News

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan)

In the hours since viewing Dunkirk – the newest film from surprisingly divisive blockbuster director Christopher Nolan – one sensory recollection has stuck out above all others. Every time that British spitfire pilot Farrier (Tom Hardy) accelerates or banks his plane, the soundtrack fills with the noise of metallic rattling, an uncomfortable chorus of knocks and pings that lets you know exactly how much stress and force are...

There are any number of unforgettable images in Ai Weiwei’s “Human Flow,” the most necessary and comprehensive documentary to date about our planet’s current refugee crisis, but the most indelible of them all is borrowed from a movie about a very different humanitarian failure. For 1956’s “Night and Fog,” Alain Resnais ventured into the haunted ruins of concentration camps Auschwitz and Majdanek, training his camera on the evidence that had been left behind. A still ocean of women’s hair. A mountain of empty shoes, spilling through the rooms of a building like a flood. Symbols that convey the scale of apathy and death better than bodies ever could, because the horror of bodies is too all-consuming to allow for any deeper understanding.

In “Human Flow,” the film’s famous artist-director shoots a massive heap of abandoned lifejackets from above, the camera lifting into the sky to reveal...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Beauty and the Beast (Bill Condon)

The near-ubiquitous familiarity with the majority of Disney animations make the financial proposition of a live-action remake a no-brainer greenlight. In aiming to appeal to those experiencing these stories for the first time, the generation prior, and the generation that brought that generation to the theater, it can also be as creatively risk-averse as one might imagine. As these cultural touchstones get dusted...

Syria doc Last Men In Aleppo will open the Copenhagen documentary festival.

Cph:dox has announced the full programme for its first spring edition (March 16-26), boasting 200 films including 75 world premieres.

The festival will open with Last Men In Aleppo [pictured], which was directed by Firas Fayyad and co-directed by Steen Johannessen.

Other highlights include a new cultural summit Cph:meetings – about the political and social role of art in society; a Vr cinema; a new children’s programme; a new science section; a focus on the rise of populism; and an 11-film programme curated by musician Anohni.

Themes to be explored include the rise of populism and a “talk show” about the alternative facts of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon.

The children’s programme will include titles such as Obscure about kids with Ptsd; Childhood about a Norwegian kindergarten in the forest, and a film about Chinese children whose parents are in prison, Waiting For The...

To celebrate The Criterion Collection’s 2016 releases — and there’s a lot to celebrate — Arik Devens, David Blakeslee, Keith Enright, Scott Nye, and Trevor Berrett gather to talk about the past year in Criterion, including their favorite three Criterion releases of 2016.

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Episode Notes Arik’s List

– Favorite Cover: A Brighter Summer Day

– Favorite Packaging: Trilogia de Guillermo del Toro

– Favorite Releases:

3) Fantastic Planet

2) Wim Wenders: The Road Trilogy

1) Night and Fog

David’s List

– Favorite Cover: Lady Snowblood

– Favorite Packaging: Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

– Favorite Releases:

3) The Executioner/Death by Hanging

2) Chimes at Midnight

1) The Emigrants/The New Land

Keith’s List

– Favorite Cover: Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams

– Favorite Packaging: Valley and Beyond the Valley

– Favorite Releases:

3) Valley of the Dolls and Beyond the Valley

2) One-Eyed Jacks

1) The Kennedy Films of...

As our countdown continues, Andrew Pulver looks back on a harrowing Holocaust drama from Hungarian director László Nemes

• More on the best culture of 2016

The Holocaust is a subject so vast, so brutal and so uncompromisingly repulsive that it has defeated almost every director who has dared take it on: even the most confident film-makers seem to quail before the terrifying responsibility of massacre, torture and sadism – and, essentially, pull their punches. This applies as much to the hyperreal dynamism of Schindler’s List to the eyes-averted sentimentality of Life Is Beautiful, to the maudlin strains of The Pianist. Only documentaries – Alain Resnais’ haunting Night and Fog, the epic Shoah, the recently reconstructed German Concentration Camps Factual Survey – have got close to penetrating the mysteries of this most cataclysmic of human horrors.

Continue reading...

Marlen KhutsievI discovered the name Marlen Khutsiev two summers ago at the Locarno Film Festival, where Russian critic and programmer Boris Nelepo introduced an increasingly awestruck audience to the small but overwhelming filmography of this Russian filmmaker. Thankfully for American audiences, the Museum of Modern Art has picked up and continued this essential retrospective, which starts October 5 in New York, expanding it in the process, and so here I will gather my thoughts upon encountering this truly stunning work for the first time.My experience began incongruously with Khutsiev’s last completed feature, 1992's Infinitas, an unexpected choice considering that the film's 206 minute wanderings of a middle-aged man through his life and memories was even to this uninformed viewer clearly autobiographical. After next viewing Khutsiev's 1965 masterpiece variably known as Fortress Il'ichi, Ilych's Gate and I Am Twenty, it was clear that Infinitas is also a continuation or sequel to that semi-autobiographical film,...

