I first encountered Robert Greene's inventive and daring filmmaking at the Art of the Real film series in 2013. Actress, his film starring Brandy Burre playing herself in a documentary-style portrayal of an aging actress in upstate New York, was decidedly refreshing in a documentary world inundated with straight up character studies that are as predictable and boring as reading someone's short bios on wiki. With his new film Kate Plays Christine coming out in theaters, Greene's adventure into meta filmmaking continues, digging deeper into the very nature of performance and also of the filmmaking process. It is a densely layered, thought provoking, endlessly fascinating piece of work that is very rare in the American Indie cinema landscape. I got a chance to talk with...
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- 8/23/2016
- Screen Anarchy
In Kate Plays Christine, which premiered earlier this year at Sundance, filmmaker Robert Greene tackles the story of Sarasota TV journalist Christine Chubbuck, who shot herself live on-air in 1974 and died 14 hours later. But rather than taking a straightforward documentary approach to Chubbuck’s story, Greene instead chronicles actress Kate Lyn Sheil’s preparation to play Chubbuck in a film that will conclude with her suicide. While Greene’s previous film Actress explored the real life of actress Brandy Burre, Kate Plays Christine relies on a constructed situation to which Sheil must act and react. Footage of Sheil preparing for the role are intercut with […]...
- 7/20/2016
- by Paula Bernstein
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Dailies is a round-up of essential film writing, news bits, videos, and other highlights from across the Internet. If you’d like to submit a piece for consideration, get in touch with us in the comments below or on Twitter at @TheFilmStage.
Following the tragic passing of Chantal Akerman, we’re dedicating today’s Dailies to highlighting some of the best tributes and interviews.
Chantal Akerman, From Here, an hour-long conversation with the director:
Scout Tafoya at RogerEbert.com:
She was very short, had serious, beautiful, sunken eyes, her voice was low and raspy and it flowed out of her like a thick current. It was winter 2013 and she was reading from her memoirs in a black box theatre in Chelsea, while her latest photography exhibit played on a loop upstairs. The story she told was of unbearable melancholy. A woman, in her 60s, trying to learn how to date online,...
Following the tragic passing of Chantal Akerman, we’re dedicating today’s Dailies to highlighting some of the best tributes and interviews.
Chantal Akerman, From Here, an hour-long conversation with the director:
Scout Tafoya at RogerEbert.com:
She was very short, had serious, beautiful, sunken eyes, her voice was low and raspy and it flowed out of her like a thick current. It was winter 2013 and she was reading from her memoirs in a black box theatre in Chelsea, while her latest photography exhibit played on a loop upstairs. The story she told was of unbearable melancholy. A woman, in her 60s, trying to learn how to date online,...
- 10/7/2015
- by TFS Staff
- The Film Stage
Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Kati with an I is playing on Mubi in the Us through September 1; Actress is playing through September 2. Though filled with flashes of incredible immediacy, each one of Robert Greene’s documentaries seems less interested in mapping concrete environments, narrative arcs and motivations than plunging the viewer into an impressionistic hyper-reality. The aesthetic he’s developed and refined over the 4 features he’s directed creates a sense of spatial and temporal disorientation: choppy, elliptical editing; handheld, grainy cinematography; a playful flexibility of focal length; regular fluctuations in shot scale (often lapsing into extreme close-ups that cut off part of the subject’s face); complex in-camera abstractions; sound design that often foregrounds ambient noise; extended lyrical interludes. Both Kati With an I and Actress begin with a mundane premise—a high school graduation in the former, a year in the...
- 8/4/2015
- by James Slaymaker
- MUBI
Documentarian, editor, critic, one of the "10 Filmmakers to Watch" according to the Independent film magazine and now filmmaking faculty at the New Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism, Robert Greene is bound by no one title. It's fitting then that Actress, his latest directorial effort, is a rich, multilayered affair, unable to be neatly placed into a single genre. An intoxicating fusion of fiction and non-fiction, the movie intimately chronicles the trial and tribulations of actress-turned-housewife Brandy Burre (The Wire). Equally spellbinding and heartbreaking, Greene's masterwork in cinematic non-fiction constantly forces us to evaluate the veracity of what's in front of us.>> - Sam Fragoso...
