Story
This stunning feature documentary chronicles the attempted takeover of a small town in North Dakota by notorious white supremacist Craig Cobb. As his behavior becomes more threatening and tensions soar, the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbor. With incredible access to both longtime residents of Leith and white supremacists, the film examines a small community in the plains struggling for sovereignty against an extreme vision.Read More »
Plot
Most is the story of a single father who takes his eight year-old son to work with him at the railroad drawbridge where he is the bridge tender. Just as an oncoming train approaches, his son falls into the drawbridge gear works, leaving the father with a horrific choice. While the film is produced from a completely secular viewpoint, parallels are drawn with the sacrifice a young boy and his father make to that of God and Jesus. Other relevant narratives run in parallel, namely one of a female drug-addict, and they all meet at the climax of this tumultuous film. Critics gave rave reviews for this unique, subtle, and brilliantly produced work. Many reviewers had deep and moving reaction to the film. Christianity Today magazine called it “life changing.”Read More »
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Joey Izzo is an award winning writer/director whose work has been screened at top festivals worldwide, including Cannes Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and San Francisco International Film Festival. His recent short film, Stepsister, is the first film from San Francisco to be selected for Cannes’s Cinéfondation Official Selection.
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Fearing her own, displacement, Anna torments her stepbrother’s new fiancee.Read More »
In film studies, Iranian films are kept at a distance, as ‘other,’ different, and exotic. In reponse, this book takes these films as philosophically relevant and innovative. Each chapter of this book is devoted to analyzing a single film, and each chapter focuses on one philosopher and one particular aesthetic question.
‘A fascinating piece of work which brings the insights of Continental philosophy to bear on Iranian cinema and perhaps more importantly brings Iranian cinema to bear on those insights.’ – Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social ResearchRead More »
An opening title card from director Thom Andesen’s new feature film, The Thoughts That Once We Had, directly identifies the cinematic writings of philosopher Gilles Deleuze as the project’s primary subject and inspiration. Deleuze’s two volumes on film, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1983) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985), are today synonymous with a certain modernist school of thought that, while integrated in academia to such a degree as to be all but understood, remains quite radical. Unquestionably dense and provocatively pedantic, the French empiricist’s filmic texts integrate an array of theories and conceptualizations into a fairly delineated taxonomy, and are therefore fairly conducive to Andersen’s established approach to essay filmmaking—and particularly to the director’s latest, which finds him deliberating on Deleuzian dogma while charting an alternate, personal path through film history.Read More »
Synopsis by Mark Deming
Thanks to the technological marvels of wireless phones, answering machines, the internet, and e-mail, it is no longer necessary actually to see anyone you know, and seven friends have taken this notion to its logical extreme in this comedy. Linda (Aida Turturro) throws a birthday party and to her dismay, none of her friends show up. The next day, while making phone calls with several acquaintances (none of whom ever meet face to face), Linda hears the same excuse from everyone: they were busy with work and tied up on the phone. Denise (Alanna Ubach), meanwhile, is pregnant, and she decides to call the father, Martin (Dan Gunther), whom she’s never met; he made what he thought was an anonymous donation to a sperm bank, and he isn’t so sure he wants to be part of the parenting process. Gale (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) wants to set up a blind date between her friend Barbara (Caroleen Feeney) and Jerry (Liev Schreiber), who exchange photos via fax machine. The group ends up having a wake via conference call when one of their friends dies in a car accident, while talking on a cellular phone, of course. Denise Calls Up was the directorial debut for screenwriter Hal Salwen.Read More »
Martin Lynn (Farley Granger) has crossed his breaking point. Poor, stuck in a menial job and mourning his recently deceased, devoutly Catholic mother, the mentally fraying youth visits his local pastor to arrange a decent funeral for her and, in a frustrated rage, kills the cleric with a crucifix. On the run in a clouded haze, Martin slips into the night and anxiously watches as circumstances result in someone else being arrested for the crime. But the empathetic Father Roth (Dana Andrews), inquiring into the incident, sees something suspect in Martin – as well as a soul worth saving. The only crime drama produced by Samuel Goldwyn, this under-recognized film-noir thriller with a unique religious twist is powered by a searingly intense performance by Granger as a man undone by unforgiving forces closing in on him. Directed with clockwork urgency by Mark Robson, shot in shimmering black-and-white by Harry Stradling and named one of 1950’s 10-best films by the National Board of Review, Edge of Doom is a haunting vision of darkness not easily shaken.Read More »
Shotgun Stories tracks a feud that erupts between two sets of half brothers following the death of their father. Set against the cotton fields and back roads of Southeast Arkansas, these brothers discover the lengths to which each will go to protect their family.Read More »
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Around the world everyone knows that honest hard work gets you nowhere. In sunny Orlando, Florida, construction worker Dennis Nash learns this the hard way when he is evicted from his home by a charismatic, gun-toting real-estate broker, Rick Carver. Humiliated and homeless, Nash has no choice but to move his mom and nine-year old son into a shabby, dangerous motel. All is lost. Until an unexpected opportunity arises for Nash to strike a deal with the devil – he begins working for Carver in a desperate attempt to get his home back. Carver seduces Nash into a risky world of scamming and stealing from the banks and the government; he teaches Nash how the rich get richer. Living a double life, Nash hides his new boss and job from his family. He rises fast and makes real money; he dreams bigger. But there is a cost. On Carver’s orders, Nash must evict honest families from their homes – just as it happened to him. Nash’s conscience starts tearing him apart… but his son needs a home.Read More »