White Bird.The repeatedly delayed film White Bird, based on the 2019 graphic novel by R.J. Palacio, follows an elderly Jewish woman looking back on her youth in France during World War II, particularly the time she spent hiding from the Nazis. The framing is odd: She is telling this tale to impart a lesson to her grandson, a bully character from a different, earlier novel by Palacio, Wonder. Both stories are part of a wider fictive universe authored by Palacio, the “World of Wonder,” which comprises spinoff books, film adaptations, and merchandise, all branded with the poptimistic slogan/hashtag “Choose Kind.” A friendly schoolmate refusing to persecute White Bird’s protagonist for being Jewish is implicitly an example of “choosing kind,” divorced from any historically based understanding of solidarity or resistance to fascism. More problematically, White Bird has as its epigraph George Santayama’s famous quote “Those who can’t...
- 11/28/2023
- MUBI
It’s a chicly austere and, at stray moments, provocative tabloid thriller in which Kate (Kate Bosworth) and Mikey (Emile Hirsch), as part of a mysterious contest, agree to spend 50 days living in a large bare white room. When they first walk in, they’re greeted by a Siri voice, British and female, who makes ritual pronouncements like “It is evening. Enjoy your stay in the Immaculate Room.” If they make it through all 50 days, they’ll get 5 million in prize money. It doesn’t sound all that hard, like two months of voluntary prison time minus the dirt and danger. And that’s the hook: Who wouldn’t do this for 5 million? But the fact that it sounds so do-able means the audience is asking from minute one: What’s the catch?
In a funny way, “The Immaculate Room” is a parable of boredom, which makes it a story for our time.
In a funny way, “The Immaculate Room” is a parable of boredom, which makes it a story for our time.
- 8/20/2022
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Each month we choose a German film or series currently available to stream, watch it independently, and come together for a hosted conversation with other fans of German film.
In honor of the upcoming Academy Awards, our film for March is Germany’s most recent Oscar nominee, Never Look Away, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
Never Look Away follows thirty years in the life of artist Kurt Barnert (a character loosely based on Gerhard Richter). From a childhood witnessing Nazi Germany to life in post-war East Berlin.
Watch the trailer here.
The Kino! Film Salon will take place on Sunday, March 13th, at 11am — 12pm Pst, 2pm — 3pm Est, 8pm — 9pm Cet.
To join us, please RSVP at https://bit.ly/neverlookawaykinorsvp and the Zoom link will be emailed to you 24 hours before the event. Please don’t share this link directly (but do encourage your friends to RSVP!); our capacity is limited and admission will be on a first-come-first-served basis.
We look forward to seeing you on Sunday, March 13th!
Best,
Telescope Film and the German Film Office
Host: Sydney Levine consults, interviews and writes about filmmakers and the film industry. She has taught international film business at universities including UCLA, Chapman, The New School of Social Research, and the University of Television and Film Munich, as well as at festivals including the Cannes Producers Workshop, and Berlinale Talents. She created FilmFinders, the film industry’s first database, which was acquired by IMDb. She currently lives in Berlin and Los Angeles. https://blogs.sydneysbuzz.com/
Kino! Film Salon is a production of Telescope Film, in partnership with the German Film Office.
In honor of the upcoming Academy Awards, our film for March is Germany’s most recent Oscar nominee, Never Look Away, directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
Never Look Away follows thirty years in the life of artist Kurt Barnert (a character loosely based on Gerhard Richter). From a childhood witnessing Nazi Germany to life in post-war East Berlin.
Watch the trailer here.
The Kino! Film Salon will take place on Sunday, March 13th, at 11am — 12pm Pst, 2pm — 3pm Est, 8pm — 9pm Cet.
To join us, please RSVP at https://bit.ly/neverlookawaykinorsvp and the Zoom link will be emailed to you 24 hours before the event. Please don’t share this link directly (but do encourage your friends to RSVP!); our capacity is limited and admission will be on a first-come-first-served basis.
We look forward to seeing you on Sunday, March 13th!
Best,
Telescope Film and the German Film Office
Host: Sydney Levine consults, interviews and writes about filmmakers and the film industry. She has taught international film business at universities including UCLA, Chapman, The New School of Social Research, and the University of Television and Film Munich, as well as at festivals including the Cannes Producers Workshop, and Berlinale Talents. She created FilmFinders, the film industry’s first database, which was acquired by IMDb. She currently lives in Berlin and Los Angeles. https://blogs.sydneysbuzz.com/
Kino! Film Salon is a production of Telescope Film, in partnership with the German Film Office.
- 5/8/2022
- by Sydney
- Sydney's Buzz
A German boy who witnesses Nazi horrors grows up to become a painter in this overcooked but affecting melodrama
At a key early moment in German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s acclaimed art-drama/suspense-thriller hybrid (which reportedly received a 13-minute standing ovation at the Venice film festival last year), a young boy confronted by a terrible sight holds his hand in front of his eyes. At first, we think he’s doing it to blot out the spectacle of his beloved aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl) being bundled into an ambulance in Nazi Germany. But the truth is more complex. As young Kurt (a wonderfully wide-eyed Cai Cohrs) holds his palm a few inches in front of his face, we see what he sees – the hand coming into close focus, rendering what’s behind it slightly blurry. When his hand drops down, the awful truth beyond remains momentarily fuzzy – creating...
At a key early moment in German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s acclaimed art-drama/suspense-thriller hybrid (which reportedly received a 13-minute standing ovation at the Venice film festival last year), a young boy confronted by a terrible sight holds his hand in front of his eyes. At first, we think he’s doing it to blot out the spectacle of his beloved aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl) being bundled into an ambulance in Nazi Germany. But the truth is more complex. As young Kurt (a wonderfully wide-eyed Cai Cohrs) holds his palm a few inches in front of his face, we see what he sees – the hand coming into close focus, rendering what’s behind it slightly blurry. When his hand drops down, the awful truth beyond remains momentarily fuzzy – creating...
- 7/7/2019
- by Mark Kermode
- The Guardian - Film News
This fictionalised story of the artist by the director of The Lives of Others lacks a strong central performance to match its ambition
With his Oscar-winning debut The Lives of Others in 2006, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck made an important movie about the intellectual squalor of postwar East Germany, featuring a Stasi spy whose life of bugging and listening-in betrays his own emotional bankruptcy – and that of an entire ideology. But Donnersmarck’s following film was the lacklustre caper The Tourist starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp in 2010. Now here is his third film, Werk Ohne Autor (that is: Work Without Author – although it has been assigned the English title Never Look Away) which received Oscar nominations for best foreign film and best cinematography.
It’s an unevenly acted and sometimes frankly misjudged sexy-sentimental melodrama of epic length set in Germany of the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s, based on the...
With his Oscar-winning debut The Lives of Others in 2006, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck made an important movie about the intellectual squalor of postwar East Germany, featuring a Stasi spy whose life of bugging and listening-in betrays his own emotional bankruptcy – and that of an entire ideology. But Donnersmarck’s following film was the lacklustre caper The Tourist starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp in 2010. Now here is his third film, Werk Ohne Autor (that is: Work Without Author – although it has been assigned the English title Never Look Away) which received Oscar nominations for best foreign film and best cinematography.
It’s an unevenly acted and sometimes frankly misjudged sexy-sentimental melodrama of epic length set in Germany of the 1930s, 40s, 50s and 60s, based on the...
- 7/4/2019
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’re highlighting the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and an archive of past round-ups here.
Antichrist (Lars von Trier)
Like the majority of Lars von Trier films, from the first moments of Antichrist, one will be able to discern if it’s an experience they want to proceed with. For those will to endure its specific unpleasantness, there’s a poetic, affecting exploration of despair at its center. Chaos reigns, indeed. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Mubi (free for 30 days)
Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller)
On July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin embarked on a historic lunar odyssey, successfully landing on the moon and then returning to Earth. Free of talking heads, reenactments, and newly-recorded narration, the new documentary Apollo 11...
