Propaganda can be well-intentioned. It can be dangerous. It can be art. It can be uplifting. It can be hurtful. It can be anything and everything. With all communication, the motive and purpose of the message are key. But so are the reception and perception. While misunderstandings and misinterpretations are not necessarily the fault of the messenger, they’re also not always mistaken reactions. The documentary Torn: The Israel-Palestine Poster War on NYC Streets should serve as a reminder that images (including text) can contain multitudes. In support of its own theme, though, the film’s statement shall be divisive. That only proves it’s a success.

Torn explores the creation and evolution of a piece of artistic transmission that became personalized and politicized to the point where its initial purpose was lost. Following the October 7 attacks by Hamas in 2023, posters showcasing Israeli hostages began appearing around New York City. As presented in the documentary, for some, these posters were cathartic. For others, they were propaganda meant for the justification of the ensuing bombing in Gaza. Many were torn down. That act begat actions and reactions that themselves became propaganda via social media. The hostages were exploited and re-exploited for political reasons, often performatively so.

Much of the individual activism on both sides was empty and uninformed. Or, merely informed by simplistic ideology spouted in less than a minute on social media. But it added up to attention to two sides of an issue, and it could result in a conversation had by anyone not afraid to tread the gray areas of complex discourse. Torn does lean more toward one of the two sides, but not at the expense of the other. The filmmakers claim, via a title card, that they invited representatives for the poster-tearers but were turned down. However, they did get anonymous arguments to share, which are read and given fair consideration in the film by one of their more objective interviewees.

It’s a shame that none of these pro-Palestine commentators show their faces because director Nim Shapira shows a clear interest in people over politics. It’s the whole point of the documentary. Many of the participants were affected personally by the October 7 attacks, the kidnappings, and the posters, whether they were blood relatives of hostages or former acquaintances. As with any war movie, this one about a fight with and over posters is better for focusing on individuals and the human element. It relates to the fact that at the center of this particular conflict, and the greater war, are real people, most notably here, both the Israeli hostages and innocent victims in Gaza.

Phrases like “both things can be true” and “at the same time” (the latter used in the film by one interviewee as a conjunction) tend to be forgotten in these times of (as is also acknowledged) the “moral binary” of today’s society. We all need to think more about how our speech and actions will be received, not for self-censorship but for social awareness. Immediate, spontaneous, and passionate statements are powerful but may be met with the same, and it’s up to both parties to eventually come to an empathetic discussion. So many clips in Torn showing angry people on both sides yelling their opinions and insults, and then walking away is where it’s all going wrong.

The Mexican pop star opens up about how a new era in her life is shaping the future of her music

The Mexican pop star opens up about how a new era in her life is shaping the future of her music

The documentary focuses on McCartney’s post-Beatles career with Wings.

Venice: For her debut doc, Coppola chronicles the work of her long-time friend and collaborator, avoiding hagiography in favor of something more elusive.

German-based cinematographer Tim Pfautsch was a uniquely excellent choice to lens the experimental documentary Fassaden (internationally titled Curtains). Narrated by acclaimed actress Sandra Hüller (Zone Of Interest, Anatomy Of a Fall), the documentary explores the onset and progression of domestic violence, interweaving expert advocate testimonials with raw dance sequences. With a strong background in music video and experimental filmmaking, Pfautsch worked intimately with the director and choreographer to depict the emotional rollercoaster of an unraveling relationship. The cinematographer looked to the versatility and nimbleness of Astera Titan and Hyperion Tubes to light the pivotal dance scenes that structure Fassaden.

Fassaden is no lighthearted film, tackling heavy and complex themes with a careful, nuanced touch. “The film has a very clear arc and structure,” Pfautsch explains. “When interviewing the women for the film, our director Alina Cyranek found that almost all, if not all, of these toxic relationships starts the same. While there are many different reasons why women might stay with a partner–there is a very real danger that the relationship will end with a femicide.” The filmmakers aimed to share this story in way that was palatable and instructive while artfully opening audiences to a painful topic.

The explosively emotional core of Fassaden is found in the choreographed sequences of a female and male dancer which illustrate a relationship poisoned by violence. “The dance sequences operate as a canvas that Sandra Hüller’s voice paints over,” Pfautsch says. For these scenes to embrace their full potential, he needed a versatile lighting set up that would not restrict the dancers or camera’s ability for dynamic movement.

