Filmmaker

Spring 2013: Click here to read interviews with Frances Ha's Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, The Act of Killing's Joshua Oppenheimer, Before Midnight's Richard Linklater and more...

Featured

Cannes 2013: Polanski’s Venus in Fur and Katrin Gebbe’s Tore Tanzt

Venus in Fur Venus in Fur

My last day in Cannes brought about a number of mixed emotions: relief that the somewhat grueling schedule of waking up for early morning press screenings was coming to an end, disappointment that my time at the festival was over (and that I was shut out of the afternoon screening of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, bringing unceremonious closure to my festival experience), and excitement that I have had the experience of attending a festival like Cannes where there is so much energy devoted to the idea of cinema. Two of the last films I saw at the festival, though remarkably different in terms of subject matter, focused from very different perspectives on the issues of power and domination.…  Read more

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Cannes 2013: Prizes for Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week Announced

The Selfish Giant The Selfish Giant

As Cannes is coming to a close, the accolades are being handed out. We still have to wait for the Competition award ceremony,which will be on Sunday, but the Directors’ Fortnight and Critics Week have already both bestowed honors on their films. Though Directors’ Fortnight does technically have a competition, nevertheless prizes are handed out, with this year Guillaume Gallienne’s flamboyant comedy Les Garçons Et Guillaume, A Table! (an autobiographical piece about his difficult relationship with his mother) taking two prizes, and The Selfish Giant – Clio Barnard’s follow-up to The Arbor, a Cannes favorite in 2010 — also winning an award. (Barnard’s film got picked up by Sundance Selects in the past 24 hours, so U.S, audiences should expect to see…  Read more

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Shooting with a RED EPIC in Indonesia: Interview with David Kruta

indonesiafeatured

Cinematographer David Kruta spent a week in Indonesia this February shooting footage for the SurfAid charity to use in their promotional and educational campaigns. He took with him a RED EPIC, and says that the goal was to “bring a cinematic approach” to something that would be more often shot in a documentary style. Filmmaker: How did the project come about? Kruta: The director, Michael Lawrence, is a good friend of mine and I’ve done five or six projects with him. He said he had a shoot in Indonesia, and that he was going there to revisit the places he photographed after the tsunami and asked if I wanted to come along. Four days later, we were on a plane to Dubai…  Read more

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The New Digital Storytelling Series: Caspar Sonnen

IDFA_DocLab

For the final installment of Filmmaker and the MIT Open Documentary Lab’s interview project with the foremost thinkers on transmedia, IDFA DocLab’s Caspar Sonnen answers our questions. Sonnen is the new media coordinator for the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) and curator of the festival’s IDFA DocLab, a competition program for new forms of documentary and interactive storytelling. In 2008, Sonnen founded IDFA DocLab to create a platform for interactive and multimedia documentary storytelling that expands the genre beyond traditional cinema. Besides his work at IDFA, he is co-founder and programmer of the Open Air Film Festival Amsterdam. For an introduction to this entire series, and links to all the installments so far, check out “Should Filmmakers Learn to Code,”…  Read more

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Cannes 2013: Gray’s The Immigrant and Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty

The Immigrant The Immigrant

James Gray’s The Immigrant is Classic Hollywood melodrama, done incredibly well, a film that powerfully portrays the emotional journey of a Polish immigrant, Ewa (Marion Cotillard), and her pimp, Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix). It offers a powerful historical account of the connections between the mass immigration to the United States and the often desperate desire to achieve the American Dream, while also serving as a brutal reminder of the ways in which that dream was exploited by people who were willing to take advantage of new arrivals, many of whom were overwhelmed by their new home. Gray’s film borrows from classical cinema in order to convey the complex emotions felt by many first generation immigrants. The film’s story could have been…  Read more

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Rama Burshtein on Fill the Void

Fill the Void Fill the Void

There are few more unlikely and inspiring filmmaking success stories than that of Rama Burshtein. The 46-year-old New York City-born, Israel-based writer/director of Fill the Void had previously made handful of films specifically aimed at Jewish Orthodox audiences, but had defined herself primarily as a mother and a wife. Now she has become the first Israeli Orthodox woman to direct a film intended for those outside the Orthodox community. After going through the Sundance Screenwriting Labs, Burshtein’s debut feature had a remarkable festival run last year, world premiering without much fanfare at the Jerusalem Film Festival but then going on to play at Venice (where it won two awards), Toronto, New York, London and Sundance. It has since won seven Ophir awards (Israel’s equivalent of…  Read more

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Cannes 2013: Payne’s Nebraska and Puenzo’s Wakolda

Nebraska Nebraska

Alexander Payne’s Nebraska is an impressive achievement, a fresh and innovative take on that most familiar of genres, the road movie, one that takes conventions about the American heartland and turns them on their head. It’s also a story about a father and son learning to see and understand each other for the first time. The film opens with a shot of Woody Grant (Bruce Dern in what should be a performance that collects numerous awards) shuffling purposefully down a Billings, Montana, highway, his scraggly beard, limping gait and weathered face suggesting a man who has struggled for the little that he has. But this is undercut when we realize that Woody’s actions are part of a routine. He has…  Read more

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Filmmaking

James Franco in Cannes (Photo: Ariston Anderson) James Franco in Cannes (Photo: Ariston Anderson)

Ten Lessons on Filmmaking from James Franco

There’s a trend in actor-turned-director helmed films at Cannes this year, an impeccable direction of the people on screen. You can tell there’s a sense of trust and cohesive goal to create something great. One of the clearest examples of this is James Franco’s new feature…  Read more

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May 21, 2013

Columns

Frances Ha

Frances Ha — A Hammer To Nail Review

Frances Ha world premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. It is being distributed by IFC Films and opens theatrically on Friday, May 17, 2013. Visit the film’s official website to learn more. Just when it seems oh so skull-poundingly clear that the world…  Read more

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on May 16, 2013

Videos

Festivals & Events

The Immigrant The Immigrant

Cannes 2013: Gray’s The Immigrant and Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty

James Gray’s The Immigrant is Classic Hollywood melodrama, done incredibly well, a film that powerfully portrays the emotional journey of a Polish immigrant, Ewa (Marion Cotillard), and her pimp, Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix). It offers a powerful historical account of the connections between the mass immigration…  Read more

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on May 24, 2013

VOD Picks

  • upstream_color_xlg
    Upstream Color
    Independent
    Official Site
    5/7/2013 VOD
  • slp
    Silver Linings Playbook Comedy Drama
    The Weinstein Company
    Official Site
    4/30/2013 MOD

Interviews

Fill the Void Fill the Void

Rama Burshtein on Fill the Void

There are few more unlikely and inspiring filmmaking success stories than that of Rama Burshtein. The 46-year-old New York City-born, Israel-based writer/director of Fill the Void had previously made handful of films specifically aimed at Jewish Orthodox audiences, but had defined herself primarily as a mother and…  Read more

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on May 23, 2013

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