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat ran away from home as a teen and came to New York City. He began as a graffiti artist and quickly joined the circle of New York artists, musicians and filmmakers of the early 1980s. He eventually moved from walls to canvases, began to appear in galleries, and began to sell his art. He became very rich, very quickly. An association with his hero Andy Warhol turned the public against him and he began to fall just as quickly as he climbed.
Rating (out of 5): ***
In the mid-1980s, filmmaker Tamra Davis videotaped an interview with painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. When he died in 1988 at the age of 27, she put the footage away and kept it there until recently. That footage is the raison d'être for Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, a feature-length documentary about Basquiat and his turbulent life.
Born to a Haitian father and a Puerto Rican mother, Basquiat ran away from home as a teen and came to New York City. He began as a graffiti artist and quickly joined the circle of New York artists, musicians and filmmakers of the early 1980s. He eventually moved from walls to canvases, began to appear in galleries, and began to sell his art. He became very rich, very quickly. An association with his hero Andy Warhol turned the public against him and he began to fall just as quickly as he climbed.
- 11/12/2010
- by underdog
- GreenCine
There's plenty of stuff hitting DVD and Blu-ray today, some of it "game changing", and some of it not so much. The two major new releases this week are Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (trying to make up for its weak theatrical run) and Adam Sandler's Grown Ups (simply adding to its coffers), but we've also got Charlie St. Cloud starring Zac Efron, Beverly Cleary's Ramona and Beezus, and Love Ranch starring Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci. For the more adventurous, Criterion unleashes Lars Von Trier's controversial Antichrist on DVD and Blu-ray, and the large assortment of television releases include Season 1 of BBC's Sherlock, the third seasons of Californication, The Boondocks and Metalocalypse, and a 25th Anniversary Collection of The Golden Girls that comes in Sophia's purse! Amazing. What will you be buying or renting this week? Scott Pilgrim vs. The World [1] (+ Blu-ray [2]) Grown Ups...
- 11/9/2010
- by Sean
- FilmJunk
A look at what's new on DVD today:
"Antichrist" (2009)
Directed by Lars von Trier
Released by Criterion Collection
From its incendiary debut at Cannes to becoming a cult hit defined by the meme "Chaos Reigns," Lars von Trier's psychosexual horror film about a married couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) that repairs to a cabin in the woods to grieve over the death of their young son is receiving the Criterion Collection treatment. Video interviews with von Trier, Gainsbourg, and Dafoe, making-of vignettes and a documentary about the Cannes premiere accompany the feature. (Aaron Hillis' interview with von Trier is here.)
"The Battle of River Plate" (1956)
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Released by Hen's Tooth Video
Despite being Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's most financially successful film, it has been a rare commodity in America on home video, where people have had to buy the British...
"Antichrist" (2009)
Directed by Lars von Trier
Released by Criterion Collection
From its incendiary debut at Cannes to becoming a cult hit defined by the meme "Chaos Reigns," Lars von Trier's psychosexual horror film about a married couple (Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg) that repairs to a cabin in the woods to grieve over the death of their young son is receiving the Criterion Collection treatment. Video interviews with von Trier, Gainsbourg, and Dafoe, making-of vignettes and a documentary about the Cannes premiere accompany the feature. (Aaron Hillis' interview with von Trier is here.)
"The Battle of River Plate" (1956)
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Released by Hen's Tooth Video
Despite being Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's most financially successful film, it has been a rare commodity in America on home video, where people have had to buy the British...
- 11/9/2010
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
The Vancouver International Film Festival is my baby. In its 29th year, this is the event I look forward to every year. The lists I've kept through the year come out and I eagerly look through the list of titles in search of those little gems and every year Viff responds with a huge assortment of titles. This year's festival is no different.
Some of the titles we're most eagerly anticipating include Tsumetai Nettaigyo’s Cold Fish (trailer), Gareth Edwards’ Monsters (trailer, review), Jo Sung-Hee’s apocalyptic road movie End of Animal, Carl Bessai’s Repeaters (trailer) and Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats (trailer, review).
There's loads more so be sure to check the titles (so far) after the break. Many more to be announced in the coming days.
Canadian Images
Altitude (Kaare Andrews), B.C.
View trailer
A weekend getaway aboard a small plane turns deadly for a rookie pilot and four teenage friends.
