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Late in filmmaker Gregory Nava’s harrowing 1983 immigration drama El Norte, Guatemalan refugee Rosa (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez) lays ailing in a Los Angeles hospital, ravaged by a fatal case of typhus acquired crawling through the rat-infested sewers underneath the Mexican-American border. Sadly resigned to her own death, she turns to her equally ill-fated brother Enrique (David Villalpando) to ask: “When will we find a home, Enrique? Maybe when we die?”–a blunt, heartbreaking moment among many.

But even setting aside the Guatemalan Civil War whose harsh realities provide El Norte its backdrop so too could Rosa’s mournful question could just as easily be asked in relation to the state of independent film in the Americas by the time of El Norte’s world premiere at the 1983 edition of the Telluride Film Festival.

After spending the bulk of the 1970s drinking and producing a series of increasingly unreleasable masterpieces, indie film pioneer John Cassavetes was,...

Prime Video is gearing up for Prime Day with some exciting deals, and you don’t have to wait until the big day to score major discounts. Starting October 7, Prime members can save up to 50% on a selection of movies and TV shows, making it a perfect opportunity to build up your digital media library without breaking the bank. Whether you’re looking to buy or rent, there are plenty of options to explore, and the savings are significant. The best part? You don’t have to keep checking for price drops yourself. If a movie you’re eyeing is still too expensive, services like CheapCharts make it easy to track prices. Just add your desired titles to their wishlist, and they’ll notify you when the price goes down. Among the discounted titles are Harold and the Purple Crayon for just $8.99 and the original Joker movie at $6.99. There are other options like Fall Guy,...

Jeremy O. Harris wants his upcoming feature “Erupcja” to inspire rising filmmakers — and perhaps inspire change among distributors.

The Tony winner told Variety that he hopes his secret film “Erupcja” (Polish for “eruption”) with director Pete Ohs could help resurrect the arthouse “micro-budget” films of decades past.

“I’m hoping that what comes from this is a lot more young filmmakers feeling less pressure to have their first, second, third, fourth, fifth feature be the $10 million, $20 million, $30 juggernaut they want with every person that’s like, the most famous person online,” Harris said. “And maybe, you know, something that’s like, truly honest, fun, and unique to them, that’s smaller, that maybe takes a really brave, exciting distributor to jump onto.”

Of course, this one has a pretty famous person online: Charli Xcx co-stars with Harris. The two also co-produce.

Harris added, “There’s so much pressure on everyone,...

It took Richard Shepard years to get out of “movie jail” after he made “The Linguini Incident,” the nearly-forgotten 1991 crime comedy starring David Bowie and Rosanna Arquette. But now the film is getting a second chance, with a series of screenings and an upcoming Blu-ray release.

Just about everything went wrong with the production that could go wrong, Shepard recalls. “I made this movie when I was 25 — and I was no genius at 25,” admits the director, who went on to helm features including “The Perfection” as well as TV series like Lena Dunham’s HBO comedy “Girls.”

Unlike Dunham, who was “in complete control of her artistic self” at that age, “I was not,” says Shepard.

But when his original co-producer, Sarah Jackson, suggested he try to rerelease a director’s cut of the scrappy indie caper about two restaurant employees who decide to rob their bosses, Shepard jumped at...

Exclusive: Celebrating his 50th year as an indie filmmaker and distributor, Jeff Lipsky is prepping the release of his eighth feature as director. Goldilocks and the Two Bears is due to open domestically via Glass Half Full Media in July for a limited theatrical run, followed by a general release in late summer/early fall. Check out an exclusive clip above.

Goldilocks introduces a trio of new actors: Claire Milligan, Serra Naiman and Bryan Mittelstadt. It’s directed and written by Lipsky, produced by longtime collaborator Nick Athas and shot by Zak Ray with production sound mixed by Caleb Mose (O.J.: Made in America).

Filmed entirely in Las Vegas, the movie centers on a man and a woman – travelers who’ve all but given up on futures that might have been glorious. When a stranger enters their midst, a woman on the run from her own demons, the...

January is one of the biggest months of the year for independent film, with hundreds of film critics descending upon the Sundance Film Festival to discover the works of up-and-coming directors. But for those of us who can’t make the trek to Park City, Utah, there are plenty of independent movies to enjoy from the comfort of our homes.

This month, there’s a particularly big selection of independent classics to choose from on streaming, particularly if you’re subscribed to the Criterion Channel. In celebration of the approaching festival, Criterion is hosting a massive selection of past Sundance favorites, including the 1968 experimental documentary “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One.” Other favorites in the selection include “Blood Simple,” “Stranger Than Paradise,” “The Times of Harvey Milk,” “Desert Hearts,” “Working Girls,” “Paris Is Burning,” “Mississippi Masala,” “Slacker,” “Hoop Dreams,” and “The Doom Generation.” Other major indie favorites on the streamer this January include...

