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Filmmaker Black Friday Sale, 40% Off All Subscriptions
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Please consider subscribing to Filmmaker — print or digital — for 40% off in our annual Black Friday sale. Subscribe by Tuesday, December 3, 10:00 AM, Eastern, use the coupon code BLACKFRIDAY, and receive, for U.S. readers, a four-issue print subscription for just $10 or a one-year digital subscription for just $6.00. (That's about one month of your favorite Substack!) Next Tuesday is also the cut-off to make it onto the mailing list for our Winter print issue, which hits mailboxes and Exact Editions (all print subscriptions include a free digital edition) by the end of the year, so subscribe now to receive that print issue. (Also, Filmmaker makes a great gift subscription for any film-loving friend or family member.) This sale is… Read more
“The Abortion Ban May Be Protecting the Unborn, But It’s Killing Our Women”: Antoinette Jadaone on Sunshine
Maris Racal in Sunshine
Around sixteen years ago, the late great Filipino film critic Alexis Tioseco saw Antoinette Jadaone’s student short films ‘plano (2005) and Saling Pusa (2006) and began championing her work. In the words of critic Oggs Cruz, Tioseco thought Jadaone was “the person that is most qualified to give Filipino mainstream filmmaking that much-needed burst of novel inspiration,” given that her “shorts are all tightly packaged confections that marry the popular appeal of mainstream escapist entertainment and the unique wit of more adventurous fare.” Two years after Tioseco’s death, Jadaone made her feature debut—a love letter to and critique of Filipino cinema called Six Degrees of Separation from Lilia Cuntapay—which she dedicated to him. Cinema in the Philippines has changed drastically in… Read more
Permission to Narrate: Narrative Sovereignty in Documentary
Suhad Babaa, Jess Devaney, Tracy Rector and Zaina Bseiso
The following is an edited transcript of the panel discussion "Permission to Narrate: Narrative Sovereignty in Documentary,” which followed a September 13 screening of No Other Land at the Camden International Film Festival. Moderated by Suhad Babaa (executive director, Just Vision), the conversation featured CIFF programmer Zaina Bseiso, filmmaker and 4th World Media Lab founder Tracy Rector, and Jess Devaney (founder and president, Multitude Films). Using the film and Edward Said's concept of "permission to narrate" as a starting point, the panelists explore the challenges of solidarity and co-authorship in the context of dominant Western media narratives that often fail to give Palestinians the power to tell their own stories. (A fifth panelist, the Palestinian writer and poet Mohammed el… Read more
“I Thought Maybe Directors Have This Magical Thing Where They Can Judge a Performance”: DP Rodrigo Prieto on his Directorial Debut, Pedro Páramo
Pedro Paramo
Based on the novel by Juan Rulfo, a key work in Mexican literature, Rodrigo Prieto's Pedro Páramo follows several characters across decades as they search for answers to their lives. The story unfolds in arid villages and lush haciendas, against a backdrop of feudal aristocracy and a powerful Catholic church. First seen at a crossroads in a desolate landscape, Juan Preciado (Tenoch Huerta) sets out to keep a promise to reconnect with his estranged father Pedro Páramo (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo). In his journey Juan encounters others who have dealt with his father: criminals, priests, the deaf and blind, and above all, women. Lovers, wives, cooks, servants, the women in Pedro Páramo are trapped by rules and conventions that apparently leave them powerless.… Read more
IDFA 2024: Winners and Winners
The Propadandist
This year’s IDFA (November 14-24) starred Polish filmmaker Maciej J. Drygas’s Trains, a cinematic ride through 20th century industrial revolution-propelled European history via a trove of archival found footage; it unanimously nabbed Best Film in the International Competition. And while the doc is undoubtedly a tour de force of editing and sound design (unsurprisingly, it also took Best Editing in the International Competition), not to mention hypnotically reminiscent of the work of Bill Morrison, it was actually the other B&W archival-heavy film in that section that I just couldn’t shake. Dutch director Luuk Bouwman’s The Propagandist (which did receive the IDFA Award for Best Dutch Film) mostly combines previously unpublished interviews, home movies and propaganda films to paint a detailed portrait of another Dutch… Read more
“All That Exists is the Illusion that We’re Creating in this Frame.” The Seventh Annual Kevin Corrigan Episode
In this time of the year when traditions give us a sense of comfort and repetition that we need, especially in these volatile days, Back To One has a tradition of its own—the annual Kevin Corrigan episode! The patron saint of the indie film actor was the first guest on this podcast and he has returned every year since, telling hilarious stories from his adventures in the acting world, waxing about Brando, Walken, Scorsese, expounding on music, philosophizing about life in general. These episodes have become listener favorites. In this installment, Corrigan talks about shooting a scene recently where his emotions were almost too much at his finger tips, shares the awe and pride he felt working for his old… Read more
“I Became Obsessed with the Idea that All Great Art Contains the Life Force of the Artist…”: Director Rachel Elizabeth Seed on A Photographic Memory
A Photographic Memory
Filmmaker Rachel Elizabeth Seed’s photographer mother Sheila Turner Seed died when she was just 18 months old, before specific memories could take hold — an absence that structures doc producer-turned-director Seed’s True/False, Hot Docs and DOC NYC-playing A Photographic Memory, which I caught at the Woodstock Film Festival. From the outset, the documentary is an archive-based biographical detective movie of sorts, following Seed over the years in which she learns about her mother by reconstructing the biography of her professional life. This work includes not only her own photography but a 1970s interview series, Images of Man, she produced with Cornell Capa of the International Center of Photography. In the series, the elder Seed talks to some of the century's… Read more
“You Can’t Tell the Story of America Without a Theft”: Malcolm Washington on The Piano Lesson
John David Washington and Skylar Smith in The Piano Lesson
Set in 1936, The Piano Lesson—the fourth chronological entry in playwright August Wilson’s ten-play Century Cycle—is both a family drama and a ghost story. The titular musical instrument sits in the living room of Doaker Charles (Samuel L. Jackson), who lives in Pittsburgh's Hill District with his adult niece Berniece (Danielle Deadwyler) and her young daughter Maretha (Skylar Aleece Smith). As the story opens, Berniece’s brother Boy Willie (John David Washington) and his friend Lymon (Ray Fisher) have arrived at the Charles House from Mississippi, looking to sell a truckload of watermelons they’ve brought from their home state. Once inside the home, Boy Willie, who wants to sell anything he can to purchase the land his family was formerly enslaved… Read more
Will & Harper and the Netflix Effect
Harper Steele and Will Ferrell in Will & Harper
Every Tuesday Tyler Coates publishes his new Filmmaker newsletter, Considerations, devoted to the awards race. To receive it early and in your in-box, subscribe here. At this year’s 35th annual Producers Guild Awards (which took place on Feb. 25, two weeks before the March 3 Oscars), Netflix’s American Symphony took the prize for best documentary feature. The Matthew Heineman-directed film followed musician Jon Batiste’s meteoric year in which he won five Grammys (including album of the year) and premiered a new composition at Carnegie Hall—all while his wife, journalist and artist Suleika Jaouad, fought a rare form of leukemia. One would have expected the film to win the respective Oscar for documentary feature two weeks later—the PGA Awards are often reliable predictors… Read more
