Shadows on the Pier: The 48th Thessaloniki Film Festival Jared Rapfogel April 2008 Festival Reports 16 – 25 November 2007 Thessaloniki may be an ancient city, but much of its history has been effaced by time, war and relentless modern building, its remaining ancient monuments rising incongruously out o...
Festival Perché: The 5th Tribeca Film Festival Jared Rapfogel July 2006 Festival Reports April 25–May 7, 2006 Founded in 2002 in the wake of the WTC attack as a way of celebrating and reinvigorating its neighbourhood, the Tribeca Film Festival has outgrown its origins, both in its location –...
Stop Motion: Transformation and Stasis at the NYFF’s Views from the Avant-Garde Jared Rapfogel May 2006 Festival Reports October 1–2, 2005 Packed tightly into two demanding, marathon-like days, this year’s annual New York Film Festival component Views from the Avant-Garde featured a record ten programs, some comprising a s...
Lakes in Lower Manhattan: The 4th Annual Tribeca Film Festival Jared Rapfogel July 2005 Festival Reports April 19–May 1, 2005 It’s hard to describe New York as a film-festival-starved town, with the 41 year-old New York Film Festival towering most visibly over a teeming hive of more specialised cousins, f...
Minimalism and Maximalism: The 42nd New York Film Festival Jared Rapfogel February 2005 Festival Reports October 1–17, 2004 The venerable, 42 year-old New York Film Festival is no longer the only game in town, with the Tribeca Film Festival stealing some of its spotlight and, more importantly, growing, matu...
“Do I Exist?”: The Unbearable Blankness of Being in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Bright Future Jared Rapfogel July 2004 53rd Melbourne International Film Festival More comprehensible than the prolific Kurosawa's previous efforts, this story of an unlikely friendship between a hopeless youth, an older man and a jellyfish is still unconventional and moving.
Jennifer Dworkin Interviewed Jared Rapfogel December 2003 Feature Articles In this conversational yet rigorous interview, Dworkin discusses the techniques and overall experience of working on Love and Diane, a landmark in contemporary documentary that, in the tradition of Wiseman, reveals the workings of social structures from the point of view of human experience.
New York Film Festival 2003 – A Report Jared Rapfogel December 2003 Festival Reports Please note: discussions of individual films reveal plot details. Year after year I find myself frustrated by the New York Film Festival's extreme selectivity, its policy of showcasing only a handful of ...
Central Asian Films Jared Rapfogel July 2003 Feature Articles Jared delights in films from this region of the world, in particular, their humility, insight and complexity in grasping a reality much harsher then that of the contemporary West.
A Report of Dreams of a Nation – A Palestinian Film Festival Jared Rapfogel March 2003 Festival Reports January 24-27, 2003, NYC http://www.dreamsofanation.org In New York City, a town largely defined by the presence of so many ethnic and national identities, the Palestinian Film Festival that took place ...
Adaptation: How to Stop Worrying and Love to Compromise Jared Rapfogel January 2003 Feature Articles Though Kaufman-Jonze's latest effort may be striking, intelligent and original, it may not be as radical or novel as we're led to believe.
The New York Film Festival 2002 – A Report Jared Rapfogel December 2002 Festival Reports The 40th anniversary of the New York Film Festival was a strange affair – a far more relevant event than in past years, but relevant in spite of itself. The announcement that Abbas Kiarostami had been denie...