Two years in, the Academy Film Museum is rolling full steam ahead with a new programming director and a packed slate of upcoming films for the winter season. On Dec. 10, Christopher Nolan will present the classic Western “Shane” on its 70th anniversary and speak about the film for the George Stevens Lecture.

Other spotlight programs include:

A retrospective film series on “Parasite” actor Song Kang-ho in-person for four conversations starting Dec. 7 A 10th anniversary screening of “12 Years a Slave” on Feb. 25 with Steve McQueen. “3D-cember” with screenings like “Jaws” and “Frozen” in 3D “Works of Enduring Importance: 35 Years of the National Film Registry” starting Dec. 14 “Beware the Elements! Natural Disasters on Film” starting Jan. 4 A screening of 1972’s “Buck and the Preacher” will pay tribute to Harry Belafonte “Echoes of Africia” presents African stories on film from Feb. 1 to Feb. 9

K.J. Relth-Miller just took over as Director of Film...

Festival completes its 2023 programme.

Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has unveiled the juries for its 27th edition, with jurors including Danish star Trine Dyrholm, and John Altman, who has worked on the music for Titanic, Life Of Brian and No Time To Die.

Jury head Dyrholm and English composer Altman are on the official selection competition jury, alongside filmmakers Xie Fei from China, Hilmar Oddson from Iceland, and Inna Sahakyan from Armenia.

The first feature competition jury consists of Mexican producer Nicolas Celis of Pimienta Films, who heads that jury, alongside Diana Ilijine, former Filmfest Munchen director; Chinese filmmaker Ran Huang...

Original editions of one of the most highly valued records in hip-hop will be available to the public again next month when the estate of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat releases 50 copies of Beat Bop, a collaboration between rappers Rammellzee and K-Rob, which features Basquiat’s artwork on the cover. Some original copies have sold for upward of $100,000. The copies available from the artist’s estate, however, will go for $4,000 each and be available via Phillips’ Dropshop starting next Thursday.

Basquiat produced the 10-minute track and released it in 1983. The cover art...

After working as a translator for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, Donya (Anaita Wali Zada) is now staking out a new life in Fremont, California. Donya is exiled from her home and haunted by memories of those she left behind, and Babak Jalali’s wryly melancholic film watches her navigate the eponymous city as she tries to find a new place in the world.

Given Fremont’s monochrome photography and monotone punchlines, the comparisons that the film has drawn to the work of Jim Jarmusch are understandable. Jarmusch has described his 1984 sophomore feature Stranger Than Paradise as looking at America “through a foreigner’s eyes,” which is also the lens through which Jalali views the world of this film. Fremont is rendered as a strange and alienating place but one whose humdrum routines are alive with quirks and curiosities for those whose senses haven’t been dulled by familiarity.

A real-life Afghan refugee,...

John Lurie is putting away his watercolors.

The actor, musician and painter revealed that his show Painting with John will end with its third season on HBO.

The series, which is part meditative tutorial and part fireside chat, sees Lurie shares his philosophical thoughts while honing his watercolor techniques.

Lurie revealed the news on social media, saying that he is “sad about it, but it is a miracle that it ever happened at all”.

The series launched in January 2021, the second season premiered in February 2022 and the third season launched in June 2023.

Lurie, who co-founded the jazz ensemble Lounge Lizards, has starred in films including Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law and was behind the Grammy nominated soundtrack for Get Shorty. He is also well known for Fishing with John, a cult series that aired on IFC and Bravo in the early 90s.

Written and directed by Lurie, who also did the music,...

New York Film Festival stalwart Jim Jarmusch is the 61st New York Film Festival poster designer Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Film at Lincoln Center has announced that Jim Jarmusch is the designer of the 61st New York Film Festival poster with an “image of film star Yûzô Kayama.” Jim’s films that have screened at the New York Film Festival are Stranger Than Paradise (1984); Down By Law; ]Mystery Train (1989); Night On Earth (1991); Dead Man (1999); Broken Flowers (2005); Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), and Gimme Danger and Paterson (2016). Earlier it was announced that Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, a portrait of Elvis Presley’s (Jacob Elordi) wife, born Priscilla Ann Wagner (Cailee Spaeny) will be the Centerpiece selection of the festival. Todd Haynes’s May December, starring Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, and Charles Melton will be the Opening Night selection and Michael Mann’s...

The first time Jim Jarmusch came to Cannes was with his sophomore film Stranger Than Paradise, which played the Quinzaine in 1984. “We all shared one apartment that had no hot water, that was up the hill,” he recalls. “One day I had to be on TV and there was no water, so I had to shave with leftover tea.” Those days are long gone; Jarmusch is a fixture on the Croisette these days, and even had the dubious pleasure of opening it in 2019 with his Bill Murray-starring zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die.

