John Sayles, filmmaker | John Anderson, interviewer

Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 7:00 pm
AtriumFlix

AtriumFlix and JustFilms introduce free monthly screenings of social justice films. Don’t miss groundbreaking films and intimate conversations with leading filmmakers.

7:00: Conversation with John Sayles followed by a screening of The Brother From Another Planet

click here for all the info

John Sayles likes to be known as a storyteller.  GO FOR SISTERS is his 18th film, all of which he has also written, and most of which he has edited.  He writes fiction, most recently his epic historical novel A Moment in the Sun, which was published by McSweeney’s in May 2011 and has gone into its second printing.  His book about the making of MATEWAN, “Thinking in Pictures” is taught in film classes and has never been out of print.  Sayles supports his directing career as a “writer for hire” in Hollywood.  He has most recently written about KGB assassins, the Tasmanian penal colony, the Rosenberg spy case, the great singer- songwriters Joni Mitchell, Carole King, & Carly Simon, and a famous American brewing dynasty.  He directed three music videos for Bruce Springsteen; Born in the USA, I’m on Fire, and Glory Days.  He is one of the godfathers– or grandfathers– of the US Independent Film movement.  He lives with his producing partner of many years, Maggie Renzi, in upstate New York.

John Anderson is a film critic for various publications including Variety, Newsday, and the Washington Post.

Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

The Brother from Another Planet (1984)

This recommendation comes to us from our friend and colleague Dylan Marchetti at Variance, who did a great job of releasing AMIGO.  Today, they are releasing a new indie from a young Brooklyn filmmaker named Terence Nance, called An Oversimplification of Her Beauty. 

Dylan says:

The film, using a masterful mix of cinéma vérité, traditional narrative, and (ten different kinds of) animation, examines and re-examines Terence’s real life unrequited romance with a Namik, a beautiful young woman from Brooklyn.  This romance was first put on film in his short How Would U Feel?, parts of which are interspersed throughout Oversimplification.

Oversimplification takes then takes that short, which was made in part to show Namik how he felt, as a starting point- and then throughout the film, he breaks it up and examines the impact the making, and screening, of the short had on his relationship and the relationships he’s been in with other women, using different styles of animation from watercolor to psychedelic to stop-motion to tell the backstory.

Anyone who’s ever been in love but not had it work out can relate- but anyone who’s ever been in love and been unsure how to process it with sabotaging everything will feel it right in their gut.  I see a lot of films, and I haven’t had a film make me feel this way before, forcing me to look at myself as hard as I look at a film.  It felt weird.  Then it felt good.  Really good.

The film opens TONIGHT at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (at Lincoln Center) and at Cinema Village (on 12th Street).  There will be filmmaker Q&As after every screening of the film this weekend.  Oversimplification won the Gotham for “Best Film Not Playing In A Theater Near You,” and buzz is beginning to build around the movie and its filmmaker.  You won’t want to miss it!

As readers of the blog know well, we are very passionate about encouraging people to “vote with your wallets” to keep indie film alive and talented filmmakers of all ages making great work.  Help us by checking out this film if you’re in the NYC area, and then spreading the word to your friends!

Official site: www.ofherbeauty.com
Twitter: @ofherbeauty
Facebook: facebook.com/ofherbeauty

click here for more information

Saturday, APRIL 27

12:00 – 9:00 PM | Norris Cinema Theatre

Frank Sinatra Hall | University Park Campus | University of Southern California

Admission is free. Refreshments will be served.

The Pacific has a vivid hold on the European and American imagination as a paradise, as a vast region of exploration, as a mystery. It has also been a place of conquest, colonization and war. In a one-day festival, screenings and discussions with filmmakers John Sayles and Vilsoni Hereniko, scholars Viet Nguyen and David Kang and members of the community will address themes of the Pacific. The juxtaposition of three films dealing, respectively, with the Philippines, Fiji and Korea will connect seemingly disparate times and places of the Pacific under a common history.