Some of the titles we're most eagerly anticipating include Tsumetai Nettaigyo’s Cold Fish (trailer), Gareth Edwards’ Monsters (trailer, review), Jo Sung-Hee’s apocalyptic road movie End of Animal, Carl Bessai’s Repeaters (trailer) and Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats (trailer, review).
There's loads more so be sure to check the titles (so far) after the break. Many more to be announced in the coming days.
Canadian Images
Altitude (Kaare Andrews), B.C.
View trailer
A weekend getaway aboard a small plane turns deadly for a rookie pilot and four teenage friends.
- 9/8/2010
- QuietEarth.us
What's cool about Pitchfork's best 50 videos countdown from the 90's are seeing how some of the least obvious names cut their teeth on music videos -- some became full fledged members of the filmmaking community, while some are still in the cross over stages. What is most odd about the list is how Chris Cunningham, who along with Spike Jonze (see Weezer video below) and Michel Gondry dominated the music video scene, never made the jump into feature film. While you've got Jonathan Glazer, Mike Mills and Mark Romanek with more than one mention, and together, Jonze and Gondry are mentioned a dozen times, I've decided to point out those who have made a feature film among the 50 list. Check them out after the jump - Yo La Tengo: "Sugarcube" Phil Morrison blasted onto the scene with indie gem Junebug, but hasn't made anything since. Blur: "Coffee + TV" Garth Jennings...
- 8/24/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
Tamra Davis Last week, I saw two of the best films I have seen all summer. One was Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, a film I beg you all to see before it gets shunted out of theaters in the next two or three weeks. The other film was Tamra Davis's new doc Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child.
Radiant Child is one of those films that often flies under the radar during this crowded summer season that deserves more attention than it is currently getting. It debuted earlier this year at Sundance along with the much more hyped Banksy film Exit Through The Gift Shop, and the comparisons are obvious. Jean-Michel Basquiat is the blueprint for an artist like Banksy and a cautionary tale as well.
But the similarities stop there. Both films are great. Probably the two best docs you'll see this year. But Banksy...
Radiant Child is one of those films that often flies under the radar during this crowded summer season that deserves more attention than it is currently getting. It debuted earlier this year at Sundance along with the much more hyped Banksy film Exit Through The Gift Shop, and the comparisons are obvious. Jean-Michel Basquiat is the blueprint for an artist like Banksy and a cautionary tale as well.
But the similarities stop there. Both films are great. Probably the two best docs you'll see this year. But Banksy...
- 8/22/2010
- by Bill Cody
- Rope of Silicon
The film, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, opened in New York City last week, and will travel to a few cities over the next 4 months.
I was supposed to see it over the weekend, but plans didn’t go as expected. However, I will see it some time this week, followed by a review on this blog.
Click Here to see if it’ll be playing in your city, at a theater near you; and if it won’t be, well, the next best thing could be listening to the director, Tamra Davis, talk about the project, and the rise and fall of her friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat.
I suppose you could also just wait for the eventual DVD release – although that may not happen until 2011...
I was supposed to see it over the weekend, but plans didn’t go as expected. However, I will see it some time this week, followed by a review on this blog.
Click Here to see if it’ll be playing in your city, at a theater near you; and if it won’t be, well, the next best thing could be listening to the director, Tamra Davis, talk about the project, and the rise and fall of her friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat.
I suppose you could also just wait for the eventual DVD release – although that may not happen until 2011...
- 7/26/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
Setting Eric Lavallee's "American New Wave 25: Class of 2010" at Ioncinema alongside Filmmaker's annual roundup of "25 New Faces of Independent Film," you'll find very little overlap but plenty of multi-tasking resourcefulness. Also in the new Summer 2010 issue of Filmmaker: Brandon Harris talking with Gaspar Noé about Enter the Void, Jason Guerrasio's interview with Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story), Lance Weiler on transmedia and Anthony Kaufman: "Why Won't Kickstarter and Twitter Save Indie Film?" In its tech section, Filmmaker staff and friends recommend apps and Roberto Quezada-Dardon evaluates the latest HDSLRs.
"Tamra Davis's documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child might make you weep (it did me) and might help you better appreciate a painter whose work matters enormously in the history of late-twentieth-century art." Amy Taubin for Artforum: "It achieves these ends largely though an abundance of footage of its subject at work and with a long interview that...
"Tamra Davis's documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child might make you weep (it did me) and might help you better appreciate a painter whose work matters enormously in the history of late-twentieth-century art." Amy Taubin for Artforum: "It achieves these ends largely though an abundance of footage of its subject at work and with a long interview that...
