Latest news with #SundanceFestival
LeMonde
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- LeMonde
World Press Photo Executive Director Joumana El Zein Khoury: 'The legend surrounding the Napalm Girl photo is being challenged'
In January, the film The Stringer, shown at the Sundance Festival in the United States, sparked controversy by claiming that one of the world's most famous photographs, The Terror of War – better known as Napalm Girl – had been wrongly credited to Nick Ut of the Associated Press (AP) when it was actually taken by another Vietnamese photographer, Nguyen Thanh Nghe. Since then, AP has published its own investigation and decided to maintain credit to Ut. However, World Press Photo, which runs a prestigious annual photojournalism competition and awarded the image in 1973, took a different path: It no longer attributes the image to Ut, though it has not reassigned credit to another photographer. The organization's executive director, Joumana El Zein Khoury, explained the reasoning behind the decision. Why did World Press Photo feel the need to take a position on the 'Napalm Girl' photograph? Our organization has existed for 70 years, and we take questions of transparency and accuracy very seriously. When doubts arise about a prize-winning photo, we have a process in place. So, when the documentary The Stringer was shown in January at the Sundance Festival, we conducted our own investigation. We waited for the AP to release its own findings before going public. And we found that there were valid questions surrounding this photo. We decided to keep the 1973 prize for the photograph, but have suspended the attribution until further evidence emerges.
New York Post
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Malia Obama accused of copying indie filmmaker for Nike commercial: ‘shockingly similar'
Malia Obama is being accused of copying an indie filmmaker's work for her Nike commercial released earlier this month — the first ad the former president's daughter has directed. Natalie Jasmine Harris, 27, said Obama's one-minute commercial had scenes that were 'shockingly similar' to her own 2024 short film 'Grace.' The scene in question is one in which two young Black girls play pat-a-cake. Advertisement 3 Obama and Harris met at Sundance Festival last year when their short films were in competition. Getty Images 'It's not about the game,' Harris noted to Business Insider. 'It's about the cinematic tools used to depict it.' Harris said there were a lot of technical similarities — from the camera angles to the shots to the framing composition and the color palette. Advertisement 'I know art often overlaps, but moments like this hit hard when you've poured your heart into telling stories with care and barely get the recognition you deserve. If brands want a certain look, why not hire from the source instead of for name recognition,' she posted on X. 'It's devastating,' she wrote, next to a side-by-side comparison of the shots. Harris says she isn't frustrated with Obama herself, but with the industry. Advertisement 3 Harris said she was devastated when she saw the Nike commercial. Getty Images for Acura 'It speaks to a larger issue of brands not supporting independent artists and opting for folks who already have name recognition, which doesn't breed innovative films or original storytelling,' said Harris. The two met at last year's Sundance Film Festival, when Harris screened the 14-minute 'Grace' and the two had films in competition in what was Obama's red-carpet debut, after the former first daughter said she'd drop her last name to avoid being labeled a nepo baby. Advertisement Nike and Obama didn't return The Post's request for comment. 3 The Nike commercial has two young black girls playing pat-a-cake, like Harris' film. Tiktok/@nike
The National
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
TRNSMT: Please hold your nerve and keep Kneecap
Yet before we get into the weeds, we should remember the theory that the Pistols' svengali Malcolm McLaren held, to guide his management aims: 'cash from chaos'. Sampling the Kneecap archive as their notoriety burgeons, I'm struck by their cartoonish brand as much as their terroristic qualities. Like one of McLaren's fruitier publicity stunts, Kneecap rolled up luridly to Utah's Sundance Festival premiere of their eponymous docu-drama in January 2024. Their name was spray painted on the side of a Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Land Rover. The band were on board, holding up a republican tricolour of smoke flares. The Belfast Telegraph noted that the Dublin-based creative agency The Tenth