In this episode of CriterionCast Chronicles, Ryan is joined by David Blakeslee, Arik Devens and Scott Nye to discuss the Criterion Collection releases for July 2016.

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Episode Links Links to Amazon Amazon.com: A Touch of Zen Amazon.com: Carnival of Souls Amazon.com: Muriel, or The Time of Return Amazon.com: Night and Fog Amazon.com: The In-Laws Amazon.com: The New World The In-Laws The In-Laws (1979) “Serpentine! Serpentine!” The Impeccable Madness of The In-Laws Carnival of Souls Carnival of Souls (1962) Carnival of Souls on iTunes Watch Carnival of Souls | Hulu Herk Harvey on Carnival of Souls Carnival of Souls: “Thinkin’ Like That, Don’t It Give You Nightmares?” Carnival of Souls Introduction to Carnival of Souls A Touch of Zen A Touch of Zen (1971) A Touch of Zen on iTunes Notes on A Touch of Zen A Touch of Zen: Prowling, Scheming, Flying...

Alain Resnais' deceptively conventional drama is really about interpersonal dynamics: lives lived in the here and now are really anchored in events and concerns from the past, that bleed into the present. Delphine Seyrig's antique dealer invites an old beau to visit, but instead of clarity and direction finds just more personal confusion. Muriel, ou Le temps d'un retour Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 824 1963 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 116 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 19, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Delphine Seyrig, Jean-Pierre Kérien, Nita Klein, Jean-Baptiste Thiérrée, Claude Sainval, Laurence Badie, Jean Champion Cinematography Sacha Vierny Production Design Jacques Saulnier Film Editor Claudine Merlin, Kenout Peltier, Eric Pluet Original Music Paul Colline Written by Jean Cayrol Produced by Anatole Dauman Directed by Alain Resnais

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Back in film school we'd make pronouncements like, why do all movies have to have such structured plots, with organized conflicts and resolutions?...

In this episode of Off The Shelf, Ryan and Brian take a look at the new DVD and Blu-ray releases for the weeks of, July 19th and 26th 2016.

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News Lost in Space Tweets The Abyss coming in 2017 at last, plus Aliens: 30th, Star Trek Beyond, Steven King’s It, new Scream & more! Raising Cain Collector’s Edition Blu-ray Detailed Sid & Nancy 30th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray The Man Called Noon Blu-ray Criterion: McCabe & Mrs. Miller Blu-ray Delayed James Cameron: The Abyss Remastered in 4K, Coming to Blu-ray in 2017 Scream Factory: 13 New Titles Prepped for Blu-ray Shout Factory: To Live and Die in L.A. Special Edition Blu-ray Coming Up Upcoming Code Red Blu-ray Releases The Laughing Policeman Blu-ray Detailed An American Werewolf in London 35th Anniversary Blu-ray Edition The Wolf Man: Complete Legacy Blu-ray Collection Frankenstein: Complete Legacy Blu-ray Collection Scream Factory:...

Every week, the CriticWire Survey asks a select handful of film and TV critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday morning. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?” can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: This past weekend saw the release of “Lights Out,” which is based on a horrifying short film. Shorts can have tremendous value, though even the best of them tend to fly under the radar. What is your favorite short film, and why?

Miriam Bale (@mimbale), freelance

I count this Resnais film about plastics, “La chant de la styrene,” and an industrial film by Les Blank about factory farm chickens, “Chicken Real,” among the best films, and certainly best docs, I’ve seen. And the Safdies’ short “John’s Gone” is probably my favorite of their movies, if not their best.

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit the interwebs. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

April and the Extraordinary World (Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci)

Most writing on Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci‘s April and the Extraordinary World speaks as though they’ve adapted one of revered Frenchman Jacques Tardi‘s graphic novels. This isn’t quite the case. What they’ve actually done is bring his unique “universe” to life with help from previous collaborator Benjamin Legrand (writer of...

NEWSFilm scholar V.F. Perkins, author of the essential book Film As Film (1972), has died at the age of 80.The BFI in London has announced Black Star, the UK's largest celebration of black screen actors, to run October 17 - December 31, 2016.Consummate Hollywood director Garry Marshall, best known for Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride and such television productions as Happy Days and Mork & Mindy, has died at 81.Filmmaker and Mubi team member Kurt Walker and filmmaker Isaac Goes are launching online film exhibition space Kinet, "catered to the dissemination of new and boundary pushing avant-garde cinema." Kinet's first program, which begins next week, includes Masha Tupitsyn's epic Love Sounds.Recommended VIEWINGThe feature debut of Canadian director Isiah Medina, 88:88, which received its global online premiere on Mubi last spring, is now streaming for free.An English-subtitled, behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Johnnie To's excellent thriller, Three.The teaser trailer for...