This year he arrived at the festival with a piece for Cannes Classics called The Return to Reason, a work-in-progress restoration of four films by American artist Man Ray shot in Paris during the early 1920s. Featuring a live soundtrack by SQÜRL, the band Jarmusch formed with Carter Logan in 2009, it is essentially a concert movie...

Jim Jarmusch hopes his latest project — a soundtrack composed with his SQÜRL bandmate Carter Logan for a new restoration of Man Ray silent films — induces in viewers a “psilocybin-inspired” experience.

The “Only Lovers Left Alive” and “Stranger Than Paradise” filmmaker and musician, along with Logan, spoke exclusively with IndieWire about the screening of four early-1900s black-and-white shorts from Dadaist pioneer Man Ray hitting Cannes Classics tonight: “Return to Reason,” “Emak-Bakia,” “The Starfish,” and “The Mysteries of the Chateau of Dice.”

Together, Jarmusch and Logan improvised an original score, a tripped-out sonic soup of distorted guitars and loopy feedback, now recorded to accompany the films. The quartet of shorts holds up a distorted mirror to human sexuality as Jarmusch and Logan’s eerie music envelops the Freudian dreamscape — and while you might be tempted to drop a tab of acid or mushroom cap or two for the viewing, Jarmusch says that’s not necessary,...

Sqürl is the musical outfit featuring legendary indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch alongside Carter Logan, a co-producer on Jarmusch’s recent movies. After releasing a series of soundtracks and EPs, the duo have just unveiled their first proper full-length studio album, Silver Haze.

Music has been an integral part of Jarmusch’s movies throughout his career, starting with his groundbreaking ’80s films Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law, and continuing in the ’90s with Dead Man and Ghost Dog. For his recent films, he and Logan have teamed up to compose the scores.

Now, the pair have unveiled Silver Haze, a guest-filled album that was just released via Sacred Bones Records. Among the notable contributors are Marc Ribot, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Anika.

Consequence caught up with Jarmusch and Logan to discuss the new album, along with its various guest musicians. During the conversation, the pair also talked about their process of scoring movies,...

Sqürl is the musical outfit featuring legendary indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch alongside Carter Logan, a co-producer on Jarmusch’s recent movies. After releasing a series of soundtracks and EPs, the duo have just unveiled their first proper full-length studio album, Silver Haze.

Music has been an integral part of Jarmusch’s movies throughout his career, starting with his groundbreaking ’80s films Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law, and continuing in the ’90s with Dead Man and Ghost Dog. For his recent films, he and Logan have teamed up to compose the scores.

Now, the pair have unveiled Silver Haze, a guest-filled album that was just released via Sacred Bones Records. Among the notable contributors are Marc Ribot, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Anika.

Consequence caught up with Jarmusch and Logan to discuss the new album, along with its various guest musicians. During the conversation, the pair also talked about their process of scoring movies,...

Never mind the Blues-, here are the Techno Brothers, and they are ready to conquer Japan. The music band in the film pronounced as a trio of geniuses on a par with Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, The Beatles, Miles Davis and Bob Dylan by their agent Himuro (Asuna Yanagi), consists of real life Watanabe brothers (Hirobumi and Yuji) and Kurosaki Takanori, dressed up as if they came out of the Kraftwerk impersonators' competition. In case anyone wonders, yes – they are dressed in the signature red shirts and black ties, and they perform long electronic numbers in the most unlikely of places such as a recreation park and a green house to a very small, mostly unwilling audience.

“Techno Brothers” is screening at Udine Far East Film Festival

There are evident film influences from the 1990s in the “Techno Brothers”, from Jim Jarmusch's “Stranger Than Paradise”, the above indicated Jon Landis musical hit,...

Jim Jarmusch has been an independent film lynchpin since “Stranger Than Paradise” in 1984. Since then, he has released everything from hip-hop martial arts movies to vampire romances while maintaining his fiercely independent spirit and distinctive voice. But even he worries that artists face an increasingly uninhabitable landscape.

In an interview with The Guardian to promote his new album “Silver Haze,” Jarmusch expressed serious concerns about the lack of sustainable business models for independent filmmakers.

“The film industry is kind of gone,” Jarmusch said. “It sucks. It’s gotten worse. The kind of split-rights deals – an equal 50-50 shared profits, after costs, with financiers – that I used to be able to do with my films… if you even suggested that now, you would be laughed out of the fucking building.”

Jarmusch admitted that his famously uncompromising creative process is increasingly incompatible with the current economic environment that filmmakers have to work in.