Antichrist (Lars von Trier)
Like the majority of Lars von Trier films, from the first moments of Antichrist, one will be able to discern if it’s an experience they want to proceed with. For those will to endure its specific unpleasantness, there’s a poetic, affecting exploration of despair at its center. Chaos reigns, indeed. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Mubi (free for 30 days)
Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller)
On July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin embarked on a historic lunar odyssey, successfully landing on the moon and then returning to Earth. Free of talking heads, reenactments, and newly-recorded narration, the new documentary Apollo 11...
- 5/17/2019
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
‘Soundtrack of America’: Inaugural Performance at the Shed in New York City Engages Emerging Artists
How do you open a new arts complex in New York City — one that costs nearly half a billion dollars and is on the edge of a glittery enclave that locals have swiftly rejected as a wealthy gated community — without wallowing in cultural elitism? Alex Poots, the Scottish artistic director of the Shed — which opened on Friday night without much pomp but plenty of circumstance — must have been worrying about that for years.
As the former director of the Manchester International Festival, he’s leaning into his global connections to...
As the former director of the Manchester International Festival, he’s leaning into his global connections to...
- 4/7/2019
- by Jerry Portwood
- Rollingstone.com
Modern Films has snagged U.K. and Ireland rights to “Never Look Away,” the German-language Oscar entry from “The Lives of Others” helmer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
The multi-generational story follows a young art student (Tom Schilling), who falls in love with a fellow student (Paula Beer). Her father (Sebastian Koch), a renowned doctor, disapproves of their relationship and vows to destroy it. Set in Germany, it spans three decades of the country’s history from Nazism through to the Cold War. The central character is loosely based on artist Gerhard Richter.
The three-hour picture, which premiered at the Venice Film festival, recently opened via Sony Pictures Classics. Beta Cinema was the sales agent. Distributor Modern Films plans an event-driven release plan similar to what it did with “Manifesto,” starring Cate Blanchett, and with HBO and Rai’s Italian-language miniseries “My Brilliant Friend.”
Thorsten Ritter of Beta Cinema says it...
The multi-generational story follows a young art student (Tom Schilling), who falls in love with a fellow student (Paula Beer). Her father (Sebastian Koch), a renowned doctor, disapproves of their relationship and vows to destroy it. Set in Germany, it spans three decades of the country’s history from Nazism through to the Cold War. The central character is loosely based on artist Gerhard Richter.
The three-hour picture, which premiered at the Venice Film festival, recently opened via Sony Pictures Classics. Beta Cinema was the sales agent. Distributor Modern Films plans an event-driven release plan similar to what it did with “Manifesto,” starring Cate Blanchett, and with HBO and Rai’s Italian-language miniseries “My Brilliant Friend.”
Thorsten Ritter of Beta Cinema says it...
- 2/19/2019
- by Stewart Clarke
- Variety Film + TV
A version of this story about Caleb Deschanel appeared in the Down to the Wire issue of TheWrap’s Oscar magazine.
For the first 38 years of the Academy Awards, foreign-language films were ignored in the Best Cinematography category. But in recent years, foreign fare has averaged almost one nomination a year — and this year three of the five nominations are for films not in English, tying the record set in 2004 when “House of Flying Daggers,” “The Passion of the Christ” and “A Very Long Engagement” were all nominated.
Interestingly enough, Caleb Deschanel was involved both of those years: He shot Mel Gibson’s 2004 nominee “The Passion of the Christ,” which was in Aramaic and Latin, and also is in the running this year for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s German-language drama “Never Look Away.”
“The difference is that nobody on the set of ‘The Passion’ understood Aramaic and Latin,” Deschanel said with a laugh.
For the first 38 years of the Academy Awards, foreign-language films were ignored in the Best Cinematography category. But in recent years, foreign fare has averaged almost one nomination a year — and this year three of the five nominations are for films not in English, tying the record set in 2004 when “House of Flying Daggers,” “The Passion of the Christ” and “A Very Long Engagement” were all nominated.
Interestingly enough, Caleb Deschanel was involved both of those years: He shot Mel Gibson’s 2004 nominee “The Passion of the Christ,” which was in Aramaic and Latin, and also is in the running this year for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s German-language drama “Never Look Away.”
“The difference is that nobody on the set of ‘The Passion’ understood Aramaic and Latin,” Deschanel said with a laugh.
- 2/15/2019
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
Directors of this year’s foreign-language Oscar nominees felt compelled to tell tales of universal themes.
Capernaum Lebanon
The Oscar race has fueled the ongoing protest against the industry’s sidelining of woman directors, serving up no female-helmed films in the best picture or director categories. That leaves Lebanon’s Nadine Labaki as the only distaff director nominated for a narrative feature film this year. “Capernaum,” a sprawling, dirt-on-the-lens labor of love about refugee children surviving on the mean streets of Beirut, is the most emotionally abrasive contender in the category. Centered on a destitute 12-year-old Syrian boy suing his parents for giving him life, it left many hardened critics weeping in the aisles at Cannes, where it duly won the Jury Prize. Variety’s Jay Weissberg was among them, deeming it “a splendid addition to the ranks of great guttersnipe dramas”; an Oscar nomination was widely predicted then and there.
Capernaum Lebanon
The Oscar race has fueled the ongoing protest against the industry’s sidelining of woman directors, serving up no female-helmed films in the best picture or director categories. That leaves Lebanon’s Nadine Labaki as the only distaff director nominated for a narrative feature film this year. “Capernaum,” a sprawling, dirt-on-the-lens labor of love about refugee children surviving on the mean streets of Beirut, is the most emotionally abrasive contender in the category. Centered on a destitute 12-year-old Syrian boy suing his parents for giving him life, it left many hardened critics weeping in the aisles at Cannes, where it duly won the Jury Prize. Variety’s Jay Weissberg was among them, deeming it “a splendid addition to the ranks of great guttersnipe dramas”; an Oscar nomination was widely predicted then and there.
- 2/6/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
One of the most unexpected Oscar nominations this year came for a German film in the thick of the foreign-language race that managed to score love elsewhere: Caleb Deschanel’s cinematography notice for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s “Never Look Away,” a three-hour epic inspired by the life of artist Gerhard Richter.
For Deschanel, a beloved industry veteran with six nominations dating back to 1983’s “The Right Stuff,” it was as much a shock to him as it was to the awards season chattering class.
“You sort of figure, ‘No chance; not enough people have seen the movie,'” Deschanel says, calling from London where he’s in the middle of production on Jon Favreau’s effects-driven remake of “The Lion King,” due out in July. “But I had so many calls from people who loved this movie.”
It’s easy to see why Deschanel’s colleagues in the cinematography branch,...
For Deschanel, a beloved industry veteran with six nominations dating back to 1983’s “The Right Stuff,” it was as much a shock to him as it was to the awards season chattering class.
“You sort of figure, ‘No chance; not enough people have seen the movie,'” Deschanel says, calling from London where he’s in the middle of production on Jon Favreau’s effects-driven remake of “The Lion King,” due out in July. “But I had so many calls from people who loved this movie.”
It’s easy to see why Deschanel’s colleagues in the cinematography branch,...
- 1/29/2019
- by Kristopher Tapley
- Variety Film + TV
Like everyone else, Caleb Deschanel was taken by surprise with his sixth Oscar nomination for German-language nominee, “Never Look Away,” about the horrors of war and the artistic process. The legendary cinematographer, best known for “The Black Stallion, “The Right Stuff,” and “The Natural,” now becomes the sentimental favorite to win his first Academy Award.
“People kept coming up and raving about ‘Cold War’ and ‘Roma’ and I sheepishly told them that I had a foreign-language film and they said they had the DVD somewhere,” Deschanel said.
