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While the summer movie season will kick off shortly––and we’ll be sharing a comprehensive preview on the arthouse, foreign, indie, and (few) studio films worth checking out––on the streaming side, The Criterion Channel and Mubi have unveiled their May 2021 lineups and there’s a treasure trove of highlights to dive into.

Timed with Satyajit Ray’s centenary, The Criterion Channel will have a retrospective of the Indian master, along with series on Gena Rowlands, Robert Ryan, Mitchell Leisen, Michael Almereyda, Josephine Decker, and more. In terms of recent releases, they’ll also feature Fire Will Come, The Booksellers, and the new restoration of Tom Noonan’s directorial debut What Happened Was….

On Mubi, in anticipation of Undine, they’ll feature two essential early features by Christian Petzold, Jerichow and The State That I Am In, along with his 1990 short documentary Süden. Also amongst the lineup is Sophy Romvari’s Still Processing,...

Exclusive: The Young Turks has launched a new venture, Tyt Productions, a film and television company that will develop and produce original non-fiction projects that examine stories of national importance that would be better served through long-form storytelling.

“The launch of our film and television arm, Tyt Productions, will continue to amplify the important stories that match our mission to boldly pursue truth, challenge the establishment, and drive positive change,” said Cenk Uygur, Founder and CEO Tyt, an online news outlet that produces a variety of programs, including its flagship talk show, The Young Turks.

“We pride ourselves in sharing unfiltered commentary in our daily news coverage and we’re going to continue to deliver the same authentic and honest perspective through Tyt Productions.”

The first project under the new label is The Oxy Kingpins, a documentary that is set to premiere at the upcoming 2021 SXSW Film Festival during SXSW Online.

Filmmakers Zefrey Throwell and Josephine Decker first met at a goodbye party. Their brief but volcanic romance began that night when he pretended to throw her off the roof. It was 2011, the world was still spinning forward, and these two beautiful strangers were soon lost in a shared daydream where, in Decker’s words, “you’re making art and you’re making life and anything feels possible.”

They waited a little while to have sex, because they were that committed to each other, but the inevitable episode was intimate in a very different way than either of them had expected or hoped for, arousal curdling into alarm when Throwell’s condom slipped off. Decker had never taken the morning-after pill before, and the experience — in her words — “makes you a little fucking nuts.” It was sometime around then, either just before or right after or maybe even while Decker was screaming “you killed our baby!

Chicago – The 16th Tribeca Film Festival wrapped last Sunday (April 30, 2017) and the award-winning films of the festival have been named. Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com was there for the first week of Tribeca and files his personal best of the films he experienced.

This is Patrick switching to first person, and I was able to see 13 media and film works, and took a turn in the “Immersive” or Virtual Reality arcade (there will a separate article on that experience). I sampled TV, short films, documentaries and narrative films, and rank them from first preferred on down, but honestly I didn’t see anything that I didn’t like, which is a testament to the programmers of this iconic film festival.

The following are the prime 13, and an indication of when they are scheduled to release…

“Flower”

’Flower,’ Directed by Max Winkler

Photo credit: Tribeca Film Festival

What seems like a “Juno” rip-off,...

For AhkeemEstablished in 2002, the Tribeca Film Festival has had a bit of trouble defining itself during the course of its 15-year run. It lacks the grit and quirk of SXSW or the finesse of Sundance, but like the latter, it serves a springboard with its own lab for first time directors. Tribeca's ambitious programming has evolved to encompass much more than movies. A Virtual Reality sidebar is innovative and conveniently forward-looking, the television slate, chock full of hotly anticipated premieres, is opportunely adaptive, and the Talks section is fascinating in its pairings, both expected (Noah Baumbach and Dustin Hoffman, whose work together will be showcased at Cannes) and funkily improbable (Barbra Streisand and Robert Rodriguez). There's even a curation of interactive media in the Games section.While the festival is often unfairly maligned, there are many decent offerings, including spillover from the international film festival circuit and a premieres of some more well-known titles,...

At about the hour mark, I was very glad to see the filmmakers and subjects of Flames, Zefrey Throwell and Josephine Decker, had entered some kind of counseling even if may also be, in part, a performance. Then again, what isn’t? Simultaneously, it appears they’re also in the editing room with an unnamed assistant cutting this brief film. Later they, of course, fight about what’s transpired and who has ownership of the film. It takes a certain amount of narcissism to make a film about one’s relationship and expect folks you don’t know to care. Flames is an attempt to capture such intimacy, yet it’s missing much of an emotional core. To put it into simpler terms: one evening I was at a concert with a fighting couple; it wasn’t a fun experience for any of us.

Framed by screenprints created by an unseen hand,...

At the Tribeca Film Festival, press photographers lined the Flames red carpet expecting the likes of James Franco and Greta Gerwig. Instead, they were greeted by filmmakers Zefrey Throwell and Josephine Decker as well as Flames cast members wearing printed-out masks of said celebrities. In a way, this stunt acts as a great introduction to the tone of the film, a documentary that explores and expounds on Throwell and Decker’s relationship over the course of five years in very intimate detail (from funnily-posed sex to a post-dating therapy session to the editing room of this film). I got to sit down with Throwell, Decker, and their long-time Dp Ashley Connor to discuss the intimacy of the film, how nudity isn’t necessarily the most revealing thing, and the line of exploitation both on film and in a relationship.