Misfits and Outlaws: Jim Jarmusch's Cinema of Outsiders is now showing on Mubi in many countries.The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.In Permanent Vacation (1980)—Jim Jarmusch’s underseen, undercooked, wholly unpolished first feature—Aloysius “Christopher” Parker (Chris Parker), a disaffected young drifter who recalls the ’50s Jazz-Age hipster and presages the ’90s slacker, wanders around a bombed-out Manhattan without an agenda. He dances in his apartment as his indifferent girlfriend smokes out the window. He talks to various strangers: a concessions attendant at a repertory house, a streetwise saxophone player, a disturbed man who believes he’s in a war zone. Eventually, he steals a car and uses the profits to board a steamer ship to Paris, content to roam as if he’s a tourist on a… well, you know.It's almost beside...

Though Jim Jarmusch hasn’t entirely fallen off the map––Covid knocked about a year from everybody’s production timelines, and there is a new album from his excellent band SQÜRL coming soon––The Dead Don’t Die sure suggested a winding-down. (Or maybe its “fuck everything” vibe less than a year before the world stopped really compounded the sense.) But the longer-than-usual gap between features may be reaching its close: The Playlist talked with him at this year’s Overlook Film Festival, where he revealed a shoot is likely to begin later this year.

If details are scant, new Jarmusch is what it is, so we’ll take such crumbs: he calls it “a funny and sad film,” one so reliant on having “both woven in” that it may skirt a musical component altogether, lest a soundtrack “move it too much one way.” One might point to the concept of dramedy,...

After years of paying the bills with commercial gigs and extra work, by the mid ’80s, Robert Townsend was making a decent living performing in comedy clubs and appearing in small roles in big movies like “A Soldier’s Story,” “American Flyers,” and Walter Hill’s action-musical extravaganza “Streets of Fire.” Most of his auditions, however, were still for stereotypical roles as pimps, slaves, and gangbangers; his agent told him that Hollywood only made one decent Black film a year, and “A Soldier’s Story” was it for 1984.

Frustrated by the lack of opportunities, Townsend and Keenan Ivory Wayans created their own by co-writing the movie industry satire “Hollywood Shuffle,” which Townsend directed and self-financed on savings and credit cards. The 1987 comedy —now part of the Criterion Collection — stands alongside “Stranger Than Paradise,” “She’s Gotta Have It,” and “sex, lies, and videotape” as a touchstone of the ’80s independent film movement, and...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Japan Society

A series celebrating Seijun Suzuki’s centennial begins with imported 35mm prints.

Roxy Cinema

35mm showings of Happiness continue; a Sara Driver series brings Stranger Than Paradise and Sleepwalk on 35mm, as well as Boom for Real.

Museum of Modern Art

A series on Claudia Cardinale begins, including Rocco and His Brothers this Saturday.

Film Forum

Dino Risi’s Una Vita Difficile has begun playing in a 4K restoration, while Howl’s Moving Castle screens on Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

A series on awards-snubbed films continues with Sirk, Cukor, and The Night of the Hunter.

IFC Center

28 Days Later, The Big Lebowski, Eraserhead, The Witches, and Psycho play.

The post NYC Weekend Watch: Seijun Suzuki, Sara Driver, Claudia Cardinale & More first appeared on The Film Stage.

Sara Driver retrospective at the Roxy Cinema in New York

The Roxy Cinema in New York this week will be screening with discussions Sara Driver’s You Are Not I with Claire Denis’ Keep It For Yourself, Sleepwalk, When Pigs Fly, Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years Of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Sara will introduce with Lewie Kloster and Noah Kloster their short Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver and Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise. Alexis Adler and Al Diaz will join Sara following Boom For Real. George Franju’s Judex has been picked by Sara to screen tonight to complement her retrospective On the Bowery: Lost and Found Films of Sara Driver.

Sara Driver with Anne-Katrin Titze: “Sleepwalk is very influenced by Jacques Rivette …”

In the second instalment of my conversation with Sara Driver on Zoom before the 50th anniversary edition of New Directors/New Films in 2021, we discussed...

Independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch’s influence can be easily spotted in writer-director Babak Jalali’s latest film, Fremont, a wry, droll, observational drama. From its shimmering, luminous black-and-white photography, to its focus on marginal, outsider characters, and its casual, unhurried pacing, Fremont feels like, if not like an early, lost work of Jarmusch’s, then certainly one of his proteges eager to adopt Jarmusch’s minimalist film style to new subject matter undreamed of by Jarmusch himself. Co-written with Carolina Cavalli, Fremont centers on Donya (Anaita Wali Zada), an Afghan translator and refugee relatively new to the United States, and the small, not quite thriving Afghan community housed on a city block in Fremont, a city of over...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Coined by the film historian and critic B. Ruby Rich in 1992 to give voice to the explosion in queer film she was witnessing on the burgeoning film festival circuit, the New Queer Cinema’s influence on independent film cannot be overstated. The ‘80s saw films like Jim Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” explode the idea of what film could be, in turn inspiring a new generation of radical queer filmmakers to pick up the camera and crack the whole thing wide open.