Schedule of Events

12:20 PM: The Land Has Eyes
Directed by Vilsoni Hereniko, Fiji, 87 minutes
Vilsoni Hereniko will present his film, The Land Has Eyes, the first indigenous feature film written and directed by a Fiji citizen.The film explores the British colonial administration in Rotuma (the Fiji Islands) during the 1960s and ’70s and the political corruption and local violence that resulted from the colonial administration’s lack of understanding about the local people and customs.

2:15 PM: Amigo
Directed by John Sayles, 124 minutes
Renowned independent filmmaker John Sayles will present his film Amigo, the first American feature film to tackle a crucial but forgotten chapter in American history—the American colonization of the Philippines, which cost one million Filipino lives and was as divisive to Americans as the Vietnam War.

4:30 PM: Panel Discussion and Reading with John Sayles and Vilsoni Hereniko
Featuring filmmakers John Sayles and Vilsoni Hereniko. Moderated by Professor Viet Nguyen. John Sayles will also read from his novel A Moment in the Sun, about the Filipino struggle against the American colonial presence.

5:15 PM: Reception, Queen’s Courtyard

6 PM: Sunny
Directed by Lee Jun-ik, 126 minutes
Lee Jun-ik’s Sunny is a big-budget Korean epic about the Korean participation as an American ally in the Vietnam War, little known to Americans but fundamental to the transformation of South Korea.

We hope to see you there for the screening and the Panel!

We’d love to introduce you to Lorenzo Wolff and spread the word about his new 9-song LP, Keep It Down.

Lorenzo is a fantastic musician and an excellent songwriter who has been hard at work on this solo album for over a year, and recently launched it into the world on his website, lorenzowolff.com.

“Zo’s just released his first album, which mines some of the richest veins in rock and rockabilly and regrooves them under funky basslines and lyrics that are both smart and smartass. The playing is top notch and features the extraordinary sax of Steve Elson, which gives the fantastic opening rocker A Sides, a Springsteen-like feel, back when Springsteen was having fun. Zo calls this album Keep It Down, but don’t: it’s meant to be played loud, as loud as it gets.” – Jeff St. Clair, Editor of CounterPunch

Keep It Down is available as a CD for $10, or as a name-your-price download via the website.  You can also listen to Lorenzo’s music by clicking here, and like him on Facebook here.

Keep independent music alive and well by supporting passion projects like Keep It Down!

One of the most exciting events at SXSW last week was the literary salon People of Letters, a Texas transplant of the Australian literary salon Women of Letters, held on Tuesday, March 12th in Austin.

The panel of guests/presenters included John Sayles, Buck 65, Jenny Owen Youngs, Kim Boekbinder, Neil Gaiman, and Amanda Palmer.  Each read a hand-written letter to “The Thing I Wish I’d Written.”

John’s letter, in the words of the Austin Chronicle’s Richard Whittaker, “ruminat[ed] and fulminat[ed] on the tunelessness, both literal and cultural, of The Star Spangled Banner.“  (read the full article in the Austin Chronicle here)

Correspondents at People of Letters at SXSW (photo credit Gary Miller via The Austin Chronicle)

The evening was by turns poignant, hilarious, and heartfelt.  The standing-room-only crowd had a fantastic literary and personal experience, unlike anything else at the SXSW Festival.

So we heartily encourage our friends in the NYC area to attend this upcoming stop on the Women of Letters American tour:

To the Person I Misjudged

Wednesday, March 27th @ 7pm

Housingworks Bookstore Café

126 Crosby Street New York, NY

More information about next week’s NYC salon can be found by clicking here.

We hope that as many of you as possible will be able to spend the evening in the company of some well-spoken women writers and the charming curators of the event, Marieke Hardy and Michaela McGuire.

John at SXSW with Marieke Hardy, co-founder of Women Of Letters.

video via Austin360.com

“A run for the border as gripping and complex as his 1996 Lone Star… The hunt is fraught with tension, though Sayles – as always, keeping the action at street level and vividly filling the screen with a culture’s sights, sounds, and rich, distinctive characters – makes us as concerned for the fate of two women’s friendship as for a man’s life.”

– Robert Faires, The Austin Chronicle

“John Sayles’ working-class obsessions are put to good use in borderland detective tale… Sisters knows exactly what it’s doing.”

