News

  As we continue exploring Black History Month, HFPA member Kimberly Reyes recently sat down on zoom with two influential filmmakers who have unique credentials to address both where we stand and where we should be headed in entertaining and educating audiences to better understand history. Also in perfect timing for the milestone month, producer Chris L Jenkins and director Brandon Kramer are promoting their own documentary film, The First Step, which followed media personality and civil rights activist Van Jones as he attempted to build bridges during the Trump era and bring people together from both political parties to pass a landmark criminal justice bill on prison reform, The First Step bill.

Malene Choi, a South Korean filmmaker, has only been to Berlin once but it is her second visit to the German capital that promises to be the most memorable. It is here at the 2023 edition of the Berlin Film Festival her film Stille Liv (The Quiet Migration) will premier.

Tia Kouvo is a Finnish director and screenwriter based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Her directorial feature, Family Time, follows an annual family Christmas get-together that sees the usual tensions rise when family members try to find connection, but aren’t always successful.

In 1923, a gangster and bootlegger called Owney “The Killer” Madden got out of Sing Sing jail and bought out heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson’s supper club, the Club De Luxe, on the corner of 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue, in Harlem. He renamed it the Cotton Club.

Having famous parents could either be a blessing or a curse to children who want to follow their parents’ paths. They are either compared to their popular parents or they are pressured to live up to the expectations of the public that they are as good as their elders.

If you loved Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio there’s currently a special exhibition Guillermo del Toro: Crafting Pinocchio devoted to the process behind the Golden Globe-winning stop-motion animation film is now on view at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (open through April 15, 2023). This insightful exhibition offers a behind-the-scenes look at the handcrafted creative process to deeper comprehend del Toro’s first stop-motion animation film.

“Most people only live once. But I’ve lived 141 lives,” said Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale in 2014.

In the spirit of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Muriel’s Wedding comes the newest feel-good Aussie film, Seriously Red. The film is produced by Rose Byrne and her Dollhouse Productions company, and stars her best friend Krew Boylan, who also wrote the film.

As expected, the nostalgia effect paid off: the Titanic reissue monopolized the weekend in Italy. The re-release’s 290 screens brought more than 800,000 euros to Disney’s coffers in just four days (since its debut on February 9, 2023), with a very high per-screen average compared to other releases.

The new Hulu miniseries The 1619 Project starts with a simple statement: “In August 1619, a ship arrived on these shores in Virginia carrying the very first enslaved Africans to be brought to the British colonies of North America. ” Through many different perspectives and narratives, the series expounds on how nothing in American history was the same after this point and, more specifically, on how American history has been shaped by the ripple effects of that voyage.