Man had teamed up with Kneecap for the stunt. Their clients include Stella McCartney, GymBox, Guinness and Carlsberg. So already, the back story is slicker than the front story: that of out-of-control, drug-addled, young Irish-speaking Fenians cavorting down the Shankill Road. When rock writer Dorian Lynskey interviewed them in 2024, Naoise Ó Cairealláin (known as Móglaí Bap) admitted: 'We're very calculated in our PR stuff. We know things are going to get a reaction.' Kneecap the movie shows them to be as capable of self-deprecation and auto-irony as The Beatles or The Monkees. They're taking lightly, and playing for laughs, some very heavy matters. The survival and rights of the Irish language, especially in the North. The lingering potential for violence and gang coercion, even in post-Troubles Belfast. The everyday buffet of hallucinogenic drugs, both dealt and consumed, in youth culture. Yet their mode, as the film's director cites explicitly, is the fast-paced fantasy of Trainspotting and Amelie, than anything too social realist. There are often action lines around the movements of the characters, making them look like Looney Tunes animations. The purisms of Irish republicanism are also being jerked around with. Irish language advocates wear massive jumpers and lament sonorously in the backrooms of bars. Michael Fassbender (below) reprises his Bobby Sands role in Steve McQueen's Hunger – except here as a comically intense IRA fugitive (and father of one of the Kneecappers). He's currently teaching yoga on a Belfast beach; 'Bobby Sandals', as one of the rappers quips. There's even a vigilante group the band contend with, known as Radical Republicans Against Drugs (RRAD). They're rendered as three stooges, stumbling and farcical. Yet there's a line the movie circulates around, capturing an ambivalence towards language-based nationalism. 'Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom', hisses the fugitive father to his sons. That cultural radicalism has granted their children a potent medium to use among themselves. But it's emptied of modernity, even the chaotic and fragmentary kind. So Kneecap invent Irish words for drugs. 'Snaois' means coke, 'capaillín' means ketamine. On Móglaí Bap's chest, the letters 3CAG are tattooed (it's the name of their 2018 record). They stand for 'three chonsan agus guta', meaning 'three consonants and a vowel' in Irish. Which means MDMA. READ MORE: Does Kneecap row show how out of touch Westminster is? The struggle to have the Irish language assume the same legal status in Northern Ireland as in the Republic – a status achieved in 2022 – is consistently referred to in the docu-drama. It seems Kneecap have played their part with lines like: 'These E's are sweet/They're sweet E's/I'm eatin' em like sweeties/Mála mór cola bottles agus mála meanies.' But here we are in the spring of 2025, and things are a lot less about artful hedonism, language activism and scampish satire for the trio. Clips dug up from previous live performances seek to render Kneecap as advocating killing Tory politicians, or supporting proscribed Middle Eastern terrorist organisations. Both positions they have, in recent days, strenuously denied holding. Politicians in Scotland, the US and the UK have urged promoters to take the band off their books and line-ups, with their appearances at TRNSMT and Glastonbury the most symbolic cancellations yet threatened. For what it's worth, as a free-speech-friendly musician, I support the recent collective letter sent out by Heavenly Records, and endorsed by significant artists – especially this part of the statement: 'The question of agreeing with Kneecap's political views is irrelevant: it is in the key interests of every artist that all creative expression be protected in a society that values culture, and that this interference campaign is condemned and ridiculed.' It has to be possible to object, as an artist, to the appalling slaughter by the Israeli Defence Force of the people of Gaza, as a wildly disproportionate response to the Hamas atrocity on October 7, 2023. Without that objection causing deplatforming or the destruction of careers. As to Kneecap, there's a history to their position. 'Way, way before October 7, you'd have seen Palestinian and Basque flags alongside Irish ones on the Falls Road,' Móglaí Bap said to the Irish music mag Hot Press. 'There's always been solidarity in West Belfast for other occupied territories.' In any case, it seems there's a deeper strata to their politics. 'We've more in common with working-class people in Belfast than rich people in Dublin', said the third member, Mo Chara, on Patrick Kielty's Late Late Show. 