The October 4-6 Yellow Springs Film Festival should be of keen interest to anyone wondering what a hip, sophisticated big-name film festival like Sundance is like. And given that Cincinnati is now one of the final three candidates to be the home of Sundance when its contract with Park City/Salt Lake City expires after 2026, everyone here should be developing interest. (The other finalists are Boulder, Colorado, and a return to Park City/Salt Lake City.)
The Yellow Springs festival is much smaller than Sundance, of course, and this is just its second year. But it has some very artistically prestigious and—important for a major fest seeking a following—recognizably high-profile programming. And it also wants to have some fun.
Definitely worth mentioning here is the closing night appearance of Jim Jarmusch, one of the absolute gods of modern American indie cinema. He’s also an Ohio native (born in Cuyahoga Falls). Following a 25th anniversary screening of one of his most popular movies, 1999’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, at Antioch College’s Foundry Theater October 6, Jarmusch will participate in a Q&A. A quirky and moving crime drama starring Forest Whitaker, Ghost Dog also has a terrific hip-hop score by RZA.
Opening night offers a movie that premiered at this year’s South by Southwest film fest in Austin: the comedy-drama The Uninvited, in which the life of a comfortable Hollywood Hills couple is upended when a woman who claims she should be living there unexpectedly shows up. After the screening, director Nadia Conner will be present to discuss the movie.
There’s also a screening of the widely hailed new documentary Eno, about the genius musician and conceptual artist Brian Eno, October 5 at the historic Little Art Theatre. Director Gary Huswit will be present to talk about the film and its seemingly magical technical achievement of having every screening everywhere include some kind of unique element. I have more about Eno below, as it’s touring some of the more discerning Ohio and Kentucky theatrical venues.
The esteemed Dayton documentarian Steven Bognar will also present his new film Julia’s Stepping Stones October 5 in the Little Art Theatre. The Julia of the title is the late Julia Reichert, Bognar’s “partner in film and love” as the festival notes so nicely phrase it. She won a 2020 Oscar for her documentary American Factory. Before her passing in 2022, Reichert recorded her personal story about finding a calling as a documentarian. Bognar then spent a year creating a film based on her recorded recollections, and this event will be its premiere. He will also participate in a post-screening Q&A.
Besides these and other movies, the Yellow Springs fest is also programming some comedy events. A big one occurs at 5 p.m. October 4, when the electrifying comedian and musician Reggie Watts does a show at the Foundry Theater. You might remember how good he was at the 2016 MidPoint Music Festival; it will be fun to see him again.
Wondering about how and why tiny Yellow Springs suddenly has such a cool film fest, I asked founder/executive director/programmer Eric Mahoney about it. A Dayton native who worked in New York’s film business (he interned for Jarmusch), Mahoney directed a popular and well-regarded documentary about the Dayton rock band Brainiac. He moved from hectic Brooklyn to Yellow Springs when COVID first arrived and has stayed.
“It’s always been a dear place in my heart,” he says. “It supports arts and film and mirrors the locations of a lot of other successful (film) festivals launched in small towns like Woodstock and Telluride. A lot of small villages around the country support arts and are wonderful places for festivals. It was a no brainer to try to get it off the ground here.”
Megalopolis
[Watch the trailer. Now showing at the Esquire Theatre, AMC Newport on the Levee, AMC West Chester, and Cinemark Oakley.]
Francis Ford Coppola, 85, one of our greatest living filmmakers, has just delivered his long-in-the-works new film to almost 2,000 theaters nationally amid speculation that it would be one of the year’s biggest film events. Alas, the public largely stayed away and many who did go didn’t get it.
The film is a science fiction speculation and drama starring Adam Driver as a heroic architect, and Coppola sees parallels between our declining modern America and the fall of glorious ancient Rome. He’s been out ahead of the public before (One From the Heart), so the early response doesn’t mean it isn’t wildly, beautifully visionary and will one day be considered a classic. The New York Times gave it a critic’s pick, a good start, and online film site Indiewire reported that the limited IMAX screenings did indeed do well, so you might especially want to attend an IMAX screening at AMC West Chester.
Keep in mind why Indiewire feels it’s such an important film, whatever its flaws might be: “As personal and egoless as you could ever hope to expect from an $120-million self-portrait that doubles as a fable about the fall of ancient Rome, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is the story of an ingenious eccentric who dares to stake his fortune on a more optimistic vision for the future—not because he thinks he can single-handedly bring that vision to bear, but rather because history has taught him that questioning a civilization’s present condition is the only reliable hope for preventing its ruin. Needless to say, the movie isn’t arriving a minute too soon.”
Lee
[Watch the trailer. Now showing at the Mariemont Theatre, AMC Newport on the Levee, AMC West Chester, and Cinemark Oakley.]
This biopic about the tough, brave, and immensely talented war photographer Lee Miller starring Oscar-winner Kate Winslet is getting lots of critical praise. The New York Times’ Lisa Kennedy wrote, “Lee feeds the desire to seek out more of her images. Winslet’s performance demands that we consider the force behind the camera.”
The Invitation
[Watch the trailer. Screens at 7:30 p.m. October 2 at the Esquire Theatre.]
