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      10 Movies That Capture the Essence of New York

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      With the Tribeca Festival around the corner, it’s a fitting time to look back at the memorable ways cinema has given New York City a featured role.What makes for a strong New York movie? The standouts are often, like the city itself, unpredictable, a little shabby around the edges, sometimes exasperating but always compelling.The Tribeca Festival, which runs Wednesday to June 18, has loved this kind of work since its beginnings and has made it a point to celebrate the films set right in its backyard. This year will feature one such movie made by one of the festival’s founders.“A Bronx Tale” (1993), the directing debut of Robert De Niro, will close the festival with a 30th anniversary screening that Mr. De Niro and the movie’s writer and co-star Chazz Palminteri (a Bronx native) are scheduled to attend. The film shows a reverence for the neighborhood in which much of it takes place, and Mr. De Niro brings a knowing eye to the material.As the festival has prided itself on being a hometown one, it’s a fitting time to look back at the memorable ways cinema has given New York City a featured role. Below, in alphabetical order, are 10 noteworthy movies that have helped to capture the city’s warts and all.Griffin Dunne, left with Teri Garr, plays the office worker Paul Hackett in “After Hours.”Warner Bros.‘After Hours’ (1985)A kinetic example of the one-wild-night movie, this dark comedy from Martin Scorsese carries its lead on a tidal wave of late-night mishaps through SoHo. Griffin Dunne brings just the right level of measured pathos to the office worker Paul Hackett, whose overnight journey kicks off with a near-calamitous cab ride and goes downhill from there. Anyone who has stayed out late enough in New York to know how weird things can get should be able to relate.John Malkovich, left, and Catherine Keener in “Being John Malkovich.”Universal City Studios‘Being John Malkovich’ (1999)The narrative of this movie (written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze), about a puppeteer who finds a portal into John Malkovich’s consciousness, is so original that it sometimes feels like it is inventing itself in front of your eyes. But in addition, the film does a great job of showcasing some of the city’s quirkier sides. The low ceiling of an office building’s seventh-and-a-half floor, which one can only get to using good elevator timing and a crowbar, is a great visual gag that, in its own way, mirrors the process of trying to find affordable housing in the city: trial but mostly error. The film throws in a New Jersey Turnpike joke for good measure.Spike Lee directed and starred in “Do the Right Thing.”Universal City Studios‘Do the Right Thing’ (1989)When it’s hot in the city, watch out. Spike Lee’s masterpiece uses a sweltering summer day to zero in on the boiling racial tensions between the residents of the Brooklyn neighborhood Bedford-Stuyvesant. But as bleak as it can be, it is also a love letter to the richness and brashness of personality this city holds. Its character ensemble includes the smooth-talking Mookie (Mr. Lee), the sly D.J.-chronicler Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L. Jackson), the bold Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), the disgruntled pizzeria owner Sal (Danny Aiello) and a host of others that keep the film’s energy building to a breaking point.Al Pacino’s character, Sonny, robs a Brooklyn bank in “Dog Day Afternoon.”Moviestore/Shutterstock‘Dog Day Afternoon’ (1975)Speaking of summer heat, a sweaty, off-the-deep-end Al Pacino generates plenty of his own in this nerve rattler from Sidney Lumet. Chaos finds its home in the character Sonny (Mr. Pacino), who robs a Brooklyn bank and sets the screen afire along the way. The actor has taken hits for giving too much in some of his performances over the years (“hoo-ah”). But here, more is just enough. The city can certainly be a place to find spectacle, and Mr. Pacino is working overtime to provide it.“In the Heights” is an adaptation of the Broadway musical.Macall Polay/Warner Bros. Entertainment, via Associated Press‘In the Heights’ (2021)From its songs to its winsome performances and overall sense of place, Jon M. Chu’s film adaptation of the Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes is as alive as it is poignant. Using the neighborhood of Washington Heights as its canvas, the film paints a breathtaking city portrait through dynamically choreographed numbers and surreal flights of fancy. A Busby Berkeley-inspired scene at the city pool and a softer sequence that has two characters dancing right up the outer walls of an apartment building capture the wonder lurking around the city’s corners.Catherine Keener, right, in “Please Give,” Nicole Holofcener’s comedy of errors.Piotr Redlinski/Sony Pictures Classics‘Please Give’ (2010)There’s a darkly funny moment in Nicole Holofcener’s comedy of errors that I often think about: The lead character Kate (Catherine Keener) sees a Black man in a ski cap standing outside a nice restaurant. Sensing he must be homeless, she offers him her doggie bag. He tells her he’s waiting for a table. Ms. Holofcener is excellent at painting New York characters like this who think they’re doing the right thing but are often getting it wrong. That tension between compassion and entitlement propels this thoughtful feature.Carey Mulligan stars with Michael Fassbender in “Shame.”Abbot Genser/Fox Searchlight Pictures‘Shame’ (2011)As rewarding of a place as New York can be, it can also beat you down. That comes across most apparently in the British director Steve McQueen’s tale of a sex-obsessed city dweller (Michael Fassbender). The film’s Manhattan melancholy is embodied in a slow, sad yet depressingly magical rendition of “New York, New York” performed by Mr. Fassbender’s co-star, Carey Mulligan. Sometimes being a part of it helps when you can spend some time apart from it.Will Smith, second from right, in “Six Degrees of Separation.”RGR Collection/Alamy‘Six Degrees of Separation’ (1993)A double-sided Kandinsky and a multilayered performance from Stockard Channing fuel this bitter tale of New York elites on the Upper East Side who are transformed by Paul (Will Smith), a young man who claims to be both friends with their college-age children and the son of Sidney Poitier. It’s a sharp, satirical look at the ways that wealth and class can bruise relationships.Robert De Niro in “Taxi Driver,” directed by Martin Scorsese.Moviestore/Shutterstock‘Taxi Driver’ (1976)“All the animals come out at night,” a disgusted Travis Bickle (Mr. De Niro) says early in Mr. Scorsese’s film. What he sees as a bug is really a feature in this nightmare story by Paul Schrader that makes the city pulse with an irresistible vibrancy and vigor. Mr. De Niro is captivating as both our city guide and its conscience. And Bernard Herrmann’s score brings a majestic method to all of the madness.“Wild Style” was directed by Charlie Ahearn.via Music Box Films‘Wild Style’ (1983)Featuring Lee Quiñones (and having a retrospective screening during the festival), this film from Charlie Ahearn captures the pulsating soul of early 1980s New York, with lovingly graffiti-plastered subway cars and joyful hip-hop beats. The party that closes out the film is just about guaranteed to get you moving. More