The Film Stage: This is an understatement, but Flames is a deeply intimate film.

Let’s say you’re a creative couple in New York, a performance artist and an indie filmmaker in a city filled with them. How do you break out from the pact? In reality TV show fashion, you could film your heterosexual relationship in intimate detail. And that’s exactly what real-life and professional partners Zefrey Throwell and Josephine Decker did. In Flames the fearless duo start out with good intentions as their lay bare their emotions and naked bodies before the camera. Perhaps sensing their film is going nowhere fast, they – and their cinematographer – embark on an on-the-fly trip to...read more...

“Flames” co-directors Josephine Decker and Zefrey Throwell have created something truly unique with their new docudrama, a word and genre that typically should be weighed heavily before being written as a descriptor. For good or for ill, depending on how gratuitously self-indulgent you find their filmed voyage of their passionate first months of uninterrupted love and inevitable disintegration, “Flames” is without a doubt unlike any other film released in recent memory.

Continue reading Josephine Decker & Zefrey Throwell’s ‘Flames’ Captures The Burning Lights & Charred Embers Of Love [Tribeca Review] at The Playlist.

As filmmakers and multi-talented artists, you can't get much more nakedly transparent than Josephine Decker and Zefrey Throwell, who bare their bodies and souls with their Tribeca-premiering documentary Flames. Shot over the course of five years, the project charts the immensely passionate and profound relationship between the two artists, watching the spectacular romance, excitement and adventure of their relationship at its peak, and the fallout as Decker and Throwell…...

"Where you're making art, and you're making life, and it feels like anything is possible." Now this might be something worth watching. An official trailer has debuted for a film titled Flames, a "docu-art hybrid" that was filmed over five years. The story follows a couple, filmmakers/artists Zefrey Throwell & Josephine Decker, who documented their own romance over the course of these five years. It's apparently a very real romance and real story, but doesn't end well. The two "simmer in the white hot apocalypse of first love until the throw of a dart finds them on a spontaneous trip to the Maldives and cracks open the question -- is their love true or just a performance?" Even after breaking up, the two of them still came together to finish this film and present it as a remarkable inside look at real romance, including the bad side of what can happen.

This year’s Star Wars Celebration kicked off with a “40 Years of ‘Star Wars'” panel that included a surprise appearance by George Lucas, but the real star was the late Carrie Fisher, who appeared in a heart-rending tribute video that was presented by her daughter, Billie Lourd.

Lourd, who recently appeared in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” took to the stage after a loving introduction from both Lucas and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who offered their own memories of their Princess Leia (Lucas billed her as “one in a billion”).

Read More: Star Wars Celebration: 5 Ways This Year’s Event Will Impact the Franchise

“My mom used to say she never knew where Princess Leia ended and Carrie Fisher began,” Lourd said to the packed house. “She was imperfect in many ways but her imperfections and willingness to speak about them are what made her more than perfect.

Neon is off to a strong start. After enjoying a successful debut with the Anne Hathaway–starring “Colossal,” which opened in theaters last Friday, the newest distributor in town has released the trailer for Ana Lily Amirpour’s “The Bad Batch.” The writer/director’s sophomore effort has earned comparisons to both “Mad Max” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” apparently living up to the strangeness of “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” and then some. Watch below.

Read More: ‘The Bad Batch’ Review: Jim Carrey and Keanu Reeves’ Thriller Is ‘Mad Max’ Meets ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ — Venice Film Festival

Beginning with an ominous bird perched atop a “find comfort” sign, the trailer introduces us to our one-legged heroine (Suki Waterhouse), a group of imposing body-builders led by Jason “Khal Drogo” Momoa, a sagacious Keanu Reeves and everyone else trying to eke out an existence in this post-apocalyptic wasteland.

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Filmed over the course of five — often wonderful, occasionally excruciating — years, Josephine Decker and Zefrey Throwell’s “Flames” chronicles the artist pair’s real-life falling in (and out of) love story. The film, set to bow at Tribeca later this month, blends reality and art, fact and fiction, the past and the present, all to tell a deeply intimate and very original story.

Read More: Cinelicious Pics Acquires Two Raunchy Josephine Decker Films

Decker, best known to cinephiles as the singular mind behind the double-whammy dramas “Butter on the Latch” and “Thou Wast Mild and Lovely,” and performance artist Throwell fell madly in love when they first met, kicking off a passionate romance punctuated by their own desires to document their budding relationship (hey, artists).

But a whirlwind vacation to the Maldives rocks their relationship to its core — or is the trip really to blame? — and when the pair decides to split,...

Fox Searchlight has set an awards-friendly release date for “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” Martin McDonagh’s follow-up to “Seven Psychopaths” starring Frances McDormand. The playwright-turned-filmmaker made his cinematic debut with “In Bruges,” which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. His latest is due in theaters on October 13, leaving plenty of time for the studio to make pushes for McDonagh and McDormand.

Read More: ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ Trailer: Frances McDormand and Martin McDonagh Go to War Against Racist Cops

Here’s the synopsis: “‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ is a darkly comic drama from Academy Award winner Martin McDonagh (‘In Bruges’). After months have passed without a culprit in her daughter’s murder case, Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at William Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), the town’s revered chief of police.