Leo Barraclough International Features Editor U.S. director-producer Laura Poitras, who won an Oscar and an Emmy with Edward Snowden film “Citizenfour,” and recently took the Golden Lion at Venice with opioid epidemic pic “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” will be the Guest of Honor at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The 35th edition of the festival takes place from Nov. 9 to 20. Poitras will be honored at IDFA with the Retrospective and Top 10 programs, in which she curates 10 films. The Top 10 program includes reflections on political imprisonment (“Hunger” by Steve McQueen; “This Is Not a Film” by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb), incarceration and psychiatry (Frederick Wiseman’s “Titicut Follies”), and genocide (Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah”). As part of the Top 10, Poitras will be in conversation with several of her selected filmmakers during the festival’s public talks program.
‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’ Review: Laura Poitras’s Film About How Nan Goldin Turned Her Art of Transgression Against the Sackler Family
03.09.2022 - 14:59 / variety.com
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” the photographer Nan Goldin tells a woeful, revealing, and in its way rather funny anecdote about how in the 1980s, when she first gathered up her photographs — casually transgressive images of her and her friends, who were often drag queens and addicts, along with shots of the assorted other people and situations she experienced as part of the hummingly squalid East Village New York subculture — and tried to shop them around to galleries and museums, they were roundly rejected, because the arbiters of taste, who were inevitably men, favored photographs that were black-and-white and composed in elegant meticulous ways. Goldin’s photographs were in garish verité color, set in environments that were so scruffy (messy bohemian apartments, ordinary people just lolling around) that it looked, to the gallery mavens, like there was no visual organization to them, no art.
This, with 40 years’ hindsight, is telling, because what you see now is that Goldin was nothing less than a postpunk Diane Arbus, and that the deceptive “randomness” of her images pulsated with life, and was the key to their power and mystery. In fact, she had an extraordinary eye for composition. Her photographs, which she organized into slideshows like “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency,” seemed caught on the fly, but they were portraits. They told the stories of the people in them, so the more you looked the more you saw. “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” the fifth documentary feature directed by Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour,” “Risk”), is a portrait of Goldin, and a deft and satisfying one, though it’s not a conventional biography. Half of it is about Goldin’s life and work, and the
Laura Poitras Announced As Guest Of Honor At Doc Fest IDFA
Oscar-winning director Laura Poitras will be guest of honor at the 35th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), running from November 9 to 20.
Poitras, Poitier, Pipelines & ‘Patrick’: TIFF’s Documentary Premieres Throw Awards Race Into Focus
The Oscar race came into sharper focus at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, with actors like Brendan Fraser and Michelle Yeoh cementing their lead contender status, and big-budget studio efforts like The Fablemans and Glass Onion premiering to raves.
New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival Lineup: HBO’s Dustin Lance Black Docu ‘Mama’s Boy’ Set For Opening Night
NewFest said Thursday that HBO’s upcoming Mama’s Boy, the documentary about the life of Oscar-winning Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, will be the opening-night film for the New York LGBTQ+ Film Festival. The fest, which also announced its full lineup, kicks off its 34th edition October 13.
Oscar Winner Laura Poitras Bashes Toronto, Venice For Programming Hillary Clinton Docs, Accuses Festivals Of “Kind Of Whitewashing” Clinton’s Record
Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras sharply criticized the Toronto and Venice film festivals today for programming documentaries connected with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, suggesting the decision bordered on a “whitewashing” of history.
Laura Poitras Slams TIFF, Venice for Supporting Clinton ‘Whitewashing’
Adam Benzine Guest Contributor Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras slammed the heads of the Venice and Toronto film festivals for “engaging in a kind of whitewashing” by programming glossy documentaries from the Clinton family. Her comments come as TIFF this week hosted the Canadian premiere of Poitras’s “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” a documentary about the artist and activist Nan Goldin, and just days after the film won Venice’s top prize, the Golden Lion. It is the rare doc to land slots at the superfecta of Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York, and Poitras said she thought “long and hard” about whether or not to voice criticism at the same venues feting her latest work. Nevertheless, she said, “journalists need to ask hard questions.”
‘All The Beauty And The Bloodshed’ Wins Venice 2022 Golden Lion [Full List Of Winners]
For critics and audiences alike, the Venice Film Festival is an important first look at the films that will shape the award season and year-end conversations. That puts added emphasis on the Venice Film Festival awards – including the Golden Lion, the festival’s top prize – as the first step towards canon-building for the rest of the year.
Toronto Review: Aitch Alberto’s Directorial Debut Film ‘Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe’
Aristotle and Dante Discover The Secrets Of Universe, written and directed by Aitch Alberto, is a film about two queer Mexican boys who discover deep secrets within themselves over the course of a school year. The movie is an adaptation of Benjamin Alire Sáenz YA novel of the same name.
HBO Lands Streaming Rights to Laura Poitras’ ‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’
Neon snapped up theatrical rights on Aug. 18 prior to the documentary’s world premiere at Venice Film Festival.