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      Filmmakers Sometimes Take a Years-Long Approach to Documentaries

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      Three films showing at the Tribeca Festival tell stories over several years, a challenge for the filmmakers and the subjects.One of the magic tricks of documentaries is the ability to film somebody changing over a period of time. When it’s a span of several years, audiences can get a unique psychological portrait. But these long-haul projects come with particular challenges and obstacles for the filmmakers who see them through.These documentaries might take anywhere from a few years to more than a decade to shoot and complete, and the reasons vary. Sometimes, the goal is to track a crucial segment of a person’s life in full. Or the filmmaker’s approach might instead be open-ended, taking cues from the person’s emotional experiences as to how much ground to cover, and when to say “the end.” No matter the circumstances, every production requires the filmmaker’s careful management of the relationship with the subject.Three recent movies that follow their subjects over the course of more than a year are showing at the Tribeca Festival, which runs Wednesday to June 18 in New York City: “Apolonia, Apolonia,” “Between the Rains” and “Q.”Lea Glob’s “Apolonia, Apolonia” films a young Paris painter, Apolonia Sokol, over the longest span of time — 13 years. Ms. Sokol grew up in the building that housed a theater run by her parents, which became a boisterous haven for actors and other artists. Over the course of the film, she forges a career in the tough, often sexist arenas of the art world and the academy.Ms. Glob first made a short movie about Ms. Sokol while studying at the National Film School of Denmark in 2009, after other potential subjects turned her down. At the time, the director didn’t know she would go on to make a feature about Ms. Sokol, but in the course of making that film, she recognized something special about the young painter.Apolonia Sokol grew up in a bohemian theater community. In “Apolonia, Apolonia,” Lea Glob focused on her as she navigated art school and the gallery world. Danish Documentary“She really wants to give something in front of a camera. And I wasn’t able to let her go after that,” Ms. Glob said in a phone interview from Denmark, where she lives.The decision to film over the course of 13 years was not made from the outset. Ms. Glob and Ms. Sokol agreed on an essentially open-ended arrangement that turned into the decade-plus production, with Ms. Sokol not viewing footage while Ms. Glob was shooting, but offering input during editing. As Ms. Sokol pursued her career, Ms. Glob began to think a possible conclusion would come when Ms. Sokol had reached some milestone of success, but the (amicable) ending had more to do with Ms. Sokol wanting time to herself.Ms. Glob benefited from the free artistic environment of the community around the theater belonging to Ms. Sokol’s parents. The young artist would call Ms. Glob when something interesting was happening — like when it looked like she would be evicted from the theater.The method could be hit-or-miss.“I’d drop everything and go, and I’d find her there just cooking pasta and reading,” Ms. Glob said.Lea Glob filming the documentary “Apolonia, Apolonia” in 2009. Glob began shooting the film that year, and wrapped in 2022.via Lea GlobMs. Glob continuing work on “Apolonia, Apolonia” in 2016. She eventually decided to focus the film on Ms. Sokol’s journey as an artist.via Lea GlobMs. Glob recalibrated to track Ms. Sokol’s development as an artist, instead of chasing events. Watching Ms. Sokol navigate art school, have her first gallery show, and travel to Los Angeles under the auspices of the art dealer Stefan Simchowitz — this was now a movie.“I built a relationship with her camera and then with her,” said Ms. Sokol, who now teaches, in addition to painting.“It’s not family, it’s not friendship. It’s something else. Something stronger, I think,” she added.Ms. Glob said she tried to check in with Ms. Sokol about once a month, but she didn’t live in Paris. There were other logistical challenges, too: Ms. Glob was working on other projects, and there was variable funding for this one. At first, Ms. Glob edited footage along the way, but when that proved counterproductive, she waited till later to undertake an edit.Ms. Glob also had to stop for at least a year when she nearly died after giving birth, a trauma she reflects upon in the film. And Ms. Sokol weathered an intense relationship with the Ukrainian activist Oksana Shachko, who took her own life in 2018. But in 2022 Ms. Glob completed the portrait of her fellow artist, calling the process “liberating”; the film won the top prize at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam after its world premiere.To make “Between the Rains,” the filmmakers Andrew H. Brown and Moses Thuranira followed Kole James over four years. Mr. James said he appreciated the chance to connect with the outside world.Andrew H. BrownFor “Between the Rains,” the filmmakers Andrew H. Brown and Moses Thuranira track Kole James, a young member of the Turkana community in Ngaremara village, Kenya, over four years during a pivotal period in his life.Working as a shepherd, Mr. James prepares for rites of passage and copes with drought-related clashes with neighboring communities.Making the movie involved at least a year of securing permission and trust before shooting.“It’s not a community you can just go and film. There is a lot of protocol you have to follow. You have to get blessings from the elders,” said Mr. Thuranira, who is from a town about a 40-minute drive away, and used his house as a kind of home base for the production. (There’s also a family link in the production team: a producer, Samuel Ekomol, is Mr. James’s cousin and is a teacher in Ngaremara village.)Moses Thuranira, right, co-director and producer of “Between the Rains,” came from a town a 40-minute drive away from the Turkana community in Ngaremara village.Andrew H. BrownThe team maintained a bond with the community that involved pitching in at cookouts and bringing groceries — sometimes goats, sometimes bags of rice. But just as important was the bond of trust they built with Mr. James, who, during the course of the film, pushes back against some of his community’s more arduous traditions, including a harrowing tooth removal rite.Through a translator, Mr. James said in a call that he stuck with the documentary because of the opportunity to connect with the outside world and share the challenges faced by his community. He especially liked one dramatic sequence when he traps and kills a hyena — a moment that gives the filmmakers a suitable climax to the coming-of-age arc.The director of “Q,” Jude Chehab, chose a subject even closer to home: her mother, Hiba Khodr. Ms. Chehab portrays Ms. Khodr’s evolving relationship with a secretive religious sect that was a part of both of their lives. After watching her mother spend decades focusing intensively on the group and its leader (who is known as the Anisa), Ms. Chehab planned to interview her mother and explore her feelings relating to the group and their family. Ms. Khodr agreed, knowing that her daughter would question her freely about things she hadn’t talked much about.Hiba Khodr spent decades focusing intensively on a secret religious sect. Her daughter’s film, “Q,” explored Ms. Khodr’s feelings toward the group, and her own family.Jude ChehabMs. Chehab filmed her first interview with her mother in February 2018, and when the pandemic hit, she found herself cooped up with her parents in Lebanon.“I think that’s how we achieved that level of intimacy, because they couldn’t escape the camera,” Ms. Chehab said with a chuckle, in a video call.Filming continued for about four and a half years, but in a targeted fashion (not a whole day at a time). The movie stretches even further back, to the 1990s, through home movies made by Ms. Chehab’s reserved father (whom she also questions in the film).Throughout, Ms. Chehab showed footage to her mother, against advice she had received that it might make Ms. Khodr self-conscious about the camera. She said that this early exposure to the movie helped ease her mother into the process more smoothly.“She knows me, she knows when I’m sad, and when she’s putting pressure,” Ms. Khodr wrote in an email. “I can tell her more things than a stranger and there’s no transaction, because we are mother-daughter.”Jude Chehab, the director of “Q,” was cooped up in Lebanon with her parents when Covid hit. “I think that’s how we achieved that level of intimacy,” she said, “because they couldn’t escape the camera.”Fahd AhmedCamerawork was another decision from day to day. Knowing her mother’s routines, Ms. Chehab could film her naturally on the fly, but she could also adjust for unexpected moments, like when Ms. Khodr went to a poetry reading or got a dramatic visit.The domestic intimacy required special considerations. When Ms. Khodr was not wearing her hijab, Ms. Chehab framed the shot to avoid showing her hair. She also incorporated feedback from a friend to show her mother outside of the home at her job as a professor.Ms. Khodr said that, at first, she participated in support of her daughter. But then the film changed her, as we see her express in the finished documentary.“It was a way for me to uncover some layers in myself that were hidden,” she said in her email. “It really helped me become real.” More

