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FILM ARCHIVES

Brighter Summer Days

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To judge by the box office stats and the grousing critics, not to mention the received wisdom that summer movies are only good for air-conditioning, 2005 is shaping up as the worst year in film since, oh, 2004. But a quick survey of the city’s art houses suggests a much happier state of affairs. No movie lover can reasonably complain about a season that sees local runs for Café Lumiere, Kings and Queen, The Holy Girl, Mysterious Skin, Tropical Malady, The World —and the films by the three new directors in our summer movie package. As it happens, all are only quasi-neophytes, crossing over into feature filmmaking after distinguished careers in other fields. David LaChapelle, celebrity photographer of celebrities, hung out with teenage “krumpers” in South Central L.A. and emerged with the irresistible dance documentary Rize (opening June 24). Multimedia artist Miranda July’s expansive, idiosyncratic rom-com, Me and You and Everyone We Know (opening June 17 at the brand-new IFC Center) is already the most lauded American indie of the year, having just won an armful of Cannes prizes. And Pawel Pawlikowski, an ex-BBC documentarian who earned critical praise for 2000’s Last Resort, looks set to consolidate his art house rep with the languid and faintly sinister girlhood reverie My Summer of Love (opening June 17).

Blow Up

David LaChapelle plays his krump card with a South Central dance doc.
by Laura Sinagra
“It’s like, ‘Oh the rich gay photographer goes into the ghetto to exploit the poor children.’ But you know what? These kids want people to see their work. As artists, they want people to see what they do.”

People Person

Hyphenate hipstress Miranda July infiltrates Indiewood
by Ed Halter
Her trajectory from punk clubs and cinematheques to scripting, directing, and starring in a delicately complex romantic comedy might seem stretchy for another artist.

Love Streams

Pawel Pawlikowski finds a place in the sun
by Jessica Winter
“I try to be a bit documentary about everything, and think on my feet, to create a situation where cinema can happen,” Pawlikowski says. “It’s not drama I’m talking about, or realism. I’m talking about a poetry of cinema.”

New Waverly

IFC indahouse: A Village theater reopens, but not without controversy
by Matthew Ross
While local cinephiles saw the Waverly’s shuttered marquee as another sad relic of the city’s once thriving art house scene, another Cablevision subsidiary—the Independent Film Channel—has been working to restore the institution as a force in New York film culture.