- 4/9/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Documentarian, editor, critic, one of the "10 Filmmakers to Watch" according to the Independent film magazine and now filmmaking faculty at the New Murray Center for Documentary Journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism, Robert Greene is bound by no one title. It's fitting then that Actress, his latest directorial effort, is a rich, multilayered affair, unable to be neatly placed into a single genre. An intoxicating fusion of fiction and non-fiction, the movie intimately chronicles the trial and tribulations of actress-turned-housewife Brandy Burre (The Wire). Equally spellbinding and heartbreaking, Greene's masterwork in cinematic non-fiction constantly forces us to evaluate the veracity of what's in front of us.>> - Sam Fragoso...
- 4/9/2015
- Keyframe
40. Night Moves
Since 2006, Kelly Reichardt has found a way to reach inside of the hearts of her audiences, plucking out strings one by one with desolate re-imaginations of the American Pacific Northwest, seen through the eyes of people not so different than ourselves. With Meek’s Cutoff, she departed from her typical genre and moved in to the Old West, but you could still see her stark realism, perfectly imagined on-screen. Now, Reichardt has shifted gears again, this time to present day (still in the Pacific Northwest), following three environmental activists as they plan to blow up a dam. But this time Reichardt has eschewed all sense of dry, dirty characterization for a much more flowing story where the characters emerge from their settings more fully. It’s still methodical, but somewhere in between the planning and heist itself, Reichardt’s star Jesse Eisenberg finds notes we haven’t seen...
Since 2006, Kelly Reichardt has found a way to reach inside of the hearts of her audiences, plucking out strings one by one with desolate re-imaginations of the American Pacific Northwest, seen through the eyes of people not so different than ourselves. With Meek’s Cutoff, she departed from her typical genre and moved in to the Old West, but you could still see her stark realism, perfectly imagined on-screen. Now, Reichardt has shifted gears again, this time to present day (still in the Pacific Northwest), following three environmental activists as they plan to blow up a dam. But this time Reichardt has eschewed all sense of dry, dirty characterization for a much more flowing story where the characters emerge from their settings more fully. It’s still methodical, but somewhere in between the planning and heist itself, Reichardt’s star Jesse Eisenberg finds notes we haven’t seen...
- 12/28/2014
- by Staff
- SoundOnSight
1. Frank
Those of us who care about movie posters often complain about “big head” posters from Hollywood studios, but the design for Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank is the ne plus ultra of big head posters: a poster for a film about a big head. The head in question is the papier-mâché noggin worn by Michael Fassbender’s title character, which was inspired by the nearly identical prop worn by Chris Sievey, a.k.a. Frank Sidebottom, the nasal-voiced troubadour from Timperley, Manchester, who famously covered the Sex Pistols (“Anarchy in Timperley”) and had his moment of cult fame in the 80s. The poster for Frank, designed by an as-yet uncredited designer at P+A studio (the anonymity seems apt) subverts the chief function of the big head poster by not showing us the film’s star. To me it’s a thing of beauty (my affection for Frank Sidebottom and...
Those of us who care about movie posters often complain about “big head” posters from Hollywood studios, but the design for Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank is the ne plus ultra of big head posters: a poster for a film about a big head. The head in question is the papier-mâché noggin worn by Michael Fassbender’s title character, which was inspired by the nearly identical prop worn by Chris Sievey, a.k.a. Frank Sidebottom, the nasal-voiced troubadour from Timperley, Manchester, who famously covered the Sex Pistols (“Anarchy in Timperley”) and had his moment of cult fame in the 80s. The poster for Frank, designed by an as-yet uncredited designer at P+A studio (the anonymity seems apt) subverts the chief function of the big head poster by not showing us the film’s star. To me it’s a thing of beauty (my affection for Frank Sidebottom and...
