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Independent and Underground Films from China
Come, September! Boyd van Hoeij’s previewed Venice, Toronto carries on announcing new titles and New York’s lineup also features Raúl Ruiz’s Mysteries of Lisbon. We’re ready. Meantime, here’s what’s going now on at MUBI and The Auteurs…
CHINESE INDEPENDENTS
“We remain deeply committed to providing American audiences with an unmediated look at life, as it’s truly lived, inside the world’s next superpower.” That’s the remarkable distributor dGenerate Films, bringing uncensored, visionary work from deep within mainland China’s independent and underground film scenes. We’re proud to present ten titles to our viewers in the States.
THE BLUE ANGELJosef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich are back. Criterion releases 3 Silent Classics by Josef von Sternberg next week and Not Coming to a Theater Near You is already off and running with its series, von Sternberg and Dietrich. Cullen Gallagher on The Blue Angel: “Dietrich’s magnetism on-screen is unmistakable, and the inspired and fortuitous pairing of her and von Sternberg remains magical eight decades later.”
IF YOU ONLY SEE ONE MOVIE THIS WEEK
Boasting as many layered alternative realities as Inception, Yael Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished is, of course, far more serious fare, a documentary analyzing a Nazi propaganda film and the outtakes that betray its lies. In the New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis finds it “remarkable as much for its speculative restraint as for its philosophical reach.”
MAGAZINE RACK
Distinctions between high-, middle- and low-brow have been on the endangered list for decades now, but few toss them out with such pizzaz and abandon as one of our favorite film journals, Bright Lights. Once you’ve caught up with their new issue, turn to Electric Sheep, featuring our columnist on “Forgotten” films, David Cairns. And finally, a question. How do you break into a military-industrial fortress perched on the side of a snowy mountain? Doug Dibbern considers the approaches taken by Christopher Nolan and Anthony Mann.
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