Every week we dive into the cream of the crop when it comes to home releases, including Blu-ray and DVDs, as well as recommended deals of the week. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best (or most interesting) films one can take home. Note that if you’re looking to support the site, every purchase you make through the links below helps us and is greatly appreciated.

Night & Fog (Alain Resnais)

Ten years after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, filmmaker Alain Resnais documented the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek in Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard), one of the first cinematic reflections on the Holocaust. Juxtaposing the stillness of the abandoned camps’ empty buildings with haunting wartime footage, Resnais investigates humanity’s capacity for violence, and presents the devastating suggestion that such horrors could occur again. – Criterion

Sing Street (John Carney)

Returning...

The first and most powerful Holocaust reassessment extends the horror with the assertion that, in 1955, its reality is already fading from the world memory. Alain Resnais uses the form of the art movie and his own essay-film innovations to communicate the yawning wound in the human consciousness. Night and Fog Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 197 1955 / Color & B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 32 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 19, 2016 / 39.95 Narrator Michel Bouquet Cinematography Ghislain Cloquet, Sacha Vierny Assistant Directors André Heinreich, Jean-Charles Lauthe, Chris Marker Film Editor Alain Resnais Original Music Hanns Eisler Written by Jean Cayrol Produced by Anatole Dauman, Samy Halfon, Philippe Lifchitz Directed by Alain Resnais

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Although I review more than my share of grim shows about the Holocaust, I don't think I have an unusually morbid curiosity; subjects like the Shoah and The Bomb are important problems difficult to fully understand.

For its forthcoming Blu-ray treatment, The Criterion Collection sat down with filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence) to discuss one of the most impactful documentaries ever assembled: Alain Resnais’s Night and Fog, a truly unshakeable rumination on the idea of memory, how it could be altered or buried, and how the truth still lingers like a ghost on the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek in 1955.

In part of the conversation, now available online, Oppenheimer discusses his fascination with how Resnais’ documentary doesn’t ask some questions — unlike many documentaries — and at the same time seems devoid of answers. These questions that aren’t present, Oppenheimer states, “haunt the film almost as powerfully as the ones that are asked.” What the viewer is left with instead is contemplation of horrific, impactful imagery. However, one question it does hint at is why the Nazis filmed all of this.

This time on The Newsstand, Ryan is joined by Arik Devens and Scott Nye to discuss a few pieces of Criterion Collection news.

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Contact us with any feedback.

Shownotes

July Line-up

The In-Laws

Criterion.com Amazon.com Instagram Tease Twitter Tease

Carnival of Souls

Criterion.com Amazon.com Instagram Tease Podcast episode / Upgrade Wish List Episode 110 / 154

Night and Fog

Criterion.com Amazon.com Twitter Tease

Muriel

Criterion.com Amazon.com Twitter Tease Masters of Cinema release (DVDBeaver)

A Touch of Zen

Criterion.com Amazon.com Cannes Classics 2015 Nyff Scott’s Review of the Masters of Cinema Blu-ray Wacky Newsletter Tease Greg Ruth’s Tease Posters

The New World

Criterion.com Amazon.com Wacky New Years Drawing 2015 Wacky New Years Drawing 2016 Criterion Current Tease Twitter Tease Misc. Links Cannes Classics 2016 Foreign Exchange Blu-ray: Facebook / Twitter / Instagram Episode Credits Ryan Gallagher (Twitter / Website) Scott Nye (Twitter / http://www.

Ah, Criterion! I love it when the company expands the parameters of what many people consider to be "classic cinema" and anoints the likes of The In-Laws, the 1979 comedy that remains a personal favorite. It may be very broad and very American, but it's also a quite inspired mixture of physical comedy, clever wisecracks, and great performances by Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. It also features a sparkling original screenplay by Andrew Bergman. Criterion's release schedule for July 2016 also includes the 1962 version of Carnival of Souls, two from Alain Resnais (Muriel, or The Time of Return and Night and Fog), King Hu's A Touch of Zen (a wonderfully fluid and dazzling martial arts classic) and Terrence Malick's dreamy The New World. Here's...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

With the exception of several crowd-pleasing samurai epics (like Zatoichi and Three Outlaw Samurai) and a few bargain-priced historical costume dramas (such as The Ballad of Narayama and Gate of Hell), the flow of newly released Japanese art films by the Criterion Collection has slowed to a trickle over the past five years or so. (And for the sake of politeness and avoiding pointless controversy, I won’t invoke Jellyfish Eyes in this argument either.) We’ve obviously enjoyed a steady stream of chanbara, Ozu and especially Kurosawa Blu-ray upgrades during this past half-decade, and there have been several outstanding Japanese sets recently issued as part of the Eclipse Series as well, but we really haven’t seen much else along these lines in the main lineup since Kaneto Shindo’s Kuroneko came out in the fall of 2011. That’s over 200 spine numbers ago! But I’m happy to report...