Clearly, enough branch members (bolstered by the large international bloc) were swayed by Deschanel’s exquisite cinematography to give him the nod. “Never Look Away,” directed by Oscar winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (“The Lives of Others”), fictionalizes the life of experimental abstract German painter Gerhard Richter, who finds his artistic voice in the film after falling in love with a fashion student...
“People kept coming up and raving about ‘Cold War’ and ‘Roma’ and I sheepishly told them that I had a foreign-language film and they said they had the DVD somewhere,” Deschanel said.
Clearly, enough branch members (bolstered by the large international bloc) were swayed by Deschanel’s exquisite cinematography to give him the nod. “Never Look Away,” directed by Oscar winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (“The Lives of Others”), fictionalizes the life of experimental abstract German painter Gerhard Richter, who finds his artistic voice in the film after falling in love with a fashion student...
- 1/28/2019
- by Bill Desowitz
- Indiewire
Veteran cinematographer Caleb Deschanel last week scored his sixth Oscar nomination, for his work on Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look Away, one of the three Foreign Language nominees that crossed into other key categories this year. Deschanel, a respected Dp who has surprisingly never won the Academy Award, has such varied credits as Being There, The Black Stallion, The Right Stuff, The Natural, National Treasure, Killer Joe and The Passion Of The Christ. I caught up with him recently from London (where he’s working on this year’s The Lion King for Disney) to discuss his approach to Never Look Away, the mystery of creating art and connecting emotionally through images.
Never Look Away is inspired by the life of artist Gerhard Richter and premiered to much acclaim in Venice. It spans three eras of German history, centering on art student Kurt (Tom Schilling) who escapes post-war...
Never Look Away is inspired by the life of artist Gerhard Richter and premiered to much acclaim in Venice. It spans three eras of German history, centering on art student Kurt (Tom Schilling) who escapes post-war...
- 1/28/2019
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
Just nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign-Language Film and for the extraordinary cinematography of Caleb Deschanel, Never Look Away concerns itself with love and war and the limitless reach of art. These are big themes and easy to bungle over the course of this three-hour-plus epic from German writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. In his third film, after the Oscar-winning The Lives of Others and a misbegotten 2010 merging with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie to create The Tourist — a mega-flop for the ages — von Donnersmarck returns triumphantly to form.
- 1/24/2019
- by Peter Travers
- Rollingstone.com
“A Quiet Place,” “Roma,” “First Man” and “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” led all films with three nominations each for the 66th Annual Mpse Golden Reel Awards, which were announced on Friday. The awards are handed out by the Motion Picture Sound Editors, a nonprofit organization of professional sound and music editors.
In the category of Feature Film – Effects/Foley, the Golden Reel category that most closely corresponds to the Oscars’ Best Sound Editing category, the nominees were “A Quiet Place,” “Avengers: Infinity War,” “Black Panther,” “Deadpool 2,” “First Man,” “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” “Ready Player One,” “Roma” and “The Favourite.” But because the Mpse has so many different sound-editing categories, and because those categories often contain eight or nine nominees, the Golden Reel Awards tend not to be helpful in forecasting Oscar nominees.
In the television categories, the shows that received multiple nominations include “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Vikings,” “Westworld” and “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.
In the category of Feature Film – Effects/Foley, the Golden Reel category that most closely corresponds to the Oscars’ Best Sound Editing category, the nominees were “A Quiet Place,” “Avengers: Infinity War,” “Black Panther,” “Deadpool 2,” “First Man,” “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” “Ready Player One,” “Roma” and “The Favourite.” But because the Mpse has so many different sound-editing categories, and because those categories often contain eight or nine nominees, the Golden Reel Awards tend not to be helpful in forecasting Oscar nominees.
In the television categories, the shows that received multiple nominations include “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Vikings,” “Westworld” and “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan.
- 1/18/2019
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
You can’t go home again, goes the old saying — and for many Hollywood émigré filmmakers over the years, from Billy Wilder to Milos Forman, it has proved true. But exceptions have always endured, hopping productively between between continents: recently, take Taiwanese-born Ang Lee, fitting in Chinese-language epics like “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Lust, Caution” amid glossy U.S. prestige projects, or Chilean auteur Pablo Larrain, who sandwiched the Natalie Portman starrer “Jackie” between homegrown projects.
In this year’s Oscar race for best foreign-language film, meanwhile, a trio of accomplished, globe-trotting writer-directors — all former Oscar winners themselves — are reaping the benefits of returning to native territory after a spell in English-lingo cinema. For Germany’s Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Poland’s Pawel Pawlikowski and Mexico’s Alfonso Cuaron, going home has given them the freedom to tell ambitious, sometimes highly personal stories they couldn’t have told abroad.
In this year’s Oscar race for best foreign-language film, meanwhile, a trio of accomplished, globe-trotting writer-directors — all former Oscar winners themselves — are reaping the benefits of returning to native territory after a spell in English-lingo cinema. For Germany’s Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Poland’s Pawel Pawlikowski and Mexico’s Alfonso Cuaron, going home has given them the freedom to tell ambitious, sometimes highly personal stories they couldn’t have told abroad.
- 1/4/2019
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
I have always loved Sony Pictures Classics. It is a brand you can trust to bring great films to the U.S.
I have loved the company from the days when they were Orion Classics and we bought Us rights to ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ I for Lorimar Home Video and Tom Bernard, Michael Barker and Donna Gigliotti for Orion Classics theatrical. My Beautiful Laundrette was a huge success for everyone involved and continues as a landmark film to this day. In fact, while being honored at the Screen Awards, its producer Tim Bevan recently said , “Sadly, the most diverse crew we’ve ever had on a film was with My Beautiful Laundrette [in 1985]”.
Tom and Michael have moved on, forming Spc in 1992; Donna has created an amazing portfolio of productions including this year’s upcoming Academy Award Show (why?).
Continuing Spc’s tried-and-true formula for success that has brought us so many great movies,...
I have loved the company from the days when they were Orion Classics and we bought Us rights to ‘My Beautiful Laundrette’ I for Lorimar Home Video and Tom Bernard, Michael Barker and Donna Gigliotti for Orion Classics theatrical. My Beautiful Laundrette was a huge success for everyone involved and continues as a landmark film to this day. In fact, while being honored at the Screen Awards, its producer Tim Bevan recently said , “Sadly, the most diverse crew we’ve ever had on a film was with My Beautiful Laundrette [in 1985]”.
Tom and Michael have moved on, forming Spc in 1992; Donna has created an amazing portfolio of productions including this year’s upcoming Academy Award Show (why?).
Continuing Spc’s tried-and-true formula for success that has brought us so many great movies,...
- 12/21/2018
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Oscars Foreign Language Film Shortlist: ‘Roma’, ‘Cold War’, ‘Burning’ & More But No ‘Girl’, ‘Border’
Updated, writethru: From a field of 87 submissions to the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar category, nine movies have now advanced to the shortlist. Working with one of the strongest years in recent memory, the Phase I Committee and the Executive Committee have settled on such favorites as Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters.
Among the films left off the list is Golden Globe nominee and Cannes Camera d’Or winner Girl by Belgium’s Lukas Dhont. That film has seen backlash from rights groups regarding the casting of a cisgender actor in a trans role. Also not making the cut is Sweden’s audacious Border, which did however score as a finalist for the Make Up and Hairstyling race. A surprise inclusion is Kazakhstan’s Ayka, the Cannes Best Actress-winning drama from Sergei Dvortsevoy. And, in Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, Korea finally makes the shortlist.
Among the films left off the list is Golden Globe nominee and Cannes Camera d’Or winner Girl by Belgium’s Lukas Dhont. That film has seen backlash from rights groups regarding the casting of a cisgender actor in a trans role. Also not making the cut is Sweden’s audacious Border, which did however score as a finalist for the Make Up and Hairstyling race. A surprise inclusion is Kazakhstan’s Ayka, the Cannes Best Actress-winning drama from Sergei Dvortsevoy. And, in Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, Korea finally makes the shortlist.
