Beyond White Space
As the owner and visual effects supervisor at Filmworks, FX, Inc., Ken Locsmandi has worked on films by major directors like David Fincher, David O. Russell and the Wachowskis. In the last couple of years, he has expanded his company’s scope, producing his own films in an attempt to put his expertise and resources to use on independent work that can stand alongside studio productions costing literally hundreds of times what he has to spend. When I saw Locsmandi’s directorial debut, Beyond White Space, as it traveled around the film festival circuit this year, I was stunned by its level of ambition and scale; the movie holds its own against just about any other sci-fi film of 2018 in terms… Read more
By Jim Hemphill
Blind Vaysha
The Virtual Reality Portal at the FilmGate Interactive Media Festival, which this year overlapped with Art Basel in downtown Miami, featured a wealth of new discoveries alongside some stellar high-profile projects. Among the three-dozen or so interactive works on display were a pair that made for great companion pieces. The first was Lynette Wallworth’s “psychedelic documentary” Awavena, an inner trip that I’d just missed experiencing at IDFA DocLab (and which made me wish that every VR experience came with a hammock). The second, Eliza McNitt’s Sundance-premiering outer trip Spheres, also had perhaps the widest target audience of any of the pieces represented. As I waited in line, watching a little boy who looked to be having a ball participating in… Read more
By Lauren Wissot
Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in A Star is Born
This is not a good time to be in love. At least not if you’re a movie character in an awards season that is awash in tragically doomed romances. In the last week alone I’ve seen couplings quashed by systemic racism (If Beale Street Could Talk), politics (Cold War), and unconquerable inner demons (a second go-round for me with A Star is Born). No one seems to be swimming off into the sunset with their fishman this year. In addition to ill-fated relationships, Beale Street, Cold War and A Star Is Born share another common element — sumptuous cinematography. In A Star Is Born, that comes courtesy of Matthew Libatique. A longtime collaborator of director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a… Read more
By Matt Mulcahey
The Morning After
In The Morning After an interracial lesbian couple wake up the day after the 2016 general election to find their world changed. They drag their tired bodies out of bed to have brunch with one of the women’s fathers, who presents a charming, welcoming veneer despite his soon-to-be revealed political leanings. Written and directed by Lauren Minnerath, and starring Taylor Hess (a Filmmaker contributing editor) and Adenike Thomas, the short film methodically dissects an already tense instance of “meet the parents,” made all the more trying by the present circumstance. Check it out above.
By Sarah Salovaara
Grisaille
The Sundance Film Festival’s always-revelatory New Frontier section announced its 2019 lineup today. Dedicated to work sitting at the “dynamic crossroads of film, art and technology,” New Frontier typically explores various forms of new media, including VR, AR, mixed reality and work implementing artificial intelligence. Amongst the highlights are the first time, I believe, that the Magic Leap technology has appeared in a Sundance selection, here in a work co-created by the Royal Shakespeare Company; Eminem taking you on a nighttime Detroit ride in VR; the VR component of Roger Ross Williams’s multi-format Traveling While Black project; painter turned VR artist Teek Mach’s Grisaille; and new work from some of the field’s strongest artists and New Frontier veterans: Doug Aitken,… Read more
By Scott Macaulay
Cole
One of the very best shorts of the year has made its way online. Actor David Call wrote, directed and stars in Cole, an elliptical drama about a combat veteran who’s suffered a traumatic brain injury and is struggling to reintegrate himself into the working world. With a steady, almost minimalist approach, Call relays the quotidian rejection that his character faces to heartbreaking effect. Check it out above.
By Sarah Salovaara
A Morning Light
“Big Companies Can’t Change or Adapt… We are a Speedboat”: Director and VFX Artist Ken Locsmandi on His Under $1 Million, Lo-Fi Sci-Fi Beyond White Space
Dec 10, 2018
“If the Content is Sh*t, It Will Still be Sh*t in VR and AR”: Virtual Reality and Hard Truth at the 2018 FilmGate Interactive Media Festival
Dec 9, 2018
“We Wanted to Keep the Light as Unobtrusive as Possible”: A Star is Born Cinematographer Matthew Libatique
Dec 8, 2018
Trailer Watch: Alexandre Nahon’s Burning Shadow
Dec 8, 2018
Back to One, Episode 36: The Long Dumb Road‘s Jason Mantzoukas
Dec 6, 2018
Magic Leap, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Eminem and Traveling While Black: Sundance Announces 2019 New Frontier Slate
Dec 5, 2018
Five Misconceptions of Errol Morris’s American Dharma and Why It’s Still Without Distribution
Dec 5, 2018
AFI Names Its Top 10 Films and TV Shows of the Year
Dec 4, 2018
Watch: The Beginning and the End: Legendary Filmmakers’ First and Last Shots
Dec 4, 2018
Watch: Lauren Minnerath’s Short, The Morning After
Watch: David Call’s Short Film Cole