Below you will find our favorite films of the 45th International Film Festival Rotterdam, as well as an index of our coverage.Daniel Kasmantop Picksi. Lejos de los árboles, Le Moulin, Female Student Guerilla, Noche de vino tintoII. Juke: Passages from Films of Spencer Williams, Warsaw Bridge, MotherIII. Night and Fog in the ZonaIV. Where the Chocolate Mountains, ElliV. Operation Avalanche, Sixty Six, Fata Morgana, Cada vez que..., Oleg y las raras artes, ActeonCOVERAGEFirst Steps: Ear, Nose and Throat (Kevin Jerome Everson), Lejos de los árboles (Jacinto Esteva Grewe)Acting Out: General Report II: The New Abduction of Europe (Pere Portabella), Esquizo (Ricardo Bofill), Actor Martinez (Mike Ott, Nathan Silver)Japan's Cinematic Revolutionary: Sex Game (Masao Adachi), Female Student Guerilla (Masao Adachi), Artist of Fasting (Masao Adachi)The Streets, the Mountains, the Snow, and the Ocean: Noche de vino tinto (José María Nunes), Where the Chocolate Mountains (Pat O'Neill), Cinéma...

In this era of digital cameras and laptop editing, ambitious video essays and filmmaker documentaries are hardly the uncommon encounter they had been when Claire Denis made her film for the Cinéma, de notre temps television series, Jacques Rivette - Le veilleur—a movie on a lot of our minds with the passing of the New Wave master last week. Yet, as with fiction films, while the increased democratization and affordability of movie-making apparatus has meant more such essays and more such documentaries, the quality of this greater proliferation varies widely. Which is why it was such a pleasure to come in Rotterdam across two stupendous examples of each: Night and Fog in the Zona, Jung Sung-il's long-form documentary on Chinese independent filmmaker Wang Bing, and Juke: Passages from the Films of Spencer Williams, American teacher and filmmaker Thom Andersen’s video essay on the culturally forgotten films by the African American director.

Concluding our countdown of the best movies released in the Us this year, the harrowing Holocaust drama from Hungarian director László Nemes has come out on top

• Full Us list

Related: The best films of 2015: Guardian readers' choice

The Holocaust is a subject so vast, so brutal and so uncompromisingly repulsive that it has defeated almost every director who has dared take it on: even the most confident film-makers seem to quail before the terrifying responsibility of massacre, torture and sadism – and, essentially, pull their punches. This applies as much to the hyperreal dynamism of Schindler’s List to the eyes-averted sentimentality of Life Is Beautiful, to the maudlin strains of The Pianist. Only documentaries – Resnais’ haunting Night and Fog, the epic Shoah, the recently reconstructed German Concentration Camps Factual Survey – have got close to penetrating the mysteries of this most cataclysmic of human horrors.

Continue reading...

With the shimmering waters of Lake Maggiore beckoning mere blocks from Locarno's cinemas and the heat here wilting and cruel, how teasing for Athina Rachel Tsangari to set her much-anticipated third film, Chevalier, entirely on a luxury yacht bobbing in the Aegean. I believe many of us have high hopes for Tsangari, a Greek filmmaker who rose to prominence producing Yorgos Lanthimos's Dogtooth and Alps and directing Attenburg, which was far superior to Lanthimos's Greek films, and similarly in this nouveau Greek cinema style of blending art cinema with conceptual art. I wondered, as many no doubt did, at Chevalier's absence from Cannes (whose competition included Lanthimos's leap to English production, The Lobster) and Venice, which had previously supported this new, provocative Greek cinema. Was the film too daring for these wary red carpet competitions? The answer is no; in fact, Chevalier is a far more approachable film—slyly so—than Attenberg,...

I'm not interested in The Bible, I'm interested in death.

So, you think you're an art house movie buff? Good for you, buddy, because I don't know if I can handle it. My ambitions are entertainment with literacy with a wide definition for both. Alain Resnais is surely an opaque dividing line between my sort of dilettantism and the hard core, high art snob/hippie with Last Year at Marienbad (1961) being a classic example of unwatchable inner-rectal filmmaking to your mainstream audience. The Cohen Collection has put together two of his films, from the early 1980's, written by Jean Gruault, Life is a Bed of Roses (1983) and Love Unto Death (1984) one presumes because Criterion already has the rights to Last Year at Marienbad, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), and Night and Fog (1955). Still, given Resnais's stature in film history, he is criminally underrepresented in home video and these are odd enough to...

