by | Nov 27, 2024 9:32 am | Comments (15)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Best Video's Rai Bruton, with Lyric Hall's John Cavaliere: “Places like this and Best Video will only last if we work together.”
Lyric Hall Theater came full circle on Tuesday night as the beloved Westville venue partnered with Best Video for the first night of its new monthly film series for New Haven movie fans.
Continue reading ‘Best Video, Lyric Hall Pair Up For Film Series’
by | Nov 25, 2024 7:20 am | Comments (0)
Paul Mescal as Hanno in Gladiator II
Gladiator II
Cinemark Buckland Hills 18 XD and IMAX
Manchester
Nov. 21, 2024
Twenty-four years in the making, Gladiator II is a direct sequel to the movie of the same name starring Russell Crowe that came out in 2000.
by | Nov 19, 2024 8:00 am | Comments (0)
Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans in Red One.
Red One
Cinemark Buckland Hills 18 XD and IMAX
Manchester
Red One is the first new Christmas movie of the year, starring Dwayne Johnson as the zealous head of Santa’s security detail and Chris Evans as an unscrupulous hacker he’s forced to team up with.
by | Nov 15, 2024 9:36 am | Comments (0)
A still from the film "Madame Sata."
Grit and glitter played equal parts in Thursday night’s Yale Film Archive presentation of Karim Ainouz’s Madame Sata, the 2002 film based on the true story of Brazilian legend Joao Francisco dos Santos, who fights his way through the streets and onto the stages of 20th-century Rio de Janiero to become a prominent trans performer who considers himself a “disciple” of Josephine Baker.
Continue reading ‘Madame Sata Takes The Screen At Yale Film Archive’
by | Nov 12, 2024 6:20 pm | Comments (9)
Thomas Breen photos
Is that NYPD Blue... in Wooster Square?
And who's the lady in white?
Ohh, it's a film shoot! For "The Monster."
In front of large computer screens and a focused film crew, a woman in a white dress walked up to a Wooster Square brownstone pretending to be New York City.
She reached the top of the entrance. Before she could open the door and walk inside, she stopped, turned, and walked back down the stairs — ready to repeat those moves again and again, as part of a new horror movie being filmed in part in New Haven.
by | Nov 8, 2024 9:04 am | Comments (1)
Saoirse Ronan as Rona in The Outrun
The Outrun
Real Art Ways
Hartford
Nov. 7, 2024
About one hour into The Outrun, I realized that I was watching one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.
by | Nov 7, 2024 9:32 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photo
Velapatino, Caicedo, Tortora, Atehortua, and Diaz Costa.
Two Colombian films, both made of film fragments, gave audiences insight into the history of not only the country, but cinema itself, as the Latino and Iberian Film Festival at Yale (LIFFY) held its third night of screenings.
In its 15th year, the festival — which runs Nov. 4 to Nov. 10 — has over 40 films from 16 countries shown both virtually and in person as well as panel discussions and Q&A sessions to offer attendees, all of which are free and open to the public.
Continue reading ‘Latino Film Fest Gives Voice To Silent Witnesses’
by | Nov 5, 2024 7:49 am | Comments (1)
Tarrell (André Holland) confronts his father La'Ron (John Earl Jelks) in Exhibiting Forgiveness.
Exhibiting Forgiveness
Real Art Ways
Hartford
Nov. 1, 2024
I’m going to be real: I couldn’t wait to give Titus Kaphar’s new movie, Exhibiting Forgiveness, a glowing review.
by | Oct 30, 2024 12:10 pm | Comments (1)
Contributed photo
Fortunoff archive co-curator Stephen Naron.
In 1979, a New Haven-based television producer named Laurel Vlock and psychiatrist Dori Laub began filming the testimonials of Holocaust survivors and survivors of antisemitic violence. Over many years, thousands of interviews were recorded in more than a dozen languages. More than 10,000 hours of the resulting videos have been digitized, preserving material of great historical importance.
Continue reading ‘Unpacking Holocaust Testimonies At The Beinecke’
by | Oct 29, 2024 8:34 am | Comments (2)
André Holland and Andra Day in Exhibiting Forgiveness.
A man with frazzled hair and beard gets mixed up in a liquor store robbery and is badly hurt. He stumbles to his brother’s house, where his wounds are tended to, his hair and beard trimmed; in the shower, he cries until he’s shaking, the water at his feet stained with dirt and dried blood.
Somewhere else, in a clean, opulent modern house, a talented painter appears to be on the brink of art stardom. His works are already fetching big money in the art market, and his next set of paintings looks to be an even bigger hit. But the painter is deeply uncomfortable with his success, maybe scared, maybe even angry. How are the two men connected?
