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Returning for its fourth edition, the experimentally-focused Prismatic Ground film festival will once again host a series of screenings across several NYC theaters and via a free streaming platform. Running from May 8 through 12, the program kicks off with an appropriately urgent Opening Night screening at the Museum of the Moving Image of Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi’s Fertile Memory (1981), preceded by a reading from poet Hala Alyan and concluding with a post-film discussion between Bidoun magazine’s Tiffany Malakooti and researcher, writer and curator Adam HajYahia. “Most of my energy and attention in the last several months has been focused […]

The post “This Is a Safe Space for People Who Are Against Genocide, And Who Want to See a Liberated Future for All”: Inney Prakash Previews Prismatic Ground 2024 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Returning for its fourth edition, the experimentally-focused Prismatic Ground film festival will once again host a series of screenings across several NYC theaters and via a free streaming platform. Running from May 8 through 12, the program kicks off with an appropriately urgent Opening Night screening at the Museum of the Moving Image of Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi’s Fertile Memory (1981), preceded by a reading from poet Hala Alyan and concluding with a post-film discussion between Bidoun magazine’s Tiffany Malakooti and researcher, writer and curator Adam HajYahia. “Most of my energy and attention in the last several months has been focused […]

The post “This Is a Safe Space for People Who Are Against Genocide, And Who Want to See a Liberated Future for All”: Inney Prakash Previews Prismatic Ground 2024 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

KimiKat Productions Presents Onlookers, a film by Kimi Takesue

Opens Friday, Feb. 16th, 2024 in U.S. theatres

Metrograph (New York exclusive) U.S. theatrical premiere

“Onlookers” will screen as part of the series Fire Over Water: Films of Transcendence January 26 – February 25, 2024 at Metrograph featuring films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Kim Ki-duk, Kimi Takesue and more.

Official Selection:

World Premiere – Slamdance Film Festival 2023, Breakouts Feature Honorable Mention Winner

International Premiere – Cinéma du Réel 2023

Ridm: Montreal International Documentary Film Festival 2023

Dmz International Documentary Film Festival 2023

San Diego Asian American Film Festival 2023

Krakow International Film Festival 2023

Prismatic Ground 2023

Cinéma du Réel 2023

Onlookers, a film by Kimi Takesue

USA | 2023 | 72 minutes

Official site: www.onlookersfilm.com

Onlookers offers a visually striking, immersive meditation on travel and tourism in Laos, reflecting on how we all live as observers. Unfolding in painterly tableaux, Onlookers explores the paradox of travel: Why do people fly thousands of miles from home...

Prismatic Ground, the New York-based film festival that showcases experimental documentary and avant-garde works, kicks off this week. Spanning five days and six theaters, the festival will run from May 3-7 with screenings at the Museum of the Moving Image, Maysles Documentary Center, Bam Cinematheque, Dctv’s Firehouse Cinema, Light Industry and Anthology Film Archives. Now in its third year, Prismatic Ground’s 2023 slate features approximately 60 films, including both recent films from contemporary artists and new restorations of work from essential filmmakers. During a recent chat with Prismatic Ground’s founder and director Inney Prakash, he emphasized that the festival’s lineup […]

The post 15 Films to Catch During Prismatic Ground 2023 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Prismatic Ground, the New York-based film festival that showcases experimental documentary and avant-garde works, kicks off this week. Spanning five days and six theaters, the festival will run from May 3-7 with screenings at the Museum of the Moving Image, Maysles Documentary Center, Bam Cinematheque, Dctv’s Firehouse Cinema, Light Industry and Anthology Film Archives. Now in its third year, Prismatic Ground’s 2023 slate features approximately 60 films, including both recent films from contemporary artists and new restorations of work from essential filmmakers. During a recent chat with Prismatic Ground’s founder and director Inney Prakash, he emphasized that the festival’s lineup […]

The post 15 Films to Catch During Prismatic Ground 2023 first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSHayao Miyazaki’s new film for Studio Ghibli has finally been officially announced. Miyazaki had originally retired after completing The Wind Rises (2013), but returned to work in 2016 to make a film inspired by a 1937 children’s novel by Yoshino Genzaburo that he is particularly fond of. The film, tentatively titled How Do You Live, will open in theaters in Japan on July 14, 2023 and has been unveiled with enigmatic artwork (above) showing some kind of bird-like figure. Among the films chosen for this year’s induction into the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry are Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies (1967), Marlon Riggs’s Tongues Untied (1989), and Jon Favreau’s Iron Man (2008). Good luck trying to draw a connecting line between the 25 films that made the selection.

As various critics groups and awards bodies dole out their top films of the year, it can be hard to parse which ones are actually worth paying attention to. One such list has arrived today with Film Comment’s annual end-of-year survey. Revealed at a special live talk last night, in an unexpected but welcome surprise, David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future topped the list, which also included Jerzy Skolimowski’s Eo, Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun, two by Hong Sangsoo, and more. They also revealed their top undistributed films list, which included David Easteal’s The Plains, Bertrand Bonello’s Coma, and Laura Citarella’s Trenque Lauquen.

