All posts tagged: Directors

Pope Leo Addresses Museum Directors

Pope Leo Addresses Museum Directors

Published by Jenni Sidey

Pope Leo XIV addressed a group of directors of globally renowned museums on Saturday at the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican, underlining the Catholic Church’s “special affinity with the arts.” The pontiff spoke to members of the Bizot group, also known as the International Group of Organizers of Major Exhibitions, whose member institutions include the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Singapore, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the British Museum in London, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, among other world-class institutions. Related Articles Founded in 1992, the group takes its name from Irène Bizot, former director of France’s Réunion des Musées Nationaux, who was instrumental in its establishment. Rijksmuseum director Taco Dibbits is its current president. The organization’s members met in Rome and Vatican City, including at the Vatican Museums, for a meeting devoted to the theme of materiality. “Art is the means by which persons, through their ingenuity, enhance and transfigure matter—that is, the creation in which they dwell …

Gaza documentary ‘NAZA’ sparks political storm, threats against directors in Israel

Gaza documentary ‘NAZA’ sparks political storm, threats against directors in Israel

Published by Sam Flores

On a street in southern Israel, a graffiti artist paints a mural depicting the filmmakers behind the award-winning documentary “NAZA”. But this is not a tribute. Red targets are painted next to the two Israeli directors, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, whose faces are branded with the word “TRAITORS”. A month ahead of close-fought elections, the documentary, which uses anonymous military sources to speak about Israel’s widespread killing of civilians in Gaza, has unleashed a political storm. To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. Accept Manage my choices One of your browser extensions seems to be blocking the video player from loading. To watch this content, you may need to disable it on this site. Try again An ensuing wave of threats and intimidation has targeted the film’s creators and their families. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has even said he intends to introduce legislation aimed at revoking the citizenship of people who “defame IDF soldiers”. “Their place is not among us,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on …

Israeli Minister threatens to Revoke Citizenship of ‘NAZA’ directors

Israeli Minister threatens to Revoke Citizenship of ‘NAZA’ directors

Published by Daniella Wilson

Israel‘s Culture Minister has said he will work to revoke the citizenship of Oscar-winning filmmakers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor over their new documentary, NAZA. Writing on X, Zohar described the film as “vile,” saying it “constitutes treason.” The documentary, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival on Saturday, features testimony from 24 Israeli military officers outlining the systems and protocols they allege Israel uses to target and kill civilians in Gaza. The film’s title, NAZA, comes from an acronym the Israeli military uses as a shorthand for civilian casualties. “This is exactly the reason I led the important reform in cinema so that Israeli citizens will no longer have to pay out of their own pockets for the harm to IDF soldiers and the State of Israel,” Zohar wrote, referring to his recent reforms of government funding for the Israeli film industry. NAZA, like the documentary No Other Land, directed by Zohar and Abraham together with Palestinian filmmakers Basel Adra and Hamdan Ballal, did not receive any Israeli public funding. …

Gary Oldman addresses clashes with Francis Ford Coppola on Dracula: Directors are ‘all a bit nuts’

Gary Oldman addresses clashes with Francis Ford Coppola on Dracula: Directors are ‘all a bit nuts’

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Gary Oldman has reflected on the on-set tensions that troubled the production of 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, joking: “We’re all a bit nuts.” Oldman, now 68, played the lead role in The Godfather and Apocalypse Now director Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of the classic vampire novel. During an appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, per Entertainment Weekly, Oldman accepted that the pair had “clashed” but said ultimately making the film was a “good experience.” “The interesting thing about it was that it was Francis Coppola’s Dracula, and how he would see it and what vision he’d bring to it,” said Oldman. “We sometimes would come together and we’d butt heads.” He continued: “We sometimes clashed, but then — and this is the funny thing — when I later directed, I used a clip from Apocalypse Now. I obviously …

The Original ‘Practical Magic’ Director, Griffin Dunne, Shares How His Personal Tragedy Influenced the Film

The Original ‘Practical Magic’ Director, Griffin Dunne, Shares How His Personal Tragedy Influenced the Film

