Review: "Riefenstahl" confronts a singular, disgraceful director

by Nick Taylor

We will never escape the discourse of whether it is possible to separate an artwork from the artist who created it. Death of the author, authorial intent, auteur theory vs collaboration, wider social contexts in which a work exists, so on and so forth. I state this as a fact above all else. We do love interviews and essays where someone talks about how they funnelled their passions and lived experiences into something magnificent. Frankly, I find it annoying only insofar as it feels like we’re asked to do this when someone’s got something very shitty going on offscreen, but even at its best, conflate an artist with their entire past can be a simple shortcut to dogpiling an object rather than meaningfully engaging with it. 

Which brings us to Leni Riefenstahl, a hideously controversial and influential director forever famous as the woman behind Nazi propaganda films Triumph of the Will and Olympia. She’s also the subject of Andres Veiel’s documentary Riefenstahl, which premiered to great acclaim at last year’s Venice Film Festival and is waiting for you to rent it right now . . . .

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TIFF 50: To be or not to be, with "Hamlet" and "Scarlet"

by Cláudio Alves

You thought you were free of TIFF coverage? Well, think again, because there are still a lot of movies to discuss, even if already intertwined with NYFF reviews. In any case, let's consider Shakespeate and a certain prince of Denmark.

There lived and died a Hamnet before Hamlet came to be on the page, on the stage, and in the imagination of countless folks stretching from the Elizabethan age into eternity. At TIFF 50, however, Aneil Karia's Hamlet screened before Zhao's Hamnet, a bit overshadowed by the film that had already rocked Telluride by that point and still promises to be a talking point for months to come. The same could be said for Scarlet, Mamoru Hosoda's latest animated fantasy, which takes its cues from the Bard's tragedy for one wild ride into purgatory and beyond…

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NYFF 63: Currents Program #4 - Model Behaviors

by Nick Taylor

FICTION CONTRACT, Carolyn Lazard

As always, the names for these NYFF shorts programs are creatively apt. Here, Model Behaviors encompasses practical applications of technology across very different fields. How do these machines recognize human beings, and how do they in turn shape us? Broad perceptions of reality, filtered through a digital intermediate, are taken to specific extremes as these filmmakers explore the unique applications of technology happening across fields of labor and care…

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NYFF 63: Pedro Pinho's "I Only Rest In the Storm" is a Portuguese must-watch

by Cláudio Alves

Today, in Portugal, the country celebrated 115 years since the monarchy fell and its first Republic came into being. Across the Atlantic, at the New York Film Festival, there was another celebration of sorts as Pedro Pinho's I Only Rest In the Storm had its North American premiere. This three-and-a-half-hour oddball drama cum political comedy is one of the best Portuguese films of the season, drunk with playfulness and an audacious spirit to the point of euphoria. At Cannes, Cleo Diára won the Best Actress prize from the Un Certain Regard section, a well-deserved honor for what feels like a star-making turn. At its best, her work suggests an anticolonial variation on the Old Hollywood screwball heroine, complete with constant outfit changes, a barnburner of a monologue, and a starring role in the cinematic year's most entrancing sex scene…

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NYFF 63: Rose Byrne sinks her teeth into Mary Bronstein's "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You"

by Cláudio Alves

No mother is ever good enough. Not according to her children, nor to extended family, friends, nosy neighbors, presumptuous strangers. Not in the collective imagination of society at large and, above all else, herself. It might not seem like it, considering all the dubious looks and insulting concerns thrown her way, but she is her own worst critic. Others try their best, but there will never be a harshest judge than mother. Hell, she's prosecutor, accused and accuser, key witness and vengeful jury all wrapped into one in a trial that might sound like a pity party but is closer to a circus of fire and fury and self-loathing. 

Just ask Linda, the ever-aggrieved lead of Mary Bronstein's If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, played by Rose Byrne as a woman under the influence and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And who can blame her for being such a mess? There's a hole in her daughter's stomach and a hole in her ceiling…

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