Dan Sullivan
This Action Lies (James N. Kienitz Wilkins, US/Switzlerand) — Wavelengths
By Dan Sullivan | 09/02/2019 | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2019
By Dan Sullivan Published in Cinema Scope #78 (Spring 2019) “The way I see it, movies move,” James N. Kienitz Wilkins declares in his monologue film This Action Lies (2018), made for Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève’s Biennale de l’Image en Mouvement. A styrofoam cup of coffee is viewed several times, with fluctuations in gradient distinguishing…
Read More → You Can’t Own an Idea: The Films of James N. Kienitz Wilkins
By Dan Sullivan | 03/26/2019 | CS78, Features, From Cinema Scope Magazine
Rare these days is the filmmaker who proclaims that cinema is firstly a medium of ideas rather than of images and sounds, and few have made the case as strongly as James N. Kienitz Wilkins.
Read More → I Love You, Daddy (Louis C.K., US) — Special Presentations
By Dan Sullivan | 09/14/2017 | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
By Dan Sullivan Full disclosure: An issue of this publication (CS 70, to be precise [Ed. note: not cleared for use]) appears laid atop the desk of Glen Topher (Louis C.K.), the creatively blocked but nevertheless richer-than-God television writer/producer whose daughter China (Chloë Grace Moretz, surely a career-best turn) moves into his opulent penthouse in…
Read More → Caniba (Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor, France) — Wavelengths
By Dan Sullivan | 09/04/2017 | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
By Dan Sullivan On paper, what could be more sordid than an interview-portrait with Issei Sagawa, the infamous cannibal who became a tabloid sensation in the early ’80s after he murdered and ate part of a Dutch woman in Paris? Caniba, the new film by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, doesn’t exactly skimp on the…
Read More → Félicité (Alain Gomis, France/Senegal/Belgium/Germany/ Lebanon) — Contemporary World Cinema
By Dan Sullivan | 09/03/2017 | Cinema Scope Online, TIFF 2017
By Dan Sullivan Alain Gomis’ first film since 2012’s Aujourd’hui unfurls leisurely, with a precision, patience, and sense of musicality, embodied on a somewhat literal level by the chansons sung by its magnetic protagonist. The set-up is slightly elemental, which may be the point: by night, Kinshasa native Félicité (Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu, a Congolese…
Read More → An Element of Danger: Josh and Benny Safdie on Good Time
By Dan Sullivan | 06/23/2017 | Festivals, Spotlight, Web Only
By Dan Sullivan Cinema Scope: Good Time has a propulsive feeling of forward momentum, a kind of punchiness, which was also present in flashes in Heaven Knows What (2014). Your work has always been marked by a chaotic energy—but here it’s so consistent and sustained. Was that always the idea for the film, and how…
Read More → The Only Luxury: An Interview with Ted Fendt
By Dan Sullivan | 03/21/2016 | CS66, From Cinema Scope Magazine, Interviews
By Dan Sullivan For the past few years, Ted Fendt has been one of the busiest under-the-radar figures in film exhibition in New York: a projectionist at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, he is also the city’s go-to live-subtitler of rare, unsubtitled prints of French films, and ranks among its most active moviegoers. But…
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