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.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 27, 2024 9:23 am
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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?
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Lisa Reisman |
Sep 17, 2024 4:07 pm
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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.
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Lisa Reisman |
Sep 13, 2024 3:00 pm
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"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.
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 10, 2024 9:16 am
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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.”
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Brian Slattery |
Sep 3, 2024 9:39 am
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“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.
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Karen Ponzio |
Sep 3, 2024 9:15 am
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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.
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Karen Ponzio |
Aug 30, 2024 9:26 am
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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.
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Karen Ponzio |
Aug 13, 2024 9:16 am
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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.
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Karen Ponzio |
Aug 7, 2024 9:04 am
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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.
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Eleanor Polak |
Jul 29, 2024 9:37 am
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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.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jul 12, 2024 9:34 am
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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.
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Eleanor Polak |
Jul 11, 2024 9:08 am
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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?
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Karen Ponzio |
Jul 10, 2024 9:19 am
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A still from Spike Lee's Crooklyn.
Hopscotch, stick ball, dominoes, and double-dutch: the 1994 film Crooklyn opens with all of this and more playing out on the stoops and sidewalks of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, where people of all ages live, work, play, and play out their daily lives.
Under the direction of Spike Lee, the viewer soon comes to know and care deeply about one of the families living on this street, The Carmichaels, as well as their neighbors, friends, and extended family members at their best, their worst, and everything in between.
Tuesday night saw the film as the first in Best Video’s July screening series focusing on Lee and his storied career. Other films to be shown in the series include 1998’s He Got Game on July 16, 1989’s Do The Right Thing on July 23, and 2018’s BlacKkKlansman on July 30.
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Lisa Reisman |
Jul 9, 2024 2:26 pm
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Marcus Harvin at Saturday's doc premiere, with Bill and Kathy Carbone.
In the trunk of his car, Marcus Harvin has a rock from the parking lot of a vacant building on Bassett Street. So does his friend Babatunde Akinjobi. The two met when they were incarcerated at MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield.
“Each of us carries it around, believing that one day soon we will cut a ribbon for that property,” Harvin told a spirited audience of 60 family, friends, and supporters at Peterson Auditorium at the University of New Haven (UNH) on Saturday night.
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Lisa Reisman |
Jul 5, 2024 9:34 am
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Contributed photo
UNH film student Elisa Broche (second from right) with her family in Honduras.
Elisa Broche won’t be at Saturday’s premiere of her new documentary about Newhallville community activist Marcus Harvin at the University of New Haven.
That’s because the 19-year-old student filmmaker is back in her home city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras — doing everything she can to raise enough money to return to West Haven to complete her studies.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jul 1, 2024 9:27 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos.
A still from Oxide.
A woman on the run shares a cigarette with a chicken. A family portrait elicits a daughter’s memories of familial tensions. Three friends navigate the challenges of working to pay the rent when they would rather party. All of these stories and more were told in various animated styles, including stop motion, painting, and Procreate at the 2024 Womanimation event, presented this past Saturday by MergingArts Productions at Best Video in Hamden.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jun 20, 2024 9:15 am
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A still from "Black Moon".
Cult Night! With Anthony, the newest monthly series at Best Video, offered its third showing Wednesday night and cultivated not only a discussion of what the film was about, but also multiple discussions of what constitutes a “cult” film in the first place.
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Karen Ponzio |
Jun 5, 2024 9:24 am
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Karen Ponzio Photos.
The June screening series lineup at Best Video.
“School’s out for summer” is not just an Alice Cooper lyric; it is also the theme for Best Video’s June screening series. Four films are set to take fans back to high school each Tuesday of the month at 7 p.m. to experience the awkwardness and the uncertainty of that time with a heavy dose of laughter and relatability. According to Best’s own Teo Hernandez, it was a fitting choice for the lazy, hazy, and hot days to come.
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Karen Ponzio |
May 17, 2024 9:37 am
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A still from But I'm a Cheerleader.
Best Video welcomed the return of a popular film screening series Thursday night as Queer Film Club, a collaboration between the film and cultural center and East Rock House, screened the first of four queer comedies to be shown each month from May to August.
The 1999 cult comedy classic But I’m A Cheerleader led the way, as an exuberant audience filled every chair in the space and then some for the story of Megan, played by Natasha Lyonne, who gets sent to a “sexual redirection” school when her parents suspect her of being a lesbian.
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Karen Ponzio |
May 8, 2024 8:04 am
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A still from The Truman Show.
What would it feel like to suspect that your whole life was a lie? Actor Jim Carrey famously plays out that scenario in a comedic-dramatic-dystopian-existential tour de force as Truman Burbank, the star of The Truman Show — both the film and the TV show within the film that follows his character’s life on a 24/7 live feed, unbeknownst to him until, well, it isn’t. The 1998 film, screened Tuesday evening, was the first in Best Video Film and Cultural Center’s May screening series, which this month will feature a retrospective of Carrey’s career.
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Karen Ponzio |
May 1, 2024 11:47 am
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Brian Meacham and student archivists.
Yale Film Archive turned one of its screening events over to students Tuesday night as members of the Spring 2024 Film and Media Studies 604 class shared their archivist projects — which included everything from a not-so-silent Dutch short that focused on the rain to a Looney Tunes cartoon that focused on a not-so-cool cat — with a room full of appreciative movie fans.
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Karen Ponzio |
Apr 22, 2024 11:00 am
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The Creature descends on Best Video.
The Giant Behemoth and a creature from beneath the sea stood side by side with Betty Boop, Jimmy Stewart, and a New Jersey couple celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary as Best Video Film and Cultural Center hosted a screening of 8‑millimeter films projected and presented by Quinnipiac University’s Women in Films president Julia Schnarr.
Sunday evening saw an intimate gathering of enthusiastic film professors, students, and fans at the Whitney Avenue movie lover’s mecca taking in seven short films, six from Schnarr’s own collection and one belonging to Best Video.
“The astounding story of an astounding military plot to take over the United States! The time is 1970 or 1980 or, possibly, tomorrow!”
Thus reads the tagline to the political thriller Seven Days in May, the first entry in April’s Tuesday night film screening series at Best Video. Last night an engrossed crowd took in the John Frankenheimer-directed and Rod Sterling-penned 1964 classic, based on the novel written by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Barley II and published in 1962.
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Karen Ponzio |
Apr 9, 2024 9:02 am
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A still from La Practica.
On Monday night Yale Film Archive’s Cinemix series offered a selection that exemplified its description of itself as “stand alone screenings of standout films.” La Práctica (The Practice) — the latest from Argentinian writer/director Martín Rejtman — is the story of a yoga instructor’s interactions with students old and new as he maneuvers his way through his ever-changing world. Presented in conjunction with the Latino and Iberian Film festival at Yale (LIFFY), the event included a post-film Q&A with Rejtman, moderated by LIFFY’s founder and executive director Margherita Tortora.
