by | Jan 20, 2023 9:13 am | Comments (0)
Jules Larson introduces Carol at Best Video.
Best Video filled every seat in the house and then some on Thursday, the inaugural night of Queer Film Club, a new series in collaboration with East Rock House, New Haven Pride Center, and Hamden Pride that aims to share queer-centered films in a safe and friendly environment.
by | Jan 11, 2023 8:47 am | Comments (0)
A scene from Merrily We Go to Hell.
Jerry and Joan meet over booze at a party, and Jerry steals a kiss. Joan muses as to why she let him do that, but she’s just charmed enough by him to go out on a date with him the next day. He learns that she’s the heir to a business fortune. She learns that he’s a drunken journalist who yearns to be a playwright. Perhaps she can get him to stop his drinking and turn his life around. But at what cost to her?
Continue reading ‘Film Series Puts Women Directors In The Spotlight’
by | Dec 20, 2022 8:34 am | Comments (0)
A mix of familiar and new faces dropped in on the latest installment of “Animation Celebration,” the ongoing series from the New Haven Free Public Library hosted by Haley Grunloh, library technical assistant at Mitchell Library. Attendance may have been down slightly thanks to the holidays, but enthusiasm was as high as ever, thanks to the particularly bewitching choice for this month — the film János Vitéz, or Johnny Corncob, a 1973 film from Hungarian animator and director Marcell Jankovics.
Continue reading ‘Animation Celebration Dives Into Hungarian Folklore’
by | Dec 15, 2022 1:49 pm | Comments (9)
Thomas Breen file photo
On the scene of a "48-hour film" set in 2016.
A New Haven-based fiscal policy watchdog has proposed cutting a money-pit state film tax credit as part of a broader suite of reforms targeting Connecticut’s “unfair tax system.”
by | Dec 15, 2022 8:55 am | Comments (0)
Leonard Cohen: celebrated songwriter, poetic dreamboat, ladies’ man, writer of “Hallelujah,” a song so ubiquitous and covered so many times that even Cohen, by the end of his life, felt maybe people should give it a rest. Diving into the details of all that, for some, would be enough.
Continue reading ‘FIlm Screening Examines Leonard Cohen's Spiritual Side’
by | Nov 14, 2022 11:30 am | Comments (0)
Lindsey Skedgell photo
Skater / moviemaker Thomas Purtell at Plush screening Saturday.
Skaters rolled down the blacktop of a partially closed Orange Street, gathering in a large group. They were there Saturday night to see the premiere of Sucker, a new skate film by Thomas Purtell.
by | Nov 4, 2022 9:11 am | Comments (0)
Films and filmmakers from Mexico, Venezuela, Spain, Puerto Rico, and Cuba, among other places, are coming to New Haven next week as the Latino and Iberian Film Festival at Yale — known to all as LIFFY — returns for its 13th year of free and open-to-the-public films and events, in person with an online component after being virtual only for the past two years. No one could be happier about that than its founder and executive director Margherita Tortora, senior lecturer in Spanish and Portuguese at Yale, who is looking forward to the return of in-person events, but has also kept the online opportunities available due to audience demand.
Continue reading ‘Latino & Iberian Film Fest Returns In-Person’
by | Oct 7, 2022 9:07 am | Comments (2)
Official Trailer - Greatest Radio Station in the World from Cob Carlson on Vimeo.
The broadcaster the New Yorker called “the greatest radio station in the world.” A musician who sounds like three musicians. The history of a certain bivalve in New Haven. The trial of a Black Panther. Climate change and air guitar. Films about all these and more will be finding their way to screens for 10 days this month as the New Haven Documentary Film Festival, now in its ninth year, returns to the Elm City from Oct. 13 to 23, screening feature films and shorts, hosting several musical performances, and featuring a student film competition — 116 films in all.
Continue reading ‘Film Festival Keeps Documentaries In Focus’
by | Sep 7, 2022 9:31 am | Comments (0)
Vivian is a literature professor from New York who has come to Reno to sort a few things out. It’s the 1950s. Her marriage, though amicable, has faded away on her. She yearns for something more, though she’s not sure what. It’s how she finds herself on a ranch, where she crosses paths with Cay, a woman 10 years younger than her who works at a casino and is not afraid to be who she is — defiant, unapologetic, walking the tightrope of living how she wants, and sleeping with who she wants, without getting into too much social trouble. There’s a connection between the two women, undeniably. But what does it mean for both of them, from such different worlds that neither wants to leave?
Continue reading ‘At Best Video Film Series, Women Work It Out’
by | Aug 11, 2022 1:44 pm | Comments (29)
Thomas Breen Photo
Farewell, flicks: Middletown Ave.'s Ciné 4, now shuttered.
Start the early ed: Friends Center's Schiavone, who plans to convert cinema into childcare campus.
The lights are off and the popcorn’s all gone from a decades-old independent movie theater on Middletown Avenue — which new nonprofit owners aim to convert to a bustling campus for affordable early childhood education.
by | Jul 11, 2022 12:25 pm | Comments (5)
Brian Slattery Photo
Julie Smith: "Fingers crossed" on open-air concerts resuming.
A new executive has taken over at Best Video — just in time to work with her former colleagues in Hamden city government to enable one of the town’s cultural gems to resume popular outdoor concerts.
