The Toronto International Film Festival had no shortages of movies where facts won out over fictional narratives.
Filmmaker Ira Sachs ("Forty Shades of Blue," "Little Men") talks about the impact of his first feature, “The Delta,” on his life and career, and the lessons he drew from its production.
A critic spends an entire year watching Woody Allen films and reports on the experience.
Premieres, Midnights, Special Events and more have been announced for next month's Sundance Film Festival.
A reposting of Tina Hassannia's article from Movie Mezzanine, and the response it received from Peter Becker, president of the Criterion Collection.
An interview with "Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon" director Douglas Tirola.
The table of contents for RogerEbert.com's complete coverage of AFI Docs 2015.
An introduction to coverage of the 2015 AFI Docs Film Festival.
Eight things the writer wants you to know about Albert Maysles, the pioneering documentary filmmaker who died last week at age 88.
Editor's Note: Filmmaker Gregory Nava wrote the following essay for inclusion in the program book for the 2014 Spirit Awards, where Roger was honored in March.
Critic Carrie Rickey traces the evolution of women on film and behind the camera over the course of her career writing about film.
Roger was a tireless advocate for the films he loved. Sometimes that gave a film a little boost. Sometimes his praise saved the day for a film that might have disappeared without him. Here are eight films whose fate was shaped in part by Roger's reviews.
From the Sundance Institute:
Los Angeles, CA — Last night, Wednesday, June 5, the third annual ‘Celebrate Sundance Institute’ benefit in Los Angeles honored the life and work of beloved journalist and film critic Roger Ebert with the Vanguard Leadership Award in Memoriam. The event also honored filmmaker Ryan Coogler – whose debut feature film, Fruitvale Station, was selected for Sundance Institute's Screenwriters Lab and went on to win both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival – with the Vanguard Award, Presented by Tiffany & Co.
Streaming on Netflix Instant.
Do we teach our young people to dream in the way we used to dream? I feel a sadness as I look at the long faces of so many undergrads. In their expressions, there is a resignation towards, rather, a skepticism of, rather, a fear of the murky future. Have we lost the motivation, passion and, yes, romance of our counterparts from the 1960s, believing that with enough determination we could change the world into a better place?
Watching Mark Kitchell's "Berkeley in the Sixties," (1990) I'm thinking the contrary, that maybe things have not changed. We might look at the activism of the 1960s with nostalgia, thinking that the activists knew exactly what they were doing, but we see that the participants were discovering the process as it unfolded before them. In any case, this is one of the great documentaries of American dissent.
Today, fifteen years after I first saw it, I believe "Hoop Dreams" is the great American documentary. No other documentary has ever touched me more deeply. It was relevant then, and today, as inner city neighborhoods sink deeper into the despair of children murdering children, it is more relevant. It tells the stories of two 14-year-olds, Arthur Agee and William Gates, how they dreamed of stardom in the NBA, and how basketball changed their lives. Basketball, and this film.
Photo copyright by Roka Walsh. Used with permission
"Hoop Dreams" observed its 15th anniversary Wednesday night at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Agee and Gates were both there. Gates, now a minister, observed that in one period of time he buried 20 victims of gang violence, 16 of them under 16. Agee said when he looks at his friends in the film today, "ten of them are no longer with us." Yet there they sat, men of around 40 now, articulate, thoughtful, and spoke about how their lives began to change on a Chicago playground 22 years ago when a movie camera showed up.
"We started out to make a little 30-minute documentary about a kid who had basketball dreams," Steve James, the director of the film, said Wednesday night. This was at a benefit for Kartemquin Films, the 40-year-old Chicago documentary group that produced the film.
PARK CITY, Utah--From despair to victory, the South African documentary "Amandla!" has the widest range of emotion of any film at this year's Sundance. It follows the history of the struggle for freedom in terms of the movement's music--which was, as one singer observes, a weapon the apartheid government could not disarm.
The committee found five better pictures, is the glib explanation.
Great Movies