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      Women Directors Make Progress at Tribeca Festival

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      In a milestone, women outnumber men this year as directors at the Tribeca Festival. Three of them shared their paths to the director’s chair.For the director Olivia West Lloyd, it was good, old-fashioned networking that earned her the chance to make her first feature, “Somewhere Quiet.” With no film school on her résumé, she took every bottom-rung job she could get on a production set, and then connected with other peers on their way up, building a team ready to seize the moment when the opportunity to make a movie together came around.Gabriella A. Moses, whose first directing feature is “Boca Chica,” credits the film industry itself, and her participation in fellowships designed to give women and other newcomers a leg up, for getting noticed by the “right people” who offered the chance to helm the project.Maggie Contreras, the director of “Maestra,” said that she got her break from male colleagues who had already found success in the movie business and decided to give a woman they trusted a chance. Now she is making it a no-excuses priority to bring other female filmmakers along.No matter how women are getting the chance to direct these days, the sentiment that they need to lead a new generation of female filmmakers seems to prevail. All three directors, whose films are showing at the Tribeca Festival, gave key jobs — as producers, writers, designers and editors — to other women.The momentum to put more women in top positions manifests itself in a milestone this year. For the first time, the festival, which runs Wednesday to June 18 in New York City, will have more women than men vying for prizes. A considerable 68 percent of all competition films were directed by women, according to the festival.Jennifer Kim in a scene from “Somewhere Quiet,” a thriller directed by Olivia West Lloyd. Her character, Meg, is trying to readjust to normal life after a heinous abduction.Conor MurphyThat is not to say that women have achieved parity in the industry overall. Female directors remain far behind men at the top, according to a study published in January from the Inclusion Initiative at University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Male directors outnumbered women 11 to 1 when it came to the 1,500 highest-grossing films from the last 16 years.Stacy L. Smith, who founded the Inclusion Initiative and led the study, called that tally “abysmal.”“It doesn’t reflect the proportion of women and girls in the U.S. population nor in the world,” she said. “It’s not related to the proportion of girls and women studying in higher education. And most certainly, it doesn’t represent or reflect the number of girls and women enrolled in film school around the country.”Ms. Smith said the problem was with film company executives who failed to see women as viable directors on high-profile, big-budget films — particularly action films, which tend to do best at the box office. The playing field was more even on smaller projects, she added, and those are what make it to the rosters of film festivals, such as Tribeca.“I think that many of the institutes and film festivals have really started a concerted effort to think more critically about how they select, and who the committee is for selecting films, because we know that is where bias comes in,” she said.But the news from Tribeca suggests that a more equitable future is possible, particularly because its roster relies heavily on newcomers likely to continue creating films.How any woman makes it to the director’s chair is a personal story, of course, that starts with her own skills and ambition, but the aforementioned directors show how some women have cut a path and did it across genres.Ms. Lloyd carved out a niche in the horror/suspense category, where relatively few women are working. “Somewhere Quiet” is a tense, claustrophobic thriller set in a remote cabin in the woods. Viewers are kept guessing whether the tormented lead character Meg (Jennifer Kim) will make it out alive.“I love horror,” said Ms. Lloyd, who also wrote the screenplay. “I have since I was a teenager.”Ms. Lloyd, who has carved out a niche in horror and suspense, also wrote the screenplay for “Somewhere Quiet.”Emma HannawayShe said she believed that getting the film made was “fated in a way.” The deal was cut during the coronavirus pandemic when projects with small casts and closed locations were in demand. But she also had the pieces in place to make it happen.During her stints as a production assistant, she bonded with Taylor Ava Shung and Emma Hannaway, who were building careers as producers. “We would just talk at length about movies, and how we wanted to make movies, and what we would prioritize when given the opportunity,” Ms. Lloyd said.They were ready to go when they saw an opening, tapping their own advice network that included the producer Mollye Asher, whom they met assisting on the Oscar-winning film “Nomadland,” and her partners, Derek Nguyen and Mynette Louie.“They were super helpful in just introducing us to other production companies and getting us in touch with various people who could actually come on and make the movie,” she said.Ms. Moses’ first feature took her in a different direction, to the Dominican Republic, for “Boca Chica,” a drama about 12-year-old Desi (Scarlet Camilo), who works in her family’s beachfront restaurant but dreams of becoming a singer. The film’s intimate moments and lively music underscore its exploration of issues like human trafficking and sex tourism.Scarlet Camilo in “Boca Chica,” which features a Spanish-language script.Selene FilmsThe director had other plans for her career, envisioning herself writing and directing her own movies. To get there, she attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and began seeking mentorships designed to bolster young filmmakers. She received support from the Sundance Institute, New York Women in Film & Television, and others.In 2018, she participated in the Tribeca Institute’s Through Her Lens program for rising female filmmakers and used its resources to make the short “El Timbre de Tu Voz.” After completing that project, she began lining up what she assumed would be her first feature, a story she wrote called “Leche.”But her early work came to the attention of the producer Sterlyn Ramírez, who approached her about directing “Boca Chica,” which featured a Spanish-language script written by Marité Ugas and Mariana Rondón.“It was actually through this institute, and the never-ending grant-writing and fellowships, that the producer on ‘Boca Chica’ found me,” she said.Accepting the job was a tough decision. Ms. Moses’ mother is from the Dominican Republic, but Ms. Moses herself was born in the United States and her own Spanish was lacking. Still, the movie’s themes echoed her own artistic goals and she decided “to go along for the ride.”“It was a sink-or-swim situation where I was like, ‘OK, it’s hard to make your first feature no matter what. It’s going to be even harder to do it in another country and not in your mother tongue. And it’s going to be deeply personal and probably more emotional than anything to do it in your mother’s country,’” she said.With her first feature making the cut at Tribeca, she is turning her attention back to “Leche.”A still image from “Maestra,” a documentary about female orchestra conductors directed by Maggie Contreras.Isabelle RazavetWith “Maestra,” Ms. Contreras stepped sideways into directing. She had worked extensively as a producer, collaborating with the documentary maker Neil Berkeley. She first took him the idea of directing a film about an international competition for female orchestra conductors after hearing a report about it on NPR.Mr. Berkeley surprised her by suggesting that she direct it herself. “It was as simple and profound as that,” she said.The job came with challenges. She saw her own situation as a first-time director mirrored in the women competing for a spot on the podium: They were trying to break into a profession historically dominated by men. She decided she needed to pass on the baton, so to speak, to other women.“From Day 1, I said we would have at least 80 percent women behind the cameras making this film,” she said.Ms. Contreras put together a female-led crew for “Maestra.”Ryan Musick“Maestra” follows the several conductors leading up to the charged competition, with interviews in the United States, France, Poland and Greece. In some of those places, it was difficult to find female workers, Ms. Contreras said. With a tight schedule and budget, there was pressure to fill jobs with men. She held firm to her quota.Ms. Contreras credits the female-led crew for the project’s success. Her subjects open up, telling tales about child abuse, discrimination and body insecurity. “Because of my own experiences as a human being, as a woman with my own thoughts and fears and struggles and joys and the way I show up in the world, we were able to have a conversation,” she said.That perspective, she said, echoes other arguments for giving women more opportunities: Diverse directors expand the possibilities of storytelling, which is the heart of filmmaking.Her next directing project centers on an “Erin Brockovich” type who triumphs, though in a different context from classical music. She plans to keep the same philosophy when assembling an inclusive production staff.“It’s now my responsibility to hire people who will then hire other people,” she said. “That chain cannot be severed or we go backwards.”Ms. Smith, whose academic research has made her a leading proponent of equity in the film business, said that chain affected the experiences of audiences, as well as the careers of female filmmakers.“If you have a female director, you’re more likely to have a whole series of things,” she said. “More female-driven story lines, more women over 40 in films, more women working behind the camera, and more people in below-the-line crew that are women.” More

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      Rock Hudson Documentary Shows His Life Through a New Lens