- 12/18/2018
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
There’s a common adage that beautiful works of art — important art — can only come from a place of real suffering. It’s an adage that set writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck on the path to his newest film, “Never Look Away,” which is based on the life of German painter Gerhard Richter.
“My favorite book about filmmaking is Elia Kazan’s autobiography ‘A Life.’ He talks about his work with artistic geniuses and he says their artistic talent was the scab that formed on the wounds life had dealt them,” von Donnersmarck said during the question and answer portion of TheWrap’s screening series Wednesday night.
“That’s this very poetic phrase he used… and this film is about a genius painter and it’s a very beautiful analogy that you can stretch quite far, that if the wound is still open you can’t create art and once...
“My favorite book about filmmaking is Elia Kazan’s autobiography ‘A Life.’ He talks about his work with artistic geniuses and he says their artistic talent was the scab that formed on the wounds life had dealt them,” von Donnersmarck said during the question and answer portion of TheWrap’s screening series Wednesday night.
“That’s this very poetic phrase he used… and this film is about a genius painter and it’s a very beautiful analogy that you can stretch quite far, that if the wound is still open you can’t create art and once...
- 12/6/2018
- by Trey Williams
- The Wrap
Today’s Golden Globes nominations for the Best Foreign Language Film include some of the leading favorites with potential to be in the mix for the similar category at the Oscars like Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look Away. But there is one glaring omission. Pawel Pawlikowski’s black-and-white Polish drama Cold War did not make the cut despite plaudits from Cannes and critics bodies.
There’s been a lot of heat on Cold War which was the Best Director laureate in Cannes and has frontrunner status at the upcoming European Film Awards. Star Joanna Kulig is currently spending several weeks in La to talk up the film (and croon), and the 1950s-set romantic drama from Amazon has also scored a Best Foreign Language Film win from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle.
Pawlikowski...
There’s been a lot of heat on Cold War which was the Best Director laureate in Cannes and has frontrunner status at the upcoming European Film Awards. Star Joanna Kulig is currently spending several weeks in La to talk up the film (and croon), and the 1950s-set romantic drama from Amazon has also scored a Best Foreign Language Film win from the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle.
Pawlikowski...
- 12/6/2018
- by Nancy Tartaglione
- Deadline Film + TV
How did Caleb Deschanel end up being the cinematographer on “Never Look Away,” Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s three-hour-plus German-language film?
“I had known Florian for a number of years because we had been on some various committees at the academy,” Deschanel shared at Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts: Cinematographers panel, moderated by this author (watch above). “He had met with Gerhard Richter, the painter, and he had done a lot of interviews with him and he was really fascinated by his life. He then called me and we met and we sat down for about four hours and he sort of told me this story and it was before he had written the script, but I was really fascinated by this character.”
Inspired by Richter’s life, “Never Look Away” tells the fictional story of a painter, Kurt (Tom Schilling), who grew up in Dresden, Germany, during World War II,...
“I had known Florian for a number of years because we had been on some various committees at the academy,” Deschanel shared at Gold Derby’s Meet the Experts: Cinematographers panel, moderated by this author (watch above). “He had met with Gerhard Richter, the painter, and he had done a lot of interviews with him and he was really fascinated by his life. He then called me and we met and we sat down for about four hours and he sort of told me this story and it was before he had written the script, but I was really fascinated by this character.”
Inspired by Richter’s life, “Never Look Away” tells the fictional story of a painter, Kurt (Tom Schilling), who grew up in Dresden, Germany, during World War II,...
- 12/4/2018
- by Joyce Eng
- Gold Derby
One of the biggest challenges when making a film about a fictitious artist must be coming up with art that doesn’t make audience members question the admiration for the artist. In that sense, writer/director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck covers his bases by using Gerhard Richter’s photorealistic pieces as the inspiration for the work created by Kurt Barnert (Tom Schilling), the protagonist of Never Look Away. So by the time a frustrated Kurt realizes he can turn painful memories into haunting paintings that see beyond the “reality” of a photograph, we are so immersed in his story that unexpected chills are the only possible reaction we can have upon seeing his first completed piece.
The other challenge of a quasi-biopic must certainly be writing a backstory plotty enough to feel novelistic, but subtle enough to feel as random and unplanned as real life, so that the more cynical...
The other challenge of a quasi-biopic must certainly be writing a backstory plotty enough to feel novelistic, but subtle enough to feel as random and unplanned as real life, so that the more cynical...
- 12/3/2018
- by Jose Solís
- The Film Stage
Never Look Away (Werk Ohne Autor) director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck on Martha's (Ina Weisse) marriage to the monstrous Professor Seeband (Sebastian Koch), father to Ellie (Paula Beer): "You can sense she has a different spirit but yet she is so subjugated by everything that she can't even dare to live it."
Elements from Gerhard Richter’s life story inspired the role of Kurt Barnert, played by Generation War and Jan Ole Gerster's Oh Boy (aka A Coffee In Berlin) star, Tom Schilling, in the latest film from the director/screenwriter of the Oscar-winning The Lives Of Others. In Never Look Away (Werk Ohne Autor), Germany's Oscar submission for the 91st Academy Awards, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck sets the bar far higher for himself than he did for his Hollywood misfire The Tourist, starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (with Anne-Katrin Titze) on his...
Elements from Gerhard Richter’s life story inspired the role of Kurt Barnert, played by Generation War and Jan Ole Gerster's Oh Boy (aka A Coffee In Berlin) star, Tom Schilling, in the latest film from the director/screenwriter of the Oscar-winning The Lives Of Others. In Never Look Away (Werk Ohne Autor), Germany's Oscar submission for the 91st Academy Awards, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck sets the bar far higher for himself than he did for his Hollywood misfire The Tourist, starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (with Anne-Katrin Titze) on his...
- 12/1/2018
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
In 2006, a 33-year-old German director named Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck took Hollywood by storm with his Oscar-winning debut, a manipulative and wantonly middle-brow spy drama about a heartless Stasi captain’s long road to redemption. Told with a watchmaker’s precision and finished off with a tear-jerking gut punch of a finale (complete with a freeze frame for good measure), “The Lives of Others” offered a seductive peek at a shadowy part of history, and seemed to herald the arrival of a filmmaker who might be able to class up some Hollywood fare, or even sell American viewers on the idea of reading subtitles. Then von Donnersmarck made “The Tourist,” and that was the end of that.
Now, eight years since his disastrous — but Golden Globe-nominated! — dalliance with the studio system, von Donnersmarck is ready to walk his own long road to redemption (even if his most grievous crime was...
Now, eight years since his disastrous — but Golden Globe-nominated! — dalliance with the studio system, von Donnersmarck is ready to walk his own long road to redemption (even if his most grievous crime was...
- 11/30/2018
- by David Ehrlich
- Indiewire
by Murtada Elfadl
Tense apprehension is usually how I approach 3 hour long movies. But I shouldn’t have fretted about Germany's Oscar entry Never Look Away. It was never less than totally engrossing and I was completely riveted throughout. For his third picture, following Oscar foreign-language winner The Lives of Others (2006) and Hollywood turkey The Tourist (2010), director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck was inspired by the life and work of German painter Gerhard Richter. The film tells the story of a 20th century German artist, given the name Kurt Barnert here and played by Tom Schilling as an adult, from his childhood in the 1930s through WWII, growing up in Communist East Germany, then defecting to the West and finding his artistic voice there...
