Each year Screen Slate invites our dozens of contributors—along with filmmakers, critics, performers, programmers, cinema workers, community organizers, and other friends—to submit their lists of favorite "First Viewings and Discoveries. Responses appear below in the format they were submitted, along with individual "Best of " ballots if submitted.
For the aggregated Best of list tabulated from these responses, visit here , and see also Amy Taubin's Top Ten , pulled from the December issue of Artforum. Our annual end-of-year poll is guest edited by Nicolas Rapold. Art: Steak Mtn. Editorial assistance: Lauren Lee. Much gratitude to our community for the responses, and look forward to seeing you at the movies in ! Inland Empire because I wanted to read Melissa Anderson's fantastic monograph on the film.
Take A Giant Step I think it should be more widely seen and leads me back to the portrayal of middle and upper middle class Black characters those in my sole new release viewing, American Fiction Except one, which I found really beautiful: Le grand amour , by Pierre Etaix Permanence and ephemerality evoked through the window at Canal Street — the former studio of the artist Michael Snow - At the suggestion of Peter Scott, we screened an abbreviated version on our window in , generously edited by the artist himself "for those who don't have time.
Two friends meet for dinner and muse about life, revealing some fundamental differences. Opening scene sees them ambling down Canal Street — a once common activity for the out-of-work artist seeking inspiration. Mary Parker Posey cleans up her act and becomes a librarian at Seward Park Library Essex and Canal — in the process falling in love with a sexy falafel vendor.
A portrait of Canal Street, landing place for waves of immigrants, produced by DCTV and this year re-screened as part of their retrospective at the Firehouse Cinema for Documentary Film, sadly sans the inimitable Peter Kwong Shapeshifting raccoons fight to save their forest home from developers.
