Several great film festivals have returned this week, once again in COVID-optimized online forms. Mea
| Several great film festivals have returned this week, once again in COVID-optimized online forms. Meanwhile, new films include a documentary about the unfortunate case of Pepe the Frog, an omnibus about the Mekong River, and works at the Noguchi Museum. Plus, from now on, we’ll be doing weekly sets of capsule reviews on various films both new and old. We also have a consideration of Wong Kar-Wai’s masterpiece In the Mood for Love on its 20th anniversary, and much more!– Dan Schindel, Associate Editor for Documentary | |
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| The 2020 Toronto International Film Festival started this week. Like every other festival this year, it’s constrained by the COVID-19 pandemic, mainly limited to online screenings. But it still has some vibrant selections, and Serena Scateni has an overview of the program, particularly highlighting its attention to Indigenous filmmakers. We’ll have more coverage of the fest coming, so keep an eye out! |
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| | The Unwavering Beauty of In the Mood for Love Twenty years later, Wong Kar-wai’s celebrated film remains a master work of affect, though the eeriness of certain scenes sit more heavily given current events in Hong Kong. Mohamad Khalil Harb |
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| The Noguchi Museum Can Exist Without Visitors The films of Distance Noguchi show the empty museum’s famous sculpture garden faintly stirred by the wind, the gentle splash of a fountain, or the chance arrival of a bird. Glenn Adamson |
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| Here’s the best piece of film criticism this week. Writer/director Charlie Kaufman has a new film, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, out on Netflix. For The Ringer, Adam Nayman provides an overview of Kaufman’s career, defining his eccentricities and obsessions through seven recurring themes. |
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| | The Charlie Kaufman Dictionary |
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| Sarah Sherman and Nate Houghteling have produced an online short documentary about how badly the Trump administration has handled COVID-19. A lot has happened over the past six months, so it can be easy to forget some of these details. American Pathogen lays out the entire timeline of the ongoing debacle. |
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| The 2020 Open City Documentary Festival |
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| TIFF isn’t the only festival kicking off this week. London’s Open City is a lovely little doc-focused festival, and it too has an online edition this year. It has a great lineup, and you can use our previous coverage of some of its selections to help decide what you may want to watch.A major standout is Those That, At a Distance, Resemble Another(covered at last year’s TIFF), about questions of “real” and “fake” objects. We briefly looked at Mayor, about the mayor of Ramallah, Palestine, at this year’s Hot Docs. We touched on the environmental doc The Lake and the Lake at the Montreal International Documentary Festival. And finally, we wrote up both The Viewing Booth and the video essay series Bottled Songs at this year’s True/False Festival. |
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| Until we can see you at the movies again, stay safe! |
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