Tense apprehension is usually how I approach 3 hour long movies. But I shouldn’t have fretted about Germany's Oscar entry Never Look Away. It was never less than totally engrossing and I was completely riveted throughout. For his third picture, following Oscar foreign-language winner The Lives of Others (2006) and Hollywood turkey The Tourist (2010), director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck was inspired by the life and work of German painter Gerhard Richter. The film tells the story of a 20th century German artist, given the name Kurt Barnert here and played by Tom Schilling as an adult, from his childhood in the 1930s through WWII, growing up in Communist East Germany, then defecting to the West and finding his artistic voice there...
- 11/29/2018
- by Murtada Elfadl
- FilmExperience
With “Never Look Away,” Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck wanted to make a film “about human creativity. I was always amazed at how people who do great creative things … can take the trauma of their life and turn it into something so beautiful. It seems to me almost like a kind of alchemy, that you would take the lead of your suffering and turn it into the gold of art.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
See 2019 Oscars: Foreign-language film entries from A (Afghanistan) to Y (Yemen)
This Sony Pictures Classics release follows an art student (Tom Schilling) living in post-war East Germany. He falls in love with a fellow student (Paula Beer) to the chagrin of her father (Sebastian Koch), a famous doctor who participated in the Nazi eugenics program during the war. The film is the official German entry for the Foreign Language Film Oscar, a prize that was...
See 2019 Oscars: Foreign-language film entries from A (Afghanistan) to Y (Yemen)
This Sony Pictures Classics release follows an art student (Tom Schilling) living in post-war East Germany. He falls in love with a fellow student (Paula Beer) to the chagrin of her father (Sebastian Koch), a famous doctor who participated in the Nazi eugenics program during the war. The film is the official German entry for the Foreign Language Film Oscar, a prize that was...
- 11/16/2018
- by Zach Laws
- Gold Derby
The new documentary The Price of Everything is nothing if not layered—kind of like an onion. And like an onion, the more you peel into it, the more it makes you want to cry.
Nathaniel Kahn’s complex film explores the dynamics of the contemporary art world where individual works regularly fetch astronomical amounts at auction: $91.9 million earlier this week for Edward Hopper’s canvas “Chop Suey,” and $110.4 million last year for an untitled Jean-Michel Basquiat painting that sold for $19,000 in 1984.
The sums have become so impressive that money managers now promote art collecting to the wealthy as an “investment asset class,” as the accounting firm Deloitte once put it. According to a report by Artprice, “the world leader in art market information,” between July 2016 and June 2017 contemporary art “generated a global auction turnover of $1.58 billion.”
“I very much wanted to investigate in this film this hyper-commoditized environment that we are in,...
Nathaniel Kahn’s complex film explores the dynamics of the contemporary art world where individual works regularly fetch astronomical amounts at auction: $91.9 million earlier this week for Edward Hopper’s canvas “Chop Suey,” and $110.4 million last year for an untitled Jean-Michel Basquiat painting that sold for $19,000 in 1984.
The sums have become so impressive that money managers now promote art collecting to the wealthy as an “investment asset class,” as the accounting firm Deloitte once put it. According to a report by Artprice, “the world leader in art market information,” between July 2016 and June 2017 contemporary art “generated a global auction turnover of $1.58 billion.”
“I very much wanted to investigate in this film this hyper-commoditized environment that we are in,...
- 11/16/2018
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
It’s been 12 years since “The Lives of Others” earned critical raves and captured the Oscar for best foreign film, but director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is back in the awards hunt.
The German writer and director’s latest, “Never Look Away,” opens in limited release on Nov. 30. It is being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. The story of visual artist Gerhard Richter is Germany’s official selection for the 2019 Academy Award for best foreign language film. Like “The Lives of Others,” the film unfolds in East Germany. It follows Richter as he grapples with the fact that his girlfriend’s father played a role in the Nazi eugenics program. A new trailer for the film is debuting exclusively on Variety.
In an interview, Donnersmarck said he was drawn to Richter’s life story out of a desire to look at the artistic process.
“I wanted to explore human creativity...
The German writer and director’s latest, “Never Look Away,” opens in limited release on Nov. 30. It is being distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. The story of visual artist Gerhard Richter is Germany’s official selection for the 2019 Academy Award for best foreign language film. Like “The Lives of Others,” the film unfolds in East Germany. It follows Richter as he grapples with the fact that his girlfriend’s father played a role in the Nazi eugenics program. A new trailer for the film is debuting exclusively on Variety.
In an interview, Donnersmarck said he was drawn to Richter’s life story out of a desire to look at the artistic process.
“I wanted to explore human creativity...
- 11/13/2018
- by Brent Lang and Rebecca Rubin
- Variety Film + TV
By Glenn Dunks
We took a week off recently due to office job duties so as a means of not getting behind in the schedule, we're posting a (for now) one-off weekend documentary review for your Sunday reading.
The world is a distressing place right now where seemingly everything is terrible. It’s only natural that documentary filmmaking would reflect this global tussle for law and democracy. If these films aren’t telling us something frightening and new then they at least usually these films at least attempt to show us something familiarly awful from a new angle or with an unfamiliar point of view. I’m here to tell you, however, that one of 2018’s most miserable moviegoing experiences isn’t about war or famine, disease or political unrest. Rather, it’s about the art world. A ghastly portrait of some of society’s worst impulses of greed and capitalist grotesquery.
We took a week off recently due to office job duties so as a means of not getting behind in the schedule, we're posting a (for now) one-off weekend documentary review for your Sunday reading.
The world is a distressing place right now where seemingly everything is terrible. It’s only natural that documentary filmmaking would reflect this global tussle for law and democracy. If these films aren’t telling us something frightening and new then they at least usually these films at least attempt to show us something familiarly awful from a new angle or with an unfamiliar point of view. I’m here to tell you, however, that one of 2018’s most miserable moviegoing experiences isn’t about war or famine, disease or political unrest. Rather, it’s about the art world. A ghastly portrait of some of society’s worst impulses of greed and capitalist grotesquery.
- 10/28/2018
- by Glenn Dunks
- FilmExperience
Despite its selection as Germany’s entry for the Oscars and a glitzy premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s “Never Look Away” is struggling to get viewers to look at it on home ground.
Henckel von Donnersmarck won an Oscar in 2007 for his freshman feature outing, the critically acclaimed East German drama “The Lives of Others.” He went on to make 2010’s “The Tourist” with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. “Never Look Away,” his highly anticipated third film, follows a young painter through three turbulent eras of German history.
The film boasts a strong cast led by Tom Schilling (“Oh Boy”) and Sebastian Koch (“The Lives of Others”) and a reported budget of around $20 million – high for a German film and evident in its lavish production values. The three-hour movie has enjoyed positive and often glowing reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, including from Variety,...
Henckel von Donnersmarck won an Oscar in 2007 for his freshman feature outing, the critically acclaimed East German drama “The Lives of Others.” He went on to make 2010’s “The Tourist” with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. “Never Look Away,” his highly anticipated third film, follows a young painter through three turbulent eras of German history.
The film boasts a strong cast led by Tom Schilling (“Oh Boy”) and Sebastian Koch (“The Lives of Others”) and a reported budget of around $20 million – high for a German film and evident in its lavish production values. The three-hour movie has enjoyed positive and often glowing reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, including from Variety,...
- 10/26/2018
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
In 1933 an exhibition of so-called “Degenerate Art” — as in art that the newly empowered Nazi party considered antithetical to its values — took place in Dresden. Transposed slightly to 1937, this show, complete with stiff-necked tour guide (Lars Eidinger) explaining the worthlessness of the paintings to a crowd caught between socially-mandated disapproval and private titillation, provides the perfect opening for Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s return to the welcoming embrace of Germany’s historical past. Coming after a brief, best-forgotten dalliance with Hollywood with “The Tourist,” after “The Lives of Others” won the foreign-language Oscar in 2007, “Never Look Away” has already been selected as this year’s German Oscar hopeful. And it is all about the three-way tussle between art, history and politics, though in form, Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film, as classical and dignified a three-hour-plus, generations-spanning drama as you will meet, could not be less “degenerate.”
