Category Archives: Film

Coming to NYC’s Quad Cinema for a week beginning tomorrow, Friday, December 23: VITO

Jeffrey Schwarz’s portrait of LGBT activist Vito Russo had its world premiere at this Fall’s New York Film Festival. Since then, the doc has screened at a number of LGBT festivals, with more engagements forthcoming. The Quad brings the film back to Russo’s NYC stomping grounds with daily screenings at 1PM and 3PM through December 29.

For younger generations of LGBT individuals and for film scholars, Vito Russo may be familiar as the author of THE CELLULOID CLOSET, the pioneering book exploring representations of homosexuality in the cinema, which was later adapted into the Sundance award-winning documentary by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. For an older generation, Russo was also known as a vibrant gay rights political activist, both before and after the impact of AIDS. He was a co-founder of both GLAAD and ACT UP, recognizing in the former the importance of the media in creating and fostering the public’s view of LGBT people, and in the latter the necessity for the LGBT community to mobilize in order to fight for its own continued existence in the face of the AIDS epidemic. What’s so moving and important about Schwarz’s portrait is not only its deeply felt appreciation for Russo and his diverse contributions to society and culture, but in the way that the documentary also functions as an affecting elegy for an entire generation lost to the AIDS crisis. The film captures not only Russo’s history, but the history of all those people, predominantly gay men, and helps in some way to repopulate the vacuum that has resulted from their loss.

Coming to NYC’s Film Forum for a one week run beginning next Wednesday, December 28: EL SICARIO, ROOM 164

Gianfranco Rosi’s unconventional yet remarkably gripping profile of an ex-hitman premiered at last year’s Venice Film Festival, where it won three awards. It has screened at numerous fests since, including Hot Docs, DocLisboa, DocAviv, and Thessaloniki Documentary, picking up additional accolades along the way.

I included the film in my Hot Docs round up here.

Coming to theatres this Friday, December 23: PINA

Wim Wenders’ 3D celebration of the legendary German choreographer and her legacy premiered at the beginning of the year at the Berlin Film Festival, and came to North America this Fall with much-talked-about screenings at Telluride, Toronto, and the New York Film Festival. The film has already won Best Documentary at the European Film Awards and opens nationwide next month after its initial theatrical release in NYC.

While the master director had discussed collaborating with Bausch long ago, an uncertainty about how to capture dance on film stalled the project for years. With developments in 3D film technology allowing Wenders’ camera to approximate the immersive experience of watching a live performance, the project moved forward. When Bausch died in 2009, Wenders was ready to abandon the project, but credits her dancers’ dedication to her work as spurring him on to complete the film, creating an elegy for her that also serves as a catharsis. Utilizing 3D in a jaw-dropping way, Wenders brings the audience a privileged vantage point to witness Bausch’s creativity and her dancers’ remarkable virtuosity and beauty. Blending these 3D performance with the personal perspectives of various members of Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal ensemble, some of whom worked with Pina for decades, results in a dance film rather unlike any other – one which seems poised to draw even the most hardened non-dance fans into its world.