- 7/25/2010
- MUBI
Tamra Davis has seen the highs and lows of fame more than most. One of the most successful contemporary female filmmakers around (not to mention the wife of a Beastie Boy), she directed Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Dave Chappelle and Britney Spears in their first leading roles. She offered Drew Barrymore her couch to crash on and Barrymore's first adult part in 1992's "Gun Crazy," a few years after the former child star was told by her agent her career was over at the age of nine, and hung around Kurt Cobain before his untimely passing.
"I've been in that position where I've seen people who have incredible talent but also who are very sensitive and have a very difficult time dealing with fame," said Davis. "And I'm always amazed at the people that I know that keep going."
Consider her latest film, "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child," as a...
"I've been in that position where I've seen people who have incredible talent but also who are very sensitive and have a very difficult time dealing with fame," said Davis. "And I'm always amazed at the people that I know that keep going."
Consider her latest film, "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child," as a...
- 7/24/2010
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
Not interested in seeing Angelina Jolie and Chiwetel Ejiofor in Salt this weekend?
Previously profiled on this blog… Tamra Davis’ Sundance selection, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, which, in short, centers on a rare interview that Davis shot with him 20+ years ago, chronicling the meteoric rise and fall of the young artist, with interviews (Julian Schnabel, Fab 5 Freddy, and countless others).
New Yorkers can now see the film, which opened this week at Film Forum, where it’ll run through August 3rd, so you really have a couple of weeks to see it. After that, it’ll travel to about 25 cities, screening for limited periods of time in each, through October. Click Here to find it if your city is on its itinerary.
I know it’ll be playing at the Black Harvest Film Festival next month, so Chi-Town folks can see it then.
I’ll check it out this weekend,...
Previously profiled on this blog… Tamra Davis’ Sundance selection, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, which, in short, centers on a rare interview that Davis shot with him 20+ years ago, chronicling the meteoric rise and fall of the young artist, with interviews (Julian Schnabel, Fab 5 Freddy, and countless others).
New Yorkers can now see the film, which opened this week at Film Forum, where it’ll run through August 3rd, so you really have a couple of weeks to see it. After that, it’ll travel to about 25 cities, screening for limited periods of time in each, through October. Click Here to find it if your city is on its itinerary.
I know it’ll be playing at the Black Harvest Film Festival next month, so Chi-Town folks can see it then.
I’ll check it out this weekend,...
- 7/23/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
Jean-Michel Basquiat gave the world thousands of pieces of art but very few interviews. His friend, filmmaker Tamra Davis (director of the cult films "CB4" and "Half Baked), recorded one of the rare ones in a room at the L'Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills in June 1986. Basquiat died two years later of a heroin overdose and Davis, worried she might be taking advantage of her friend's legacy for personal gain, left the footage in a drawer for over 20 years. She was finally convinced to share it with the world, first in a 20-minute short film and now as part of the new feature documentary, "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child."
Davis' candid interview with Basquiat is only a small (albeit crucial) element of her 93-minute film. The rest is a mixture of archival footage of late '70s, early '80s New York and reflections from Basquiat's friends, collaborators, contemporaries, clients,...
Davis' candid interview with Basquiat is only a small (albeit crucial) element of her 93-minute film. The rest is a mixture of archival footage of late '70s, early '80s New York and reflections from Basquiat's friends, collaborators, contemporaries, clients,...
- 7/21/2010
- by Matt Singer
- ifc.com
"Inception" may be the best (non-animated) blockbuster of the summer, but that's hardly setting the bar very high. Is Christopher Nolan's latest a masterpiece, a disappointment or somewhere in between? In this week's (spoiler-filled, super-sized) IFC News podcast, we talk about "Inception," then trace common themes from that film through Nolan's career to date.
Download: MP3, 1:14:22 minutes, 68.1 Mb
Subscribe to the podcast: [iTunes] [Xml]
This week's keyword game giveaway are two posters (they look like this, without the type) designed and signed by Shepard Fairey, from Tamra Davis' new documentary "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child," open this week at the Film Forum in New York.
Download: MP3, 1:14:22 minutes, 68.1 Mb
Subscribe to the podcast: [iTunes] [Xml]
This week's keyword game giveaway are two posters (they look like this, without the type) designed and signed by Shepard Fairey, from Tamra Davis' new documentary "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child," open this week at the Film Forum in New York.