Continue reading ‘New Best Video Chief Saving Outdoor Music’
by | Jul 11, 2022 8:52 am | Comments (0)
Photos by Northern Shade Production Team
Northern Shade
A homegrown writer and director came home from Hollywood to show what he’s been up to — and what the world is about to see.
Continue reading ‘It's A Wrap: From Quinnipiac Marina To The Silver Screen’
by | Jul 6, 2022 8:50 am | Comments (0)
A boat carrying two young families — one, a wife and husband, the other, a wife, husband, and child — steers slowly across a mist-covered expanse of river water. The woman doing the navigating sings an eerie song. The two men are talking about the fortune they expect to make. “You and I will be rich men, and our wives will be wealthy women,” one says to the other. The women, however, have more immediate concerns. “It’s good we went by boat,” one says to the other. “On foot, we’d probably be dead by now.”
by | Jun 20, 2022 8:25 am | Comments (2)
Yale Repertory Theatre was the setting on a chillier than typical Saturday in June for a cool combination of events presented by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, both featuring local designer and cool cat himself, Neville Wisdom.
by | May 18, 2022 9:03 am | Comments (0)
A man, Osamu, and a boy, Shota, enter a grocery store. The man is shopping casually, the boy following a pace or two behind. They give a quick fist bump, and split up. The boy approaches a rack of goods. It becomes clear the man is positioning himself to be the boy’s looking. He flashes a couple meaningful hand gestures, and the kid slips goods into his backpack — ramen and other packaged food. They leave together, heading home to feed their family. Instead, however, they find a new family member.
Continue reading ‘Best Video Screens Japanese Modern Classic’
by | Feb 28, 2022 8:35 am | Comments (1)
A walk along the water with your dog on a lovely late summer day: does anything sound better than that right now? The fun and vibrant new single by the New Haven-based band Big Sigh captures that vibe both visually and musically in “Dog Boy,” a meditation with a chorus — “we walk around and he goes wild listening to Arcade Fire” — that catches after one listen.
Continue reading ‘On New EP, Big Sigh Breaks Out Of Hibernation’
by | Feb 22, 2022 9:09 am | Comments (0)
Falconeer Productions Photo
Brian Ember
“In my aspiration to be famous the one thing I’m looking forward to the most is press junkets,” said Brian Ember (a.k.a. Brian Robinson. More about that later). “I want to do them so bad. Please put me in front of a scrim and just let me talk, please, for the love of God.”
by | Feb 10, 2022 8:47 am | Comments (1)
Courtesy Octavia E. Butler Estate
Butler.
A new art exhibit, and a panel on migration facilitated by Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS). The screening and discussion of the “first-ever ethnographic acid Western.” A Sun Ra tribute concert.
All these events and more, happening between now and the middle of May, are organized around a single novel by a science-fiction visionary that is the focus of this year’s One City: One Read, a campaign organized by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, in partnership with Yale’s Schwarzman Center, the New Haven Free Public Library, Artspace, and Best Video.
by | Jan 24, 2022 11:45 am | Comments (6)
Raizine Bruton Photo
Hank Hoffman
It is hard to imagine Hamden’s beloved Best Video without Hank Hoffman, its current executive director, who has been an integral part of that institution since 1994. But in June he will retire to a life beyond the walls of DVDs and the wildly unique series of shows and programs he helped bring to life at the corner of Whitney Avenue and Thornton Street.
Continue reading ‘Hank Hoffman Plans For A Future Beyond Best Video’
by | Nov 15, 2021 9:22 am | Comments (0)
New Haven-based rockers Chaser Eight premiered a new music video that tackled a serious subject at The State House on Friday night while also giving live music fans a serious dose of hard hitting rock ‘n’ roll as they headlined a three-band bill that also included the fast and furious trio The Problem With Kids Today and the dreamy pop rock group The Sparkle and Fade.
Continue reading ‘Chaser Eight Premieres Video With a Message’
by | Nov 4, 2021 10:41 am | Comments (6)
When we argue about statues and historic monuments, what fundamental questions are we discussing —or not discussing?
by | Nov 1, 2021 10:17 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Light Upon Blight
Best Video brought back one of its most anticipated annual events on Saturday night: the Light Upon Blight live scoring of a horror film, and this year’s choice — the 1932 classic Vampyr — provided ample spooky and surreal images to inspire four musicians to create a matching soundtrack that suited the mood.
by | Oct 19, 2021 8:22 am | Comments (0)
“Exquisitely crafted and exquisitely boring.” “Disgusting.” A source of motion sickness. And for one fan, revelatory.
Such were the reactions of the participants in the New Haven Free Public Library’s ongoing Animation Celebration series to four short works by the Quay Brothers — one of the most influential and also most divisive teams in animation history, whose works are perhaps uniquely suited to the run-up to Halloween.
Continue reading ‘Animation Celebration Contends With The Quay Brothers’
by | Sep 20, 2021 8:08 am | Comments (0)
Karen Ponzio Photos
Still from “Skin.”
Black Haven Film Festival returned on Saturday for its second year, with five new filmmakers ready to share their vision via spoken word, song, dance, and animation — both in person and online.
by | Aug 19, 2021 3:40 pm | Comments (0)
The New Yorker has a new 20-minute documentary out about celebrated Westville-based Syrian artist Mohammad Hafez (who also owns the Pistachio coffee shop).
Continue reading ‘Documentary Features Mohammed Hafez’s Story’