Watching Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs made me think of E. M. Forster. This particular passage from Howards End to be precise: Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die. The film struck…

This is just another heads up that the Generation DIY series starts at the IFC Center on Wednesday for all of you who are just itching to find out what the hell this darn mumblecore nonsense is all about. And the lovely IndieWIRE gang are doing a special event at the Apple Store on Thursday to tie in with the series. Here’s the info: An Evening with Generation DIY: Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig, Aaron Katz and Aaron Hillis at Apple…

Oh dear – nothing for weeks and then I just can’t stop the posts coming! There are some great film events coming up though that I feel I must share. Manda Bala is opening at the Angelika tomorrow – this intense and beautifully made documentary about Brazil was a favorite of mine at Sundance earlier this year and I’m really looking forward to seeing it again, outside of the film fest bubble. And then next week The New Talkies: Generation…

Brits reading this blog might not be familiar with the group of super-indie US filmmakers who have been labelled with the “Mumblecore” moniker. I wrote about this right after SXSW this year when everybody there was buzzing, or rather mumbling, about Joe Swanberg and a few other filmmakers who have been doing the festival circuit with him. As this recent Filmmaker Magazine article illustrates, the origins of Mumblecore can actually be traced back to SXSW 2005 when the Duplass Brothers’…