- 7/20/2010
- by Alison Willmore
- ifc.com
This original print by artist Shepard Fairey was used for the poster design of the new documentary film, Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, opening at the Film Forum on July 21. TribecaFilm.com is pleased to give one of the prints away in our Tribeca SwagBag! Centered on a rare interview that director and friend Tamra Davis shot with Basquiat over twenty years ago, this definitive documentary chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of the young artist. In the crime-ridden NYC of the 1970s, he covers the city with the graffiti tag Samo. In 1981, he puts paint on canvas for the first time, and by 1983 he is an artist with 'rock star status.' He achieves critical and commercial success, though he is constantly confronted by racism from his peers. In 1985 he and Andy Warhol become close friends and painting collaborators, but they part ways and Warhol dies suddenly in ...
- 7/16/2010
- TribecaFilm.com
By Ali Naderzad - July 14, 2010
There’s a new Basquiat documentary, this time made by Tamra Davis, a filmmaker who was friends with the New York artist and has earned her stripes directing TV series (“My Name is Earl,” “Ugly Betty”), music videos and the occasional feature film (“Half-Baked” and “Billy Madison”). In “Basquiat: The Radiant Child” Davis chronicles the classic tale of the rise and fall of a one-of-a-kind individual along a pretty straightforward timeline except that she introduces never-before-seen interview footage of Basquiat with commentary from friends and art-world luminaries. Definitely worth a trip to the local theatre. “Jean-Michel Basquiat: the radiant child” will open at Film Forum on July 21.Cannot be reprinted without permission from site owner...
There’s a new Basquiat documentary, this time made by Tamra Davis, a filmmaker who was friends with the New York artist and has earned her stripes directing TV series (“My Name is Earl,” “Ugly Betty”), music videos and the occasional feature film (“Half-Baked” and “Billy Madison”). In “Basquiat: The Radiant Child” Davis chronicles the classic tale of the rise and fall of a one-of-a-kind individual along a pretty straightforward timeline except that she introduces never-before-seen interview footage of Basquiat with commentary from friends and art-world luminaries. Definitely worth a trip to the local theatre. “Jean-Michel Basquiat: the radiant child” will open at Film Forum on July 21.Cannot be reprinted without permission from site owner...
- 7/14/2010
- by Screen Comment
- Screen Comment
It took a while, but finally the complete and final 2010 Black Harvest Film Festival in Chicago has been announced. Over 40 movies in every category from feature film to shorts, documentaries, dramas (such as Bilal’s Stand pictured), comedies and everything else in between. All the films will be screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago located at 164 N. State St in the heart of downtown Chicago.
Opening night is Friday August 6th and the festival continues throughout the month until Thursday Sept. 2 with a special advance screening of Tanya Hamilton’s Night Captures Us with Ms. Hamilton present. Of course I will be there too on most nights, so if you ever had the desire to punch me out for any of my articles on S & A now here’s your chance. (Not that I encourage it though…)
The complete list below:
The Gene Siskel Film Center welcomes...
Opening night is Friday August 6th and the festival continues throughout the month until Thursday Sept. 2 with a special advance screening of Tanya Hamilton’s Night Captures Us with Ms. Hamilton present. Of course I will be there too on most nights, so if you ever had the desire to punch me out for any of my articles on S & A now here’s your chance. (Not that I encourage it though…)
The complete list below:
The Gene Siskel Film Center welcomes...
- 7/6/2010
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
It was just confirmed today that Tamra Davis’ documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child about the pioneering and tragically self destructive artist, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this winter, will be screened at this year’s Black Harvest Film Festival in Chicago (starting on Aug. 6) before its theatrical run. Here’s the trailer for the film:
Also making it’s world premiere at the festival is Chicago filmmaker and TV producer Beverly Price’s documentary India of K Town about the unique friendship between India Meadows, a young woman who’s lived a rough and tragic life, and acclaimed fashion designer Barbara Bates. “K-Town” by the way is a local slang expression for a section of the West side of Chicago in which all the street names begin with the letter “K”. Here’s the trailer for that film:...
Also making it’s world premiere at the festival is Chicago filmmaker and TV producer Beverly Price’s documentary India of K Town about the unique friendship between India Meadows, a young woman who’s lived a rough and tragic life, and acclaimed fashion designer Barbara Bates. “K-Town” by the way is a local slang expression for a section of the West side of Chicago in which all the street names begin with the letter “K”. Here’s the trailer for that film:...
