The press release came in Friday afternoon, but I had already abandoned the computer for Tribeca screenings, so I’m just looking at it in depth now: BAMcinematek has announced the lineup for BAMcinemaFEST, the summer event that replaces what was formerly known as Sundance and BAM –– and, it would seem, builds on it substantially. A sampling of the program’s highlights:

• The New York premieres of some of the most interesting American indie festival films of the year, including Beeswax, Brock Enright: Good Times Will Never Be the Same, Children of Invention, Humpday, Sorry, Thanks and You Won’t Miss Me.
• On July 1, “An Evening with Arnaud Desplechin,” in which the director of A Christmas Tale “presents two personal favorites: Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) followed by a conversation with film critic Kent Jones; and then Desplechin will introduce the next screening, François Truffaut’s Mississippi Mermaid.” I had planned to be out of the country that night, but this sounds almost good enough to change my plans.
• A screening of Metropolis with “live performance of original score by Irish ambient rock collective 3epkano.”
• A retrospective sidebar featuring films by Visconti, Jarmusch and a special 20th anniversary screening of Do the Right Thing.
• Parties! Including the after party for opening night film Don’t Let me Drown, and an all-night movie marathon.

The festival runs from June 17 to July 2.

Much to the admiration and gratitude of New York cinephiles such as yours truly (that is, young and urban and eager), BAMcinématek in Brooklyn has been running a retrospective of Carl Theodor Dreyer films during the second half of March. Beginning with a sold-out screening of The Passion of Joan of Arc and continuing through what I’m told will be a sold-out run of Vampyr screenings tonight, the series has shown a good deal of the master filmmaker’s silent cinema as well as his later, sound masterpieces. The silent pictures before Joan are mostly unavailable on Region 1 DVD (and those that are do not come well recommended), but thanks to those helpful guides at The Criterion Collection we have fine, restored, digital versions of Joan and each successive masterpiece (one per decade) that followed.

This much is predictable: part of the fun of a retrospective for me is the pleasure of seeing cinema exhibited as it should be—large, loud, altogether impressive—since I have no plasma television, no surround sound, and more often than not I appreciate seeing such films as these in friendly company. However, this should not stop you from exploring these elegant sphinx films at home if you could not make it to the series. For starters, Dreyer’s cycle is as fertile an education in the cinema as one may find since each film deploys a singular approach to the medium’s capacities for storytelling. Add to that: together they build an image of film history that stands outside time stamps: none of the five appear dated in the way, say, Marnie may (made the same year as Gertrud), or, to pick a descendant, something like Time of the Wolf howls of its era. Part of this is due to Dreyer’s lack of interest, so to speak, in documenting anything “of the moment” since each film is, to some degree, a period piece. Therefore, it’s best to look at these films as lessons in looking. It’s just easier, sometimes, to pay attention when forced to by the dark of the auditorium.
…Read more

When Philippe Garrel’s most recent film premiered in competition at Cannes last year, it carried the French title La Frontière de l’aube; that was translated in English in the Cannes guide as Frontier of Dawn, but the subtitle at the beginning of the film read, The Dawn of the Shore. None of these titles give any indication of what this film is: a story of amour gone so fou that the natural world becomes subject to the supernatural. Hands down the most accessible Garrel film I’ve seen, it’s still a strange, swoony, genre-bending challenge. I named it as the best undistributed film of 2008; now, IFC is screening it theatrically in series at BAM in Brooklyn (starting tonight) and at Cinefamily in Los Angeles (Saturday, March 14), before it premieres on VOD.

…Read more

Hearing about Jennifer Montgomery’s Deliver, an all-female remake of John Boorman’s 1972 Deliverance, having its world premiere at BAMcinématek this evening, I got the same feeling I had when my friend Rose told me about her sister’s all-female, Motley Crue tribute band Girls Girls Girls. How exciting! Upending and giving the finger to notions of gender and sexuality always gets me all hot and bothered. As did watching Burt Reynolds strut his sexy stuff in Boorman’s original (with its screenplay and book by that ornery southern, man’s man James Dickey).