Hiroshima mon amour

Written by Marguerite Duras

Directed by Alain Resnais

France/Japan, 1959

The first thing we see is a textured image of ash covered bodies. Indistinctly illuminated limbs are entwined in what appears to be a passionate embrace. Glistening particles of dust sprinkle down like snowfall. Then comes the dialogue. A woman recalls the devastating effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945. She says she saw it all. A man says she didn’t see a thing. “How could I not have seen it?” she questions. We see images of it, but some of it is staged, presented for the camera, possibly from her point of view. That is, if she’s telling the truth. There is a graphically unsettling montage of photographs, reconstructions, and Japanese films, all chronicling the attack; there is a morbid museum containing artifacts of that fateful day, haunting reminders of the physical and material destruction.

Upon first impression, the stark, angular and abstract constructions of Hiroshima mon amour (released in a new upgraded edition earlier this month by the Criterion Collection) serve as a kind of filter that separates viewers who find themselves bored or baffled by what they see from those who emerge from the viewing with a distinct affinity for the pair of anguished lovers at the heart of the film. The gist of the story is fairly simple: a French actress, on assignment in Hiroshima to play a part in an antiwar film, has a brief but emotionally intense affair with a Japanese man who lives there. Both are married, and even though they recognize a real temptation for them to prolong their time together to more fully enjoy this rush of passion, there’s no practical possibility of the relationship extending beyond a fling. But over the course of the weekend they spend together,...

“He Said/She Said—Reflections On Love, Unreliable Memories, And The Atomic Bomb”

By Raymond Benson

Director Alain Resnais achieved worldwide acclaim with his documentary short, Night and Fog (1955), which revealed to the world the true horrors of what went on in the Nazi concentration camps. For his first feature film, Resnais turned to fiction; and yet, he maintained a somewhat documentary approach in showing the world the true horrors of what occurred in Hiroshima, Japan when the first atomic bomb was dropped. Beyond that, Hiroshima mon amour (“Hiroshima, My Love”) is an art film that not only signaled the beginning of the French New Wave (although many film historians do not count it as an example of that movement), it also established Resnais’ singular, enigmatic and ambiguous style as an auteur. The director would go on to make even more thematically-mysterious pictures (namely Last Year at Marienbad) and become...

Exclusive:Kelly Reilly and Tim Roth have signed to co-star in John Hay’s thriller Lives in Secret, inspired by the true story of Second World War spy-mistress Vera Atkins.

Paris-based Other Angle is launching the project, formerly titled Night and Fog, in Cannes.

Lives in Secret is due to start shorting in the northern English region of Yorkshire in August. It is produced by Jeremy Bolt (Resident Evil).

Adapted from Sarah Helm’s A Life in Secrets, the film tells the true story of Atkins, a British intelligence who trained and dispatched hundreds of agents to Occupied France.

After the war, Atkins made it her personal mission to ascertain the fate of all the female agents she lost. The film revolves around her interrogation of Gestapo officer Hans Kieffer about what happened to a young Muslim spy.

Exclusive: Uma Thurman WWII drama is hot seller at Afm for Other Angle.Other Angle has seen strong interest on new drama Night and Fog, its WWII drama set to star Uma Thurman [pictured].Deals have closed at the Afm with Turkey (Fabula), Middle East (Falcon), South Africa (M-Net) and Former Yugoslavia (2 Eye Films) with Germany, Latin America, Benelux and Poland about to sign.Thurman is set to play intelligence office Vera Atkins, who made it her mission to discover the fate of missing agents she had dispatched to Occupied France after the conflict.John Hay will direct the drama, due to shoot in Northern Ireland in 2015.At the Afm Other Angle has also closed deals on Asia Argento’s festival favourite Misunderstood with Brazil (Imovision) and Turkey (Mars).The company recently concluded deals with Germany (Rapid Eye), Australia (Palace), Russia (A-One Films), Argentina (Zeta Film), Poland (Spectator), South Korea (At Nine) and Hungary (Cirko).Also continuing to sell...

Uma Thurman will play WW2 intelligence officer Vera Atkins in John Hay’s upcoming drama "Night and Fog" based on Sarah Helm’s non-fiction novel "A Life in Secrets".

Atkins was an intelligence officer for Special Operation Executive’s French Section who trained and dispatched agents to Occupied France. After the conflict, she makes it her mission to discover the fate of those who went missing during her tenure.

The film will focus on another famous element of her story, specifically her involvement in the interrogation of Rudolf Hoess, the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp commandant

Atkins has been cited as the inspiration for the character of Miss Moneypenny in Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Jeremy Bolt and Elliot Jenkins are producing 'Fog' and filming begins in Northern Ireland in 2015.

Source: Screen...

Exclusive: Actress to play WWII secret agent Vera Atkins; Paris-based sales agent Other Angle launching sales at the Afm.