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      The documentary on the movie star, whose death in 1985 changed how the public viewed AIDS, is premiering at the Tribeca Festival.Rock Hudson was the ultimate midcentury movie star, turning heads and breaking hearts as the camera lit his chiseled face and rugged frame. The double life he led as a gay man — and his death from AIDS-related causes at 59 in 1985 — have sealed him in Hollywood lore, but he is largely unknown to new generations of film fans.For Stephen Kijak, the director of the documentary “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed,” premiering Sunday at the Tribeca Festival (and streaming on Max on June 28), the actor was a fascinating figure to explore, both as a quintessential midcentury movie star and a gay icon.Mr. Kijak, who has directed several L.G.B.T.Q.-themed films, spoke recently from his Los Angeles home about the legacy of and enduring fascination with a movie star who lived a gay life almost out in the open and who, in a true act of openness as one of the first celebrities — if not the first — to go public about his illness, changed the course of how the world responded to the AIDS epidemic. The conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.What is it about Rock Hudson that drew you to do this film?This film presented itself at exactly the right time, and from a group of people I love working with who brought me a subject I was fascinated by. I didn’t know a lot about Rock Hudson, and I love being in that spot. That journey of discovery is built into my process so that I can bring my audience along with me. It was initially titled “The Accidental Activist,” which is 100 percent accurate but a little bit limiting. I thought there was a bigger story there, even though that is also an interesting element to his story: someone who doesn’t at all intend to change anything but inadvertently ends up being culturally, politically and socially a catalyst in a way that I think most people have completely forgotten about.Rock Hudson with Lee Garlington. The men dated in the 1960s but had to keep the relationship private because of the mores of the day. Martin Flaherty & The Rock Hudson Estate Collection/HBOHow did it go from being titled “The Accidental Activist” to “All That Heaven Allowed”?There were so many more people over the course of the entire AIDS crisis who were true activists, who really moved the needle with forceful, direct action. I thought “activist,” and even “accidental,” might be a bit rich. There is so much more around his story: the Hollywood closet, the manufactured personality, the double life, the way the private existed weirdly under the surface of the manicured facade. He was having this kind of great rampant, randy gay sex life right there under everyone’s noses, but seemingly living without a care. There wasn’t the kind of angsty, oh-I-wish-I-could-just-be-an-out-gay-man. It was a generation that I don’t think considered that to be an option, or even something that they would want.What do you think people who are not familiar with Rock Hudson will get from this film?He’s faded away. Who were the big marquee names from the ’50s who everybody knows? It’s Marilyn Monroe. It’s James Dean. If anything, he is probably remembered for having died of AIDS in the ’80s and that scandal of having kissed Linda Evans on “Dynasty” when he was sick. Also, the manufactured star is not a concept that is completely alien to our modern age. He is a completely classic midcentury figure, from his upbringing, his trajectory, the look, the style, the movies he made. And who doesn’t like a doppelgänger story? The hall of mirrors, the split personality, the hidden life. There’s always the question of “why would young people be interested in this?” It wasn’t that long ago when it was really hard to be gay. Publicly, your life would be ruined. You were constantly afraid of being discovered.Is there a sense of how a movie can hold something in this moment that it might not have held in the past?There are people who don’t know a subject and people who do. So how is the method of our telling going to pull them both in and give them something that they didn’t expect or have experienced before? There is a slight tweak to how we approached who we were going to interview on film. Who you see on camera is a short stack of gay men who were in his life, either lovers, playmates, a wing man, a co-star, a best pal — people who he revealed himself to. What you get is an arc of gay men that takes you from pre-Stonewall, pre-gay liberation to the other side of the AIDS crisis. It’s Rock’s life that could have been through the lens of these guys.Stephen Kijak, director of the documentary “Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed,” premiering at the Tribeca FestivalDavid ArenasWas that a specific decision?Yes, and partly it was practical. We had to be very specific on how many days we could shoot. Granted, there is a part of me that wishes that we could have been rolling on Linda Evans when she tears up, but I think the choke in her voice still works. And you’re seeing her and him in their “Dynasty” glory days.Does this movie represent more than just Rock Hudson? Does it represent the film industry still regarding that “double life” idea?Well, I’m not going to name names, but you know there’s a handful of Rock Hudsons out there right now who have to be even more careful given the fact that everyone has a little camera in their phone. Confidential magazine was one thing, but it seems so quaint now looking back.Do you think this film documents something people long to return to? The old Hollywood, maybe?When his films were great, they were so great. The Douglas Sirk films were so lush and so layered. I could watch “All That Heaven Allows” a hundred times. Oh, and “Written on the Wind” with that crazy Dorothy Malone performance! Can I make a movie about her next? More

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      Christian Petzold and a German Connection With His Films

