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    Sundance Film Festival Forges Ahead, Led With 'Warrior Spirit'

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixTabitha Jackson became director of the Sundance Film Festival early last year.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexWith ‘Warrior Spirit,’ a New Leader Pushes Sundance ForwardSince taking over as the film festival’s director, Tabitha Jackson has had to figure out how to hold a cinema showcase during a pandemic. Her virtual solution starts Thursday.Tabitha Jackson became director of the Sundance Film Festival early last year.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJan. 27, 2021Updated 2:28 p.m. ETShortly after Donald J. Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, Tabitha Jackson, then the director of the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program, was hosting the annual opening reception for documentary filmmakers at the festival in Park City, Utah. The British Ms. Jackson, who is mixed race and gay, took the stage, knowing many in the audience were unsettled by what had happened and what was ahead.She struggled to find the words to convey what people were feeling. Instead, in a reverse Samson moment, she asked the filmmaker Sandi Dubowski (“Trembling Before G-d”) to start chopping off her dreadlocks, which she had been growing for 20 years. The crowd went wild.“It was a release of energy,” she said in a recent interview. “A nonverbal expression of something needing to change around me leading this program and around us as a community. A little warrior spirit and also a slight howl, since we didn’t know what was going to come.”Ms. Jackson, 50, now finds herself as a leader in another moment of wider uncertainty. She took over as the director of the Sundance Film Festival in February, right before the pandemic truly took hold in the United States, and has spent the past year pivoting over and over again in order to get ready for the 37th edition of the independent cinema showcase.Set to begin Thursday in a mostly virtual setting (in-person screenings will happen in some art-house theaters in 28 cities with lower virus numbers like Atlanta, Houston and Memphis), Sundance 2021 is a lofty experiment. It will allow those who have never been able to share in the snowy ski-town extravaganza — because of either cost or the remote location — to experience it for the first time. With screening times set for each film, and live question-and-answer sessions to follow, Ms. Jackson and her team are trying to recreate the unique energy of Sundance, which has been the premier destination of American independent film for close to four decades.“It was initially depressing when we realized we couldn’t put on the festival in the way we had before,” Ms. Jackson said. “But as we began to plan, it became liberating when we thought, ‘Well, what can we do this year that we couldn’t do before?’”Ms. Jackson received roars of approval when she asked the filmmaker Sandi Dubowski to cut off her dreadlocks at the 2017 festival, when she led Sundance’s documentary program.Credit…Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for Sundance Film FestivalThe decision to not hold the festival in Utah was made in June. But the organization had to change direction yet again in December when rising coronavirus numbers in California prompted the cancellation of a large number of drive-in screenings that had been set for the Rose Bowl.“It’s been a roller-coaster ride, but the rails that are keeping us stable and secure are our purpose around independent filmmaking,” Ms. Jackson said. “We know why we are doing this.”Ms. Jackson joined Sundance in 2013, after spending more than 20 years in London working for the BBC and Channel 4 and producing works like Nick Cave’s “20,000 Days on Earth,” a quasi-documentary that purported to show a singular day in the indie musician’s life, one filled with invented events filmed at fictitious locations.Those who know her often describe Ms. Jackson as curious, open and possessed of a quick wit. She is also committed to helping filmmakers.“She could actually host one of the top late-night talk shows, she’s that funny and witty,” said Diane Weyermann, chief content officer at Participant and a former director of the Sundance documentary program. This year, Participant will debut two films at Sundance: the documentary “My Name Is Pauli Murray” about a nonbinary Black lawyer, activist and poet who influenced both Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall, and “Judas and the Black Messiah,” the Warner Bros. film that chronicles the story of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party.The documentarian Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”) is bringing three films to the festival with his Concordia Studio. He said Ms. Jackson was bringing welcome change to an institution that had not evolved much over the decades.