By Maria Esteves – August 29, 2014
The U.S. theatrical release of WEB JUNKIE, directed by Israeli documentarians Hilla Medalia and Shosh Shlam immediately followed a Q&A session with Film Forum programmer Mike Maggiore at Film Forum, New York, Wednesday, August 6, 2014. Questions posed to the filmmakers by Maggiore and the audience included: How long did it take to make the film? What inspired the making of the film? Hilla, how did you come into this project? Of all the boys in the ca...
How fortunate are we film-crazy New Yorkers to have such a cinematic treasure as the Film Forum in our midst. The three-screen arthouse complex in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan has been an indispensable New York institution for over 40 years. As the only remaining independent not-for-profit arthouse theater (in a city that used to be pocketed with them), the Film Forum presents an enviable mix of the classic and the obscure, the heralded and the newly discovered. The le...
On any poll where the greatest directors who ever lived is compiled, the name of Japansese director Akira Kurosawa is certain to show up in the top three slots. More loved outside of his homeland (as are many film artists) and acknowledged by film scholars as a true visual artist, the oeuvre of this cinematic giant is the focus of a 4-week festival to be held at the Film Forum, New York's great arthouse treasure.
The 28-film festival celebrating the centennial of director Akira...
Friday, December 14---------Leave it to the good taste and the subversive spirit of the Film Forum to resurrect Woody Allen's dysfunctional family comedy classic HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, just in time for our own familial crises for the Hannukah and Christmas holidays. Woody got it so right in this tale of three sisters (the sublime Mia Farrow, Barbara Hershey and Oscar-winner Dianne Wiest) who can't help but compare their professional and personal lives in a case of sorority sister sibling riva...
Friday, August 25------There are still a few days to catch the final offerings in the NYC NOIR series that has been running at the Film Forum for the past few weeks. Dedicated to a depiction of New York as a place of grit, grays and ghosts, the series offers a tidy endgame of treats, a mix of classics and little known gems. With temperatures expected to hit the 90s in the final dog days of August, New York never looked quite so noir. But at least this NYC is air conditioned.REAR WINDOW (1954...
Thursday, February 1----The distinctive music of Italian film composer Ennio Morricone will be showcased at three distinguished New York institutions in the coming days, making New York abuzz with Morricone music magic. Films that feature both well-known and obscure Morricone music soundtracks are being presented at two different film series at the Museum of Modern Art and the Film Forum. At Radio City Music Hall, the composer himself makes his long overdue American concert debut, in a progra...
Saturday, December 23----When I was growing up Jewish in Brooklyn, New York in the 1960s, Christmas Day meant only two things…..Chinese food and going to a movie. In those halcyon days when Christmas was more of a religious event than an excuse to go shopping, almost all restaurants, stores and other commercial venues were closed on Christmas Day.....with the exception of Chinese restaurants and most movie theaters. So, it became a Jewish tradition (and the only option in town) to frequent ...
Saturday, December 9-----Cinema of the early part of the twentieth century existed on two sides of a divide. Silent or sound. Pre-Code and Code. The sexual frankness, moral corruption and sometimes kitchy melodrama of the early sound films of the 1930s have become a kind of treasure of American cinema. The Film Forum, New York's stellar arthouse complex, is currently presenting some of these tawdry treasures in their December film series, FOX BEFORE THE CODE. The FOX, of course, is Twentieth C...