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      After becoming known for movies distanced from his country’s history, culture and memory, he has drawn from them in some recent works.BERLIN — In the past decade, the German filmmaker Christian Petzold has made a Hitchcockian thriller set in postwar Germany, a time-tripping literary adaptation about exiles in occupied France and a magical realist fable about a water sprite in contemporary Berlin.In his latest film, “Afire,” showing at the Tribeca Festival, which runs June 7-18 in New York City, a young writer struggles to finish a novel at a summer home he is sharing with a beautiful stranger, while forest fires tear through the surrounding landscape.“Afire,” which will be released in theaters in the United States on July 14, won the Silver Bear grand jury prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in February. It was Mr. Petzold’s sixth time competing at the Berlinale, as the event is known here, where he has been a fixture since 2005 and where he won the best director trophy in 2012 for the tense period drama “Barbara,” about an East German doctor plotting to defect.Mr. Petzold, 62, is a leading figure in what is sometimes called the Berlin School, a loose movement of independent filmmakers who emerged in the 1990s and whose closely observed work, focused on small human dramas, refreshingly eschewed grand historical narratives. (“Unlike many German directors, Mr. Petzold has no interest in excavating the past,” a 2009 profile by The New York Times summed up.)But all of Mr. Petzold’s films from “Barbara” onward have found the director confronting his country’s history, culture and memory in a way that few would have expected from a filmmaker whose early works appeared to consciously rebuff mainstream German cinema’s emphasis on that nation’s tortured history — a trend exemplified recently by the Academy Award-winning 2022 remake of “All Quiet on the Western Front.”“He’s an extremely German filmmaker,” said Florian Borchmeyer, a programmer at the Munich International Film Festival who also works at Berlin’s Schaubühne theater.“He’s like a free radical, in some sense,” he continued, referring to how Mr. Petzold makes films outside the German film establishment. “He gets in touch with the trauma of German society and the German past. But at the same time,” he added, “he gets in connection with something that is almost beyond reality.”Speaking from the Cannes Film Festival in May, Mr. Borchmeyer called Mr. Petzold one of the best German filmmakers working today, along with Maren Ade (“Tony Erdmann”) and Angela Schanelec (whose “Music” won the screenplay award in Berlin this year), Philip Gröning and Andreas Dresen.Mr. Petzold had specific actors in mind when writing the screenplay for “Afire.”Sideshow and Janus Films“Afire” was not the film that Mr. Petzold set out to make. He had secured the film rights to Georges Simenon’s novel “Dirty Snow,” an existential noir set in an unnamed country under foreign occupation, and was writing the screenplay when the coronavirus pandemic broke out. After presenting his 2020 film “Undine” in Paris, Mr. Petzold and Paula Beer, the film’s lead (she also stars in “Afire”) came down with Covid-19.“I was in bed for four weeks with this dystopian project in front of me, and I thought: When I get out of here, I don’t want anything more to do with dystopias,” Mr. Petzold said in an interview.While convalescing in Berlin, he binge-watched films by the French New Wave director Éric Rohmer and read stories by Anton Chekhov. In that first pandemic spring, Mr. Petzold’s thoughts turned to summer and to summer films, a genre that, according to him, has not properly existed in Germany since “People on Sunday” (1930).“It’s a film about a day in summer, about young people, about Wannsee, about a weekend,” he said of the slice-of-life film, a key late work of Weimar cinema. “And then I thought about the aftermath, National Socialism, which destroyed everything: the German summers, the German youth, the German bodies, the poetry.“These are films that capture a feeling of being on a threshold,” he said, referring to works like Mr. Rohmer’s “La Collectionneuse” and “Pauline at the Beach,” which are clear touchstones for “Afire” in both content and tone.“There’s just two months, and after that you’re an adult. And in those two months there are slights, injuries, love, loss, loyalties, disappointments. And afterward, when you’re an adult, you remember that one summer when you perhaps missed out on life or first took advantage of life,” he continued, enumerating several of the themes that made their way into “Afire.”Along with French cinema and Russian literature, Mr. Petzold also drew inspiration from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” in particular the play’s setting. William Shakespeare’s depiction of the woods as a place of enlightenment and enchantment resonated with the filmmaker and his own cultural background.“The forest in Germany is a place where you go when you have problems in order to find yourself again,” Mr. Petzold said. “That’s true of right-wing philosophers like [Martin] Heidegger, but it’s also true of German Romanticism.”Mr. Petzold, now 62, came out of the so-called Berlin School, a loose movement of independent filmmakers who emerged in the 1990s.Gordon Welters for The New York TimesIn the summer of 2020, as Mr. Petzold began developing “Afire,” those woods were very much on his mind, for an entirely different reason. “Those forests were burning, the forests that actually contain the German stories, the tales of the Brothers Grimm and so on,” Mr. Petzold said.Mr. Petzold wrote the screenplay for “Afire” with specific actors in mind: Thomas Schubert as the struggling young novelist Leon and Ms. Beer as his housemate Nadja. The film is a third collaboration for the actress and director after “Undine” and “Transit.”“Talking to him you feel how much he loves literature and stories,” Ms. Beer said, adding that “after reading the script together we will watch movies and he will talk about books that refer to our work.”The 28-year-old actress, who answered questions via email while serving on a jury at Cannes, said Mr. Petzold created a “very inspiring working atmosphere” on set.“Christian tells us his ideas about the scene, maybe other things that he was thinking of that fit to the atmosphere and situation,” she said, adding, “Every thought or idea is welcome.”Anton Kaiser, of Schramm Film, the Berlin-based production company behind “Afire” and 12 of Mr. Petzold’s previous films, said Mr. Petzold likes to shoot in the summer and edit in the fall, which means that his films tend to be ready in time for the Berlin festival, which is held in February.“Each film of Petzold’s is recognizable, but each new film is also a step forward,” Carlo Chatrian, the Berlin festival’s artistic director, said in a phone interview.“They are cerebral, but they are not heavy, especially the last two,” he added, referring to “Afire” and “Undine,” both of which he programmed at the festival, as films with a note of humor that is new for the director.“I’m happy, on one hand, to be able to support Christian Petzold as an auteur and as an artist,” Mr. Chatrian said. “At the same time, I’m happy when his films can travel, because I think it’s a pity that he is not enough known outside Germany.” More

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      ‘Shooting Stars’ Review: Brotherly Love and Basketball

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      While hard to justify, this fictionalized portrayal of a young LeBron James and his high school team’s rise is buoyed by five young actors.Knowing that every inch of LeBron James’s life and career has been covered by the media in the past, it may be hard to justify “Shooting Stars,” a film focused not exactly on James’s rise as a phenom but instead on his high school squad. The movie is in essence an adaptation not only of a memoir of the same name (written by James and the journalist Buzz Bissinger, and released in 2009), but also of another film, the 2009 documentary “More Than a Game.”Yet for what it sets out to do, detailing the bond of young boys under surreal circumstances, “Shooting Stars” is a relatively sturdy retelling. Directed by Chris Robinson, the movie tracks the story of James and his childhood friends, a.k.a the Fab Five, over four years as they conquer the high school basketball landscape and reckon with the complications of a growing spotlight.Remarkably, the drama is buoyed less by the implicit understanding of who James went on to become than by the young actors, who share an infectious chemistry. (It helps that they all appear to be truly good at basketball.)The star is Marquis Cook, known as Mookie, an actual high school basketball recruit who naturally embodies a young LeBron — the boyish shyness nestled within messianic potential — likely because he is, as a young star, experiencing a version of what James did.Shooting StarsRated PG-13 for strong language, some suggestive references and teen drinking. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Peacock. More

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      ‘Past Lives’ Review: Longing for a Future

