Film
In Conversation
ZHAO LIANG with Lu Yangqiao
Chinese documentary filmmaker Zhao Liang is mostly associated with brave and heartwrenching cinema that illuminates marginal lives in China. The images of artists being unreasonably evicted as illegitimate residents (Farewell Yuanmingyuan (1995)), abusive border police violently torturing ordinary citizens (Crime and Punishment (2007)), and petitioners getting sent to mental institutions for simply confronting the government (Petition (2009)) stand in stark contrast to the Chinese mainstream media’s negligence and elimination of this social landscape.
CONSTELLATIONS AND CHROMOSOMES:
The Short Films of Conrad Schnitzler
By Joe Bucciero
In August, Brooklyn’s Spectacle Theater hosted CON-MYTHOLOGY: The Moving Images of Conrad Schnitzler, four programs that showcased films by or featuring the titular German artist (1937 – 2011), selected by Schnitzler collaborator Gen Ken Montgomery.
In Conversation
CORNELIU PORUMBOIU with Daniel Fairfax
With his films Police, Adjective (2009) and Metabolism, or When Evening Falls on Bucharest (2013), Corneliu Porumboiu has established himself as one of the preeminent members of the Romanian New Wave, a cinema movement that is still bearing fruit a decade after coming to the attention of international audiences.
Seeing Stars: 2015 Toronto International Film Festival
By Steve MacfarlaneClose your eyes and imagine a megaplex—say, the AMC Regal E-Walk 42nd Street—converted into a massive, orgiastic, and yet somehow profitable bonanza of world cinema for ten consecutive days. Apparently, this is what happens every September at the Scotiabank Theatre (alongside ten other, also ridiculously huge venues), all nestled between skyscraper-condo construction sites in the main drag of downtown Toronto for said city’s International Film Festival.
