Your weekly one-stop-shop for film news, interviews, articles, and videos from the week that was.
In the wake of pushing the reveal of Cannes’ 2021 lineup back a week, Thierry Fremaux has granted Variety’s Elsa Keslassy an audience in order to talk about speculated selections, the state of streaming and safety protocols that will be instituted for the July event. In terms of changes to expect, he shared, “We have decided, with Stéphanie Lamome and Christian Jeune, to refocus Un Certain Regard on its origins, meaning on young filmmakers, and innovative and personal films that we only see in a cinema. Moreover, we will organize out-of-competition screenings in the Debussy auditorium, which is a powerful theater similar to that of the Lumiere Theater (where the competition films unspool). We’ll also host more “midnight screenings.'” The official selection will now be announced on June 3, 2021.
Staying in the French Riviera for a moment, Brandon Cronenberg (Possessor) has announced that his next project will be adapting J.G. Ballard’s Super-Cannes into a limited series. Concerning an “underworld of crime, sexual perversion, madness and manipulation that is rapidly spiralling out of control”, the source material seems tailor-made for Cronenberg’s proclivities. Of course, Ballard’s novel Crash was previously adapted for the screen by Brandon’s father, David.
Over at Criterion, Girish Shambu share how the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival transformed his relationship with cinema. As he shares, “If auteurism had long been the principal cinephilic lens through which I engaged with the medium, imagineNATIVE broke its dominance in my viewing life. It did this by showing me how, when used exclusively, or even predominantly, auteurism diminishes the richness of cinema by curtailing its possibilities. What’s more, this applies especially to cinema made by marginalized people: women, Indigenous, Black, LGBTQ, disabled, and POC filmmakers.”
Meanwhile, Toronto’s Images Festival returns this weekend with a free online edition. Films will play at set times and be followed by livestreamed Q&As. POV Magazine’s Pat Mullen has shared five highlights, including Will Kwan’s If All You Have is a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Nail, which details an Asian-Canadian family enduring a realtor’s racism as they search for a new home.
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