Visiting the exhibition are...
Visiting the exhibition are...
- 9/4/2018
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
After winning an Oscar for The Lives of Others and making the 2010 Johnny Depp-Angelina Jolie vehicle The Tourist, which was nominated for three Golden Globes, German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is now in contention for a Golden Lion with his third feature, Never Look Away (Werk ohne Author). While nominally focused on the life and work of fictional artist Kurt Barnert from Dresden, this is really a thinly veiled biopic of one of Germany’s most popular contemporary painters, Gerhard Richter.
Spanning roughly three tumultuous decades, from 1937 to 1966, von Donnersmarck, who also penned the screenplay, manages ...
Spanning roughly three tumultuous decades, from 1937 to 1966, von Donnersmarck, who also penned the screenplay, manages ...
After winning an Oscar for The Lives of Others and making the 2010 Johnny Depp-Angelina Jolie vehicle The Tourist, which was nominated for three Golden Globes, German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is now in contention for a Golden Lion with his third feature, Never Look Away (Werk ohne Author). While nominally focused on the life and work of fictional artist Kurt Barnert from Dresden, this is really a thinly veiled biopic of one of Germany’s most popular contemporary painters, Gerhard Richter.
Spanning roughly three tumultuous decades, from 1937 to 1966, von Donnersmarck, who also penned the screenplay, manages ...
Spanning roughly three tumultuous decades, from 1937 to 1966, von Donnersmarck, who also penned the screenplay, manages ...
The Lives Of Others writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck returns to Venice, the setting for his second film The Tourist, with the world premiere of big-canvas European co-production Never Look Away (Werk Ohne Autor).
Tom Schilling, Paula Beer, Sebastian Koch and Saskia Rosendahl star in the period epic which charts the story of German artist Kurt Barnert (Schilling) who escapes East Germany but remains tormented by his childhood under the Nazis and the Gdr-regime. When he meets fellow student Ellie (Beer), he is convinced he has met the love of his life and begins to create paintings that mirror his own fate and the traumas of a generation.
With a budget of around $20M the 188-minute feature is among the most expensive German-language films ever assembled. Sony Classics has U.S. and select territory rights (as they did on the brilliant Oscar-winner The Lives Of Others), Beta handles sales and was a co-producer.
Tom Schilling, Paula Beer, Sebastian Koch and Saskia Rosendahl star in the period epic which charts the story of German artist Kurt Barnert (Schilling) who escapes East Germany but remains tormented by his childhood under the Nazis and the Gdr-regime. When he meets fellow student Ellie (Beer), he is convinced he has met the love of his life and begins to create paintings that mirror his own fate and the traumas of a generation.
With a budget of around $20M the 188-minute feature is among the most expensive German-language films ever assembled. Sony Classics has U.S. and select territory rights (as they did on the brilliant Oscar-winner The Lives Of Others), Beta handles sales and was a co-producer.
- 9/4/2018
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
German filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck made a major splash with his 2006 drama “The Lives of Others.” The film, which garnered major international awards, including the Oscar for best foreign-language film, propelled Henckel von Donnersmarck into the upper echelons of Hollywood, where he made the 2010 thriller “The Tourist” with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp and went on to set up Allegory Films with Sam Raimi. He operates Pergamon Film in Munich with partner Jan Mojto. “Never Look Away,” his latest work, is a high-tension drama that spans three turbulent eras of German history as it follows the life of a young artist, the woman he loves and the man bent on destroying their relationship.
How are the themes of this film similar to those of “The Lives of Others”?
“The Lives of Others” explored how a person can be changed by art, how a person’s life can be impacted by art.
How are the themes of this film similar to those of “The Lives of Others”?
“The Lives of Others” explored how a person can be changed by art, how a person’s life can be impacted by art.
- 9/1/2018
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
NewportFILM will screen documentaries by Morgan Neville, Matt Tyrnauer, Nathanel Kahn, and Andrew Solomon as part of its annual summer series.
The festival has become something of an institution in the posh seaside community — Newport, Rhode Island is an old world resort, with Gilded Age mansions that are straight out of an Edith Wharton novel. Part of the attraction is that the sunset screenings are hosted in several different historic venues, including Rosecliff, a mansion featured in the 1974 version of “The Great Gatsby” with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, the Eisenhower House, which was the “Summer White House” for President Dwight D. Eisenhower or his Mar a Lago, and the Newport International Polo Grounds.
The screenings kicked off Thursday with Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” a look at the enduring legacy of Fred Rogers, and runs through September 6th. Past films that have played at newportFILM include Brett Morgan’s “Jane,...
The festival has become something of an institution in the posh seaside community — Newport, Rhode Island is an old world resort, with Gilded Age mansions that are straight out of an Edith Wharton novel. Part of the attraction is that the sunset screenings are hosted in several different historic venues, including Rosecliff, a mansion featured in the 1974 version of “The Great Gatsby” with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, the Eisenhower House, which was the “Summer White House” for President Dwight D. Eisenhower or his Mar a Lago, and the Newport International Polo Grounds.
The screenings kicked off Thursday with Neville’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” a look at the enduring legacy of Fred Rogers, and runs through September 6th. Past films that have played at newportFILM include Brett Morgan’s “Jane,...
- 6/22/2018
- by Variety Staff
- Variety Film + TV
Every so often, when you hear that a painting by Picasso just sold at auction for a record $179 million, or that a Pollock or a Basquiat or a Jeff Koons now routinely fetch prices worthy of a Silicon Valley start-up, it’s easy to wonder what, exactly, is going on. Is this a true expression of the art’s value? Or is it the symptom of some skyrocketing hothouse bubble that has decadently transformed art into gold?
“The Price of Everything,” Nathaniel Kahn’s brilliant and captivating documentary about how the art world got converted into a money market, is shrewd enough to know that the answer is both. The movie gazes, with a good amount of woe (but also with the pleasurable voyeuristic charge that tends to accompany displays of great wealth), at what the art world has become: the staggering auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, where masterpieces,...
“The Price of Everything,” Nathaniel Kahn’s brilliant and captivating documentary about how the art world got converted into a money market, is shrewd enough to know that the answer is both. The movie gazes, with a good amount of woe (but also with the pleasurable voyeuristic charge that tends to accompany displays of great wealth), at what the art world has become: the staggering auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, where masterpieces,...
- 4/1/2018
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
Feature doc explores the role of contemporary art in consumerist society.
London-based documentary specialists Dogwoof has picked up UK distribution and international sales rights to Nathaniel Kahn’s contemporary art documentary The Price Of Everything.
The film had its world premiere at Sundance, ahead of which HBO Documentary Films acquired Us rights. The deal was negotiated by Josh Braun and David Koh of production outfit Submarine with Anna Godas of Dogwoof
Kahn previously directed the Oscar-nominated featuere My Architect and the Oscar-nominated short Two Hands: The Leon Fleisher Story. Featuring world-renowned artists including Jeff Koons and Gerhard Richter, collectors, dealers, and auctioneers, the film reveals how the contemporary art market works and uncovers the medium’s enduring power.
The Price Of Everything is an expose doc focused on the role of art in consumerist society.
“This highly entertaining and accessible film takes us inside the art world like never before, with incredible access...
London-based documentary specialists Dogwoof has picked up UK distribution and international sales rights to Nathaniel Kahn’s contemporary art documentary The Price Of Everything.
The film had its world premiere at Sundance, ahead of which HBO Documentary Films acquired Us rights. The deal was negotiated by Josh Braun and David Koh of production outfit Submarine with Anna Godas of Dogwoof
Kahn previously directed the Oscar-nominated featuere My Architect and the Oscar-nominated short Two Hands: The Leon Fleisher Story. Featuring world-renowned artists including Jeff Koons and Gerhard Richter, collectors, dealers, and auctioneers, the film reveals how the contemporary art market works and uncovers the medium’s enduring power.
