McElwee challenges his viewers to respect his privacy, and in return his films never have a dynamic of unearned disclosure.

Jessica Weisberg on the autobiographical documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee: http://nyr.kr/X2FMEY

To ring in the Chinese New Year, the photographer and filmmaker Gabriele Stabile recently spent a day with Danny Bowien, the chef and co-founder of Mission Chinese Food, on the Lower East Side. Stabile shadowed Bowien for a day—from an early-morning hunt for ingredients to a karaoke nightcap. Here’s a peek at life behind the scenes at the popular restaurant: http://nyr.kr/Y55h4u

(Source: newyorker.com)

Ben Greenman: 

The long, hilarious career of the filmmaker, comedian, actor, and performer Mel Brooks has been documented before, but never quite like it has been on the new box set “The Incredible Mel Brooks: An Irresistible Collection of Unhinged Comedy.” While previous career retrospectives have focussed on Brooks’s films, this collection assembles odds and ends from around the margins of his career, ranging from classic inteviews with Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson to sitcom appearances on shows such as “Mad About You” to rarities such as the 1978 parody newsmagazine “Peeping Times” and Brooks’s teaser trailer for the 1962 Italian film “My Son, the Hero.”
 

The set will be released today. While we are pleased to offer the exclusive clip above—it’s a snippet from a 1981 British documentary in which Brooks reflects on his early years, explains his relationship with his mother, and generally acts the tummler—we are doubly pleased that Brooks agreed to discuss the new collection with us. Click-through to read the conversation.

Christine Smallwood endures the masculine freak show otherwise known as the films of Norman Mailer: http://nyr.kr/NP495R

Photograph by Inge Morath/Magnum.

The music is gorgeous—Mad Lib but sped up, Prince Paul without the jokes—but the images are Joseph’s own: an amalgamation of horrifying beauty.

Hilton Als on short filmmaker Khalil Joseph: http://nyr.kr/OCPSL5

(Source: newyorker.com)

Nana Asfour on why the film “Beirut Hotel” was banned in Lebanon (it wasn’t because of the erotic scenes), and on Beirut’s efforts to reinstate the city’s “eminence as the cultural center of the Middle East”: http://nyr.kr/Ovkoky

As a special tribute to this year’s summer Olympics in London, the photographer and filmmaker Seamus Murphy set out to create a short film that would capture the city’s new spirit.  Watch the video above, and click-through for more on the Murphy and his inspiration:  http://nyr.kr/RKx4Yy 

(Source: newyorker.com)

Richard Brody remembers filmmaker Chris Marker, who died yesterday at age ninety-one: http://nyr.kr/Q72HeE

For Marker, memory isn’t passive; it’s an act of resistance—the edge that cuts a path into the future—and the effective work of memory is the very definition of art. Marker was a master of film editing—the part of the filmmaking process that Jean-Luc Godard, another master editor and memory-artist, defined as holding past, present, and future in one’s own hands—and the very possibility of remembering Marker demands a little editing, a splicing-in of excerpts from a surprising and crucial document.

(Image is a still from “La Jetée.”)

Richard Brody’s DVD pick of the week: Gerd Oswald’s 1957 harsh film noir, “Crime of Passion”.  Watch the clip above, and click through for more from Brody on the film: http://nyr.kr/NUB98U

(Source: newyorker.com)