The local film presenter Leontine Cinema, which recently started showcasing a monthly revival screening of movies made by women, hosts another one at the Esquire this week. It’s Karyn Kusama’s film from 2015 in which a woman invites her ex-husband to a dinner party she’s hosting. He in fact comes, which leads to some very testy times.
Eno
[Watch the trailer. Screens October 5 at Yellow Springs Film Festival, October 8 at the Woodward Theater, October 7 at the Wexner Center in Columbus, and October 10 at Speed Museum Cinema in Louisville.]
As I mentioned above, Eno is on a road trip of Ohio and Kentucky this month, giving his eager fans a chance to see a film that’s had trouble getting into commercial theaters because, I was told, they didn’t want to mess with its unusual presentation.
The Speed Museum’s curator Dean Otto, posted on his website a good explanation of what’s happening in the film:
“Maverick recording artist Brian Eno co-founded Roxy Music, produced breakthrough albums for David Bowie, Talking Heads, Devo, and U2, and pioneered innovative work in ambient music. A renowned explorer of technology and ‘oblique strategies,’ he is an unlikely subject for a conventional documentary; but in this first-of-its-kind portrait, Gary Hustwit applies Eno’s own concept of ‘generative’ art; the filmmaker’s proprietary technology, developed with digital artist Brendan Dawes, produces a different movie every time it’s screened, presenting variations in sequence, music, and scenes (including some with such collaborators as Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, David Bowie, U2, and others).
“Defying the hagiographic impulses of the music doc genre, Eno draws from original interviews and the artist’s own staggering archive of never-before-seen footage and unreleased music. This iteration, created only for participating theaters, will be screened in conjunction with art houses around the country on the same day and will never be seen again.”
A Different Man
[Watch the trailer. Opening October 4 at the Mariemont.]
I really struggled to understand the new Aaron Schimberg film’s story from a synopsis, which sounds fascinating but difficult to grasp at first glance. Essentially, it’s a kind of meta-take on the film/play Elephant Man and is meant to have darkly comic as well as thriller and dramatic elements. Sebastian Stam plays Edward, a man who undergoes dramatic surgery to correct his neurofibromatosis, which causes severe deformities, especially on the face.
The surgery is a success, but then Edward begins an obsession with the actor Oswald (Adam Pearson), who’s playing a stage character based on Edward’s actual life. Tension builds. And there’s another layer: Pearson actually has neurofibromatosis in real life and has developed a following for his work. It sounds pretty twisty and brain-challenging, but then that’s why we have art houses.
Blink
[Watch the trailer. Opening October 4 at the Esquire and the Mariemont.]
This isn’t a film about Cincinnati’s biennial BLINK festival of artful projection-mapping on major buildings (which occurs October 17-20), but rather a documentary about a family who goes on a world trip before the children lose their sight to a rare genetic disorder. Advance word is that the photography is absolutely sensational and the story touching, and that it could be an Oscar candidate.
Woodward Theater Screenings
Once again, the Woodward is using its big screen and superb sound system to bring in the crowds for Talking Heads’ recently revived 1984 concert film, Stop Making Sense. It’s at 7:30 p.m. October 1.
At 7:30 p.m. October 7 is Outcry: Alchemists of Rage, a short documentary about Whitney Bradshaws, who photographs women screaming at cathartic situations. She also led an Ohio campaign for abortion access. The film will be followed by a discussion.
“Carribean Eye,” a series of three auteurist films from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, represents the Woodward’s participation in this year’s FotoFocus Biennial of lens-based art. The three films are Feet in the Sand October 15, Rafaela October 21, and All the Flowers October 28; all films start at 7:30 p.m. Get tickets and more info here.
Oscar Possibles
Watch for several exciting and artistically important first-run art and indie films to arrive soon, possibly this month, since the fall months are when Oscar talk increases and spurs public interest. The indie-owned Esquire and Mariemont generally are where such films tend to do strong business, and they’ve put several eagerly awaited titles on their Coming Soon website sections, although without opening dates. Here are four that sound promising.
Rumours
[Watch the trailer. Coming soon to the Esquire and/or Mariemont.]
Canadian director Guy Maddin is fantastically imaginative, which takes his films to some unusual places. My favorite, the sublime Saddest Music in the World, features Isabelli Rossellini as a Canadian beer baroness who keeps the booze in her two glass legs. The plot for Rumours is described thusly: “Leaders of the world’s wealthiest democracies gather for the annual G7 summit to draft a provisional statement regarding a global crisis. They soon become spectacles of incompetence, contending with increasingly surreal obstacles as night falls in the misty woods and they realize they are suddenly alone.”
Anora
[Watch the trailer. Coming soon to the Esquire and/or Mariemont.]
This film is an early favorite to dominate the upcoming Oscar nominations, largely because it premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and won the Palme d’Or prize, the first American film to do so since Terrence Malick’s masterpiece Tree of Life in 2011. The story is about a sex worker (Mikey Madison) who marries a Russian oligarch’s son, much to the family’s disapproval. It’s primarily a comedy that harkens back to the screwball era, but it also has dramatic and romance elements. The director is Sean Baker, whose previous films include the wonderfully humane Tangerine and The Florida Project.
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