“That the winner of this year’s poll is a strange, gory, apocalyptic film about a future where art and humanity are both on the precipice of extinction is a striking reflection of what we’re seeking from cinema in 2022,” said Film...

Following her feature documentary Film About a Father Who, director Lynne Sachs has set her sights on a market and playground in Elmhurst, Queens with her new short Swerve, inspired by former poet laureate of Queens, Paolo Javier, and his Original Brown Boy poems, and fittingly world-premiering at NYC’s BAMcinemaFest later this month. We’re pleased to exclusively premiere the first trailer.

Wearing the tell-tale masks of our daunting now, five New York City performers (Emmy Catedral, ray ferriera, Paolo Javier, Jeff Preiss, Inney Prakash, and Juliana Sass) search for a meal at the Hong Kong Food Court while speaking in verse. The film itself transforms into an ars poetica/ cinematica, a meditation on writing and making images in the liminal space between a global pandemic and what might come next.

The film was inspired by Sachs’ reading of Paolo Javier’s sonnets in his new 2021 book O.B.

Dreams Under Confinement.This year marks the second installment of Prismatic Ground (May 4 – May 8), a new festival focusing on experimental documentary and avant-garde film and video. Last year’s inaugural edition was a completely virtual affair, but this year the festival returns in a hybrid version with in-person screenings and online viewing available for most of the films in its impressive 14 programs. Co-presented by the Maysles Documentary Center and Screen Slate, Prismatic Ground brings festival-goers a wide range of politically engaged, formally challenging new work by up-and-coming artists alongside established ones like Bill Morrison, Jodie Mack, and this year’s Ground Glass Award recipient, Christopher Harris. In the world of experimental film where visibility and opportunities to premiere new work can be hard to come by, the festival is poised to make a significant splash.Founded by Inney Prakash in 2021, last year’s edition consisted of four programs of films,...

PolygraphThe past year, in all its plague decay, has uncovered—as crises tend to—the potential for paradigm shifts. Writers much smarter than I am have already gorgeously noted the few but incredibly generative impacts of “these unprecedented times” on group consciousness. The pandemic has also forced the realm of entertainment to evolve. Art has always been a refuge in times of emergency, and we have had to largely withstand this period of isolation without the comfort that resides in the solidarity of coming together as an audience. Thankfully, movie theaters have once again begun to open in the United States. Just a few months ago, I got to take in John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence in 35mm at the Paris Theater. To sit in the dark with others and hold a bag of popcorn in my hands felt better than it ever has. Following the Warner Bros...

It began, as so many things do these days, with a tweet: in October 2020, Inney Prakash, programmer of the Maysles Cinema’s “After Civilization” series, put out a call for experimental documentary films. The resulting festival, Prismatic Ground, debuted in early April with a diverse line-up of new and repertory non-fiction films that ran the gamut of genres, styles, and techniques. Imagine: a programmer directly engaging with his community of filmmakers with an open-hearted all-points-bulletin was the antithesis of conventional festival gatekeeping. The refreshing prospect was a beacon to filmmakers struggling to create and exhibit work during a traumatic and hostile time. Prakash’s call for submissions caught my attention on that fateful October night: for once, my endless Twitter scrolling put me in the right place at the right time. For the last four years, I’d been dutifully at work on a narrative feature concerning Julian of Norwich,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Awaken (Tom Lowe)

Capturing the awe-inspiring wonders of our world has been an endeavor since the dawn of image-making, and with ever-evolving advancements in technology there’s an unparalleled pristineness in one’s ability to record such beauty. In his feature debut Awaken, director Tom Lowe takes this pursuit to heart, traversing the planet with the eye of a treasure hunter, collecting only the most stunning shots imaginable to convey the splendor of where we all collectively call home. The film’s main calling card––being executive produced by Terrence Malick and Godfrey Reggio––inevitably also sets a perhaps unfairly high bar as the film falls short of achieving...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: George Segal and Elliot Gould in California Split (1974). Actor George Segal, a "defining face of 1970s Hollywood" known for his roles in films like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Robert Altman's California Split, has died. The 2021 Jury and Special Award winners of the 28th SXSW Film Festival have been announced, with winners including Megan Park's The Fallout and Jeremy Workman's Lily Topples the World. Recommended VIEWINGFor the series A One-Woman Confessional: Eight Films by Cecilia Mangini, Another Gaze's streaming project Another Screen has also made available a video of Mangini and Agnès Varda's first meeting in 2011. Metrograph's official trailer for Claire Denis' L'Intrus, her 2004 adaptation of an essay by philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy. The film will be available at the cimema's virtual theatre from March 26 to April 8. A fan-made...