Due to a typically modest documentary budget, Pfautsch and his gaffer would be the only lighting crew on set. As such he needed a comprehensive lighting set up that could be quickly adjusted for diverse looks, without additional manpower. “I decided to use a 20×20 ft overhead rig made of Astera Titan and Hyperion Tubes that we could place before the shoot.” He designed ‘lighting zones’ which could be brightened or dimmed using the Astera App to create novel ambience without ever touching the fixture. “The Astera App was really crucial–everyone knows how to operate the app, so even if my gaffer of choice wasn’t available, I could easily have someone step in to control the console.”

Pfautsch affixed four 79.9” Hyperion and eight 40.7” Titan Tubes to a square frame, sandwiched with Ultrabounce above and ½ Grid below. Battery-powered and lightweight LEDs, the Tubes were easily lofted into place over the studio floor on a prep day. During the two shooting blocks Pfautsch and his gaffers, Benjamin Hirlinger and Stefan Hannig, would tweak the zones remotely from ground level, and when an additional backlight was required, they introduce one movable unit, a Kino Flo shell with four Titan Tubes mounted inside.

With this deceivingly simple lighting setup, an extraordinary amount of emotional variation could be exercised. Pfautsch cultivated variations in shadow and color temperature to illustrate the fraying of the relationship. “One really impactful dance scene takes place after she gets away from her abuser. She has this very contemplative moment, by herself where she examines her own body. We talked a lot about how we wanted to feel like we were inside her head,” the cinematographer describes. “That informed the lighting and camera work.” A chill stillness permeates the scene, as the lighting colour is pushed to a super cool daylight. The woman’s awakening and relief are etched through intimate cinematography that traces her pained self-reflection.

Elsewhere warm lighting creates a potent feeling of tension combined with handheld camerawork. “In the second to last scene, she dances herself free. She has escaped the relationship but is chased by flashbacks. We shot flashbacks handheld and set the color balance to be much warmer, and then really saturated that warmth in post-production, as if to underline how much pressure the character is under.”

With overhead, versatile lighting the dances and camera fluidly traverse the studio space, to breath-taking effect. Pfautsch embraced a dichotomy of light in Fassaden, creating an unforgettable experience. “For many viewers the film helps illuminate where domestic violence begins–that it can be very small actions that grow,” he relates. “It’s a film that tries to educate where psychological and physical abuse can start, before violence necessarily.

“Astera has been with me since the beginning,” concludes Pfautsch. “For this project, we put a lot of care into how to depict the emotions—and lighting was integral to this.”

Learn more about the film and future screenings: www.instagram.com/timpfautsch

The post Cinematographer Pfautsch brings Astera Titan & Hyperion for Fassaden experimental doc appeared first on Cinematography World.

Here’s the first trailer for Mike Figgi’s “Megadoc,” which I reviewed a few days ago.

The film, which premiered at Venice, peels back the curtain on Coppola’s $120M gamble, “Megalopolis.” Watching “Megadoc,” you don’t quite know whether to laugh or to wince. Figgis doesn’t shy away either. He seems to be shooting everything.

Back in 2023, Figgis, best known for “Leaving Las Vegas,” embedded himself within the orbit of Coppola’s passion project, capturing everything from early pre-production to the disastrous rollout. The result is “MegaDoc,” a look at what might be one of the most controversial and divisive film productions in recent memory.

The doc seems to delight in the chaos. The logistics, before, and during production, must have been a total nightmare to experience for cast and crew. Coppola, financing his own dream project, comes off as a self-aggrandizing control freak, but the scenes most will be taking away from the doc is the epic tug-of-war between Coppola and Shia LaBeouf.

One of the more gripping moments in the doc is when Coppola fires the entire VFX department midway through production, reports had previously stated it was allegedly over their “allegiance to the Marvel Universe mode of filmmaking.”

Talks are underway about a possible theatrical pairing: a re-release of “Megalopolis” with “MegaDoc” playing beforehand. A limited solo rollout for the documentary is set for September 19 via Utopia.

Venice: She creates her own fan “Vertigo” fan art and retains one astounding bit of cinematic sartorial history in her possession.

Laura Poitras’ latest documentary, “Cover-Up,” the best film I’ve seen at Venice, so far, is a direct encounter with Seymour Hersh, and at 88 he still comes off like a man allergic to bullshit.