As Hollywood churned out blockbusters like “Terminator 2” and “Jurassic Park,” anyone paying attention could see that the real fun was being had way below budget. Sundance was still a new little gathering in Park City, where someone fresh out of film school could show a film and meet likeminded artists. Throughout the decade, Sundance gradually established itself as the...

American filmmaker Jim Jarmusch has directed the new music video for Cat Power‘s version of The Pogues’ “A Pair of Brown Eyes” (see below) from her new album Covers, which is currently out on Domino Records.

A director widely considered one of the film industry’s most original and unique minds, Jarmusch’s filmography includes acknowledged classics such as “Down By Law,” “Stranger Than Paradise,” “Night On Earth,” and the Forest Whitaker action pic “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.” It’s also worth mentioning Jarmusch’s musical reach is similarly pathbreaking, having worked with luminaries Tom Waits, Neil Young, RZA, Gza, Joe Strummer, Iggy Pop, and more.

Continue reading Jim Jarmusch Directs Cat Power’s New “A Pair Of Brown Eyes” Music Video at The Playlist.

In 1984 John Lurie had three films at Cannes but couldn’t afford a plane ticket. For a few indelible moments in Wim Wender’s Paris, Texas, as a high-end pimp he moves through the shadows of a brothel in a purple suit. He composed a nocturnal jazz score for Bette Gordon’s Variety. And in Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise the world first got a load of his austere, trickster visage. For that film he also created a soundtrack first conceived on cocktail napkins and originally recorded with two handheld tape recorders. Stranger Than Paradise would take home the Caméra d’Or; Paris, Texas won the Palme d’Or. In Lurie’s memoir The History of Bones, published last August, he claims Jarmusch was supposed to take him to Cannes but took his girlfriend instead. This anecdote feels perfectly illustrative of Lurie’s career. Pervasively influential, a creative force of various fields,...

Get ready to once again be hypnotized by John Lurie’s soothing way of working with watercolors, because HBO has renewed “Painting With John” for a second season, the pay TV channel said Tuesday.

Per the official description for the unscripted series, which premiered in January: Season one of “Painting With John” featured musician, actor, director and painter John Lurie ensconced at his worktable, honing his intricate watercolor techniques and sharing reflections on what he’s learned about life. Combining images of Lurie’s paintings, original music and irreverent point of view on tapping into your childlike artist side, his overall ambivalence toward fame, and more, the series serves as a reminder to prioritize a little time every day for creativity, fun and a bit of mischief.

“There’s something so hypnotic and captivating about John’s style,” Nina Rosenstein, executive vice president of HBO Programming, said in a statement accompanying the renewal news.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Bertrand Mandico's After Blue (Paradis sale).The lineup for the 2021 Locarno International Film Festival includes Piazza Grande screenings of Michael Mann's Heat and Gaspar Noé's Vortex, and the latest by by Bertrand Mandico, Axelle Ropert, Abel Ferrara, Salomé Lamas and more.The great filmmaker and actor Robert Downey Sr. has passed on at age 85. His incredible filmography includes Babo 73 (1964), Sweet Smell of Sex (1965), Chafed Elbows (1966), No More Excuses (1968), Putney Swope (1969), Pound (1970), and Greaser's Palace (1972).In an interview on the Armchair Expert podcast, Quentin Tarantino announced that he has purchased Los Angeles' Vista Theatre, emphasizing that though the theatre will screen both new and old movies, it will be "only film [...] the best prints." Screenwriter and filmmaker Clare Peploe has died. Though best known for her screenplays for Bernardo Bertolucci's Besieged and La Luna,...

After a hiatus as theaters in New York City and beyond closed their doors during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, there’s a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings taking place.

Quad Cinema

Eyes Wide Shut, Funny Girl, and Ghostbusters play as part the series “A New York State of Mind.”

Listen to Bilge Ebiri discuss Stanley Kubrick’s final film on The B-Side.

Paris Theater

A Charlie Kaufman retrospective is underway through June 1, while A Color Purple plays on Sunday with Michael Koresky in person.

Film Forum

The new 4K restorations of Frederico Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Jacques Deray’s La Piscine are playing daily.

Roxy Cinema

Stranger Than Paradise plays on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Film at Lincoln Center

World of Wong Kar Wai,...

A young man looking for vengeance and a young woman looking for a new start cross paths in New York City and become outcast avengers in the new movie Funny Face. Written and directed by Tim Sutton, Funny Face is now available on Digital platforms via Gravitas Ventures, and as part of our Indie Horror Month celebration on Daily Dead, we caught up with Sutton in a new Q&a feature to discuss making his "DIY superhero origin story," including tackling the timely issue of gentrification in Brooklyn, being influenced by New York City movies such as Taxi Driver, and working with a cast that includes Cheers alums Dan Hedaya and Rhea Perlman.