Exhibiting Forgiveness — written and directed by celebrated artist and NXTHVN founder and president Titus Kaphar, making his debut as a filmmaker — explores that connection, and in the process, lays bare the ways that love, pain, art, and family history can twist together in potent ways.
Continue reading ‘Titus Kaphar Weighs The Cost Of Forgiveness’
by | Oct 17, 2024 10:03 am | Comments (0)
A still from the film "Go Fish".
The 1994 film Go Fish opens in a classroom where the teacher asks the class to make a list of “women that you think are lesbians or that you know are lesbians.” The answers she gets are everything from Eve to Virginia Woolf to Margaret, Dennis the Menace’s next-door neighbor. One student then asks why they are making the list. The teacher responds: “Throughout lesbian history there has been serious lack of evidence that’ll tell us what these women’s lives were truly about.… lesbian lives and lesbian relationships, they barely exist on paper, and it is with that in mind and understanding that meaning and the power of history that we begin to want to change history.”
by | Oct 11, 2024 2:36 pm | Comments (2)
Flicker
Are these prairie dogs wondering what makes them prairie dogs?
Laura Glesby Photo
Jeff Cibulas, with Jenny Trujillo at last NHDoc screening: “I’d rather see the truth and know how horrible it is.”
Prairie dogs have a word for “human.” They talk about us in a language with nouns, adjectives, and variable dialects — even though, to most of us, their words sound like unintelligible squeaks.
I learned that delightful fact at the last-ever film screening by NHDocs, from a vegan advocacy film about what it means to be human in a world of other animals.
by | Oct 8, 2024 9:52 am | Comments (25)
Brian Slattery photo
Bechard: It's difficult to run a film fest when "there's no movie theater in New Haven."
After a decade-long run of bringing documentaries and filmmakers from all over the country and beyond to New Haven — and, for a brief time in October, turning the city’s downtown into a documentary lover’s paradise — the New Haven Documentary Film Festival has come to a close, and will have a final farewell screening on Wednesday, at the Cannon on Dwight Street.
by | Sep 27, 2024 9:23 am | Comments (6)
Adam Driver and Nathalie Emmanuel in Megalopolis, which feels at times like an object lesson in what happens when no one is able to tell a filmmaker when his ideas are bad.
The lights dimmed in a movie theater Thursday night for maybe the most prime example of an arthouse film to come along this year, and together the audience watched as Cesar Catilina, played by Adam Driver, edged out of his office window to stand on a metal ledge at the edge of a skyscraper, balancing vertiginously over traffic. He wobbled, and almost began to fall.
It was the opening scene on opening night for legendary director Francis Ford Coppola’s new movie, Megalopolis: A Fable, but we weren’t in an arthouse theater. We were in Cinemark, in North Haven, the closest place screening the limited-release film. With the Criterion closed and New Haven without a first-run theater of any kind, would it be the same?
by | Sep 17, 2024 4:07 pm | Comments (4)
courtesy Marcus Carpenter
From left, servers Big Don McDaniel, Marcus Harvin, Greg Altieri, Adam Rawlings, Marcus Carpenter, Babatunde Akinjobi, and Bradley Woodworth.
One group brought a full-course dinner, complete with a choice of jerk chicken or fried chicken. Another brought a “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” DVD, a movie projector, and popcorn. Then a half-dozen smartly dressed servers showed up.
And just like that, with the inaugural “Dinner and a Movie” hosted by Best Video and the Newhallville nonprofit Fresh Starts, a dream, seven years in the making, saw its realization at Life Haven women’s shelter in Fair Haven.
Continue reading ‘Dinner & A Movie Served Up At Fair Haven Shelter’
by | Sep 13, 2024 3:00 pm | Comments (0)
Lisa Reisman photo
"Nightmares" cast and crew: D. Jeff Bell, Ann Bell, Darrell Bellamy Jr., Clifton Bey, Myron Attoh, and Ian Mann, at Armada Brewing for awards night.
Director-producer Darrell Bellamy Jr. was in a creative slump — but he had already signed up to participate in the New Haven 48 Hour Film Project, an annual summer competition to make a short movie over the course of just two days.
“I had to go for it,” said Bellamy, co-creator of the upcoming thriller “Marblehead,” as well as “Get Yer Mind Right,” a coming-of-age YouTube series.
Several weeks later, he found himself at a raucous 48 Hour Film Project awards ceremony at Armada Brewery — buoyed by two award nominations, and waiting to see if he and his team would make it out on top.
by | Sep 10, 2024 9:16 am | Comments (1)
We first see Duane Luckow backlit. He’s filming himself with his phone. “Hey everybody, can you see me?” he asks. We can’t. But then he turns into the light, and there’s his face, looking concerned. “I’m going to give you a little tour of this place,” he says. He shows us a bedroom, clean, well-lit, and very institutional. There’s a teddy bear on the bed. “I’m not supposed to be filming this,” he says, but gives us a view out the window, of a courtyard garden. “That’s the only thing I have hope for,” he says, “that someday I’ll get out of this place.”