The Price Of Everything is an expose doc focused on the role of art in consumerist society.
“This highly entertaining and accessible film takes us inside the art world like never before, with incredible access...
- 2/13/2018
- by Tom Grater
- ScreenDaily
HBO Documentary Films has acquired Us TV rights to The Price Of Everything in the run-up to its world premiere at Sundance in U.S. Documentary Competition on Friday (January 19).
HBO Documentary Films has acquired Us TV rights to The Price Of Everything in the run-up to its world premiere at Sundance in U.S. Documentary Competition on Friday (January 19).
The company will also open Nathaniel Kahn’s (My Architect) Park City selection in theatres in a minimum of 12 Us markets prior to its HBO premiere.
The Price Of Everything explores the labyrinthine art world and the role of art and artistic passion in society. Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter and Njideka Akunyili Crosby are among the talking heads.
“I couldn’t think of a better home for the film than HBO,” Kahn said. “I had a great experience with them on both My Architect and my short, Two Hands, and am particularly happy they will be taking...
HBO Documentary Films has acquired Us TV rights to The Price Of Everything in the run-up to its world premiere at Sundance in U.S. Documentary Competition on Friday (January 19).
The company will also open Nathaniel Kahn’s (My Architect) Park City selection in theatres in a minimum of 12 Us markets prior to its HBO premiere.
The Price Of Everything explores the labyrinthine art world and the role of art and artistic passion in society. Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter and Njideka Akunyili Crosby are among the talking heads.
“I couldn’t think of a better home for the film than HBO,” Kahn said. “I had a great experience with them on both My Architect and my short, Two Hands, and am particularly happy they will be taking...
- 1/16/2018
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
In the first deal of the Sundance Film Festival, HBO Documentary Films has picked up the art documentary The Price of Everything.
Director Nathaniel Kahn took a deep dive into the high-end art world, where artistic passion and consumerism collide. The feature includes interviews with collectors, dealers, auctioneers and artists like Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter and Njideka Akunyili Crosby.
Jennifer Blei Stockman and Debi Wisch for Hot & Sunny Productions and Carla Solomon for Anthos Media produced, with Lisa Remington and Kayla Malahiazar acting as co-producers.
The Price of Everything will debut in the U.S. Documentary Competition...
Director Nathaniel Kahn took a deep dive into the high-end art world, where artistic passion and consumerism collide. The feature includes interviews with collectors, dealers, auctioneers and artists like Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter and Njideka Akunyili Crosby.
Jennifer Blei Stockman and Debi Wisch for Hot & Sunny Productions and Carla Solomon for Anthos Media produced, with Lisa Remington and Kayla Malahiazar acting as co-producers.
The Price of Everything will debut in the U.S. Documentary Competition...
- 1/16/2018
- by Mia Galuppo
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Although until now they’ve only been known as fashion designers, cinema has always been part of Kate and Laura Mulleavy’s work. The siblings often use films as inspiration for their collections and have delivered runway shows dedicated to the likes of Japanese horror movie Kuroneko among others, their elaborate, stunning designs are also staples of awards season red carpets with actresses like Kirsten Dunst and Natalie Portman wearing them to festivals and ceremonies. In fact, Portman collected her first Best Actress Oscar in a purple Rodarte gown, after Kate and Laura had designed many of the costumes for Black Swan. After being so immersed in the world of cinema, it seems that making a film was the logical next step, and so they’ve done with Woodshock, a hallucinatory journey into the mind of Theresa (Dunst) a young woman battling depression after the death of her mother.
The...
The...
- 9/22/2017
- by Jose Solís
- The Film Stage
Jim Jarmusch. Photo courtesy of the Lisbon Estoril Film Festival.This interview took place on an auspicious morning after the U.S. elections. The setting was placid: an oceanside terrace in the small casino town of Estoril, twenty minutes outside of Lisbon, where Jim Jarmusch was attending Paulo Branco’s Lisbon Estoril Film Festival. Despite the harrowing mood, the subject was focused and insightful, talking about his working method, collaborators, and the poetic influences and resonances for his latest film, Paterson, which opens in North America this week.Notebook: I wanted to start by talking about technical matters.Jim Jarmusch: Sure.Notebook: I’m curious…do you use a shot list?Jarmusch: No. Because, say, we go to the location, and it’s 4pm, and we’re shooting the next day at 9am… and now the light is coming from a different place, and maybe it rained overnight, and everything’s different.
- 12/29/2016
- MUBI
Keltie Ferris Mitchell-Innes & Nash, NYC Through October 17, 2015
A screenwriter bursts into his agent's office. "I have a great idea for a new picture," he enthuses. "We do a remake of The Wiz. Only with white people!" Clichéd Hollywood joke, sure, yet pretty much on point with regard to current trends in art and music. The mash-up, dub, remix, redux, or whatever you want to call it, has replaced the "appropriation" strategies of the 80s. It has morphed into something called Zombie Formalism that for better, or worse, is now seen as a legitimate art movement.
Mitchell-Innes & Nash is showing the paintings and works on paper of Keltie Ferris. These very large, high-keyed, color-filled canvases are warmly inviting on first viewing. Bright reds and blues dominate. The arching motif is brushy passages of paint, checkerboard squares, and general noodling around with the brush over airbrushed planes of color. The press release notes,...
A screenwriter bursts into his agent's office. "I have a great idea for a new picture," he enthuses. "We do a remake of The Wiz. Only with white people!" Clichéd Hollywood joke, sure, yet pretty much on point with regard to current trends in art and music. The mash-up, dub, remix, redux, or whatever you want to call it, has replaced the "appropriation" strategies of the 80s. It has morphed into something called Zombie Formalism that for better, or worse, is now seen as a legitimate art movement.
Mitchell-Innes & Nash is showing the paintings and works on paper of Keltie Ferris. These very large, high-keyed, color-filled canvases are warmly inviting on first viewing. Bright reds and blues dominate. The arching motif is brushy passages of paint, checkerboard squares, and general noodling around with the brush over airbrushed planes of color. The press release notes,...
- 9/30/2015
- by bradleyrubenstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Sally Singer with Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Spring Fashion Talks at the French Institute Alliance Française kicked off with Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler, moderated by Creative Digital Director for Vogue, Sally Singer, and crossed paths with the Tribeca Film Festival as the Haute Couture on Film series continued.
Inside the Florence Gould Hall Theater on April 15, while Bao Nguyen's Live from New York! was opening Tribeca at the Beacon Theatre, McCollough and Hernandez were referencing Harmony Korine, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Cate Blanchett, Gerhard Richter, Pearl Jam, Cindy Sherman, Kurt Cobain and, at one point, Sydney Pollack's Out Of Africa, complete with mid-century craftsmanship and mother nature as shaping Proenza Schouler creations. The designers appeared in Fabien Constant's exquisite documentary Mademoiselle C on Carine Roitfeld. Inspiration for them comes mostly from "posture, movement, attitude and spirit.
Spring Fashion Talks at the French Institute Alliance Française kicked off with Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler, moderated by Creative Digital Director for Vogue, Sally Singer, and crossed paths with the Tribeca Film Festival as the Haute Couture on Film series continued.
Inside the Florence Gould Hall Theater on April 15, while Bao Nguyen's Live from New York! was opening Tribeca at the Beacon Theatre, McCollough and Hernandez were referencing Harmony Korine, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Cate Blanchett, Gerhard Richter, Pearl Jam, Cindy Sherman, Kurt Cobain and, at one point, Sydney Pollack's Out Of Africa, complete with mid-century craftsmanship and mother nature as shaping Proenza Schouler creations. The designers appeared in Fabien Constant's exquisite documentary Mademoiselle C on Carine Roitfeld. Inspiration for them comes mostly from "posture, movement, attitude and spirit.
