As one New York film festival ends (Tribeca), attention turns across the East River to the New York borough of Brooklyn where another cinema celebration has been unveiled. In only its third year, the BAMcinemaFest, presented by BAMcinématek at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, has become an important film event on the cultural calendar and a festival with a reputation for innovative programming. The third annual BAMcinemaFest, which runs June 16 to 26, will present 19 New Yo...
A real, honest-to-goodness movie star will grace the agonizingly chic borough of Brooklyn when screen goddess (and serious actress) Susan Sarandon is feted at the Brooklyn Academy of Music this coming weekend. Starting on Thursday and running through Sunday, the aptly titled The Susan Sarandon Picture Show (a hommage to Sarandon's breakout role in the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show) at BAMcinématek presents a 13-film salute to the movie star and committed social activi...
In CARLOS, the riveting and expansive 5 1/2-hour biopic of the charismatic 1970s terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, writer/director Olivier Assayas relies on a dizzying cinematic style that is also punctuated by the punk music that characterized the rebellion of the age in which he lived. Music and visuals are among the many pallettes that Assayas has used with great fidelity and skill throughout his diverse and diverting 25-year career. As an added panache to the theatrical release o...
French bad boy actor Romain Duris will be feted on screen for three Wednesdays starting tonight, as the BAMcinematek, one of New York's most adventurous arthouse cinemas, explores the work of one of Europe’s most popular young actors. Already a major star in his native France, Duris is building on that status in America with the upcoming stateside release of his newest hit, Pascal Chaumeil’s romantic comedy, HEARTBREAKER.
The series begins this evening with the stro...
THE PLEASURE OF BEING ROBBED
You've heard of the Warner brothers and the Baldwin brothers.....well, make way for the Safdie brothers, the directorial team of Benny and Josh Safdie, American indie's dynamic duo. The BAMcinématek located at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York has turned the asylum over to the inmates for the eclectic film series titled Emotional Sloppy Manic Cinema: Films Directed and Selected by Benny and Josh Safdie.
The series, a collection of 19...
Don't Let Me Drown
New York City is blessed with a number of established film events for every season, including the New York Film Festival in the Fall, the New Directors/New Films series, Gen Art Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival in the Spring, and dozens of other smaller, more specialized events. Add to this a new summer festival to be presented by BAMcinematek, the repertory film program at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, one of the city’s citadels of culture. The Festival ...
The past few years has seen a steady revival of interest in classic Japanese cinema of the 1950s and 1960s, with a stream of retrospectives and the issues of DVD packages devoted to the works of such films masters as Yasujiro Ozu, Kenzi Mizoguchi and Shohei Imamura. The latest Japanese director to get the revival treatment is Nagisa Oshima, widely considered a major force in world cinema for his provocative films of the 1960s and 1970s. A national tour of Oshima’s work has opened at the Bro...