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      Celine Song’s film debut, starring Greta Lee, follows two childhood friends who share a wistful kind of love across two decades and two continents.“Past Lives” is a wistful what-if story about two people, the children they were and the adults they become. The movie follows them through the years and across assorted reunions, separations and continents as well as milestones momentous and ordinary. It’s a tale of friendship, love, regret and what it means to truly live here and now. In a sense it is a time-travel movie, because even as the two characters keep moving forward, they remain inexorably tethered to the past, which means it’s also a story about everyday life.“Past Lives” centers on Nora (played as an adult by a terrific and subtle Greta Lee) and a boy named Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), though mostly it’s about her. The two first meet as schoolmates in their home city, Seoul. They’re charming — they’re children — and close. “He’s manly,” Nora, then called Na Young, tells her amused mother. “I will probably marry him.” Soon after the movie opens, the kids are walking home shoulder-to-shoulder, her eyes downcast. He’s received higher marks at school, which, in a portent of her later-life ambition, has upset her. Hae Sung comforts her because he’s a nice boy; he will become a nice man, but by then she will be long gone.This is the filmmaking debut of the Korean-Canadian-American playwright Celine Song (“Endlings”), who also wrote the script. Its narrative shape is fairly familiar: It opens in the present and then flashes back 24 years to when Nora was a girl in pigtails whose family was about to immigrate to Canada. In unfussy, naturalistic scenes and with onscreen text that marks the passage of time, Song follows Nora and Hae Sung as they go their different ways and reunite online a dozen years later as young adults. After a brief virtual reunion, they part ways. Another 12 years pass and they reconnect a second time.The movie’s modesty — its intimacy, human scale, humble locations and lack of visual oomph — is one of its strengths. The characters live in homes that are pleasant yet ordinary, the kind that you can imagine hanging out in, the kind you want to hang out in. There are few big, look-at-me details, though you might notice a poster for Jacques Rivette’s 1974 classic “Céline and Julie Go Boating” in Nora’s father’s home office in Seoul. Without making too much of this cinephile allusion, there’s a moment in the Rivette that does seem germane: “Your future is behind you,” one character says to another, which could serve as a tagline for this movie.Song draws you into her characters’ worlds seamlessly. As “Past Lives” develops, she toggles between Nora and Hae Sung at home and out and about, lightly sketching in how their everyday lives have developed. Even so, Nora — and Lee’s delicately calibrated performance — remains the movie’s gravitational center. By the time Nora is in her 20s, she is living in New York and has become a playwright. On a whim, she looks up Hae Sung on Facebook and discovers that he’s still in South Korea and has also searched for her. The two are soon regularly video chatting until Nora decides she needs to commit to her life in New York.These scenes of Nora and Hae Sung reconnecting are pleasant, partly because Lee and Yoo are both nice to spend time with. But as the days give way to one night after another, this interlude can also feel drifty and even a little innocuous, almost like filler. That’s partly because although Yoo is awfully nice to look at, and while Song continues to add in details about Hae Sung’s life in South Korea, the character never takes deep root in the story the way that Nora does. For much of it, he is effectively a ghostly figure, a beautiful specter on a laptop screen whose open face hides very little, including Hae Sung’s vulnerability and yearning.All this feels as specific, intentional and meaningful as the sight of different lovers embracing all around Nora and Hae Sung when, another 12 years later, they finally reconnect in person in New York. By then, each has settled into their respective lives, have separate histories, have made different memories. They have distinct personalities and ways of taking up space, and each has had a serious relationship, Nora’s with her husband, Arthur (John Magaro, wonderful). Like Hae Sung, Arthur has a sweet, transparent face that hides little, including the hurt that Nora sometimes causes him, one difference being that he actually lives with her.It’s important to Song’s overall design that one of the most crucial and extended sequences in “Past Lives” takes place not long after Nora breaks off with Hae Sung when they’re young adults. She’s rocked by their encounter, but she is soon en route to a writers retreat, an emblem of the horizons first glimpsed in her girlhood. Here, for the only time in the movie, Song lingers over a physical space, in this case a handsome, sunlit country house, a home. Nora lingers too in these rooms, and shortly after she settles in, another writer — Arthur — follows. Song stages and shoots his arrival from Nora’s room, the camera pointing through the open window as she lies asleep in her bed. She misses Arthur’s entrance, but soon after, Nora emerges from her room, awake in a present that — for the first time — feels like the future.Past LivesRated PG-13. In English and Korean, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters. More

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      How KIRAC Trailed Michel Houellebecq From the Bedroom to the Courtroom