- 4/17/2015
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
35 Cows and a Kalishnokov
What is the bond between a tribe of Ethiopian cattle farmers, dandy gentlemen parading themselves on Brazzaville streets, and the Kinshasan fetish wrestlers who appear in 35 Cows and a Kalishnokov in the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam’s (Idfa) competition this year? To propose a documentary about such a bond, an act of synthesis would be necessary, one which first deconstructs the rites and peoples exhibited, creating a web of meaning that would link the rituals.
Or, as in 35 Cows and a Kalishnokov, one could make a purely aesthetic film whose theoretical basis is but a shared continent, exotic landscapes and black skin. What director Oswold von Richthofen’s documentary offers up to its (inevitably) Western viewers is an image of Africa that is all color and form—rippling musculature, exotic hues, pierced faces, wild cries—regurgitating as always the same Western myth of Africa, a...
What is the bond between a tribe of Ethiopian cattle farmers, dandy gentlemen parading themselves on Brazzaville streets, and the Kinshasan fetish wrestlers who appear in 35 Cows and a Kalishnokov in the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam’s (Idfa) competition this year? To propose a documentary about such a bond, an act of synthesis would be necessary, one which first deconstructs the rites and peoples exhibited, creating a web of meaning that would link the rituals.
Or, as in 35 Cows and a Kalishnokov, one could make a purely aesthetic film whose theoretical basis is but a shared continent, exotic landscapes and black skin. What director Oswold von Richthofen’s documentary offers up to its (inevitably) Western viewers is an image of Africa that is all color and form—rippling musculature, exotic hues, pierced faces, wild cries—regurgitating as always the same Western myth of Africa, a...
- 1/27/2015
- by Yaron Dahan
- MUBI
This is where Matthew McConaughey's Cooper encounters the Tesseract: an artificial construct that allows him to perceive time as a physical dimension. The design and execution was a total collaboration between Nolan, theoretical physicist and exec producer Kip Thorne, the art department led by production designer Nathan Crowley, and VFX studio Double Negative led by co-owner/supervisor Paul Franklin. "We looked at works from Gerhard Richter, who has this technique of scraping the paint across the canvas and leaving these trails, so there's this sense of a historical record," Franklin explains. "The other thing I looked at was slit scan photography, and of, course, the Stargate in '2001,' but it goes back a lot further than that. "Slit scan is this process that records one specific location across a whole range of moments. You have a slit and an aperture and you move the negative behind it so...
- 12/10/2014
- by Bill Desowitz
- Thompson on Hollywood
In the era of museum as theme park, every institution jumps at the chance to play DJ. On Saturday, the Guggenheim turned its Rotunda into an art-house disco with the spacey sounds of Krautrock, all inspired by the overlooked and largely forgotten Düsseldorf disco the Creamcheese Club. Despite its, well, cheesy name (after Frank Zappa’s Suzy Creamcheese), the fringe space served as a hangout hub for everyone and anyone that you would have wanted to meet in post-war Germany: Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, and Binky Palermo (who bartended for a bit) — all of whom exhibited work inside — as well as the Zero Group artists — Günther Uecker founded it, and Heinz Mack designed the bar — and, of course, the Krautrock kings like Neu!, Can, Cluster, and Kraftwerk, who all played many of their formative performances inside the basement bunker (and the latter demonstrated an amazing pull in...
- 11/17/2014
- Vulture
The Museum of Modern Art’s sprawling extravagant “Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963–2010” is really good. How could it not be, with more than 260 works by a great artist on hand? When Polke died at 69 in 2010, John Baldessari observed that “Any one [Polke] move can provide a career for a lesser artist.” The Whitney curator Chrissie Iles said, "I don’t like using terms like ‘master,’ but Polke is a master; he knows it, and we know it." I think of him as a Rosetta Stone for young artists, one whose material glee, anarchic inventiveness, and hallucinogenic Blakean imagination puts him in the same influential postwar class with Pollock, Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol, and his old friend and nemesis Gerhard Richter. He created his own ravishingly visual, impish blends of Pop, Conceptualism, Neo-Dada, Fluxus, Constructivism, and Process Art, all replete with philosophical heft, social bite, and an extraordinary combination of chaos...
- 4/16/2014
- by Jerry Saltz
- Vulture
Eric Lavallee: Name me three of your favorite “2013 discoveries”…
David Zellner: 1. Seeing Viva Maria! in 35mm. That movie is pure joy. 2. Gerhard Richter’s Cologne Cathedral. 3. The Paperboy. I think about it regularly.
Lavallee: Was wondering if you could detail the visual ideas you had for the look of the film…what were you aiming for? Was it important to detail/distinguish the eccentricities or differences found in Japanese society?
Zellner: While particular with our focus and tone, the two places, Tokyo and Minnesota, were so inherently different we let the distinguishing details unfold naturally rather than force anything. This is why it was crucial that we shot on location.
Lavallee: We’re guessing that there isn’t much written dialogue…. how was sound and score written into the film and I’m curious if you work with storyboards or is there a more organic approach during filming?
Zellner:...
David Zellner: 1. Seeing Viva Maria! in 35mm. That movie is pure joy. 2. Gerhard Richter’s Cologne Cathedral. 3. The Paperboy. I think about it regularly.
Lavallee: Was wondering if you could detail the visual ideas you had for the look of the film…what were you aiming for? Was it important to detail/distinguish the eccentricities or differences found in Japanese society?
Zellner: While particular with our focus and tone, the two places, Tokyo and Minnesota, were so inherently different we let the distinguishing details unfold naturally rather than force anything. This is why it was crucial that we shot on location.
Lavallee: We’re guessing that there isn’t much written dialogue…. how was sound and score written into the film and I’m curious if you work with storyboards or is there a more organic approach during filming?
Zellner:...
- 1/14/2014
- by Eric Lavallee
- IONCINEMA.com
Theatrical hell-raisers and the art world's enfants terribles take centre stage in our roundup of the biggest risk-takers of 2014
Theatre
Oh! What a Lovely War
Theatre-maker Joan Littlewood was a visionary, an iconoclast and a subversive. Her 1963 "documentary collage" about the bitter ironies of the first world war was way ahead of its time, using popular period song and hard-hitting testimony. Lyn Gardner Theatre Royal Stratford East, London E15 (020-8534 0310), 1 February to 15 May.
Macbeth
Shakespeare's dark tale as you've never seen it before, taking place in a secret location from dawn to dusk. Party with Duncan, bed down in Macbeth's castle on the 27th floor of a tower block, glimpse the witches in an underground car park, and join the feast at which Banquo will be an uninvited guest. The spectres will be bloody – but the food will be vegetarian. LG Secret location, London, 4 April to 31 May.
Grit
This...
Theatre
Oh! What a Lovely War
Theatre-maker Joan Littlewood was a visionary, an iconoclast and a subversive. Her 1963 "documentary collage" about the bitter ironies of the first world war was way ahead of its time, using popular period song and hard-hitting testimony. Lyn Gardner Theatre Royal Stratford East, London E15 (020-8534 0310), 1 February to 15 May.
Macbeth
Shakespeare's dark tale as you've never seen it before, taking place in a secret location from dawn to dusk. Party with Duncan, bed down in Macbeth's castle on the 27th floor of a tower block, glimpse the witches in an underground car park, and join the feast at which Banquo will be an uninvited guest. The spectres will be bloody – but the food will be vegetarian. LG Secret location, London, 4 April to 31 May.
Grit
This...
- 1/1/2014
- by Lyn Gardner, Andrew Dickson, Jonathan Jones, Adrian Searle, Imogen Tilden, Andrew Clements, Tom Service, Mark Lawson, Tim Jonze, Brian Logan, Oliver Wainwright, Ben Beaumont-Thomas, Henry Barnes, Judith Mackrell
- The Guardian - Film News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.