Uma Thurman is set to play World War Two intelligence office Vera Atkins, who made it her mission to discover the fate of missing agents she had dispatched to Occupied France after the conflict, in John Hay’s upcoming drama Night and Fog.

Paris-based sales agent Other Angle is launching sales at the Afm on the production, which is set to shoot in Northern Ireland in 2015.

The feature is adapted from the Sarah Helm’s A Life in Secrets, telling the true story of Atkins, an intelligence officer for Special Operation Executive’s French Section who trained and dispatched hundreds of agents to Occupied France.

Jeremy Bolt and Elliot Jenkins of London and Los Angeles-based Impact Film and TV are producing. Long-time W.S. Anderson collaborator, Bolt’s credits include Event Horizon and the Resident Evil franchise.

British...

Sidney And The Sixties: Real-time 1957-1966

Throughout the 1950s, Hollywood’s relationship with television was fraught: TV was a hated rival but also a source of cheap talent and material, as in the case of the small-scale Marty (1955), which won the Best Picture Oscar. These contradictions were well represented by the apparently “televisual” 12 Angry Men (1957), which began life as a teleplay concerning a jury with a lone holdout who must, and eventually does, convince his fellow jurors of the defendant’s innocence. Its writer, Reginald Rose, persuaded one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Henry Fonda, to become a first-time producer of the film version. Fonda and Rose took basement-low salaries in favor of future points, and hired a TV director, Sidney Lumet, for next to nothing because Lumet wanted a first feature credit. Technically, there’s an opening bit on the courtroom steps that keeps this from being a true real-time film,...

Life of Riley

Written for the screen by Laurent Herbiet and Alain Resnais

Directed by Alain Resnais

France, 2014

Alain Resnais is inarguably one of the most prolific directors to come out of the French New Wave, with nearly 50 films under his belt, including his masterworks Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad, and Night and Fog. Undeterred by age, he seemed to have been working up until the day he died, with his swan song Life of Riley being presented posthumously at this year’s New York Film Festival. Those only familiar with his Nouvelle Vague work will be in for a pleasant surprise: Life of Riley is perhaps more fun that it deserves to be.

Based on the play by Alan Ayckbourn, the film follows two (or three, depending on how you count) couples in the midst of rehearsals for a play, as the news of their friend’s...

As reported over at The Dissolve, highly respected British film magazine Sight & Sound is famous for its list of the greatest films off all time released once every decade. Since 1952, Citizen Kane held the number one spot until Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo dethroned it in the 2012 poll. Now for the first time Sight & Sound has released a list of the 50 greatest documentary films of all time. The list was compiled after polling from over 200 critics and curators and 100 filmmakers, including “John Akomfrah, Michael Apted, Clio Barnard, James Benning, Sophie Fiennes, Amos Gitai, Paul Greengrass, Jose Guerin, Isaac Julien, Asif Kapadia, Sergei Loznitsa, Kevin Macdonald, James Marsh, Joshua Oppenheimer, Anand Patwardhan, Pawel Pawlikowski, Nicolas Philibert, Walter Salles, and James Toback”.

The top 10 are:

Man With A Movie Camera, (Dziga Vertov, 1929) Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) Sans Soleil, (Chris Marker, 1982) Night And Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955) The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1989) Chronicle Of A Summer (Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin,...

Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera tops the list of the greatest documentaries of all time, according to hundreds of film critics, curators, directors, and documentary film specialists surveyed by British film magazine Sight & Sound.

Every 10 years, Sight & Sound polls hundreds of film luminaries from around the world to generate a list of the best films of all time. In 2012, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo knocked Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane off its 50-year perch for the #1 spot. For the first time, the magazine is debuting a separate poll for documentaries. 340 critics, programmers and filmmakers were asked to participate; 100 of...

Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985), Chris Marker's Sans soleil (1982), Alain Resnais's Night and Fog (1955) and Errol Morris's The Thin Blue Line (1989) are among the high-scorers in Sight & Sound's new poll of critics and filmmakers, The Greatest Documentaries of All Time." Meantime, Canyon Cinema's posted a free book chapter by Peter Tscherkassky, a manifesto from Abigail Child and notes on Stan Brakhage by Phil Solomon. Plus, the legacy of Wwi and more in today's roundup of news and views. » - David Hudson...

Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985), Chris Marker's Sans soleil (1982), Alain Resnais's Night and Fog (1955) and Errol Morris's The Thin Blue Line (1989) are among the high-scorers in Sight & Sound's new poll of critics and filmmakers, The Greatest Documentaries of All Time." Meantime, Canyon Cinema's posted a free book chapter by Peter Tscherkassky, a manifesto from Abigail Child and notes on Stan Brakhage by Phil Solomon. Plus, the legacy of Wwi and more in today's roundup of news and views. » - David Hudson...

More than 200 critics and 100 filmmakers take part in poll.