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      The art collective KIRAC was embroiled in court battles over a film about the author’s sex life. Is the dispute a performance? A marketing stunt? Or a genuine cultural feud?On Saturday night, an eclectic art crowd was gathering outside an industrial garage in Amsterdam East, where Michel Houellebecq, the celebrated French author, was set to speak.Houellebecq had on May 24 released “A Few Months of My Life,” a new book describing a tumultuous period from October 2022 to March 2023 when he collaborated with a Dutch art collective called KIRAC. Together, they worked on a film, shooting scenes that show the married 67-year-old author making out with young women.Although Houellebecq had consented to making the film, he later changed his mind and tried to back out. Beginning in February, he brought court cases in France and the Netherlands to stop the movie from being shown. Last month, an Amsterdam judge upheld Houellebecq’s complaint and granted him the right to see a final cut of any re-edited film four weeks before release, giving him a chance to file another action if he doesn’t like what he sees.In “A Few Months of My Life,” a 94-page autobiographical work, Houellebecq digs deep into his hatred for KIRAC. He names the group’s leader, Stefan Ruitenbeek, only once, describing him as a “pseudo-artist” and “a cockroach with a human face.” Female KIRAC members are referred to as “the sow” and “the turkey.”According to the organizer of Saturday’s event, Tarik Sadouma, Houellebecq had not come to Amsterdam to promote his new book, but to talk about his work generally. As a condition of his participation, Houellebecq asked Sadouma to bar Ruitenbeek and his cohorts from the event.Yet just as the audience took its seats inside, Ruitenbeek burst through the door, dressed as a giant brown cockroach, with bobbing antennae and a furry cape. He was trailed by KIRAC members, one wearing a false pig snout, another filming the whole thing.“I’m here!” cried Ruitenbeek, taking the stage, to a mixture of jeering and cheers. “I’m the cockroach!”A woman taking tickets tried to wrangle the camera from the cameraman and Sadouma shouted for the intruders to leave. Eventually, Ruitenbeek — pleading, “No violence!” — left with his entourage.Michel Houellebecq released a 94-page autobiographical book, “A Few Months of My Life,” about his experiences with KIRAC.Philippe Matsas/FlammarionThis was the latest episode in an ongoing, surrealistic conflict between KIRAC, a fringe art group that posts its films on YouTube, and Houellebecq, one of the world’s most famous authors.Was it a performance? A marketing stunt? Or part of a genuine cultural feud? Who could really tell?KIRAC, an acronym for Keeping It Real Art Critics, is often described as an art collective, but its creative center is Ruitenbeek and Kate Sinha, a writer who is also Ruitenbeek’s life partner. They make films that at first appear to be documentaries, or possibly mockumentaries, typically set in the art world. In them, the boundaries between reality and fiction are often blurred, narratives sometimes conflict and onscreen characters can appear to be playing a game with the truth.It is also often difficult to discern KIRAC’s political views. In one of its films, the Dutch architect and curator Rem Koolhaas is criticized as “macho” and “patriarchal.” In another, KIRAC seems to decry diversity efforts, arguing that the artist Zanele Muholi was given a retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum, in Amsterdam, “only because she is from South Africa, Black and lesbian.” (Muholi now uses they/them pronouns and identifies as nonbinary.)Seen as provocateurs or pranksters, and sometimes art world trolls, KIRAC’s members often deliver critical monologues directly to the camera, usually in the form of articulate academic analysis from Sinha, or mocking insults from Ruitenbeek.“In the broadest sense, we’re just trying to make great films, intellectual entertainment,” Sinha said. “I think we are primarily artists, interested in the object we make, which is always the film.”Sinha in “Time’s Up, Old Man,” a KIRAC film in which she criticizes the Dutch curator and architect Rem Koolhaas.KIRACIn a joint interview, Ruitenbeek and Sinha said they developed the concept for the Houellebecq film with the author and shot 600 hours of footage of him, with his contractual consent. Houellebecq only objected when they put together a two-minute trailer for the work in progress, according to Ruitenbeek and Sinha.In that clip, Ruitenbeek explains that a “honey trip,” or sex holiday, that Houellebecq had planned in Morocco had been canceled because the author feared being kidnapped by Muslim extremists. (Houellebecq has a long history of making critical statements about Islam, and some readers have found Islamophobic sentiments in his books.)