- 12/15/2014
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
As is usually the case, 2014 held a rich vein of great nonfiction cinema … that went mostly untapped by any wide audiences. But just because documentaries are perpetually under-served by popular (and even critical) attention doesn’t mean that we should neglect these films. This is a celebration of all the best docs to come out this year.
But first, for the sake of full disclosure, here are all the notable docs of 2014 that I haven’t gotten around to seeing yet:
1989, 20,000 Days on Earth, Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case, Big Joy, Big Men, Code Black, Evolution of a Criminal, The Great Flood, The Great Invisible, The Kill Team, National Gallery, The Missing Picture, Maidentrip, Manakamana, The Naked Opera, Virunga, Watchers of the Sky, What Now? Remind Me, Whitey
Next,we have some honorable mentions — other docs of 2014 that are well worth seeking out:
A Will for the Woods, Art and Craft,...
But first, for the sake of full disclosure, here are all the notable docs of 2014 that I haven’t gotten around to seeing yet:
1989, 20,000 Days on Earth, Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case, Big Joy, Big Men, Code Black, Evolution of a Criminal, The Great Flood, The Great Invisible, The Kill Team, National Gallery, The Missing Picture, Maidentrip, Manakamana, The Naked Opera, Virunga, Watchers of the Sky, What Now? Remind Me, Whitey
Next,we have some honorable mentions — other docs of 2014 that are well worth seeking out:
A Will for the Woods, Art and Craft,...
- 12/11/2014
- by Dan Schindel
- SoundOnSight
With year end lists already flooding the interwebs a full month before the actual year’s end, its hard to ignore the fact that awards season is now in full swing. Tons of documentary awards have already been handed out, whether its for Ida (not Pawel Pawlikowski’s gorgeous new film) or for Cinema Eye Honors, there are plenty of worthy films getting their due recognition. Plus, several international festivals have handed out major awards this month, including Idfa, which hosted their awards ceremony just minutes ago. The full roundup is just below:
Dok Leipzig – Germany – October 27th – November 2nd
At the close of the 57th edition of the German documentary festival the Golden Dove Award, the festival’s highest honor, was given to Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard’s Rules of the Game, while the Leipziger Ring Film Prize went to Laura Poitras’s Edward Snowden doc Citizenfour, the...
Dok Leipzig – Germany – October 27th – November 2nd
At the close of the 57th edition of the German documentary festival the Golden Dove Award, the festival’s highest honor, was given to Claudine Bories and Patrice Chagnard’s Rules of the Game, while the Leipziger Ring Film Prize went to Laura Poitras’s Edward Snowden doc Citizenfour, the...
- 11/29/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
He tackled the weather in 2009 ("Owning the Weather"), pro-wrestling in 2012 ("Fake It So Real"), and this year documentarian Robert Greene has taken on another tempestuous, albeit much more intimate, subject with "Actress." It's the portrait of Brandy Burre, playing herself, as an actress who voluntarily placed her career on the back burner in favor of playing some of life's hardest parts: a mother raising children and a partner trying her best to maintain a happy home life. She's a familiar face to the perceptive viewer with a great memory, for Burre's most prestigious role was Theresa D'Agostino, the politically savvy campaign manager in HBO’s “The Wire.” After her biggest gig, however, Burre took a hiatus and decided to concentrate on family. Greene takes an avant-garde approach in detailing her attempt at getting back into acting now that her two children have grown out of diapers. It’s an expertly...