Published by Sam Flores

The idea of hanging with Sandy was almost motivation enough. Apparently, it was her idea that I direct. We’d hit it off at a Sundance party, and she’d seen my short film that premiered there. Later, I would fly to London to meet Nicole on one of her rare days off from shooting Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Instead of pitching my take on Practical Magic, I used our time to interrogate her about working with Kubrick. After our lunch, I gave Nic a chaste kiss on the cheek before she stepped into a waiting car, both of us unaware that paparazzi were lurking. The next morning, one of the British tabloids had a grainy shot of me leaning into Nic’s face for what looked like a real make-out session, under a headline blaring something like, “Who is This Cad Nicole Is Cheating on Tom Cruise With?” On my second, more in-depth reading of Hoffman’s novel, I found certain themes that ran parallel to my life story, themes I might have understood more than most, …

Oasis documentary directors on watching Gallaghers mend relationship

Oasis documentary directors on watching Gallaghers mend relationship

Published by Daniella Wilson

Not so long ago, the idea of the Gallagher brothers ever reconciling seemed too far-fetched to be true. Liam and Noel – who had always had a temperamental relationship, to put it mildly – had not spoken to each other for 15 years after an infamously bitter falling out ahead of a gig in Paris back in 2009, and neither seemed especially keen on mending their brotherly bond. So while fans hoped and prayed that an Oasis reunion might be on the cards, for a long time it seemed that the iconic Mancunian band would forever be consigned to the past. Then came the announcement in 2024 that the band would be reforming after all for a record-breaking world tour the following year, which is now the focus of a brand new documentary suitably titled Don’t Look Back in Anger. The film is directed by Will Lovelace and Dylan Southern, who spoke exclusively to Radio Times ahead of release and admitted that they were among those fans who had all but given up hope of …

OpenAI adds a prominent AI doomer to its board of directors

OpenAI adds a prominent AI doomer to its board of directors

Published by skeptic

Paul Christiano, an influential AI researcher focused on keeping AI systems aligned with human interests and under human control, is joining the OpenAI Foundation board, the frontier lab said Wednesday. “I now believe there is a meaningful risk that rapid acceleration in AI capabilities leads to catastrophic and irreversible loss of control in the very near term,” Christiano wrote in a social media post. “I do not think that the AI industry in general, including OpenAI, is currently on track to reduce this risk to an acceptable level. I’m joining because I believe that if OpenAI rises to the occasion we could significantly reduce risk.” Christiano wrote that using AI models to train subsequent AI systems could result in an explosion of capabilities that their creators can’t control. He joins the board as OpenAI faces renewed scrutiny over its safety procedures, following a series of incidents in which AI agents broke out of restraints and penetrated outside computer systems without the knowledge of OpenAI’s researchers. On Tuesday, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned his position to …

What the CIA Director’s Mysterious Trip to Moscow Could Mean

What the CIA Director’s Mysterious Trip to Moscow Could Mean

Published by Sam Flores

CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s brief trip to Moscow yesterday was unannounced but hard to miss: He flew in a C-17A, a large heavy-transport plane, that open-source analysts quickly identified and tracked. Within hours, he was already on his way home. The purpose of Ratcliffe’s visit remains unknown. In an interview with Glenn Beck this morning, President Trump described it as “sort of semi-routine,” but such trips are rare. The previous time a director of the CIA went to Russia was in November 2021, when William J. Burns told Moscow that the United States knew of Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade Ukraine. A likelier explanation for this latest trip is that Russia is getting more dangerous and the Trump administration wanted to warn it against escalating. Ratcliffe’s visit comes at one of the most difficult periods in the war for the Kremlin. Thanks to its drone systems, Ukraine has been able to strike military targets and oil infrastructure deep inside Russia while also hindering Moscow’s advance on the battlefield, turning the front into a kill box …

Iconic horror film finally completes trilogy as director’s sons finish sequel

Iconic horror film finally completes trilogy as director’s sons finish sequel

Published by Daniella Wilson

Get the latest entertainment news, reviews and star-studded interviews with our Independent Culture email Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter Get the latest entertainment news with our free Culture newsletter When he was making the classic 1973 horror film The Wicker Man, director Robin Hardy always envisioned it as the first part of a trilogy. It took several decades for the second film, The Wicker Tree, to come to fruition, with Hardy ultimately releasing the film in 2011. When the acclaimed director died in 2016, it was believed that the series had come to an end – but now his sons have completed the project, with the third Wicker Man film, Wrath of the Gods, now premiering in London. Wrath of the Gods is directed by Justin and Dominic Hardy, who discovered a script their father had written for the third Wicker Man film. “The person who bought Justin’s old family home said they’d discovered six sacks of letters, scripts and other material pertaining to Robin Hardy and The Wicker Man …