Thanks for taking the time to answer questions for us, Tim, and congratulations on your new movie, Funny Face! How and when did you first come up with the idea for this film?

Tim Sutton: I’ve...

Exclusive: Veteran indie executive and filmmaker Jeff Lipsky is hooking up with Kino Lorber to launch The Jeff Lipsky Collection on growing streaming service Kino Now. The collection, which becomes available on March 5, will include five out of seven of Lipsky’s directing efforts dating from 2006-2019. Other filmmakers who are similarly represented with Kino Now Auteur Collections include Jean-Luc Godard, Lina Wertmüller, Derek Jarman, István Szabó and F.W. Murnau.

On the Lipsky roster are Flannel Pajamas (2006), a relationship story co-starring Julianne Nicholson and Justin Kirk; family drama Twelve Thirty (2011), starring Jonathan Groff; surreal comedy Molly’s Theory Of Relativity (2013) with Sophia Takal and Lawrence Michael Levine; character study Mad Women (2015), co-starring Reed Birney and Jamie Harrold; and Holocaust-themed family drama The Last (2019), starring Rebecca Schull. Lipsky hopes to add his first film, 1997’s The End, to the collection as soon as its restoration is complete.

Says Lipsky, “Being inducted...

The award celebrates a filmmaker who has created a ”authentic, credible and emotionally striking visual language”.

Todd Haynes and Jim Jarmusch were among the friends and collaborators who joined the Rotterdam International Film Festival’s online tribute to Kelly Reichhardt as she received its fledgling Robby Müller award last week.

In its second edition, the prize was launched last year in memory of late Dutch cinematographer Müller, whose credits included Paris, Texas, Breaking The Waves and numerous collaborations with Jarmusch, including Mystery Train, Dead Man and Coffee And Cigarettes.

It celebrates a director of photography, filmmaker or visual artist who...

A handyman cleaning up an empty house falls for a ‘spectral agent’ sent from the afterlife to scare away new residents

Chock full of delightful narrative surprises, imaginative genre tweaks, and warming performances from its two leads, this low-budget romcom-horror story is worth seeking out. Director Adam Stovall, who co-wrote the script with the film’s star MacLeod Andrews, makes an impressive feature debut with an obviously teensy budget. It’s smartly deployed to cover essentially one set, some theatrical makeup and kit for some fetching black-and-white cinematography that simultaneously recalls vintage-era spooky movies of the 30s as well as too-cool-for-school early Jim Jarmusch films such as Stranger Than Paradise.

Andrews’ protagonist Jack is a handyman who works for a property management company. His job is to check over houses for damage and do some light cleaning after tenants move out. However, it looks as if the former residents of an ordinary looking,...

Midway through the first episode of his new show, Painting With John, John Lurie stands on the porch of his home in the Caribbean, gazing at a serene purplish-pink sunset. “I felt I should I use this beautiful moment to say something poetic, but I don’t have anything. So just imagine I’m saying something poetic,” he says, addressing the viewer. Then, after a beat, “Why put it all on me? There’s a sunset. You think of something poetic.”

The sequence captures a quintessential Lurie-an mood, in which gruff,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe death of the great John le Carré reminds us of the power of secrets—the oldest of narrative devices. Thankfully, there’s a brand new festival launching, focused entirely on secrets. Spyflix will showcase stories from classic espionage and hacking adventures to thrillers, investigative documentaries, true crime, and detective stories. Spyflix is accepting submissions (for awards with cash prizes) now through February 28th, 2021, and will start screenings April 18th, 2021.The Sundance Film Festival has announced its 2021 lineup, which includes the latest Sion Sono, Theo Anthony, Christopher Makoto Yogi, and Ana Vatz.The country submissions for International Feature Film at the 2021 Academy Awards—currently scheduled for April next year—are keeping us on our toes. Beginning, which will be coming to Mubi next year, is Georgia's submission, and Jallikattu, a bold genre favorite from our Toronto coverage last year,...

Thirty years after his first unscripted TV series aired, John Lurie is getting another.

HBO will debut “Painting With John,” a new series directed by, written by and starring Lurie, Jan. 22. Each of the new show’s six episodes will feature the artist, musician and actor painting watercolors and reflecting on life. Adam McKay and Todd Schulman of Hyperobject Industries will serve as executive producers. The series is photographed and edited by Erik Mockus.

Lurie had previously teased that he was working on a new TV project, writing on Twitter last year, “We have started shooting Painting With John. Whenever the painting or talking is going poorly, I say – Let’s go outside and shoot another elephant shot. So we do -“

We have started shooting Painting With John. Whenever the painting or talking is going poorly, I say – Let's go outside and shoot another elephant shot.