- 11/10/2014
- by Nikola Grozdanovic
- The Playlist
“I moved to Beacon. I’m not acting. So this is my creative outlet,” says actress Brandy Burre, sitting in her kids’ room in Robert Greene’s documentary portrait of her life. And then, she says the same lines again, differently. “I moved to Beacon. I’m not acting. So this is my creative outlet.” It’s a simple, seemingly tossed-off moment of cinematic self-awareness: Oh, right, ha-ha, take two, I get it, creative outlet and all that, you think. But then you start to realize that the entire film is dancing on this knife’s edge of real and make-believe. And then you realize that you are, too. Let Actress in, and it will fuck your mind forever.Before I go any further, I must add some important disclosure: I’ve admired Greene’s documentaries for some years, but over the past year or so, I’ve gotten to...
- 11/7/2014
- by Bilge Ebiri
- Vulture
This weekend is shaping up to mirror early fall, when specialty distributors packed theaters with new titles. Many of those disappeared quickly, and this weekend could be similar as companies usher in about a dozen limited-release theatrical newcomers. Focus Features’ The Theory Of Everything, however, has amassed a good amount of attention. Directed by Oscar winner James Marsh (Man On Wire), the Stephen Hawking biopic is opening two months after its Toronto debut. Two notable nonfiction titles also join the fray this weekend: Cinema Guild’s Actress, from director Robert Greene, and Zipporah Films’ National Gallery by nonfiction maverick Frederick Wiseman. Both deserve attention as the awards-race heats up. Two years after the theatrical bow of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, the 16th U.S. President is the focus of Amplify’s The Better Angels — though it focuses a very different phase of his life. Distrib Films is opening Italian political...
- 11/7/2014
- by Brian Brooks
- Deadline
“I consider the industrious Robert Greene a friend, but that makes me no less cautious in deeming his new film Actress a big deal,” I wrote after seeing the film at True/False this year. The quick takeaway: This collaborative psychodrama follows and subjectively sculpts his friend/neighbor Brandy Burre’s attempt to simultaneously separate from her longtime boyfriend and return to the acting world she left for suburban motherhood. Sliding from seemingly straightforward self-presentation to ambiguously unfeigned snapshots of daily life, director and subject collude, not so much valorizing her attempts to jumpstart her career and finances (“I have to make a […]...
- 11/6/2014
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
“I consider the industrious Robert Greene a friend, but that makes me no less cautious in deeming his new film Actress a big deal,” I wrote after seeing the film at True/False this year. The quick takeaway: This collaborative psychodrama follows and subjectively sculpts his friend/neighbor Brandy Burre’s attempt to simultaneously separate from her longtime boyfriend and return to the acting world she left for suburban motherhood. Sliding from seemingly straightforward self-presentation to ambiguously unfeigned snapshots of daily life, director and subject collude, not so much valorizing her attempts to jumpstart her career and finances (“I have to make a […]...
- 11/6/2014
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Having recently been picked up for theatrical distribution by The Cinema Guild, director Robert Greene’s latest documentary digs deep into the idea of life as performance, which he tested initially with his prior films Fake It So Real and Kati with an I. Actress in turn is a singular portrait of Brandy Burre, an actress whose claim to fame is her portrayal of Theresa D’Agostino from The Wire, yet her rising star actually pushed her away from the limelight and into the role of wife and mother. Greene’s film sees her bored with her adopted roles and anxious to re-enter show business with a new, fresh perspective, but as it turns out the challenges are not just professional.
Actress premiered earlier this year at the True/False Film Festival and has subsequently made the rounds at all the major non-fiction fests since, including Hot Docs, where I...
Actress premiered earlier this year at the True/False Film Festival and has subsequently made the rounds at all the major non-fiction fests since, including Hot Docs, where I...
- 11/6/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Acting is tough. Performers are constantly asked to inhabit the consciousness of people other than themselves for a limited amount of time, and then they are expected to abandon them and move on with their lives and careers. For any committed actor, each new role has to take a tremendous toll on their psyche, and occasionally they must face a role that overshadows their careers and even threatens to consume their personalities, affecting them permanently. Such is the case with two recent releases, Actress and Birdman, both films that deal with aging actors who are haunted by past roles and seek to escape that shadow through their latest work.
