New Directors / New Films: "Happiness Academy"

Have you ever seen a film which mixes documentary with fiction? Hybrid films, films with documentary and fiction parts or at least performed / acted elements have been around for some time. I'm not enough of a documentary expert to know if this is an increasing trend but in the past few years I've seen a few. From my (extremely limited) experience the combo can spark frissons of excitement and thoughtful layers as in Sarah Polley's autobiographical mystery Stories We Tell. The hybrid approach can also be both fascinating and exhausting simultaneously as with Clio Barnard's The Arbor (2010) in which actors lipsynched to recorded interviews from the actual documentary subjects.

At this year's New Directors / New Films festival, which wraps today in NYC, the hybrid technique (genre?) gets another discussable entry via Happiness Academy...

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Happy Birthday, Isabelle Huppert!

by Daniel Crooke

Known most recently from her starring role as "Visiting European Dignitary Whose Queenliness Clearly Outshines Her Present Yankee Company" from the taut, twisty thriller Angels in Awards Season in America, lauded subversive, all-around transgressor, and actressexual heartthrob Isabelle Huppert celebrates her 64th birthday today by doing what we all hope to be doing at sixty-four years of age: still absolutely slaying the game.

Now that she's wrapped up months of feigning surprise on stage while gleefully clutching golden trinkets she has never not deserved, Madame Huppert is back to work...

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Big Little Tweetweek

Basics: "We're glad the season is over so we won't hear more about your Isabelle Huppert."
Me:.. pic.twitter.com/c379TiY5zO

— Ali Benz (@Alibenzkr) March 12, 2017

The hilarious thing is she's always worked this much. Good luck to all the new completists out there at ever finishing her filmography!

After the jump Chris Hemsworth, Big Little Lies, the Gyllenhaals, film critic humor, and prayers for Barbra Streisand... 

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International Women's Day: "White Material"

by Robert Balkovich

Today is International Women's Day. To honor this day, a look back at a great female directed film that was critically lauded at the time but tends to not get the legacy attention it deserves: Claire Denis' "White Material."

Set in an unnamed former French colony in Africa on the brink of violent civil war, White Material is not new territory for Denis – a French national who grew up in Cameroon, Burinka Faso, Somalia and Senegal – but it does represent a more searing look at the ways in which colonialism has completely uprooted the continent.

Our hero of the story is no hero at all...

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The Many Faces of the Shocked Oscar Crowd

Chris here, to help you finally digest the shock ending of the Oscarcast, even if Meryl is still frozen in place. And maybe we can get the jokes out of your system as well.

By now we've all dissected crowd photos and video footage of the stunned response of famous people in the crowd like it was our own little Oscar Zapruder film. But if there's a silver lining moment for Moonlight's moment being a bumpy one (the history books will always honor it, remember) it's all of the delicious face we were served, from a heart-palpitated Trevante Rhodes, to a Snapchatting Taraji P. Henson, to well, Meryl.

Luckily for you readers, The Film Experience has obtained exclusive audio files to tell you exactly how every star responded...

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