“I like that it’s no longer just a festival for the few — the few people who could go, the few people who could get tickets,” he said. “It’s a brave new world, and she’s being brave.”When she took over the documentary program, Ms. Jackson recognized that she did not want the genre to become “the preserve of the elite,” open only to those who could spend years raising money and making films.Sly Stone in the opening-night film, “Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” a documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival.Credit…Mass Distraction MediaIn 2015, Ms. Jackson conducted a question-and-answer session with the first-time filmmaker Nanfu Wang in front of a slew of investors. Ms. Wang was looking for funds to complete her film “Hooligan Sparrow,” which follows activists protesting the case of six elementary-school girls who were sexually abused by their principal in China. Ms. Wang had been forced to film surreptitiously and smuggle the footage out of the country in order to complete the movie.Normally, filmmakers have a producer on hand to address the financial needs of their project, but since Ms. Wang didn’t have one, Ms. Jackson led the Q. and A. in order to introduce her to the proper financiers. The discussion led to her receiving the funds she needed to finish the work. Ms. Wang will debut her fourth feature documentary, “In the Same Breath,” which tracks the spread of Covid-19 from Wuhan, China, to the United States, at this year’s festival.“Tabitha speaks like a philosopher,” Ms. Wang said. “I felt like she saw me, not only because I was making this film about the Chinese human rights activists, but she cared as much about my background and how I became who I am today.”That ethos to try to give voice to those not always permitted to participate is personal to Ms. Jackson. A mixed-race girl adopted by white parents who later divorced, Ms. Jackson was raised in a village in rural England and learned to move between groups.“I’ve come to enjoy inhabiting the edge of things, the in-between space,” she said upon receiving an industry award in 2018. “What began as a survival mechanism is now my most comfortable place.”The programming of this year’s truncated seven-day festival illustrates those in-between places. With 72 features, down from the usual 120, Sundance will highlight movies from a diverse group of creators: 50 percent are female directors, 51 percent are filmmakers of color, 15 percent are directors who identify as L.G.B.T.Q., and 4 percent are nonbinary.“Passing,” starring Ruth Negga, left, and Tessa Thompson, is one of the more anticipated films that will debut at Sundance.Credit…Eduard GrauThe opening-night film comes from Ahmir Thompson, the Roots drummer known as Questlove. Titled “Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” it is a documentary that tracks the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, an event held to celebrate African-American music that happened the same summer as Woodstock.“Twenty minutes after Tabitha saw the film, she said not only do we want the film, we want it for the opening night and we want it for the U.S. competition,” a producer, Jon Kamen, said. “Usually, you don’t know right away. Usually, it’s all a little wishy-washy.”Ms. Jackson said she and her team, led by the director of programming, Kim Yutani, had to re-pitch the festival to many creators who were wary that the virtual environment wouldn’t be a great way to debut their work. One person they didn’t have to convince was the producer Nina Yang Bongiovi, who with her partner Forest Whitaker has had movies in competition at Sundance five out of the last seven years.They will be there this year with “Passing,” from the actress-turned-first-time-director Rebecca Hall. The film, set in 1920 and starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, tracks the story of two African-American women who can “pass” as white.“When I looked at the screen and saw Tabitha and Kim — two inclusive, diverse women — telling me and my team that our film is loved and embraced and to please come be a part of this, that meant a lot,” Ms. Yang Bongiovi said of the Zoom call when the film was accepted.“I like that it’s no longer just a festival for the few,” one filmmaker said of Ms. Jackson’s leadership.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesDespite the challenges of the past year, there have been some benefits. Ms. Jackson has been able to quarantine for most of the time in Connecticut with the documentary filmmaker Kirsten Johnson (“Dick Johnson Is Dead”), whom she married last year at Sundance, on the first day of the festival. They recently bought a home with the filmmaker Ira Sachs and the artist Boris Torres, who co-parent Ms. Johnson’s 9-year old twins.That has given Ms. Johnson a ringside seat to Ms. Jackson’s process.“What’s interesting about Tabitha is she has so many perspectives given where she comes from and what her life is,” Ms. Johnson said. “She is endlessly curious about the permutations of racism around the world and the ways we struggle with identity. I think there is a real sense of how do we keep pushing for this new landscape and not be blinded by simple solutions.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Gregory Sierra, Actor Known for His Sitcom Work, Dies at 83