“Brandy Burre is Actress.” So begins Robert Greene’s new documentary about the daily life of Brandy Burre, an ostensibly retired television actress who has not taken a role in years and has since settled down in upstate New York to raise her two kids.
“Brandy Burre is Actress.” So begins Robert Greene’s new documentary about the daily life of Brandy Burre, an ostensibly retired television actress who has not taken a role in years and has since settled down in upstate New York to raise her two kids.
- 11/6/2014
- by Antonio Guzman
- SoundOnSight
Style is a question many documentarians are implicitly cautioned to avoid. Documentary favors the unforeseen and the accidental, and style suggests the inverse: It gives the impression of control, or of the shopworn criticism, "manipulation." Style suggests deceit. Robert Greene understands that, instead, sculpting reality is precisely the job of every documentarian. And he understands that addressing the question of style doesn't preclude him from finding the truth. Toward the end of Greene's astonishing Actress, Brandy Burre, its subject and star, returns home from the emergency room after toppling face-first into pavement, her cheek a violet bruise. But Greene defers this explanation, staging instead a fraught tableau: Burre meets the camera's slow-motion gaze fixedly...
- 11/5/2014
- Village Voice
Robert Greene is one of those filmmakers who may seem to the casual viewer to dabble in different parts of the making of a film. To others he's one of those cinematic polyglot types. The editor of Alex Ross Perry's heady and acerbic Listen Up Philip, Greene is also the director of Actress, the film we're talking about today, which is about his neighbor Brandy Burre.Brandy had a reoccurring role on HBO's The Wire, until she decided to set aside acting for family. Actress is the film that Robert and Brandy began to create around her desire to return to the world of performance she left behind. When our own Dusting Chang previewed the film for his article on the Art of The Real, the...
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- 10/25/2014
- Screen Anarchy
Thanks to the increase in access to small scale non-fiction films through the barrage of streaming services viewers now have access to – Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Mubi, Vudu, etc – people are watching more documentaries than ever before. You can literally turn on any web ready device of your choosing and be watching any number of top quality docs within a number of seconds. It’s nothing short of incredible. But, with ease of access comes an over saturation of content used to fill in the curatorial gaps. For every Marwencol, Senna, Gimme Shelter or The Act of Killing, there are heaps of ordures cinéma clogging up precious bandwidth. And let’s not forget, cinemas themselves are enjoying a renewed trust in the non-fiction form, exhibiting over 100 documentaries on the silver screen last year and banking over $50 Million at the box office in the process, not including the hundreds of...
- 7/28/2014
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Haim Saban’s nascent distributor led by Bill Bromiley has struck up a one-off partnership with Roadside Attractions on the Cannes competition entry as the parties plot an awards run.
Tommy Lee Jones’ second outing as feature director will open on November 7 and stars Jones and Hilary Swank alongside Meryl Streep, Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter, Hailee Steinfeld and James Spader.
Saban Films will manage sales across all other Us distribution platforms, pursuant to what is believed to be its long-term focus of digital rights exploitation and day-and-date releases. EuropaCorp handles international sales.
Bromiley and his team are in talks with a studio partner to handle North American theatrical distribution going forward on an anticipated annual slate of eight to 10 films.
The Homesman marked Saban Films’ first acquisition and took place on the Croisette. Saban Films will put up the P&A and Roadside will take care of the disitrbution logistics and consult with Saban on marketing...
Tommy Lee Jones’ second outing as feature director will open on November 7 and stars Jones and Hilary Swank alongside Meryl Streep, Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter, Hailee Steinfeld and James Spader.
Saban Films will manage sales across all other Us distribution platforms, pursuant to what is believed to be its long-term focus of digital rights exploitation and day-and-date releases. EuropaCorp handles international sales.