“His wife had spent an entire month arranging prostitutes from Paris, and now everything was falling apart,” Ruitenbeek says in the trailer, in voice-over. He then suggests that there are plenty of young Dutch women in Amsterdam who would have “sex with a famous writer out of curiosity,” and invites the author to visit.In a French court, Houellebecq argued that the trailer violated his privacy and damaged his image. He asked the court to make KIRAC pull the trailer from all online platforms, remove any mention of his wife arranging prostitutes and pay her damages. The court rejected Houellebecq’s case.Later, in the Dutch court, Houellebecq argued that KIRAC had violated contract law, and misled him so that he ended up “in a different film than the one originally intended,” according to his Dutch lawyer, Jacqueline Schaap. An appeal judge in that case found for Houellebecq.The film is still unfinished and continues to evolve, Ruitenbeek said. After Houellebecq left the project, KIRAC filmed in and around the court proceedings, as well as shooting other moments, such as Saturday night’s cockroach show.Ruitenbeek said he was now rethinking the material, and a final cut may not come for months.“We started off this project in an open-minded attitude toward each other; we took each other as artists,” Sinha said of the collaboration with Houellebecq. “It feels like he backpedaled and put on a different coat.”Houellebecq last week agreed to an interview for this article, but pulled out after learning that he would not be shown his quotes before publication. (At the event in Amsterdam, he again declined to comment, claiming that he did not speak English, although he speaks it in the KIRAC film.)Ruitenbeek’s over-the-top voice-overs and willingness to play a goofball suggest that KIRAC is going for humor. But, often, the subjects of its films don’t find them funny.“They point fingers at others, but carve out a safe space for themselves’,” said the artist Renzo Martens, who was the focus of an unflattering movie. “From this safe space they are brave enough to cut into other people’s flesh.”Three Dutch institutions that KIRAC has lambasted — the Stedelijk Museum, the Van Abbe Museum and the Kunstmuseum, in The Hague — declined to comment for this article.Salima El Musalima in KIRAC’s film “Honeypot.” More than 1,000 people signed a petition calling the film “a glorification of sexual violence.”KIRACThijs Lijster, a senior lecturer on the philosophy of art and culture at the University of Groningen, said that there is “something threatening in their ways of going about their work. They have a style of filming, and approaching and talking to people, which is, in a way, rather hostile.”It is not just KIRAC’s targeting of artists and institutions that has been controversial. Over time, its films have evolved to enter the realm of social commentary, drawing ire from across the political spectrum.Some viewers saw the group’s 19-minute film “Who’s Afraid of Harvey Weinstein?,” in which Sinha speaks about sexual power dynamics between the American film producer and his rape victims, as dismissive of the #MeToo movement.A leading art school in Amsterdam, the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, canceled a KIRAC screening after dozens of complaints from students, former students and teachers about statements in the group’s films that they found sexist and racist. The Weinstein movie was championed on a right-wing populist Dutch blog, Geen Stijl. Suddenly, KIRAC became a magnet for conservative followers.Although Ruitenbeek and Sinha said their personal politics are progressive, KIRAC didn’t disavow the attention, and instead produced a film called “Honeypot.” For that, the group convinced a conservative Dutch philosopher and activist, Sid Lukkassen, to have sex on camera with a left-wing student. The idea was to see if the intimate act would somehow bridge a political gap.More backlash ensued. When an Amsterdam arts center called De Balie screened “Honeypot,” a feminist collective submitted a petition with more than 1,000 signatures that called the film “a glorification of sexual violence.” The petition’s signers also included the right-wing Dutch politician Paul Cliteur and some of his followers.Ruitenbeek and Sinha both said their clash with Houellebecq was no stunt. They maintained that they don’t want to be in court with the author, whom they both described as “a genius.”Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times“It was interesting that these two sides teamed up against the film for opposite reasons,” said Yoeri Albrecht, De Balie’s director, who did not cancel the event. “I’ve never seen that happen in the more than a decade that I’ve been organizing events here.”The ambiguity around the group’s motivations only feeds the interest in KIRAC’s work. Many who have been following the Houellebecq affair are unsure whether it’s real or a postmodern KIRAC fiction.“Everyone is wondering, are they playing a game together?” said Simon Delobel, a curator who teaches at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, in Ghent, Belgium, where he was introduced to the group’s work by his students. KIRAC and Houellebecq were surely “well aware that it can be interpreted as a stunt,” he added.Yet Ruitenbeek and Sinha both said their clash with the author was no stunt. They don’t want to be in court with Houellebecq, whom they both described as “a genius.” They just want to be in conversation with him, Sinha said.Ruitenbeek added that when he showed up at Houellebecq’s talk on Saturday, he thought there was a small chance that everyone would laugh and give each other hugs. He was “very happy the day he went to get the cockroach suit,” Sinha said. “After all these intimidating court cases,” she added, “we were back on our own territory again: making art.”Léontine Gallois More