Though 2016 will be remembered as the year when a slew of iconic celebrities died, none will have gone out with as much style as David Bowie. Today marks a year since the British singer-songwriter seemed to have turned his death into an artistic statement.
The “singularity” can’t come soon enough for Miami artist Jillian Mayer. The ability to upload human consciousness to the cloud, giving that consciousness the power to create, experience, and process information at the rate of a computer, seems fit for the 30-year-old artist. Mayer’s work blurs the lines between the…
When multimedia artist Agustina Woodgate was invited to participate in Miami-Dade County’s inaugural public art program for the Underline — a linear, 9.7-mile park that’s planned to run beneath Metrorail — she knew she had to activate her online radio station, RadioEE, a project she has been producing since 2011.
Welcome to Miami, Landmark Theatres. After a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Coral Gables Mayor Jim Cason at the Shops of Merrick Park during a VIP preview reception Thursday, the anticipated grand opening the following day of the Landmark at Merrick Park had to be pushed back a week because of “technical issues.”
The New York-based sculptor/musician/performance artist Naama Tsabar is no stranger to Art Basel Miami Beach. Asked how many times she has been in the official show, she offhandedly says, “I think three.” But this year, Tsabar will take part in two Art Basel Miami Beach exhibitions, one a performance…
It’s been five years since multimedia artist/filmmaker Jillian Mayer went viral with the 63-second short film I Am Your Grandma. The video has screened at many respectable film festivals and exhibited at scores of notable art galleries. It will finally make its official Art Basel Miami Beach premiere during the annual fair’s 2016 outdoor short-films program, Best Dressed Chicken in Town.
Agustina Woodgate sits in the corner of a worn, old futon in her Little River studio, twirling a black glob of myrrh on a toothpick. She sparks the blob occasionally with a lighter, releasing fragrant spirals of smoke. Occasionally, when the incense heats up, she lays it on tiny gray…
To the rest of America, the countries of the Caribbean might seem like nothing more than a bunch of beachy vacation destinations. But when Jason Fitzroy Jeffers imagines the region, he sees the future. Jeffers, who is from Barbados, says the Caribbean is a microcosm of mixing. “The people of…
Remember staring at the classroom clock in high school, waiting for the bell to ring? Sometimes, those final minutes felt as though they dragged on for hours, and you could have sworn the minute hand sluggishly dragging across the clock face ticked backward for a brief second. It’s entirely possible…
Spanish writer/director Jonás Trueba admits he has a bit of baggage with Miami. The 35-year-old was only a teenager when he was last here. His father, writer/director Fernando Trueba, followed up his Oscar-winning movie Belle Epoque with what would be his first and only English-language film, Two Much. The film…
Informed that the CDC has recommended that pregnant women avoid the Wynwood neighborhood where her new movie, Evolution, is to have its Florida premiere, writer/director Lucile Hadzihalilovic can’t help but burst into laughter. “Is this on purpose?” she asks during an interview from France. She wonders if the twisted minds…
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos came to national attention for his 2009 film Dogtooth, a dark family drama whose odd tendencies are hardly explained until the film’s end. It earned him a foreign language Oscar nomination. Normally, Hollywood comes calling to such directors, but Lanthimos has more interest in creative freedom…
Before Barack Obama opened diplomatic relations with Cuba, a filmmaker was breaking down barriers to shoot the first Hollywood movie there in 55 years. In 2014, after years of clearing red tape with the U.S. State Department and working with Canada, producer/director Bob Yari began shooting a film about Ernest…
Actor Jesse Eisenberg is known as a jittery person who speaks with a nervous stammer punctuated by “um”s and “uh”s. That characteristic is in full effect when he apologizes for calling a New Times reporter eight minutes past the scheduled time. The Oscar nominee says that after five months of…
Last week, the film The Sun Like a Big Dark Animal (El Sol Como un Gran Animal Oscuro) – directed by Miami-based filmmakers Christina Felisgrau and Ronnie Rivera (together known as Bleeding Palm) – made its online debut. Produced by the Miami-based Borscht Corp., the short had its world premiere at the 2015…
North Miami-born-and-raised writer/director Kelly Reichardt is a well-respected indie filmmaker. More than 20 years after she debuted her first film at Sundance Film Festival in 1994, River of Grass has been restored and re-released. For three nights only, it will screen at the Miami Beach Cinematheque beginning Wednesday, April 20. The…
It’s been a long time coming, but Miami mainstays the Baboons have finally released a new album. It’s called Spanglish, and the LP is an epic 15-track work inspired by all things Miami culture. “This is almost from a lifetime of experience of this place,” says Baboons founder/drummer/singer Mano Pila. 15 years…
Avant-garde filmmaker, writer, and poet Jonas Mekas has seen many things. He was at the wake of fellow poet Allen Ginsberg, he attended John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “bed-in,” and he was even at the Velvet Underground’s first public performance. But he has never been properly been introduced to Miami…
It was no surprise to Colombian writer/director Ciro Guerra when his movie, Embrace of the Serpent, didn’t win an Oscar this year. When New Times spoke to him a few weeks prior about his nomination, he laughed and said, “Honestly, I have no idea how it works. I’m just very…
Through the course of history, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and Sen. Jesse Helms have been linked. With the documentary Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato (The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Inside Deep Throat) quickly get the connection out of the way in an opening montage…
Jia Zhangke is one of China’s great living filmmakers. A master of the ordinary, he delivers quality that never falters. After his rich and violent film A Touch of Sin, Zhangke returns with something more intimate, though no less critical of China’s social fabric. Mountains May Depart follows a woman’s…
Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato are riding high on the buzz from their documentary’s first screening at Miami Dade College’s Miami International Film Festival. They were surprised at the amount of moving comments they heard from festival goers who stood up to ask questions after the East Coast Premiere of…