'A workers' revolution is the way forward rather than one based on a fucking God that might not even exist.' So there's no sense of bandwagon-jumping here – Kneecap have a coherent political position that comes out in their raps. It's as natural and accessible to them as their advocacy of 'e's and whizz' (in Pulp's words). READ MORE: Kneecap teases new music after counter-terrorism officers launch investigation A phenomena like Kneecap makes you realise how divergent social and historical paths can be on these islands. You could never imagine the local rewrite: 'Every word of Gaelic spoken is a bullet fired for Scottish freedom'. The movie shows how language politics helps intensify the street-by-street tribalism in Belfast – hip-hop and EDM is a perfect vehicle for that urban claustrophobia. Scots Gaelic would seem to take a much less aggressive position in the culture – the language feels closer to the rhythms of rural society and ecological balance. No-one looks like they need to invent Scots Gaelic terms for cocaine or ketamine. Scots, in so far as it approaches a language, has had a better run-in with hip-hop – Loki, Stanley Odd, recently Tzusan. And it's tempting to assume that the Scots language is still socio-linguistically lively in Scottish urban and suburban areas. There are also more resources for scenes to develop (venues, studios, nearness of musicians and tech). Having enjoyed the playfulness and comedy of Kneecap over the last few days, I have a sense that their highly political background instincts have pulled them into controversies which weren't really in their strategic plan. I think they were going more for Eminem than Roger Waters. There is talk in the archive of a forthcoming Kneecap album, based on their engagement with other indigenous-language artists. I'd enjoy that, as a creative next move. But the world – and particularly Gaza – is on fire. And artists who cannot help but respond to that appalling situation must be defended for their honesty and bravery. Glasto and TRNSMT, hold your nerve on Kneecap, please.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jambika Boards ‘Unwelcomed' as the Chilean Film Heads to Hot Docs (EXCLUSIVE)
Sebastián González and Amílcar Infante's debut feature documentary, 'Si vas para Chile' (Unwelcomed), has been acquired for worldwide distribution by boutique documentary label Jambika Docs, ahead of its world premiere in the International Competition section at Hot Docs. Set against the backdrop of northern Chile's most violent anti-immigration protest, 'Unwelcomed' journeys through the majestic Andean Highlands, Atacama Desert, and coastal settlements to reveal the human face of Latin America's largest migration crisis. More from Variety 'Speak' Directors on Making Doc About Teenage Orators: 'I Thought This Would Be the Most Entertaining Way to Help Make Education and Empathy Great Again' 'Militantropos' Acquired by Square Eyes Ahead of Premiere in Cannes' Directors' Fortnight (EXCLUSIVE) Sundance Festival Favorite Doc 'Come See Me in the Good Light' Lands at Apple TV+ With nearly 8 million Venezuelans displaced—the second-largest migration globally and the largest ever within South America—the film captures rising tensions, cultural clashes, and radicalization in Chile's border communities. 'We're incredibly proud to be wrapping our first feature with the beautiful news of our selection at Hot Docs,' Infante said. 'This gives us so much motivation for the upcoming phase of circulation, with the hope that the film continues to grow and reach new territories and audiences, resonating deeply and generating impact.' 'From the beginning, we aimed to create an experience that moves and sensitizes the viewer. We feel we've achieved that thanks to the talent and commitment of our team and partners—each one a vital part of Si Vas para Chile,' Sebastián González said. 'We got involved with this visually stunning film because of its strong journalistic approach and deep human connection,' Juan Solera, co-founder of Jambika Docs, said. 'It handles a complex and global issue with remarkable balance, giving space to multiple perspectives. This documentary offers a nuanced, wide-ranging human response to the realities of immigration today—it doesn't simplify, it reveals.' The documentary was selected for work-in-progress and industry forums at CPH:DOX, Cannes Docs, Ventana Sur, FICViña and Sunny Side of the Doc. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week What's Coming to Disney+ in April 2025 The Best Celebrity Memoirs to Read This Year: From Chelsea Handler to Anthony Hopkins