Dziga Vertov’s silent film Man with a Movie Camera (1929) has topped Sight & Sound magazine’s first major poll of the world’s best documentaries.

More than 1,000 films were nominated by 200 critics and 100 filmmakers with more than 100 voting for Man with a Movie Camera.

Vertov’s surrealist classic in which a man travels around a city with a camera documenting urban life was shot in Odessa, Kiev and Khadliv.

Vertov also topped the critics’ list of top doc filmmakers while Frederick Wiseman is number one according to his fellow directors.

Participating filmmakers included Kevin Macdonald, Walter Salles, Joshua Oppenheimer, James Toback, Asif Kapadia, Carol Morley and Mark Cousins.

Critics’ Top 10 documentariesMan with a Movie Camera, dir. Dziga Vertov (Ussr 1929) [pictured]Shoah, dir. Claude Lanzmann (France 1985)Sans soleil, dir. Chris Marker (France 1982)Night and Fog, dir. Alain Resnais (France 1955)The Thin Blue Line, dir. [link...

More than 200 critics and 100 filmmakers take part in poll.

Dziga Vertov’s silent film Man with a Movie Camera (1929) has topped Sight & Sound magazine’s first major poll of the world’s best documentaries.

More than 1,000 films were nominated by 200 critics and 100 filmmakers with more than 100 voting for Man with a Movie Camera.

Vertov’s surrealist classic in which a man travels around a city with a camera documenting urban life was shot in Odessa, Kiev and Khadliv.

Vertov also topped the critics’ list of top doc filmmakers while Frederick Wiseman is number one according to his fellow directors.

Participating filmmakers included Kevin Macdonald, Walter Salles, Joshua Oppenheimer, James Toback, Asif Kapadia, Carol Morley and Mark Cousins.

Critics’ Top 10 documentariesMan with a Movie Camera, dir. Dziga Vertov (Ussr 1929) [pictured]Shoah, dir. Claude Lanzmann (France 1985)Sans soleil, dir. Chris Marker (France 1982)Night and Fog, dir. Alain Resnais (France 1955)The Thin Blue Line, dir. [link...

Three weeks before Alain Resnais died this past March, he had premiered his newest film, Life of Riley, at the Berlin Film Festival, which he completed at the age of 91. Resnais enjoyed a uniquely prolific streak of filmmaking in his later years that laughed at the prospect of retirement or death. For a moment it seemed possible that Resnais himself would continue to exist as ceaselessly as the memories that preoccupy his characters; thankfully, with his incredible body of work, Resnais is etched into eternity. Resnais continued to experiment with the limits of cinematic form over fifty years after his career-defining work on Night and Fog, Hiroshima mon amour, and Last Year in Marienbad. The past decade of his career proved that age is no excuse for artistic resignation or repetition – while not nearly as well-known, more recent works including Private Fears in Public Places, Wild Grass, and You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet! challenged...

(Cannes – May 15th) The press were treated to their first 8:30 a.m. Grand Lumiere screening and were taken back to the late seventeen hundredths London (among other places) in Mike Leigh’s historical biopic on a painterly individual. At the press conference, Timothy Spall who had been pitched the project several years ago and picked up the brush for a good two year period alongside a professional, found that one of the dwellings in his own personal family history (dating not that long ago) matched one of Turner’s actual known addresses – a rather remarkable coincidence in my books. One journo also asked Mike Leigh how the Secrets & Lies stamp came about (check out the news piece).

The festival’s sidebar (Un Certain Regard) and parallel sections Directors’ Fortnight and Critics Week got off to a rowdy start. Ucr opener Party Girl (by directing team comprised of Marie Amachoukeli,...

(Claude Sautet, 1960; BFI, 12)

Le roman policier and le film policier (now widely known by the reverse slang or verlan term "polar") have been staples of French popular culture for a century. Its soundtrack crackling with underworld argot, its air thick with smoke from Gauloises, its morality pulsating with romantic cynicism, the genre's golden age in the cinema was roughly between 1955 and the mid-70s. That's from the release of Rififi (the 1955 gangster movie directed by blacklisted American exile Jules Dassin, a movie much indebted to John Huston's 1950 The Asphalt Jungle) to the death in 1973 of Jean-Pierre Melville, the Americanophile cineaste and creator of definitive gangster flicks. These two decades encompass the classic polars of Jacques Becker, the best films of Lino Ventura (the French Bogart), the nouvelle vague (informally launched by a Louis Malle policier, Lift to the Scaffold, starring Ventura), and Godard's subversion of the genre in Breathless.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center have unveiled their incredible lineup for the forthcoming "Art of the Real" series, which includes work from Corneliu Porumboiu, Robert Greene, Thom Andersen, James Benning, and more:

"The thin and often blurry line between fact and fiction will be prodded in the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s revamped Art of the Real, a two-week series (April 11-26) dedicated to an expansive definition of nonfiction filmmaking."