Continue reading ‘Film Charts Hardship Of Being A Schizophrenic Brother's Keeper’
by | Sep 3, 2024 9:39 am | Comments (1)
“I tend to see skateboarding as almost a kind of dance, a conversation with the terrain around you,” says J. Joseph in the documentary Fly, a silent film about skateboarding in New Haven that has inspired a new local album.
Continue reading ‘Skating Film, Album Put Right Foot Forward’
by | Sep 3, 2024 9:15 am | Comments (3)
A still from Picnic at Hanging Rock.
The 50th anniversary of a Francis Ford Coppola classic, a historic documentary set in 1970s New Haven, and The Bride of Frankenstein screened on Halloween night: these are just a sampling of what Yale Film Archive is offering movie fans this fall, revealed along with a host of other anniversary screenings and premiere prints at the first screening of the semester this past Friday at the Yale Humanities Quadrangle.
First, however, a capacity crowd was treated to a new 35-mm print of Peter Weir’s mesmerizing 1975 classic Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Continue reading ‘Yale Film Archive Goes On Surreal "Picnic"’
by | Aug 30, 2024 9:26 am | Comments (0)
A still from Beauty and the Beast.
The Institute Library became le cinema Thursday night as its French film series — “Bonsoir, Mes Ami(e)s!” — began with Beauty and The Beast (also known as La Belle et la Bête), the renowned 1946 film by Jean Cocteau based on the fairy tale originally published in the 1700s. The three-film series is being presented in conjunction with Best Video and is being hosted and curated by John Hatch, who recently organized a successful Italian movie series at the Chapel Street institution.
Continue reading ‘French Film Series Turns Institute Library Into Le Cinema’
by | Aug 13, 2024 9:16 am | Comments (1)
A still from Wanda.
What’s an arthouse film? Not unlike the cult film, it can draw in a certain type of cinephile that searches for an experience unlike the one you get from a blockbuster crowd pleaser. The arthouse film is typically independently made and is often experimental: sometimes cerebral, sometimes gut wrenching, sometimes both at once. Best Video — home to many of these films on VHS and DVD — is looking to share such experiences with others on Arthouse Sundays, a new monthly series that debuted this past weekend with the 1970 film Wanda.
by | Aug 7, 2024 9:04 am | Comments (0)
A still from Shadow of a Doubt.
You don’t have to be a film fanatic to know who Alfred Hitchcock is — a director so unique in his vision that his last name has become a descriptor for a certain type of perspective. On the occasion of what would have been his 125th birthday, Best Video has dedicated its August screening series to a celebration of his films. On Tuesday night the feting began with Shadow of a Doubt, the 1943 psychological thriller that held the sizable crowd captive with its snappy dialogue — cowritten by Hamden’s own Thornton Wilder — and the director’s signature directorial style.
Continue reading ‘Film Series Celebrates Hitchcock's 125th Birthday’
by | Jul 29, 2024 9:37 am | Comments (2)
Eleanor Polak photos
48 Hour Film Project team director Zach Fox: “Ketchup is harder to clean up than I thought it would be.”
The scene of the crime.
In the middle of the floor of director Zach Fox’s parents’ kitchen lay some fake blood, a real knife, and an avocado.
This was a crime scene, and the crime wasn’t only the murder of a helpless victim. It was also a crime against fashion.
Luckily, the fashion detectives were on the case. And soon, everybody would be watching them — as part of an annual competition to make a short movie in just two days.
by | Jul 12, 2024 9:34 am | Comments (1)
Anna Magnani in Mamma Roma.
New Haven is a pretty easy place to find Italian food and fairs, but what about films? The Institute Library is satisfying that craving this summer with their new film series, “Ciao, Bella!” On Thursday night the second film of the three in the series — 1962’s Mamma Roma, directed by Pier Polo Pasolini — was screened among the stacks of their biography room. Library member John Hatch had the idea for the series and according to operations manager Eva Geertz, it was one she was happy to help come to fruition.
Continue reading ‘Italian Film Series Sizzles At Institute Library’
by | Jul 11, 2024 9:08 am | Comments (1)
Mamma Mia!
The crowd in Pitkin Plaza.
Several dozen people gathered in Pitkin Plaza on Wednesday night for Movies in the Plaza, a weekly summer movie night organized by the Town Green District.
The night’s screening was the beloved and absurd ABBA-based jukebox musical, Mamma Mia!
A strong wind kept the audience cool and provided the perfect backdrop for dramatic hair-flips and other musical staples as the crowd gathered on fold-up chairs and picnic blankets to answer the age-old question: who’s the father?
Continue reading ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme Mamma Mia! In Pitkin Plaza’