Nell Minow – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Middleburg Film Festival 2023 Wrap – Nell Minow reports

October 30, 2023October 30, 2023 Nell Minow film festivals, Michael Giacchino, Middleburg Film Festival, Noora Niasari, sheila johnson, Ukrainian filmmakers

The highlight of the Middleburg Film Festival every year is not a movie. It is the annual tribute to a film composer, with the Loudoun Symphony’s full orchestra playing the music. Festival founder Sheila Johnson was a music major in college, and she always reminds attendees of the vital importance of a score in guiding the emotions of the film audience. This year’s awardee, Michael Giacchino, attracted such an enthusiastic crowd that the staff of the festival had to rush to bring in several more rows of chairs.

Festivals

DC/DOX 2023: Wrap of the Inaugural Festival – Nell Minow reports

June 19, 2023September 4, 2023 Nell Minow AFI Docs Fest, DC/Dox 2023, documentaries, film festivals, Jamie Shor, Sky Sitney, Washington DC

When the Washington DC-based AFI Docs festival was merged with the LA festival, PR Collaborative’s Jamie Shor and Sky Sitney, director of the film and media studies program at Georgetown, created DC/Dox, which had its premiere festival from June 15 to 18, 2023. The first festival’s program included 31 features and 21 shorts from eight countries, screening in venues including the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, the National Archives’ William G. McGowan Theater, and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery.

Reviews

AWFJ Presents: REVOLUTION: NEW ART FOR A NEW WORLD – Review by Nell Minow

February 8, 2023February 12, 2023 Nell Minow awfj presents, Chagall, documentaries, Film Movement, Kandinsky, Margy Kinmonth, Revolution: New Art for a New World, Sergei Eisenstein, Stalin

“Victims or vanguards?” That is the challenge faced by the artists in Revolution: New Art for a New World, a documentary about the freedom-seeking artists who helped overthrow Russia’s repressive tsarist regime, only to find themselves repressed by its totalitarian replacement, Stalin. And the answer, sadly, was both. Down with abstraction. Up with realist monuments to revolutionary leaders, “monumental propaganda.” An artist who capitulated found one kind of success. A copy of his portrait of Lenin was hung in every Soviet schoolroom. Another ended up designing textiles for tractors.

Reviews

AWFJ Presents: REVOLUTION: NEW ART FOR A NEW WORLD – Review by Nell Minow

August 26, 2022February 9, 2023 Nell Minow awfj presents, Chagall, documentaries, Film Movement, Kandinsky, Margy Kinmonth, Revolution: New Art for a New World, Sergei Eisenstein, Stalin

Interviews

Katie Aselton on MACK & RITA, Diane Keaton and Collaboration – Nell Minow interviews

August 10, 2022August 14, 2022 Nell Minow book club, diane keaton, Elizabeth Lail, Katie Aselton, Mack & Rita, Paul Welsh, Taylour Paige

Katie Aselton is the director of the body-switching comedy Mack & Rita, about a 30-year-old who wishes she was 70 and is somehow transformed into Diane Keaton. In an interview she talked about how old she feels, directing Keaton (who played her mother in the film, Book Club), and why her favorite part of making movies is collaboration.

Reviews

SO YOU’VE GROWN ATTACHED – Review by Nell Minow

August 10, 2022August 14, 2022 Nell Minow Judith Viorst, kate tsang, Madeleine Conner, Necessary Losses, Short films

In this charming and wise short film, writer/director Kate Tsang tells a story of the first steps into growing up with captivating wit and charm, and with a quality that is even more rare, genuine whimsy. The black and white cinematography gives it a timeless, fairy tale quality that perfectly suits the mood of the story. Judith Viorst’s book, Necessary Losses, describes the often-wrenching pain that humans experience as we mature. That theme is brought to life in this film, as a young, sci-fi comics-loving girl named Izzy (Madeleine Conner) has a best friend who is sympathetic, supportive, fun, and always has time to play with her.

Interviews

HANNAH MARKS on Shooting DON’T MAKE ME GO in New Zealand – Nell Minow interviews

July 19, 2022July 20, 2022 Nell Minow amazon prime, Don't Make Me Go, hannah marks, Jen Van Epps, John Cho, Mia Isaac, vera herbert

It is too late to call Hannah Marks a “promising” young director. She has more than delivered on the promise and quality of her first two films, After Everything and Banana Split with Don’t Make Me Go, starring Mia Isaac and John Cho as a teenage daughter and father on a car trip. Marks again demonstrates her exceptional skill in working with actors and in cinematic storytelling. In an interview, she talked about making New Zealand stand in for Southwestern USA, why road trip stories are an enduring theme, and telling a story about characters who are not talking to each other about what concerns them most.

Interviews

Debra McClutchy and Anne Alvergue on THE MARTHA MITCHELL EFFECT – Nell Minow interviews

June 28, 2022June 29, 2022 Nell Minow Anne Alvergue, Debra McClutchy, documentary, netflix, The Martha Mitchell Effect

On Netflix, a new documentary from directors Debra McClutchy and Anne Alvergue is called The Martha Mitchell Effect, named for a psychiatric term inspired by Martha Mitchell’s story. It means someone whose comments are dismissed as mental illness but turned out to have been telling the truth. In an interview, the directors talked about doing research at the Nixon Library, what Martha liked about talking to the press, and why they see her as a hero.

Interviews

Dana Canedy on Faith, Love and A JOURNAL FOR JORDAN – Nell Minow interviews

December 22, 2021December 23, 2021 Nell Minow A Journal for Jordan, Dana Canedy, denzel washington, MICHAEL B JORDAN, Sgt. Charles Monroe King

The title of the book and movie is A Journal for Jordan, but it is really two journals. First Sgt. Charles Monroe King was deployed in Iraq when his son, Jordan, was born, and so his fiancée, Dana Canedy, gave him a journal to give him a connection to the son he would see just once before he was killed in action. When she received the journal with his effects, Canedy, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, shared her own story, with selections from King’s journal, framing each chapter as a letter to their son.

Commentaries

Note to Hollywood: Fight Scenes Are Not Foreplay – Nell Minow comments

August 26, 2021August 29, 2021 Nell Minow combat scenes concluding with sex, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, The Protégé

I was disappointed to see the same obsolete trope in two Hollywood films this month. In The Protégé and in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings we see a man and a woman in an all-out mixed martial arts fight. At least comparatively speaking, in these two very intense, full-on fight scenes, the women are the good guys and the men are extremely dangerous killers. And in both scenes, the fights are concluded not with one combatant defeating the other but with the couple having sex.

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