IVAN BARNEV AND ASSORTED FEMALE FRIENDS IN DIRECTOR JIRÍ MENZEL’S I SERVED THE KING OF ENGLAND. COURTESY SONY PICTURES CLASSICS. Ji?í Menzel is rather like a character from literary fiction, the brilliant best friend who is beset by bad luck but accepts his lot in life with a wry, philosophical smile. Menzel, born in the former Czechoslovakia on the cusp of World War II, grew up with a passion for theatre but failed to get into drama school due to a perceived lack of ability. Instead he went to film school, where he was taught by the seminal Czech director […]
MATT BOREN, FLO JACOBS AND KEN JACOBS IN DIRECTOR AZAZEL JACOBS’ MOMMA’S MAN. COURTESY KINO INTERNATIONAL. Trying to make it as a director is difficult – and particularly so when your father is one of the most respected filmmakers in his field – however in the last few years Azazel Jacobs has made a name for himself in his own right with a string of individual and resonant films. Jacobs, the son of avant garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs and painter Flo Jacobs, grew up in New York City and studied film at Purchase University in upstate New York. His graduation […]
ROBERT ENGLUND AND TREVOR MATTHEWS IN DIRECTOR JON KNAUTZ’S JACK BROOKS: MONSTER SLAYER. COURTESY ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT. At a time when horror films are getting ever more brutal, Jon Knautz brings a comfortingly old- fashioned feel to genre filmmaking. The Ottawa-born writer-director, who grew up on a diet of slasher films and 50s creature features, went to Vancouver Film School to pursue his dream of making movies. Knautz’s graduation project, Apt. 310 (2002), a stylish, tightly scripted noir, was the first in a series of shorts that harked back to classic modes of filmmaking. After making the blood-spattered comedy horror […]
PATTI SMITH IN DIRECTOR STEVEN SEBRING’S PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE. COURTESY PALM PICTURES. Since he first picked up a camera, Steven Sebring has been defying expectations and blurring genre boundaries. A South Dakota native who grew up in Arizona, Sebring taught himself photography during his teens and then honed his style during several years spent in Europe. Following his return to the States, the mix of glamor and grit he brought to his images made him an in-demand fashion photographer, and also distinguished himself as an inventive celebrity portraitist. His background in fashion and an interest in cinema led […]
A true independent, documentarian Dorothy Fadiman has resolutely worked outside the system for more than 30 years. Pittsburgh native Fadiman was a Stanford speech pathology graduate with a husband and two kids when, in 1976, an LSD trip inspired her to become a filmmaker. The resulting short, Radiance, took a religious, poetic and academic look at light in the universe, and motivated Fadiman to continue to make films driven by her passions and interests. A grassroots activist since the early 60s, Fadiman has predominantly focused on social and political issues in her documentaries, and she had tremendous success with the […]
MARDI GRAS QUEEN HELEN MEAHER IN DIRECTOR MARGARET BROWN’S THE ORDER OF MYTHS. COURTESY CINEMA GUILD. Though she may appear to casual observers as simply a gifted young chronicler of Southern culture, Margaret Brown’s talents extend beyond that. The daughter of Milton Brown, the songwriter who penned the catchy title song for the Clint Eastwood vehicle Every Which Way But Loose, Brown was raised in Mobile, Alabama, and since graduating from university has been highly active behind the camera. In the past decade, Brown’s filmmaking career has been impressively diverse: she first produced the Student Academy Award-winning short Six Miles […]
LAU CHING WAN IN DIRECTOR JOHNNIE TO’S MAD DETECTIVE. COURTESY IFC FILMS. Somewhere between John Woo and the auteurs of the French New Wave lies Hong Kong native Johnnie To, currently one of the most engaging and vibrant directors in world cinema. The 53-year-old started making action movies in 1980, and over the course of the next decade and a half established himself as a skilled genre director, not only of thrillers but also of light comedies and melodramas. He rose to prominence with a number of highly successful collaborations with star Chow Yun Fat and in 1996, along with […]
AN IRAQI ROLE PLAYER IN TONY GERBER AND JESSE MOSS’ FULL BATTLE RATTLE. COURTESY MILE END FILMS. A strong partnership always relies on both individuals bringing different things to the table, and documentary filmmakers Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss certainly draw on diverse backgrounds for their creative collaboration. New York City native Gerber began his career directing alternative theater and making films for theatrical productions, and went on to work with conceptual artist Matthew Barney on Cremaster III (2002) and Drawing Restraint 9 (2005). He directed the short film, Small Taste of Heaven in 1997, and his debut fiction feature, […]
SCOTT PRENDERGAST AND CHRISTINE TAYLOR IN KABLUEY. COURTESY REGENT RELEASING. Like his much buzzed shorts, Scott Prendergast’s debut feature brings to the screen his poignant outsider’s perspective and talent for creating vivid comic characters. Born in Galveston, Texas but raised in Portland, Oregon, Prendergast attended Columbia University and then pursued a career as a comic writer and improviser at L.A.’s Groundlings Theater. He went on to develop his own one man comedy improv show, UNman, which had a two-year run in NYC. In the late 90s, he started making short films – grounded as much in performance comedy as cinema […]
ASIA ARGENTO IN DIRECTOR CATHERINE BREILLAT’S THE LAST MISTRESS. COURTESY IFC FILMS. Hated and loved in equal measure, Catherine Breillat is a filmmaker who could never be accused of being boring. The French writer director seems courting controversy since the beginning of her career: she was a literary sensation at the age of 17 when she published her first novel, L’homme Facile which was sufficiently racy to be forbidden reading for minors and her first cinematic involvement was acting in Bernardo Bertolucci’s sordid classic Last Tango in Paris (1972). She made her directorial debut in 1976 with an adaptation of […]