Bromiley and his team are in talks with a studio partner to handle North American theatrical distribution going forward on an anticipated annual slate of eight to 10 films.
The Homesman marked Saban Films’ first acquisition and took place on the Croisette. Saban Films will put up the P&A and Roadside will take care of the disitrbution logistics and consult with Saban on marketing...
- 6/20/2014
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
Haim Saban’s nascent distributor led by Bill Bromiley has struck up a one-off partnership with Roadside Attractions on Cannes competition entry The Homesman as the parties plot an awards run.
The Homesman, Tommy Lee Jones’ second outing as feature director, will open on November 7 and stars Jones and Hilary Swank alongside Meryl Streep, Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter, Hailee Steinfeld and James Spader.
Saban Films will manage sales across all other Us distribution platforms, pursuant to what is believed to be its long-term focus of digital rights exploitation and day-and-date releases. EuropaCorp handles international sales.
Bromiley and his team are in talks with a studio partner to handle North American theatrical distribution going forward on an anticipated annual slate of eight to 10 films.
The Homesman marked Saban Films’ first acquisition and took place on the Croisette. Saban Films will put up the P&A and Roadside will take care of the disitrbution logistics and consult...
The Homesman, Tommy Lee Jones’ second outing as feature director, will open on November 7 and stars Jones and Hilary Swank alongside Meryl Streep, Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter, Hailee Steinfeld and James Spader.
Saban Films will manage sales across all other Us distribution platforms, pursuant to what is believed to be its long-term focus of digital rights exploitation and day-and-date releases. EuropaCorp handles international sales.
Bromiley and his team are in talks with a studio partner to handle North American theatrical distribution going forward on an anticipated annual slate of eight to 10 films.
The Homesman marked Saban Films’ first acquisition and took place on the Croisette. Saban Films will put up the P&A and Roadside will take care of the disitrbution logistics and consult...
- 6/20/2014
- by jeremykay67@gmail.com (Jeremy Kay)
- ScreenDaily
Cinema Guild has acquired all U.S. distribution rights to Robert Greene's award-winning documentary "Actress" starring Brandy Burre and plans to release the film theatrically this fall. When it premiered at the True/False Festival in Missouri in February, Indiewire chief critic Eric Kohn called it a "story with universal appeal rendered in intimate flourishes." The documentary follows actress Brandy Burre, who had a recurring role on HBO’s "The Wire" when she gave up her career to start a family. When she decides to reclaim her life as an actor, the domestic world she’s carefully created crumbles around her. Read More: Gorgeous Hand-Painted Poster for Robert Greene's 'Actress' "'Actress' is, quite simply, among the most beguiling, provocative and formally exciting documentaries I have ever seen," said Ryan Krivoshey of Cinema Guild. "Robert is an extraordinary filmmaker who creates astonishing documentaries with storylines and hooks that Hollywood would kill for.
- 6/20/2014
- by Paula Bernstein
- Indiewire
[Amir, our Canadian correspondent, is reporting from The Hot Docs Film Festival, the biggest documentary festival in North America currently underway in Toronto.]
Where does an act end for a performer? What happens if the persona seeps in so deep that the performer can never shake it off? Can an actress adopt the traits of the characters she once embodied so deeply that she permanently remains in their skin? How far can passion for the craft take an artist? These are all questions that Robert Greene’s intelligent, artfully constructed documentary, Actress, poses to the audience in the first few minutes.
The subject, Brandy Burre, played the part of Theresa D’Agostino, a recurring character over a 15-episode arc in the third and fourth seasons of The Wire. She was never a star, but her future seemed bright, having taken a prominent role in one of television’s best reviewed series...
Where does an act end for a performer? What happens if the persona seeps in so deep that the performer can never shake it off? Can an actress adopt the traits of the characters she once embodied so deeply that she permanently remains in their skin? How far can passion for the craft take an artist? These are all questions that Robert Greene’s intelligent, artfully constructed documentary, Actress, poses to the audience in the first few minutes.