- 6/10/2010
- by Sergio
- ShadowAndAct
Compared with last year, Fortissmo Films come packing with only a single title, but that doesn't mean their sales agent won't be spending pretty much the entire festival from their rented office balcony. They signed a fairly ambitious deal with Fox - first time I've heard of a major studio outputting their titles to a films sales company of this nature and they've got one receiving a world preem at the festival in Sergei Loznitsa's My Joy. - Compared with last year, Fortissmo Films come packing with only a single title, but that doesn't mean their sales agent won't be spending pretty much the entire festival from their rented office balcony. They signed a fairly ambitious deal with Fox - first time I've heard of a major studio outputting their titles to a films sales company of this nature and they've got one receiving a world preem at the...
- 5/12/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
Compared with last year, Fortissmo Films come packing with only a single title, but that doesn't mean their sales agent won't be spending pretty much the entire festival from their rented office balcony. They signed a fairly ambitious deal with Fox - first time I've heard of a major studio outputting their titles to a films sales company of this nature and they've got one receiving a world preem at the festival in Sergei Loznitsa's My Joy (see pic) has the unique distinction of being from a first-timer – it's a rare feat to see a first timer in the Main Comp – so, we might be looking at a gem here folks. Among the hot titles on the sales side of things is Anh Hung Tran's Norwegian Wood – a pic that I was sure was going to land a spot in Cannes this year, but appears to still be in post prod.
- 5/12/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
A still from Tamra Davis's Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child. The movie had considerable hype coming out of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, but that buzz escalated to a fever pitch at a recent New York City screening of the film. Collective effervescence is the idea that an extraordinary perceived energy can emerge in a group setting. Think 100,000 football fans gathering in the Big House on a Saturday afternoon. Think 400,000 hippies dancing around in the mud at Woodstock. Similarly, on Tuesday night, in the hallowed halls of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art, a transcendent force could be felt as a crowd including singer Alicia Keys, V.F. photographer Annie Leibovitz, comedian Chris Rock, fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, musician Fab 5 Freddy, and pretty much every heavy hitter from the art world—Julian Schnabel, Cindy Sherman, Francesco Clemente, Jeffrey Deitch, and Peter Brant among them—gathered for a...
- 4/29/2010
- Vanity Fair
The 7th annual Calgary Underground Film Festival is ready to start off with a bang this year on April 12 and then continue through to April 18. Opening night will see the results of the festival’s wildly popular 48-hour Movie Making Challenge, where registered teams were given a genre, a prop and a line of dialogue; then sent out to craft perfect cinematic masterpieces in just two short days.
Then, the rest of the fest is dedicated to some of the wildest films made in both the fest’s home country of Canada and from around the world, including Indonesia, Serbia, the UK and the U.S.
If you’re attending the festival, there’s one incredibly fun documentary you need to see: Michael Petersen’s Eddies: The Documentary, about the craziest beer commercial-making competition in the world — that happens to take place right in Calgary every year! Petersen profiled several...
Then, the rest of the fest is dedicated to some of the wildest films made in both the fest’s home country of Canada and from around the world, including Indonesia, Serbia, the UK and the U.S.
If you’re attending the festival, there’s one incredibly fun documentary you need to see: Michael Petersen’s Eddies: The Documentary, about the craziest beer commercial-making competition in the world — that happens to take place right in Calgary every year! Petersen profiled several...
- 4/7/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
It might have been announced just today, but this deal was probably completed several weeks back, Arthouse Films (small NYC-based distributor of docu films) has picked up the rights to Tamra Davis’s film Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child. Arthouse plans a summer release, probably right after Julian Schnabel preems Miral in Cannes. - It might have been announced just today, but this deal was probably completed several weeks back, Arthouse Films (small NYC-based distributor of docu films) has picked up the rights to Tamra Davis’s film Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child. Arthouse plans a summer release, probably right after Julian Schnabel preems Miral in Cannes. The Sundance premiered film on the artist, was actually filmed two decades back. Davis (as you can grasp from the trailer below) was on the camera lense end of an interview with the artist, a couple of years before his death -...