So who would take on the Burt Reynolds role of Lewis – the dude who stands apart from the rest of his male bonding, canoe trip comrades? …Read more

Ronnie Bronstein is unlike anyone else I’ve ever met. Whip smart and endlessly self-deprecating, Ronnie’s acidic humor masks a sweetness and empathetic quality that’s rare for someone so talented and driven. His feature debut Frownland was for many, this humble author included, the definitive independent film of 2007, one that brings real credence back to that oft used, barely meaningful term. It screens this thursday at BAM. …Read more

At age 35, with just three features under his belt, Azazel Jacobs seems like an unlikely candidate for a retrospective, but if such an endeavor pumps up the profile of his first two, lesser-seen films whilst effectively promoting his soon-to-be-released Momma’s Man, I’m not going to argue against it. BAM will devote five nights of programming to Jacobs this week, with all three of his features shown alongside two films selected by the director: the 1980 Clash vehicle Rude Boy, and Aki Kaurismaki’s La Vie de Boheme.

The series opens tonight with a screening of Jacobs’ second film, The GoodTimesKid. A punk rock fantasia shot on 35mm stock infamously stolen from a Hollywood feature, the film stars Jacobs as Rodolfo, a scrappy brooder who kicks his way out of domestic complacency with girlfriend Diaz (played with an irresistible mix of strength and eccentricity by Jacobs’ drop-dead real-life GF, Sara Diaz). In order to join the army, Rodolfo steals the identity of another man named Rodolfo (Gerardo Naranjo), a loner who lives on a liquor-littered little boat. When the first Rodolfo walks out of Diaz’ life on the night she’s throwing a party for his birthday, the second Rodolfo walks right in. Diaz, hungry for the attention and affection that she can’t squeeze out of her Rudolfo, is open to a replacement Rodolfos, at least for a night.

…Read more

Elliot Gould said a few words Friday night before a BAM screening of Little Murders, the 1971 film based on Jules Feiffer’s play, which Gould starred in and produced for first-time feature director Alan Arkin. The event came towards the midpoint of a retrospective at the Brooklyn theater dedicated to Gould’s 70s-era peak, and the actor seemed humbled by the thought of so many snapshots of an era lined up for quick consumption. “It’s my life,” he said wistfully. Then, with a little wave of a hand and a vigorous shake of his head, he corrected himself: “Well, it’s all of our lives, isn’t it?”

Gould noted that he’d “probably never” seen Little Murders “with a real crowd”–when the film was released in the States in February of 1971, Gould was in Sweden shooting The Touch for Ingmar Bergman, and thanks to its disappointing box office, it didn’t have much of a life for a while. Not that Gould took time out at the time to dwell on its failure. After the screening, Gould’s answers to questions from both the audience and moderator Bruce Bennett continually circled around a kind of “fear” the actor experienced at the peak of his career. After a 1970 TIME Magazine story in which he was anointed both “the urban Don Quixote” and “a star for an uptight age”, Gould worked constantly because he was afraid that if he stopped to catch his breath––or picked the wrong project and fell on his face––his allure would cool off and he wouldn’t be able to find a job.

…Read more

• “There’s been a bit of talk lately about Manic Pixie Dream Girls,” writes Matt Prigge. “It got me thinking about a more interesting and reflexive variation on this character: the kook.” Examples include Annie Hall, “most Eric Rohmer women,” and Marcia Rudd’s character from Little Murders, which screens tonight at BAM in Brooklyn with a Q & A with Elliott Gould to follow.
• Laure Parsons has launched Infinicine, a new site with news coverage, discussion boards and other resourced dedicated to “information and dialog about the brave new world of digital distribution.”
• At the FILMMAKER Blog, Scott Macaulay points to Roger Ebert’s three-and-a-half star review of Frownland, which opens in Chicago today. Ebert acknowledges that the film is a tricky sell––”Now why would you want to see this film? Most readers of this review probably wouldn’t. I’m writing for the rest of us”––but ultimately calls the film a “rebirth of the need for expression that inspired the American independent movement in the first place.”

I don’t know whether or not I’m Through with White Girls––a low-budget, semi-high-concept rom-com about a black comic book nerd who makes a conscious decision to stop dating girls who look like me in order to start dating girls who look more like him, but ends up falling for a girl who looks like Lisa Bonet in High Fidelity, except more so––has the power to ignite a real, widespread conversation about interracial dating and the contemporary politics of race+class+coolness (or lack thereof). But after last night’s packed-house screening at BAM, which was followed by a surprisingly feisty Q & A, I do know that White Girls has the power to make a Brooklyn blogger self-censor, and that’s a feat to which few films can lay claim.

…Read more