Your weekly one-stop-shop for film news, interviews, articles, and videos from the week that was.
Speaking at a virtual master class at Chapman University on Wednesday, Bong Joon Ho offered his take on how Hollywood should respond to the recent rise in deplorable anti-Asian violence. As shared by The Hollywood Reporter, Bong asserted, “Creators and filmmakers can be bolder with dealing with issues and they shouldn’t be afraid to confront them… Use your insight to portray the issues that are currently boiling underneath the surface of society that can explode later on.”
This week marked the eighth anniversary of Roger Ebert’s passing. In tribute to the legendary critic, RogerEbert.com’s Brian Tallerico shares excerpts from (and links to) select Ebert reviews that focussed on films about connection.
Our friends at the DOXA Documentary Festival have announced an impressive first wave of programming, including Shannon Walsh’s The Gig Is Up as their opener and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers’ Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy as a special presentation in their Justice Forum. The lineup will also feature Someone Like Me, Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams’s profile of Rainbow Refugee, the Vancouver-based organization dedicated to assisting LGBTQ+ refugees who are settling in Canada.
Staying on the nonfiction front, Filmmaker Magazine invited Theo Anthony, whose All Light, Everywhere was a standout at Sundance, to talk to Sky Hopinka about małni—towards the ocean, towards the shore and his artistic process. As Hopinka, a former SFU instructor, shares, “I very much lean heavily on the structure of the film for not instilling what the intention is, not showing all my cards in the beginning of a film. [Of instead being]: there’s going to be weird jump cuts. Things are going to be inverted. Text is going to go crazy; it’s going to reveal itself. I want to make a space for an audience to get comfortable within the film to ingest it. ”
Emma Seligman, writer/director of Shiva Baby, joins us for an Indie Spirits talk on Monday, April 12. It seems he’ll have plenty of new developments to delve into as Screen Daily reports that HBO is developing a comedy series based on the Seligman’s debut feature. The writer/director is also at work on Bottoms, a sophomore effort that will see her reunite with Shiva Baby’s star, Rachel Sennott.
The New York Times’ Kyle Buchanan examines whether we could see a sweep of the Oscars’ acting categories by people of colour. As Buchanan says, this would mark a major step forward after years for #oscarssowhite backlash.
With No Ordinary Man joining Ronnie’s on VIFF Connect this week, this seems a fine time to share Jonathan Romney’s list of “10 key jazz films” over at Sight & Sound. Kicking off the chronological list is Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson’s Momma Don’t Allow, which can be seen in its entirety on YouTube.
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