- 3/24/2010
- IONCINEMA.com
Celebrating its 40th anniversary, New York's Film Forum has announced its summer 2010 slate, which includes Dover Kosashvili's "Anton Chekov's The Duel," Jessica Oreck's "Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo," Emmanuel Laurent's "Two In The Wave," Johan Grimonprez's "Double Take," Kate Davis & David Heilbroner's "Stonewall Uprising," Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio's "Alamar," Vikram Jayanti's "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector," Tamra Davis's "Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child," Marco Amenta's "The Sicilian Girl," and ...
- 3/11/2010
- Indiewire
It screened at Sundance last month, and will next screen at SXSW next month; titled Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, and directed by Tamra Davis, the documentary features never-before seen footage of the prolific artist painting, talking about his art, and life, in the two years prior to his death in 1988.
I’m sure I’ll get to see it sooner than later, living in New York City!
I’m sure I’ll get to see it sooner than later, living in New York City!
- 2/26/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
Less than a week worth of recovering from the Sundance Film Festival, and we are already looking forward to our next, big film fest coverage. That would be the South by Southwest Film Festival held annually in Austin, Texas. Last year, Scott and I brought you all kinds of coverage from the Lone Star State, and this year doesn’t look to be much different.
With that, the announcement came last night of the feature films that will be playing at the SXSW Film Festival. Previous announcement were already made about films like Cold Weather, Electra Luxx, Hubble 3D, Lemmy, Saturday Night, and The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights making their debut. Kick-ass was recently announced as the opening night film, as well.
Among the other films being presented this year are some Sundance darlings, a few, highly anticipated premieres, and MacGruber.
Check out the full list...
With that, the announcement came last night of the feature films that will be playing at the SXSW Film Festival. Previous announcement were already made about films like Cold Weather, Electra Luxx, Hubble 3D, Lemmy, Saturday Night, and The White Stripes: Under Great White Northern Lights making their debut. Kick-ass was recently announced as the opening night film, as well.
Among the other films being presented this year are some Sundance darlings, a few, highly anticipated premieres, and MacGruber.
Check out the full list...
- 2/4/2010
- by Kirk
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Late yesterday the SXSW Fim Festival, which runs from March 12-20 in Austin, TX, announced the full lineup of films that will be screening at this year’s event. And baby, it’s quite a list. Mixing big name films with intimate indie gems, the sheer number of films and the vast array of talented filmmakers is sure to be a hit with attendees and critics alike.
This lineup includes premieres of studio films such as Universal’s MacGruber, Lionsgate’s teen superhero actioneer Kick-Ass and smaller films like Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, Michel Gondry’s The Thorn in the Heart and Steven Soderbergh’s And Everything Is Going Fine. With so many films to watch, it will be very difficult to find time to seem them all during the events nine days. But hell, we’re going to try.
For more on...
This lineup includes premieres of studio films such as Universal’s MacGruber, Lionsgate’s teen superhero actioneer Kick-Ass and smaller films like Tim Blake Nelson’s Leaves of Grass, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs, Michel Gondry’s The Thorn in the Heart and Steven Soderbergh’s And Everything Is Going Fine. With so many films to watch, it will be very difficult to find time to seem them all during the events nine days. But hell, we’re going to try.
For more on...
- 2/4/2010
- by Chris Ullrich
- The Flickcast
As I said in Toronto and again at the Hof Flm Festival, until there is parity between male and female directors I will continue to look at women directors. I heard the other day that the number of women directors is actually decreasing in the television world.
Here are some quick facts on Sundance this year:
If you include shorts- 51 women directors are represented at Sundance.
In the Premiere section, out of 16 films 7 have women directors.
John Cooper, Director, Sundance Film Festival, brought it to my attention that "Low Budget is dominated by the boys still but that is changing with Lynn Shelton, Katie Aselton etc stepping up. Even there, many have women producers. I have a hunch in the indie creative producer world women dominate. Like I said, that is just a hunch I have never done a study."
Sundance Film Festival is showing approximately 115 features. Of those 25 (20%) are...
Here are some quick facts on Sundance this year:
If you include shorts- 51 women directors are represented at Sundance.
In the Premiere section, out of 16 films 7 have women directors.
John Cooper, Director, Sundance Film Festival, brought it to my attention that "Low Budget is dominated by the boys still but that is changing with Lynn Shelton, Katie Aselton etc stepping up. Even there, many have women producers. I have a hunch in the indie creative producer world women dominate. Like I said, that is just a hunch I have never done a study."
Sundance Film Festival is showing approximately 115 features. Of those 25 (20%) are...
- 1/15/2010
- by Sydney
- Sydney's Buzz
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