Authors — David Licata
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Five Questions with Triumph of the Wall Director Bill Stone
Like many documentaries, Bill Stone’s Triumph of the Wall began its life as one thing and transformed into something else. Initially Stone sought to document the construction of a 1,000 foot dry-stone wall by Chris Overing, a young man with an impressively diverse resume that lacked one necessary skill for the project: masonry. Overing estimated the project would take two months and Stone decided to chronicle Overing’s effort. The filmmaker had at the time “a vague idea of the film exploring commitment.” But Overing underestimated a bit: eight years later he was still constructing the wall and Stone was still […]
by David Licata on May 28, 2013 -
Five Questions for Unmade in China Directors Gil Kofman and Tanner King Barklow
Screenwriter George Richards wrote Case Sensitive as “an American thriller with American actors for an American audience.” Director Gil Kofman (The Memory Thief) brought the script to producer Seth Scher, who had connections to a Chinese investor who was making films for the Chinese market. The film was greenlit and Kofman, who does not speak Chinese, traveled to Xiamen, China, to direct his second narrative feature. Soon afterward his friend, documentary filmmaker Tanner King Barklow, joined him and began documenting Kofman’s travails as he tried to navigate a colossal language barrier, bureaucracy, corruption, and cultural differences. Early in the documentary […]
by David Licata on May 1, 2013 -
Five Questions with Herman’s House Director Angad Singh Bhalla
Angad Singh Bhalla uses film to bring us voices we rarely hear. After spending months with Indian villagers who had been resisting an alumina project backed by the Canadian company Alcan, he produced his first independent project U.A.I.L. Go Back. It was used widely as an organizing tool and helped pressure Alcan to end its involvement in the project. Passionate about using media as a tool for social change, Bhalla has since produced videos for groups including the Service Employees International Union, Human Rights Watch, and The Center for Constitutional Rights. His award-winning short on the lives of Indian street […]
by David Licata on Apr 16, 2013 -
Five Different Routes to a Web Series
The web series can take many shapes, from a no-budget serial made in high-school media classes to Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog to Netflix’s long-format House of Cards. These are just three of probably thousands of web series out there produced, written, and directed specifically for the Internet. But there are other roads to web series. Here are five of them. The Longish Short Film Repurposed into a Web Series Filmmaking partners Jacob Hensberry and Ken Cook had plan for their short film, Planet X, a stylized, modern romantic comedy with sci-fi leanings. “We were going to use the […]
by David Licata on Mar 19, 2013 -
Five Questions with A Fierce Green Fire Director Mark Kitchell
In 1974, Francis Ford Coppola and the cast and crew of The Godfather Part II took over a Lower East Side block in Manhattan. An NYU film student and resident of that block, Mark Kitchell, focused his camera on the proceedings. The result, The Godfather Comes to 6th Street, was not a fluffy “making of” film but a document of the good, the bad and the ugly that happens when a film crew descends on a neighborhood. A portrait of a community, the film also captured the efforts of a group of local activists who objected to the film’s presence; […]
by David Licata on Feb 27, 2013 -
The Up Films: The Speed of Life
“If one were to watch all of them, god forbid at one sitting, but over a period of time, how different they’d all be…” Michael Apted on the Up Series, from the director commentary of 42 Up. It begins in grainy black and white. A rambunctious boy runs in front of a brick wall, another walks through the foggy, rainy English countryside, three girls in a playground descend a slide side by side by side toward the camera. “In 1964,” a buttery, avuncular English voice-over begins, “Granada Television brought together a group of seven year olds, from all over the […]
by David Licata on Jan 8, 2013 -
Five Questions with 56 Up Director Michael Apted
The Up Series is a landmark set of documentaries looking at the circumstances of fourteen British citizens as they went about their lives. Initially commissioned as a one-off withSeven Up!, the series’ seed lies in the Jesuit motto of: “Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” What began as a study of class immobility in the UK has transformed from a political doc to an engrossing study of human nature. Since 1964, director Michael Apted (who began as a researcher on the first entry) has reconvened with the willing participants, with 2012 […]
by David Licata on Jan 3, 2013 -
Five Questions with Photographic Memory Director Ross McElwee
When Ross McElwee heeded the call to become a filmmaker in the mid 1970s, he enrolled in M.I.T.’s film program and studied with pioneering cinéma vérité documentarians Richard Leacock and Ed Pincus. Lighter, smaller cameras and advancements in sync-sound made it possible for one man to do what a film crew did not too many years before. McElwee would synthesize the lessons learned and use the new technology to create a distinctive kind of cinema. McElwee’s films are often filed in the “personal documentary” category. Like many labels, personal documentary seems inadequate, if not downright misleading. Yes, his family, friends, […]
by David Licata on Oct 10, 2012 -
Born Out of Grief: Kathy Leichter’s Here One Day
I first found out about Kathy Leichter’s documentary, Here One Day (above), via an email announcing the film’s Kickstarter campaign. Like many independent filmmakers, I receive many such emails. But what set this one apart from the others was the sender, filmmaker/editor (and friend) Pola Rapaport, whose work I greatly admire – and the film’s subject. Here One Day (screening at IFP’s Independent Film Week, Spotlight on Documentaries) is about Kathy’s mother’s bipolar disorder and suicide. It’s a story about what a person with mental illness does to a family — a story many of us can relate to — and […]
by David Licata on Sep 17, 2012 -
Werner Herzog and the Making of Heart of Glass
In 1976 Werner Herzog hypnotized his cast of actors and directed one of the strangest narrative films in the history of cinema, Heart of Glass. Alan Greenberg, then a young writer, aspiring filmmaker, and Herzog disciple, was on the set, and thirty-odd years later he, and Herzog, would like to tell you all about it. Hence, Every Night the Trees Disappear: Werner Herzog and the Making of “Heart of Glass” (Chicago Review Press). Greenberg had fallen under Herzog’s spell the year before, when he was sent by a film journal to interview the director. Neither cared for that process, but […]
by David Licata on May 24, 2012