– John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter

“Ever since Return of the Secaucas 7, Sayles has managed to explore the nuances of interpersonal dramas with undeniable finesse.”

– Eric Kohn, Indiewire

“Go for Sisters is an original, artfully blending humor and drama as these three journey to Mexico from California. The performances here are what you expect from a Sayles film: powerful and understated.”

–Elizabeth Stoddard, The Austin Film Society

“Sayles continues to focus on depth of character above and beyond anything else, which is surely a good thing, providing richness to his stories most of his contemporaries don’t bother with.”

– Joshua Starnes, ComingSoon.net

GO FOR SISTERS is very entertaining, emotionally satisfying, well-acted buddy/road trip/sleuthing film–all done the John Sayles way. #sxsw

– @tvoronfilm, via Twitter

GO FOR SISTERS: John Sayles. Likable, low-key mystery noir about 2 L.A. women searching for one’s son. A bit overlong, but good. #sxsw

– @EricDSnider, via Twitter

Go for Sisters: the plot of an airport novel, the music and fades to black of a TV movie, and three nicely lived-in lead performances. #sxsw

–‏@williambgoss, via Twitter

photo via The Austin Film Society

To celebrate, here are the official movie stills from the film (© John Castillo and © Kevin J. Long), as well as the official trailer and poster!

To learn more, visit www.goforsistersmovie.com.

It seems like a fitting day to tell you about a very special happening in Louisiana that recently reminded a lot of people how very special Passion Fish is to the community where it was filmed.

Passion Fish 20th Anniversary Poster

In February of 1993, The Historic Strand Theatre in the town of Jennings, Louisiana hosted the world premiere of John Sayles’s PASSION FISH.

In honor of the 20th anniversary of the premiere, the Strand Theatre once again hosted screenings of the film on February 1st and 2nd, 2013, which received enormous support from local citizens.

PASSION FISH was filmed in this small town and the surrounding area of Southwestern Louisiana, and has become a real point of pride for the members of the community.

Gregory Marcantel, who was Mayor of Jennings at the time the movie was made, reflected on the atmosphere around the 1993 premiere in a recent interview with local media. “When we started talking about having the opportunity to do the premiere, well, the community just came and supported it tremendously,” Marcantel said. “What we did was say we’re going to have a real Hollywood premiere, and we rented klieg lights and we told everybody had to come in evening dress and people were in tuxedos and their evening gowns.”

Read more of that interview with KPLC-TV, and see a video about the 2013 PASSION FISH screening by clicking here.

Unfortunately, Maggie and John weren’t able to attend this screening in Jennings, but they did spend New Years Eve with old friends on the bayou, right where the movie was made.

John and Maggie on New Year's Day, 2013

PASSION FISH holds a very important place in the hearts of the people of Southwest Louisiana, and many movie-lovers all over the world.  And the Louisiana of May-Alice and Chantelle is still very special to the filmmakers, as well.

If you missed the screening in Jennings, you can check out PASSION FISH on DVD or Netflix Watch Instantly.

Workers are the Philippines’ biggest export, and they must be protected.  The One Billion Rising movement is  a campaign by V-Day, culminating on Feb. 14, 2013 with a billion people striking and dancing in the streets to oppose violence against women.

ONE BILLION WOMEN VIOLATED IS AN ATROCITY.
ONE BILLION WOMEN DANCING IS A REVOLUTION.

Click here to learn all about the movement and upcoming February 14th events.

This very important cause was brought to our attention by our friends Art and Maritina, who both worked on AMIGO.

Art Acuña and Maritina Romulo

At the beginning of 2013, John and Maggie spent a few days in New Orleans at the 127th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association.

In addition to screening six of John’s movies in a film festival that ran January 3rd – 5th, the AHA also hosted two panels discussing John’s work:

Thinking Through History with John Sayles
A Conversation with John Sayles

The Educational Edition of AMIGO was also a big topic of discussion at the AHA Meeting, since the movie beautifully illustrates an often-overlooked part of American History.  Maggie and John had a lovely time in New Orleans, and Maggie tells me it was rewarding to have each movie discussed in its own academic and historical context.

John also gave the below interview, with the AHA was kind enough to publish on the WebsEdge/Education YouTube channel.