The subject, Brandy Burre, played the part of Theresa D’Agostino, a recurring character over a 15-episode arc in the third and fourth seasons of The Wire. She was never a star, but her future seemed bright, having taken a prominent role in one of television’s best reviewed series...
- 5/1/2014
- by Amir S.
- FilmExperience
The 2014 Art of the Real series, running from April 11th through the 26th at New York's Film Society Lincoln Center, could not have possibly asked for a more appropriate film with which to kick off its exploratory ruminations on documentary filmmaking. Raya Martin and Mark Peranson’s La última película is, among several things, a meta-commentary on its own layered being, a jocular doomsday journey through the collapsed scaffolding of the medium itself. Largely riffing on Dennis Hopper’s 1971 acid anti-Western The Last Movie (as well as its behind-the-scenes companion piece, The American Dreamer), Martin and Peranson employ varying film formats—everything from Super 8mm to HD digital—to weave a postmodern quilt that’s forever ripping at the seams. It’s a purposely paradoxical work, caustic and vulnerable, playful and grave, a flickering montage of photographs and an upside-down tracking shot—and, in its mingling of artifice and raw materials,...
- 4/10/2014
- by Fernando F. Croce
- MUBI
Above: The Apple
The celebratory attitude at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, speaks to the healthy state of nonfiction filmmaking at present. True to its name, the festival spotlights new films that incorporate elements of both fiction and documentary (and sometimes blur the line between the two), yet even the selections that resemble more traditional investigative reporting uphold a certain standard of artfulness. More impressively, the festival organizers make a point of incorporating the Columbia community into the celebration. Somewhere between 700 and 900 residents of the town and surrounding areas volunteered at the fest this year, and many businesses I encountered seemed happy to get in on the act too. (“Don’t be fooled by False advertising,” read my favorite sandwich board. “Try our True Thai cuisine!”) Roughly half of the screenings took place in locations not usually reserved for movies—a rock venue, a couple of churches,...
The celebratory attitude at the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, Missouri, speaks to the healthy state of nonfiction filmmaking at present. True to its name, the festival spotlights new films that incorporate elements of both fiction and documentary (and sometimes blur the line between the two), yet even the selections that resemble more traditional investigative reporting uphold a certain standard of artfulness. More impressively, the festival organizers make a point of incorporating the Columbia community into the celebration. Somewhere between 700 and 900 residents of the town and surrounding areas volunteered at the fest this year, and many businesses I encountered seemed happy to get in on the act too. (“Don’t be fooled by False advertising,” read my favorite sandwich board. “Try our True Thai cuisine!”) Roughly half of the screenings took place in locations not usually reserved for movies—a rock venue, a couple of churches,...
- 3/24/2014
- by Ben Sachs
- MUBI
Full disclosure: I consider the industrious Robert Greene a friend, but that makes me no less cautious in deeming his new film Actress a big deal. This collaborative psychodrama follows and subjectively sculpts his friend/neighbor Brandy Burre’s attempt to simultaneously separate from her longtime boyfriend and return to the acting world she left for suburban motherhood. (Greene’s written for Filmmaker about deciding to premiere his fourth feature at this year’s True/False.) Burre is introduced in a bright red dress standing before a kitchen sink, moving in ambiguously charged slow-mo. Is it true that, as she muses, “I tend to break […]...
- 3/5/2014
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Full disclosure: I consider the industrious Robert Greene a friend, but that makes me no less cautious in deeming his new film Actress a big deal. This collaborative psychodrama follows and subjectively sculpts his friend/neighbor Brandy Burre’s attempt to simultaneously separate from her longtime boyfriend and return to the acting world she left for suburban motherhood. (Greene’s written for Filmmaker about deciding to premiere his fourth feature at this year’s True/False.) Burre is introduced in a bright red dress standing before a kitchen sink, moving in ambiguously charged slow-mo. Is it true that, as she muses, “I tend to break […]...
