Ray Simon visits Lightbox Film Center to view a screening of “Chulas Fronteras” by Les Blank. Simon says the film is a beautiful and romantic snapshot of the lives of working-class Mexican Americans living in Texas in the mid-1970s.
Read MoreSamuel Brown reviews “The Spy Behind Home Plate,” a 101 minute long film that tells the story of Moe Berg, American spy and Major League Baseball player.
Read MoreJanyce Glasper sees an insightful movie that deals with issues of post-graduate artists trying to make a go of it in the world today. “Olympia” screened at Lightbox Film Center as part of the Fifth Annual Philadelphia Women’s Film Festival.
Read MoreMichael previews the upcoming documentary, “The Price of Everything,” and calls it a voyeur’s delight for those interested in the art market’s high rollers and art stars. Hot shot artist Jeff Koons gets a lot of screen time, if you’re into him, balanced with some Jerry Saltz and Larry Poons, who speaks about artists losing their souls to the marketplace. The film screens at the Prince Theater starting Nov. 2 and will be on HBO Nov. 12.
Read MoreImani attends the first of three screenings at Lightbox of archival footage from NEWSREEL, an activist film collective that operated during the late 1960s and early ‘70s. Against the inescapable backdrop of America’s current moral crisis, this series takes a sobering look at the social and political upheavals of 50 years ago and the independent journalists who documented them.
Read MoreIn Part Two of our 2-part coverage of the new documentary, Imani gives her take on how Sara Driver’s film about Basquiat’s early years both fits and breaks the mold. Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat is now playing at Ritz at the Bourse. See Roberta’s review from last Friday for even more to chew on.
Read MoreIn Part One of our 2-part coverage of the new documentary, Roberta gives a brief overview of the film and says it’s not a bio-pic but a history flick about an era in which Basquiat was a player who turns out to be major. The film opens today at Ritz at the Bourse. Stay tuned for Imani Roach’s review coming up soon!
Read MoreJessica Rizzo attended the Lightbox Film Center’s recent retrospective of French filmmaker Philippe Garrel’s evocative body of work. Here she traces the arc of his career and recounts highlights from the month-long survey, which included a number of films rarely screened on this side of the Atlantic.
Read MoreSeventeen years after the feature documentary, “Rivers and Tides” debuted, Director Thomas Riedelsheimer brings back to the screen British artist, Andy Goldsworthy and his magical, shamanistic works with nature. Roberta says the new film, “Leaning into the Wind,” is a film poem, and a loving embrace of this unique artist who paints with leaves and with rain and whose humble affect masks a life of hard work, repeated failure (and triumph) collaborating with a tough and changeable Mother, Nature.
Read MoreA short 2016 movie seeks to rewrite art history to include Black artists who have historically been left out of the American art history canon. Roberta says it’s a compelling piece of filmmaking that shows some progress but a lot of work still to come for an equitable inclusion to be achieved.
Read MoreIntrigued by the work of photographer Rosamond Purcell, Michael sees a documentary about the 75-year-old artist, and he is moved and by the images of odd bits of nature and human-made detritus that are her mainstay. He calls Purcell the Diane Arbus of the natural world. The film comes to Lightbox Film Center in March, 2018.
Read MoreThe new biopic about Tom of Finland tells the story of a gay man in post-WWII Finland, who escaped his country’s and family’s rejection of his homosexuality by celebrating gay love in his erotic art. Censored for years, the art of the stylized and beefy gay men nonetheless circulated and “…played an important part in the movement towards gay liberation,” says Michael in his review. This movie, with brilliant acting, was produced in Finland, an appropriate reparation. It brings the important and under-known artist and his struggle and triumph to a new audience. Opening in Philadelphia at the Ritz Bourse, Nov. 24.
Read More“Faces Places” is a road trip movie and a buddy movie made by French artist and activist, JR, and Belgian-born filmmaker, Agnes Varda. The ebullient, energetic 30-something (JR) and introverted 80-something (Varda) make an odd couple, traveling around rural France in JR’s photo studio on wheels, says Michael, in his review of the new documentary. But he also says the movie is beautifully executed, moving and inspirational. The easy camaraderie between the two intense artists is unexpected, and the country people and their stories, as they get photographed and their faces become part of JR’s public oeuvre, are totally heartwarming. Faces Places opens at the Ritz East on November 2.
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