So we do – pic.

As her new film My Zoe opens, the actor-director recalls being enchanted by Jarmusch, Godard and Chéreau – and dancing rock’n’roll at the Paris Boum Boum

When I was a teenager I was very much into films – a little bit of music maybe, but mostly films. I went to the cinema a lot. I really liked older stuff like Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life, and my dad was a big admirer of John Cassavetes, so I was a fan of A Woman Under the Influence. But I really remember being blown away by [Francis Ford Coppola’s] Rumble Fish. It’s funny: I’ve seen it since and I like it, but I wouldn’t say it was my favourite any more. But back then, I thought it was just really great: the music, the way they use black-and-white and colour. I used to listen to the soundtrack all the time,...

Like most film festivals this year, Locarno Film Festival will not be moving ahead as usual. However, they’ve found inventive ways to both celebrate filmmakers they’ve long admired and present films physically and digitally. After announcing a new initiative to support new films by Lucrecia Martel, Lisandro Alonso, Lav Diaz, Wang Bing, Miguel Gomes, and more, they’ve asked this class of talented directors to select their favorite films in Locarno history.

A Journey in the Festival’s History is devoted to Locarno’s 73-year history of showing the best in international cinema. Made up of twenty films, a selection will screen online for those in Switzerland as well as Mubi internationally. On August 5-15, they will also screen in person at Locarno’s theaters.

Lili Hinstin, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival, said, “It would be an impossible task to present a review of the history...

Films by Roberto Rossellini, Chantel Akerman and Marguerite Duras feature in selection.

The Locarno Film Festival has unveiled the selection of 20 classic film titles that will be showcased in its A Journey In The Festival’s History sidebar as part of its special hybrid edition running August 5 to 15.

The line-up is part of the festival’s ’Locarno 2020 – For the Future of Films’ edition which was created after it was forced to cancel its 73rd edition due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The titles have been selected by the directors taking part in its festival’s exceptional The Films After Tomorrow initiative...

High-profile filmmakers including Lucrecia Martel and Lav Diaz have contributed to a retrospective program for the Locarno Film Festival (August 5-15), selecting 20 titles from the event’s 74-year history that will have online and physical screenings next month.

Due to ongoing pandemic disruption Locarno shifted the majority of its festival online this year, though ten of the below list of titles will still have physical screenings in Switzerland. The entire program will be shown online for free in Switzerland by the fest, while it is partnering with streamer Mubi to stream the films outside of the country.

Ranging from 1948 (Locarno’s third edition) to 2018 (its 71st), the titles offer a broad insight into the fest’s history and are directed by filmmakers such as Roberto Rossellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jim Jarmusch, Michael Haneke, and Whit Stillman. The selectees are all participating in Locarno’s ‘The Films After Tomorrow’ initiative this year,...

The Locarno Film Festival has unveiled the selection of historic titles that will screen this year as part of the Swiss event's special edition amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Art-house classics ranging from Roberto Rossellini's 1948 drama Germany, Year Zero to Jim Jarmusch's 1984 breakthrough Stranger Than Paradise to Yolande Zauberman's French feature M, which premiered at Locarno in 2018, have been selected by directors taking part in Locarno's Films After Tomorrow section. The filmmakers picked twenty emblematic titles from Locarno's back catalog, which stretches from 1948 to 2019.

"It would be an impossible task to ...

The Locarno Film Festival has unveiled the selection of historic titles that will screen this year as part of the Swiss event's special edition amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Art-house classics ranging from Roberto Rossellini's 1948 drama Germany, Year Zero to Jim Jarmusch's 1984 breakthrough Stranger Than Paradise to Yolande Zauberman's French feature M, which premiered at Locarno in 2018, have been selected by directors taking part in Locarno's Films After Tomorrow section. The filmmakers picked twenty emblematic titles from Locarno's back catalog, which stretches from 1948 to 2019.

"It would be an impossible task to ...

Not considered a seminal year in Hollywood history, 1984 delivered an amazing number of iconic American films. Here’s a sampling of movies that still resonate today: “Beverly Hills Cop,” “The Karate Kid,” “Footloose,” “Purple Rain,” “The Terminator,” “Scarface,” “Romancing the Stone,” “Police Academy,” “This Is Spinal Tap,” “Stop Making Sense,” “Stranger Than Paradise,” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”

Four 1984 releases ended up with domestic grosses above $400 million (adjusted to 2020 values). Three led the weekend that year. The top two, “Ghostbusters” and “Gremlins,” in an unusual event, opened in wide release on the same day.

The third-ranked film, in its third week and after two weeks in the top spot, was “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.” Fourth in its second week was “Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.” “The Karate Kid” opened two weeks later. Five of 1984’s eight biggest hits opened within less than a month.