- 3/5/2014
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
"Brandy Burre is Actress," reads the opening credit of Robert Greene’s aptly titled documentary "Actress," setting the stage for a movie wholly consumed by that single, hypnotizing presence. A once-promising thespian who abandoned a role on HBO’s “The Wire” to start a family in upstate New York, Burre invites a tantalizing mixture of fascination and pity. Less nonfiction portrait than a poetic framing of domestic frustrations, "Actress" is about a lot more than flailing show business aspirations. On the surface, Burre's hardships aren't unique; it's swiftly established that she abandoned her profession to take care of her children. But Greene -- whose lyrical focus on alienated lives included "Fake It So Real" (amateur wrestlers) and "Kati With an I" (a Southern teen faces the onset of adulthood) -- makes it clear that Burre faces a perilous identity crisis. First seen with her back to the camera and facing a sea of dirty dishes,...
- 2/27/2014
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
"The Wire" alum Brandy Burre is relaunching her acting career. After recently appearing in Sundance Film Festival's "Listen Up Phillip," she's going to be the focal point of a new nonfiction melodrama. Robert Greene's new documentary "Actress" explores the desires of a woman who is both a mother and a natural star, as she struggles to keep her world from crumbling. Read More: 'The Wire' Alum Brandy Burre Relaunches Her Career in a Fascinating Teaser for Documentary 'Actress' "Actress" will have its world premiere at the True/False Festival starting Feb. 27 and will close the Art of the Real series at Lincoln Center in April. This closing will also mark its New York premiere. Read more about the film here, and check out the surreal hand-painted posted below.
- 2/25/2014
- by Taylor Lindsay
- Indiewire
The True/False Film Fest today announced its full 2014 program, just days after grabbing headlines for its innovative Pay the Artists! program.The festival takes place in Columbia Mo, between February 27 and March 2. Among the 43 films unveiled are a number of world premieres, including Robert Greene’s Actress, a portrait of Brandy Burre (best known for The Wire) which seems perfect for the fest’s embrace of the blurring of lines between nonfiction and fiction, and Kitty Green’s Ukraine is Not A Brothel, about the radical feminist nudist group Femen. Also playing for the first time are Amanda Wilder’s film […]...
- 2/6/2014
- by Nick Dawson
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The True/False Film Fest today announced its full 2014 program, just days after grabbing headlines for its innovative Pay the Artists! program.The festival takes place in Columbia Mo, between February 27 and March 2. Among the 43 films unveiled are a number of world premieres, including Robert Greene’s Actress, a portrait of Brandy Burre (best known for The Wire) which seems perfect for the fest’s embrace of the blurring of lines between nonfiction and fiction, and Kitty Green’s Ukraine is Not A Brothel, about the radical feminist nudist group Femen. Also playing for the first time are Amanda Wilder’s film […]...
- 2/6/2014
- by Nick Dawson
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
Actress Brandy Burre captivated audiences as campaign fixer Theresa D'Agostino in seasons three and four of HBO's "The Wire." The upcoming film "Actress," directed by Robert Greene, whose 2012 "Fake It So Real" was named one of the best documentaries of 2012 by Roger Ebert, explores Burre's hiatus from acting for motherhood and her current efforts to revitalize her career. Greene, who describes "Actress" as a "nonfiction/melodrama hybrid," initially wanted to explore the role performance could have in a documentary film. "I thought it would be an interesting experiment to make a documentary about a person that, as an actor, couldn’t help but perform when the camera was on her," he explained. Burre, who is Greene's real life next-door neighbor, happened to be the ideal subject. "Actress" will have its world premiere at the True/False Festival starting Feb. 27 and will close the Art of the Real series at Lincoln Center in April.
- 2/5/2014
- by Eric Eidelstein
- Indiewire
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