Detropia, the latest documentary from Jesus Camp and 12th & Delaware directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, premiered at Sundance earlier this year and is being self-distributed by the filmmakers through their company, Loki Films. (To do this, they raised $70,000 on Kickstarter.) The film, a poignant portrait of the decline of Detroit, will be released on September 7, and you can check out the newly launched trailer below.
by Nick Dawson on Jul 19, 2012In the fall of 2007, I interviewed Craig Zobel about his first film as a director, Great World of Sound, a wryly funny drama about scamming “talent scouts.” Zobel, who for some years worked as a UPM and co-producer for David Gordon Green, was on a high after getting great reviews at Sundance earlier that year, selling Sound to Magnolia at SXSW, and then being chosen as one of Filmmaker’s 25 New Faces in the summer. As we casually chatted before the interview officially began, Zobel talked about a script he had written that was to be his next movie, […]
by Nick Dawson on Jul 19, 2012On the heels of Alma Har’el’s wonderful video for Sigur Ros’ “Fjögur Píanó” (which may be the best thing Shia LaBeouf has ever done) comes another entry from an American independent filmmaker in the Icelandic band’s Mystery Film Experiment. After Sigur Ros’ keyboard player Kjartan Sveinsson did the music for Ramin Bahrani’s 2009 short Plastic Bag, the band chose the Man Push Cart director to make a video for ‘Ég Anda,” the fifth entry in the Mystery Film Experiment. Valtari, the group’s new album, is much more understated and less grand in scope than their previous records, and so the videos […]
by Nick Dawson on Jul 17, 2012In 2009, I interviewed Antonio Campos about his debut feature, After School, which was then about to be released. At the time, he had dropped out of NYU just before graduating, was doing promo content for Bloomingdales, and faced something of an uncertain future as a filmmaker. Three years on, Campos and his partners at Borderline Films, Josh Mond and Sean Durkin, are riding high; below they talk to actor/comedian Chris Gethard about their road to success.
by Nick Dawson on Jul 12, 2012Right now on Kentucker Audley’s No Budge website, it’s Frank V. Ross week. If that name elicits a blank response, it’s not an uncommon reaction. Though Chicago-based Ross is one of the original class of mumblecore directors, he never received the attention that was given to so many of his DIY peers, such as Andrew Bujalski, the Duplass brothers or Joe Swanberg (a fellow Chicagoan with whom Ross has collaborated numerous times). Nevertheless, his recent films Present Company (2008) and Audrey the Trainwreck (2010) have gained him a number of champions within the indie community, and those two films have […]
by Nick Dawson on Jul 11, 2012Martin Donovan is destined to be forever remembered for his remarkable actor-director partnership with Hal Hartley during indie film’s halcyon days of the early to mid 1990s. In era-defining movies such as Trust, Simple Men and Amateur, Donovan was Hartley’s on-screen simulacrum, a smart, softly spoken man who was simultaneously familiar and enigmatic. While Hartley’s work is sadly not nearly as popular or present as it once was, it’s fitting that Donovan has made his debut feature as a writer and director with Collaborator, a knowing and witty cinematic chamber piece that feels nostalgic for the more culturally sophisticated times […]
by Nick Dawson on Jul 10, 2012The word on the film is that this is David O. Russell going back to his roots somewhat, returning to the territory of films like Flirting with Disaster, which is something I can definitely get on board with. It seems like this might be the film that will let us know if Bradley Cooper is (or at least wants to be) an actor rather than a movie star — what he shows here is certainly promisingly different from what we’ve seen before from him. And it’s also nice to see Jennifer Lawrence coming back to a role with a little […]
by Nick Dawson on Jun 29, 2012Walk Away Renee, Jonathan Caouette’s follow-up/sequel to Tarnation, is having its big day today, with both the “real-world” premiere of the new cut of the film playing at BAMcinemaFest tonight, and also its simultaneous online premiere through SundanceNOW’s Doc Club. Howard Feinstein had an excellent, long chat with Caouette which just went live on the Filmmaker site, and we’re also very pleased to have an exclusive clip from Walk Away Renee which captures one of the more experimental moments from Caouette’s portrait of the relationship between himself and his mentally ill mother, Renee LeBlanc.
by Nick Dawson on Jun 27, 2012William Friedkin’s first major movie in a long time, Killer Joe — a Texas noir based on the Tracy Letts play of the same name — is being released in just over a month, and as a result the legendary director has been a lot more visible. In addition to popping up at a string of festivals with the film, Friedkin is now an active presence on Twitter. A week or two ago, Friedkin posted the above (completely mind-blowing) Instagram picture of himself as Ali G on his Twitter feed, and then at the currently running Edinburgh International Film Festival […]
by Nick Dawson on Jun 26, 2012We’re very happy to exclusively premiere the trailer to Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson’s buzz doc Radio Unnameable, a portrait of the legendary late-night radio DJ Bob Fass. The film, which premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival earlier this year, won a Special Jury Prize at the Sarasota Film Festival and has its first NYC screening at BAMcinemaFest tonight. You can check out Filmmaker‘s interview with Lovelace and Wolfson here. Radio Unnameable Documentary Trailer from Jessica Wolfson on Vimeo.
by Nick Dawson on Jun 26, 2012