For The New York Times, Dave Kehr remembers Alain Resnais:

"Mr. Resnais had a full head of white hair that the French newspaper Le Monde said he had sported for so long that one could forget he was ever young. He exhibited a youthful energy well into his 80s and was working on drafts of his next project from his hospital bed when he died, the producer Jean-Louis Livi said.

Despite the serious nature of his films,...

Alain Resnais, the famed French director, died late Saturday in Paris, France at the age of 91.

Resnais first made his stamp in film history with his 1959 film, Hiroshima Mon Amour, which continues to be hailed as one of the best films ever made. Resnais’ career, which includes Night and Fog (1955), a documentary on the Holocaust, Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and Wild Grass (2009), spanned over half a century.

His last film, Life of Riley (Aimer, boire et chanter), premiered last month at the Berlin Film Festival where it won the Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize for introducing new perspectives into film. Resnais is also known for influencing a new generation of filmmakers, from the French New Wave to David Lynch.

“When people ask me why I make films, I always answer that ‘je tourne pour voir comment ça tourne,’ I make films to see how films are made. I’m proud of that phrase.

Celebrated French director of Hiroshima Mon Amour and Last Year in Marienbad who died this weekend left out of In Memoriam section of Oscar ceremony

• Xan Brooks liveblogs the ceremony

• Full list of winners as they're announced

The Oscars failed to paid tribute to Alain Resnais, the celebrated French director of Night and Fog and Hiroshima Mon Amour, who died today. Perhaps because of the late-breaking nature of his death, they did not include Resnais in the traditional In Memoriam section to the film-maker.

Resnais was never nominated for an Oscar, though he did receive a string of awards from major international film festivals, including a lifetime achievement award from Cannes in 2009. His feature debut, Hiroshima Mon Amour, was a key early entry in the French new wave, competing at the 1959 Cannes film festival against the likes of François Truffaut's The 400 Blows and Jack Clayton's Room at the Top...

Coinciding with a 2000 retrospective of Alain Resnais’ work organized by both the American Cinematheque and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, producer Florence Dauman gave Filmmaker these quotes from her father, Anatole Dauman, about working with the great director. Through his company, Argos Films, Dauman produced or co-produced many of the masterworks of postwar European cinema – including Resnais’s Night and Fog; Hiroshima, Mon Amour; Last Year at Marienbad; and Muriel. On the occasion of Resnais’ death yesterday at 91, we are reprinting them here. Night and Fog (1956) “It was our first short film together. Would he accept […]...

Coinciding with a 2000 retrospective of Alain Resnais’ work organized by both the American Cinematheque and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, producer Florence Dauman gave Filmmaker these quotes from her father, Anatole Dauman, about working with the great director. Through his company, Argos Films, Dauman produced or co-produced many of the masterworks of postwar European cinema – including Resnais’s Night and Fog; Hiroshima, Mon Amour; Last Year at Marienbad; and Muriel. On the occasion of Resnais’ death yesterday at 91, we are reprinting them here. Night and Fog (1956) “It was our first short film together. Would he accept […]...

One of cinema’s greats, the French director Alain Resnais, died yesterday, March 1, at the age of 91. The director of such landmark films as Last Year at Marienbad, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, and Night and Fog, he premiered his latest film, Life of Riley, just one month ago at the Berlin Film Festival. In 2000, coinciding with a retrospective organized by both the American Cinematheque and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Peter Bowen wrote the following short essay, and we collected appreciations from three independent directors — Christopher Munch, Keith Gordon and Radley Metzger. It is reprinted below. Perhaps […]...

One of cinema’s greats, the French director Alain Resnais, died yesterday, March 1, at the age of 91. The director of such landmark films as Last Year at Marienbad, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, and Night and Fog, he premiered his latest film, Life of Riley, just one month ago at the Berlin Film Festival. In 2000, coinciding with a retrospective organized by both the American Cinematheque and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Peter Bowen wrote the following short essay, and we collected appreciations from three independent directors — Christopher Munch, Keith Gordon and Radley Metzger. It is reprinted below. Perhaps […]...

Few filmmakers leave a legacy behind in cinema that will last generations, and even fewer have a career that truly spans decades. French director Alain Resnais was one of those rarities behind the camera whose career began way back in 1946 and lasted up until his death on Saturday in Paris at age 91 (as reported by New York Times), not too long after his last film The Life of Riley premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February. The filmmaker never won an Oscar, but took home a BAFTA, saw several nominations and wins at the César Awards in France, and countless accolades at the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals. More below. Resnais is a name that only true cinephiles and students of film will know with iconic films such as Hiroshima, mon amour (starring Oscar nominee Emanuelle Riva), Last Year at Marienbad, Je t’taime, je t’aime, Night and Fog,...