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGregory Sierra, Actor Known for His Sitcom Work, Dies at 83Often cast in ethnic roles, he saw his career take off in the 1970s as a recurring character on “Sanford and Son” and a regular on “Barney Miller.”Gregory Sierra in an episode of the Emmy Award-winning sitcom “Barney Miller.” He played a detective for two seasons on the show, set in a Greenwich Village police station.Credit…ABC, via PhotofestJan. 26, 2021Updated 7:03 p.m. ETGregory Sierra, a character actor who navigated easily between comedy and drama but was best known for his supporting roles on the sitcoms “Sanford and Son” and “Barney Miller,” died on Jan. 4 at his home in Laguna Woods, Calif. He was 83.His wife, Helene Sierra, said the cause was stomach and liver cancer.Lanky and balding, Mr. Sierra started out in Hollywood in the late 1960s and early ’70s taking modest parts — including on the sitcom “The Flying Nun” and the secret agent series “Mission Impossible,” as well in as the 1970 film sequel “Beneath the Planet of the Apes.”With his Puerto Rican background, Mr. Sierra was often cast in ethnic roles, including Latinos, Italians and Native Americans.In 1972, during its second season, he joined the cast of “Sanford and Son,” one of Norman Lear’s many groundbreaking sitcoms, in the recurring role of Julio Fuentes, a junk dealer who lived next door to Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx), who also had a junkyard with his son, Lamont (Demond Wilson), in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. He stayed until 1975.Julio tried hard to befriend Fred but was the frequent target of his insults.“Why don’t you go do some work in your yard,” Fred tells Julio in one episode. “Go take a bath. Go milk your goat.”“I did that all this morning,” Julio says.“Why don’t you go back to Puerto Rico?” Fred says.“I come from New York City and I can live in any of the 50 states I want,” Julio answers.“Why don’t you try Alaska?” Fred responds. “That’s a state.”Mr. Sierra left “Sanford and Son” to become a member of the original cast of “Barney Miller,” the Emmy Award-winning sitcom starring Hal Linden set in a police precinct in Greenwich Village. As Detective Sgt. Chano Amenguale, Mr. Sierra earned particular praise for a 1975 episode which he was emotionally devastated and nearly broke down after killing two gunmen.After two seasons, he left “Barney Miller” when he was cast as the star of an ensemble comedy, “A.E.S. Hudson Street,” about an emergency service hospital in Manhattan. He played a doctor in the series, which made its debut in 1978.In his review, The New York Times’s television critic John J. O’Connor described “A.E.S. Hudson Street” as “silly, often downright stupid and occasionally insultingly tasteless.” But, he added, “With Mr. Sierra around to hold the absurdities together, it should not be written off to quickly.”ABC canceled it after five episodes.Mr. Sierra with Redd Foxx, seated, and Demond Wilson in an episode of “Sanford and Son.”Credit…NBC, via PhotofestMr. Sierra was also part of the original cast of “Miami Vice” in 1984, as the commanding officer of the detectives played by Philip Michael Thomas and Don Johnson. But he left after four episodes; his character was assassinated after he decided to leave the series. “He did not like Miami and some of the people he worked with,” his wife said by phone. “He gave up a lot to leave the show.”Gregory Joseph Sierra was born on Jan. 25, 1937, in Manhattan and grew up in Spanish Harlem. His parents abandoned him when he was young, and he was raised by an aunt.In addition to his wife, Mr. Sierra is survived by his stepdaughters, Kelly and Jill, and a step-granddaughter. His first two marriages ended in divorce.After serving in the Air Force, Mr. Sierra went with a friend to an acting school audition in Manhattan. Mr. Sierra was not there for the audition, but after performing an improvisation with his friend, it was he and not his friend who got into the school.He later toured with the National Shakespeare Company and appeared as the King of Austria in “King John” at the New York Shakespeare Festival (now Shakespeare in the Park) in 1967.He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1960s and maintained a prolific acting pace for 30 years, largely in supporting roles.One of his most riveting characters appeared in a 1973 episode of “All in the Family.” His character, Paul Benjamin, was a Jewish vigilante who tried to protect the home of Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), whose front door has been covered with a swastika. Mr. Sierra infused the character with humor and self-assurance.Believing that the ignorant, bigoted Archie has been the victim of anti-Semitism, Paul tells him — to his confusion and consternation — “You sure don’t look Jewish.”“Well there’s a good reason for that,” Archie says. “I ain’t Jewish.”The swastika, it turns out, was meant for a Jewish neighbor with a similar address. Moments after Paul leaves the Bunkers’ house, he is killed by a car bomb.Mr. Sierra’s most recent credited role was as a screenwriter in “The Other Side of the Wind” (2018), Orson Welles’s long-delayed movie about a movie director (John Huston), which was filmed in the 1970s but not released until 2018.In 2009, Mr. Sierra returned to the stage after 40 years as a British police officer in a production of “See How They Run” at the theater at Laguna Woods Village, the retirement community where he lived.“He hadn’t been onstage for a very long time, so he was a little nervous,” John Perak, who directed Mr. Sierra in that production, said by phone. “I said, ‘Greg, don’t be afraid, it’s not a big deal.’ He came prepared and did very well.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Indie Spirits Nominate a Diverse Group of Filmmakers