HBO Documentary Films Acquires Laura Poitras Oscar Contender ‘All The Beauty And The Bloodshed’ Ahead Of TIFF North American Premiere
HBO Documentary Films has acquired U.S. television and streaming rights to Oscar winner Laura Poitras’s film All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, fresh from its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival and sneak preview at Telluride.
Venice Review: Kim Ki-duk’s Final Film ‘Call Of God’
After a lifetime spent creating outrage and offence, both on and off screen, Korean master Kim Ki-duk has left the world with this final film, finished by his friends after his death. The story of a passionate affair that curdles almost immediately into jealousy and hate – but ends on a lyrically wistful note – is a startlingly appropriate rogue’s epitaph.
‘All The Beauty And The Bloodshed’ Review: Laura Poitras’ Portrait of Nan Goldin is a Powerful Rumination On Grief [Venice]
“Photography was always a way to walk through fear,” says Nan Goldin in her raspy voice as photos fill the screen. Nuzzled within the textures of the snapshots live friends, lovers, and drifters, all eternally preserved through the eyes of the consecrated artist who rose to prominence in the 80s thanks to her visual chronicling of queer life and culture in New York at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
Venice Review: Laura Poitras’ ‘All The Beauty And The Bloodshed’
The scourge of the opioid crisis has been documented in the press and in government reports; the culpability of the Sacklers, the multi-billionaire pharmaceutical family whose former company Purdue made the painkiller Oxycontin, has been successfully dramatized. The Sacklers are everywhere in Laura Poitras’ gripping documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, but they are supporting players.
‘Tár’ Review: Cate Blanchett Acts With Ferocious Force in Todd Field’s Masterful Drama About a Celebrity Conductor
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Tár,” written and directed by Todd Field, tells the story of a world-famous symphony orchestra conductor played by Cate Blanchett, and let me say right up front: It’s the work of a master filmmaker. That’s not a total surprise. Field has made only two previous films, and the first of them, the domestic revenge drama “In the Bedroom” (2001), was languorous and lacerating — a small, compact indie-world explosion. His second feature, “Little Children” (2006), was, in my opinion, a misfire, though his talent was all over it. But “Tár,” the first film he has made in 16 years, takes Todd Field to a new level. The movie is breathtaking — in its drama, its high-crafted innovation, its vision. It’s a ruthless but intimate tale of art, lust, obsession, and power. It’s set in the contemporary classical-music world, and if that sounds a bit high-toned (it is, in a good way), the movie leads us through that world in a manner that’s so rigorously precise and authentic and detailed that it generates the immersion of a thriller. The characters in “Tár” feel as real as life. (They’re acted to richly drawn perfection down to the smallest role.) You believe, at every moment, in the reality you’re seeing, and it’s extraordinary how that raises the stakes.
‘Sour Milk’ Producer Rabia Sultana Launches Production Company Sultana Film, Unveils Projects In Development
EXCLUSIVE: British producer Rabia Sultana (Sour Milk) has announced the launch of her production company, Sultana Film, unveiling details on two projects that she has in development.
‘Coo-Coo 043’ Set as Opening Film of Taiwan’s Golden Horse Festival
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Coo-Coo 043,” a family drama set in the world of racing pigeons, has been set as the opening film of the 2022 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. The closing film is comedy “Marry My Dead Body.” “Coo-Coo 043” is the second film directed by Chan Ching-lin (“The Island That All Flow By”) and stars Golden Bell Awards winners Yu An-shun and Yang Li-yin, along with Golden Harvest Awards best new performer Hu Jhih-ciang and emerging new talent Rimong Ihwar. Chan was previously nominated for Golden Horse Awards best short film for “A Breath From the Bottom,” and as best new director with his feature debut “The Island That All Flow By.” As a work in progress, “Coo-Coo 043” previously participated in the 2021 Golden Horse Film Project Promotion.
DCTV Opens Firehouse Documentary Cinema in September (EXCLUSIVE)
Michaela Zee editor DCTV’s new documentary-dedicated theater, “Firehouse: DCTV’s Cinema for Documentary Film,” will open its doors Sept. 23. Located in DCTV’s historic Chinatown firehouse building in New York, the nonprofit theater will begin its opening week with an exclusive screening of Abigail Disney and Kathleen Hughes’ “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales.” “I’m so excited that my new documentary, ‘The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,’ will kick off the opening of DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema,” Disney said in a statement. “I can’t wait to meet the first audiences who will be enjoying and shaping this vital new addition to New York City’s arthouse film scene.”
Jimmy Fallon added to sexual assault lawsuit against comedian Horatio Sanz
The woman suing Horatio Sanz for alleged sexual assault has added Jimmy Fallon to the suit. In a filing obtained by Deadline on Tuesday, the woman, who claims former Saturday Night Live star Sanz sexually assaulted her in 2002, added Fallon, Tracy Morgan, and SNL creator Lorne Michaels to the complaint as “enablers”. The original filing claimed Sanz assaulted the woman - who remains anonymous - when she was 17.