With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform. Parts of this article were published when “Good Time” premiered at Cannes.

Filmmaking duo Josh and Benny Safdie are quickly becoming some of the most celebrated American directors out there: “Uncut Gems” was the surprise hit of 2019, a dark and gritty Adam Sandler vehicle that transformed his oddball humor into a cinematic odyssey through the streets of New York’s diamond district. Now, with the movie continuing to raise its profile as one of Netflix’s most popular new releases, the Safdie brand has never been stronger: As with Robert Pattinson in “Good Time,” the Safdies have once again proven they can transform stars into naturalistic puddles of exasperation, real human faces for these anxiety-riddled times.

However, Safdie completists know that the...

One Shot is a series that seeks to find an essence of cinema history in one single image of a movie. Jim Jarmusch's Stranger Than Paradise (1984) is showing May 15 - June 14, 2020 in many countries in the series "Outlaws and Misfits: Jim Jarmusch's Cinema of Outsiders."“We can bet that this film will be a flop,” blurbed Jean Eustache about his fellow post-New-Wave underachiever and pal Luc Moullet’s Anatomy of a Relationship (1975), an early exercise in self-scrutiny coauthored by Moullet’s partner Antoinetta Pizzorno. “That’s the best for me: I’ll plunder it more easily.” In comparable fashion, a 1964 commercial flop made by one of the masters of both Eustache and Moullet, Jean-Luc Godard—who incidentally had helped to launch the careers of both of these disciples—was successfully plundered by Jim Jarmusch twenty years later in Stranger Than Paradise. More specifically, Jarmusch appropriated a black-on-white principle exploited...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe on-demand success of Trolls: World Tour, and subsequent comments made by NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell, has led to a significant development in the friction between studios and cinemas: AMC Theatres announced it will no longer play any Universal movies. The ongoing dispute speaks to the many changes likely to take place as response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Recommended VIEWINGThe Walker Art Center has made available more than 60 "in-depth portraits of directors, actors, writers, and producers who were celebrated in the Walker Cinema at pivotal moments in their careers." This abundant archive includes Bong Joon-ho, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Stan Brakhage, Julie Dash, and even Tom Hanks. Grasshopper's official trailer for Dan Sallitt's Fourteen, which stars Tallie Mehdel and Norma Kuhling as two long-time friends in New York. Read our review of the film here.

Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits Of Control will be available on Blu-ray December 10th From Arrow Academy

When it comes to American independent cinema, there s no one quite like Jim Jarmusch, the celebrated auteur behind such classics as Stranger Than Paradise and Only Lovers Left Alive. Eschewing his usual American landscapes in favor of a variety of locations throughout urban and rural Spain, his 2009 anti-thriller The Limits of Control remains one of his most alluring and multi-layered creations.

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An enigmatic loner arrives in Spain, instructed to make contact with a series of strangers in different locations throughout the country, each of whom provides a cryptic clue which propels him further towards his mysterious goal. But who is the Lone Man? Why is he here? And how does the recurring figure of an alluring femme fatale fit into the puzzle?

Boasting stunning cinematography by the award-winning Christopher Doyle (In the Mood for Love...

By Wally Adams

Fran Rubel is one of those figures in cinema that left an invisible impact behind the scenes and from multiple angles. Most people would think they never heard of her, but surprisingly very high numbers have partaken of her products, services or things influenced by her and her partner over the years. In concrete terms, she’s best known for making the original “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” movie which later spawned a more famous TV series. But there’s more to her legacy than that, to which the largely forgotten “Tokyo Pop” was both the stepping stone and emblem towards wider goals.

“Tokyo Pop” is screening at Japan Society

Fresh out of NYU, Rubel had been hired in Japan as a script supervisor for Japanese publishing and film mega-tycoon Haruki Kadokawa’s company. Kadokawa Pictures had achieved huge success in previous years with mega-hits including the classically...

Universal City, California, July 25, 2019 – A quiet town finds itself under attack from the undead with the greatest zombie cast ever disassembled in the comedy, The Dead Don’T Die, arriving on Digital on September 3, 2019 and on Blu-rayTM, DVD and On Demand on September 10, 2019 from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. Showcasing exclusive bonus features not seen in theaters including insight from the cast and filmmakers, as well as a closer look at the making of the film that takes fans deeper into this “giddy apocalypse with no way out”. Starring Academy Award®† winner Bill Murray, Adam Driver and Chloë Sevigny, The Dead Don’T Die is a “hilariously fun” and irreverent film unlike any you’ve seen before.

Directed by indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, The Dead Don’T Die features a powerhouse of an ensemble cast including Tilda Swinton, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Rosie Perez, Iggy Pop, Sara Driver (Stranger than Paradise), RZA,...