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe ProjectionistIndie Spirits Nominate a Diverse Group of FilmmakersMovies by women and people of color make up all of the contenders for best feature and best director.“Minari,” starring, from left, Alan S. Kim, Steve Yeun, Noel Cho and Yeri Han, is among the nominees for the top Indie Spirit.Credit…David Bornfriend/A24, via Associated PressJan. 26, 2021, 12:29 p.m. ETThe Oscars will be adopting new diversity guidelines soon, but the Independent Spirit Awards are already walking that talk.None of the nominees announced Tuesday for the best feature award at the Indie Spirits — “First Cow,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Minari,” “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” and “Nomadland” — were directed by white men, whose efforts are usually far overrepresented during awards season.All five nominees for best director are women and people of color, too. And of the directorial debuts nominated in the best first-film category (including “I Carry You With Me” by Heidi Ewing, “The Forty-Year-Old Version” by Radha Blank, “Miss Juneteenth” by Channing Godfrey Peoples and “Nine Days” by Edson Oda), only one was directed by a white man — Darius Marder’s “Sound of Metal.”For too many years, the Indie Spirits, handed out by the nonprofit Film Independent, could feel like they were following the Academy Awards’ lead, handing their trophies to whoever was deemed the Oscar front-runner. They were even accused of bending their own rules to let in bigger, starrier productions — in one memorable example, Harvey Weinstein successfully lobbied the organization to lift its $20 million budget threshold so that “Silver Linings Playbook” could be considered. It won four awards at the 2013 ceremony, including best feature.But the Indie Spirits work best as a corrective of the bigger, more prestigious ceremony. The last two winners of the best-feature Indie Spirit — “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “The Farewell” — weren’t even nominated for best picture at the Oscars and absolutely should have been. And though the Indie Spirits did nominate the film that some consider this year’s Oscar front-runner, Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland,” the race is still fluid.Chloé Zhao at work on “Nomadland” with Frances McDormand in the background.Credit…Searchlight Pictures, via Associated Press(The best feature nominees echoed other recent awards announcements. On Sunday, at the New York Film Critics Circle ceremony, “First Cow” won best film. And on Monday, the American Film Institute included several lower-budget films among its Movies of the Year: “Da 5 Bloods,” “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Mank,” “Minari,” “Nomadland,” “One Night in Miami,” “Soul,” “Sound of Metal” and “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”)At the Indie Spirits, nominees for best male lead are Steven Yeun (“Minari”), Riz Ahmed (“Sound of Metal”), Chadwick Boseman (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), Adarsh Gourav (“The White Tiger”) and Rob Morgan (“Bull”). For best female lead, the contenders are Carey Mulligan (“Promising Young Woman”), Viola Davis (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”), Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”), Nicole Beharie (“Miss Juneteenth”), Julia Garner (“The Assistant”) and Sidney Flanigan (“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”).Regina King’s “One Night in Miami” earned the group’s Robert Altman Award, which is given to a single film’s director, casting director and ensemble of performers.The ceremony will be broadcast live on the IFC channel on April 22. See the full list of nominations here.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Recreating an Archaeological Discovery From the Ground Down

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRecreating an Archaeological Discovery From the Ground Down“The Dig,” on Netflix, revisits the astonishing find made by two amateurs in Britain as World War II was dawning.Carey Mulligan as a landowner and Ralph Fiennes as a laborer in a scene from “The Dig.”Credit…Larry Horricks/NetflixPublished More

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    ‘Mike Nichols’ Captures a Star-Studded Life That Shuttled Between Broadway and Hollywood

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBooks of The Times‘Mike Nichols’ Captures a Star-Studded Life That Shuttled Between Broadway and HollywoodJan. 25, 2021Updated 2:45 p.m. ETAmazonApple BooksBarnes and NobleBooks-A-MillionBookshopIndieboundWhen you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.When the writer and director Mike Nichols was young, he had an allergic reaction to a whooping cough vaccine. The result was a complete and lifelong inability to grow hair. One way to read Mark Harris’s crisp new biography, “Mike Nichols: A Life,” is as a tender comedy about a man and his wigs.He got his first set (hair, eyebrows) before he went to college. It was dismal. Nichols attended the University of Chicago, where Susan Sontag was also a student. One reason they didn’t date, Harris writes, is that “she was thrown off by his wig.”Nichols moved to Manhattan to make it as a comedian. A friend said that she would enter his tiny apartment and “the smell of acetone” — wig-glue remover — “would just hit you in the face.”Nichols found fame in his mid-20s. His improvisational comedy routines with Elaine May, whom he’d met in Chicago, were fresh and irresistible. They took their act to Broadway in 1960, where Nichols met Richard Burton. Through Burton, he would get to know Elizabeth Taylor.On the set of “Cleopatra,” Taylor asked the production’s hairstyle designer, “Do you do personal wigs? Because I have a dear friend who’s a comic in New York, and he wears one of the worst wigs I’ve ever seen.” Before long, Nichols’s toupees were unrivaled.