For nearly six decades, Hersh has been reporting truth bombs the mainstream press would rather sweep under the carpet—My Lai, Abu Ghraib, Watergate, CIA spying. It’s an astonishing résumé, but what Poitras and co-director Mark Obenhaus capture isn’t just the résumé. Hersh himself, by turns charming, irritable, cagey, is a magnetic presence on screen, exuding the battered, and highly pessimistic, charisma of someone who’s had to fight too hard for too long and yet, still can’t stop.

The Hersh sit-down takes place at his home office, in conversation, papers and boxes scattered all over his office, almost deliberately. There’s nothing glossy here; Poitras doesn’t need gloss. She has Hersh’s voice, who speaks like a man who knows where the bodies are buried, and most likely realized, decades ago, that intel agencies had bugged his communications.

The documentary moves through the greatest hits of Hersh’s career, using stunning archival footage, and the sheer scope of his reporting makes the film feel like an alternative history of America, told from the view point of someone who never trusted the story being told by the mainstream press.

The last stretch, when it brushes against more recent Hersh stories, wavers a bit, as if Poitras wasn’t sure how much weight to give Hersh’s late-career work. It’s quite clear the establishment press has closed its doors on him, and Hersh now publishes on Substack, still trying to find the next big bombshell — his most recent grenade implicated the CIA in the bombing of the Nord Stream Pipeline.

If the documentary has a centerpiece, it’s the My Lai Massacre—the story that made Hersh and still disturbs to this day. Hundreds of Vietnam civilians gunned down, for no reason. Poitras approaches it with urgency and fury. Even though the likes of The Washington Post and The New York Times were well aware of what happened in My Lai, they initially refused to report on it, until Hersh finally did.

Watching “Cover-Up” feels like an encounter with history, journalism, and a man who won’t stop fighting the powerful, even as the powers-that-be continuously aim to shut him down. Poitras has always been fascinated by anti-establishment fighters, from Edward Snowden to Julian Assange, and now Hersh had been added to her canon of films.

Mike Figgis calls his behind-the-scenes chronicle “Megadoc,” but he might as well have titled it “LaBeouf vs Coppola.”

The film, which premiered at Venice yesterday, peels back the curtain on Coppola’s $120M gamble, “Megalopolis,” referred to by some online hoodlums as “Megaflopolis.”

The doc seems to delight in the chaos. The logistics, before, and during production, must have been a total nightmare to experience for cast and crew. Coppola, financing his own dream project, comes off as a self-aggrandizing weirdo, but the scenes most will be taking away from the doc is the epic tug-of-war between Coppola and Shia LaBeouf.

LaBeouf, at first in total glee over being cast in Coppola’s film — since, in his own words, he had become “Hollywood persona non grata” — is both a catastrophe for ‘Megalopolis’ and a total gift for Figgis and “Megadoc.” He says it himself: he had no business being in this movie, describing his status in Hollywood as “nuclear.” He wasn’t exaggerating. The arrests, the lawsuits, the meltdowns. We learn that Jon Voight, part guardian angel, slipped LaBeouf into Coppola’s ensemble, and suddenly the outcast had a role.

LaBeouf arrives trembling, convinced he’d be fired within days, and then immediately starts fighting with Coppola.

The actor who least belongs there is also the one who gives Figgis the richest material. LaBeouf frets over blocking, whines about tape marks on the floor “inhibiting” his acting, and turns every Coppola demand into an epic argument. Coppola, tries to persuade, then pleads, then finally explodes. “I know what I’m talking about!” he furiously shouts. LaBeouf refuses, Coppola storms to his trailer to direct the rest of the day’s shoot by remote control. It’s delightful and farcical Cinema verité.

There are apologies, too, the kind that arrive in the middle of the night. Coppola sends an email, acknowledging LaBeouf’s performance while confessing they’ll never see the world the same way. LaBeouf, half-amused, half-wounded, recounts the story to Figgis in melancholic mode. He knows he was trouble. He believes the end result is that he gave Coppola something the film couldn’t have sparked otherwise.

Watching “Megadoc,” you don’t quite know whether to laugh or to wince. Figgis doesn’t shy away either. He seems to be shooting everything. However, it’s the LaBeouf and Coppola feud that steals the show, much like “Megalopolis” itself, it’s overblown, maddening, absurd, ambitious, and impossible to look away from.