“It takes me three hours every morning to become Mike Nichols,” he told the actor George Segal. He had a sense of humor about it all. He would tell how his son, Max, crawled into bed beside him and, seeing only the back of his head, screamed, “Where’s Daddy’s face?”I’ve gone on too long about hair and the lack of it. But growing up bald was, Nichols’s brother said, “the defining aspect of his childhood.”Nichols’s gift as a director was his ability to locate and lightly tug on the details that make a character. If he’d made a movie of his own life, the wig scenes would have been superb — satirical and melancholy. He might have set a bathroom-mirror montage to the Beatles’ early cover of “Lend Me Your Comb.”His awkwardness made him watchful. He became a student of human behavior. When he finally got the chance to direct, it was as if he’d been preparing to do so his entire life.Nichols’s first two films were “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “The Graduate” — the first furious, daring and adult, the second zeitgeist-defining. He directed four consecutive hit plays at nearly the same moment. Oscars, Tony Awards and a landslide of wealth followed.He made up for his time as an outsider with a vengeance. He collected Arabian horses and Picassos and began friendships with Jacqueline Kennedy, Leonard Bernstein and Richard Avedon. He was a cocky princeling who became a master of what Kenneth Clark liked to call the “swimgloat,” a way of moving through elite society as if on a barge made of silver and silk.Nichols was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky (or Igor Michael, it’s unclear) in Berlin in 1931. His father, a doctor, was a Russian Jew who changed the family name to Nichols after the family emigrated to the United States in the late 1930s. The family had some money, and Nichols’s father’s patients in New York included the pianist Vladimir Horowitz. Nichols attended good schools in Manhattan, including Dalton.Mark Harris, whose new book is “Mike Nichols: A Life.”Credit…David A. HarrisAt the University of Chicago he became an omnivorous reader and watcher of films. His wit was withering; people were terrified of him. May’s wit was even more devastating. They were made for each other. They were never really a romantic couple, Harris writes, though early on they may have slept together once or twice.Harris is the author of two previous books, “Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood” and “Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War.” He’s also a longtime entertainment reporter with a gift for scene-setting.He’s at his best in “Mike Nichols: A Life” when he takes you inside a production. His chapters on the making of three films in particular — “The Graduate,” “Silkwood” and “Angels in America” — are miraculous: shrewd, tight, intimate and funny. You sense he could turn each one into a book.Nichols was an actor’s director. He was avuncular, a charmer, wide in his human sympathies. He tried to find what an actor needed and to provide it. He could place a well-buffed fingernail on a tick that wanted to be a tock. But he had a steely side.He fired Gene Hackman during week one on “The Graduate.” Hackman was playing Mr. Robinson and it wasn’t working, in part because, at 37, he looked too young for the role.Sacrificing someone early could be a motivator for the remaining cast, he learned. He fired Mandy Patinkin early in the filming of “Heartburn,” and brought in Jack Nicholson to play Meryl Streep’s faithless husband.One reason the chapter on Nichols’s film of Tony Kushner’s play “Angels in America” is so rich is that Harris, who is married to Kushner, had access to the playwright’s diary.Nichols turned to projects like “Angels in America” to shore up his serious side. But in everything he did, he found the funny. He knew instinctively that tragedy appeals mainly to the emotions while comedy taps the mind.Nichols presided over a lot of muck, expensive flops like “The Day of the Dolphin,” with George C. Scott; “The Fortune,” with Nicholson and Warren Beatty; and “What Planet Are You From?” with Garry Shandling. Reading Harris’s accounts of making these films is like watching a cook strain his stock down the disposal.Nichols’s Broadway flops included a production of “Waiting for Godot” with Steve Martin and Robin Williams. His failures rattled him. He battled depression (one of his vanity license plates read “ANOMIE”) and had suicidal urges after being placed on Halcion, a benzodiazepine. He had, Harris writes, “an almost punitive need to prove his detractors wrong.”He had a manic side. He snorted his share of cocaine and, for a while in the 1980s, used crack. You imagine him on the latter, racing back and forth from film set to Broadway as if through a set of constantly swinging cat doors.Harris details his subject’s many collaborations with Streep, and with Nora Ephron. Nichols was married four times. His final marriage, to Diane Sawyer, was the one that lasted.Nichols was a hard man to get to know, and I’m not sure we understand him much better at the end of “Mike Nichols: A Life.” He was a man in perpetual motion, and Harris chases him with patience, clarity and care.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More