Authors — A.E. Hunt
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“Not Addressing the Core Exploitations of Capitalism is Essential to Capitalism’s Survival”: Theo Anthony on His Surveillance Doc, All Light, Everywhere
This interview with Theo Anthony about his documentary, All Light, Everywhere, was originally published alongside the film’s premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. It is being reposted today as the film premieres in theaters, including, in New York, at the IFC Center, where Anthony will do Q&As moderated by Brenda Coughlin and Sierra Pettengill. In All Light, Everywhere’s opening shot, filmmaker Theo Anthony turns the camera lens on his optic nerve, as text narration explains that we’re blind at the point where the optic nerve and retina connect—there’s a fundamental hole in our ability to view the world that, Anthony […]
by A.E. Hunt on Jun 4, 2021 -
“Every Visual Aspect of the Film Functions to Bring People Home”: Director Shantrelle P. Lewis on In Our Mothers’ Gardens
Shantrelle P. Lewis’ feature documentary debut, In Our Mothers’ Gardens, calls forth and preserves the family histories of several Black women from Lewis’ life, traces each of their past joys and traumas to the present and lets them out into the world to heal. She creates a welcome space for her interviewees to open up on camera, many of whom are dear old friends, and she listens intently and asks thoughtful questions like, “What does your grandmother’s love look like?”, which encourage equally thoughtful responses. All of the women she interviews can call the names and stories of their ancestors […]
by A.E. Hunt on May 14, 2021 -
“Filipino Culture is Just Not in the Media”: Martin Edralin on the SXSW 2021 Premiering Islands
Fifty-year-old Joshua (Rogelio Balagtas) still lives in the ease of his parents’ home. He probably hasn’t dated anyone seriously in years — if ever. His mom still cooks for him and tends to his father, whose health is declining and needs help getting around. Joshua’s dependent lifestyle is untenable. When his mother very suddenly passes away and his father’s condition worsens, Joshua can hardly take care of himself, let alone his father. The days are lonely and even grimmer since his dad can’t seem to remember that his mom passed away. This is the initial set up of writer/director Martin […]
by A.E. Hunt on Mar 16, 2021 -
“Letting Go…Trusting that the People You’ve Casted Will Bring it to a Better Place”: Karishma Dube on Bittu
Karishma Dube’s Bittu begins with sound before image, a vague squabble over black before it drops you into the middle of a world in motion. The opening shot is not held long before cutting to the next. It is one among many, does not announce itself as the beginning, and is not so contrived and defined that you can remember exactly when the film began. Suddenly, the viewer’s immersed in a story that started well before they became a witness to it. The opening shot introduces the film’s namesake little girl, Bittu, as played by the phenomenal first time performer […]
by A.E. Hunt on Mar 12, 2021 -
“We Weren’t Trying to Go for an Exact Imitation”: Dialect Coach Audrey LeCrone on Judas and the Black Messiah
Deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party Fred Hampton was a stirring orator, firing hearts and minds out of slumber and into action against US capitalism. So clear and infectious was Hampton’s guidance against the country’s racist and classist economic system that the FBI and Chicago police department assassinated the 21-year-old as he slept. In documentaries like The Murder of Fred Hampton, which don’t circulate enough, Hampton is seen delivering his famous speeches at rallies, casually moving fellow Panthers with his warmth in a mock trial at the headquarters, mingling at the Free Breakfast for School Children Program and […]
by A.E. Hunt on Feb 17, 2021 -
“So Many Movies Are Disingenuous About [Death] and it Pisses Me Off”: Filmmaker Jack Dunphy on His Slamdance-Premiering Short, Revelations
Filmmaker Jack Dunphy makes personal films. His shorts Serenity, Chekhov and now Revelations, tell stories from his life with a dash of fiction. He uses construction paper as a base material for his animated films and seemingly does detail work with whatever bachelor-pad rubbish he has on hand. These stop-motion worlds are grubby and handmade; there’s no handsome veneer getting between us and Jack’s emotions, though they’re beautiful in their own right. In Revelations, now streaming as part of the Slamdance Film Festival, he combines animation with video footage and photos from his past to tell the story of his high […]
by A.E. Hunt on Feb 15, 2021 -
“Everybody Had to Work Barefoot”: P.S. Vinothraj on His Tiger-Award Winning Pebbles
The fields that once sustained Arittapatti village have perished from a long drought. All that’s left is parched desert without trees to screen the land from the sun. Since farm work is virtually non-existent, locals must cross this harsh terrain to jobs in the surrounding towns. P.S. Vinothraj’s Tiger Award-winning Pebbles, follows a barefoot father and son as they travail this desert in rural Tamil Nandu. A day drunk Ganapathy (Karuththadaiyaan) plucks his son (Chellapandi) from class and immediately asks him to choose between himself or his mother. The little boy doesn’t reply, his frenetic father walks off, and the […]
by A.E. Hunt on Feb 10, 2021 -
Liberties in the Room
The night after Cassius Clay clobbered Sonny Liston in their first bout at the Miami Beach Convention Center in 1964, the new heavyweight champion, who would later change his name to Muhammad Ali, celebrated his win in a hotel room flush with icons: his friends Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke. They stayed in a room at the Hampton House, a known safe haven for Black people during Jim Crow where social gatherings of various Black icons were not uncommon. Regina King’s feature debut, One Night in Miami, adapted from Kemp Powers’s one-act play of the same name, imagines […]
by A.E. Hunt on Feb 10, 2021 -
“Looking At Diversity Through A Different Lens”: Debbie Lum on Try Harder!
Lowell High School, whose student population is predominantly Asian American, is different from most US high schools portrayed on film. Director Debbie Lum came to the nationally ranked school to portray Lowell’s students, particularly so called “tiger cubs” in the heat of the college admissions process for her Sundance 2021 doc Try Harder!. Of course, not all of the Asian American students shown in the film have stereotypical “tiger moms,” and it’s refreshing to see an array of Asian American parents and students shown in communities where they feel comfortable, rather than shrinking in the minority. But the pressure on […]
by A.E. Hunt on Feb 5, 2021 -
“Backwards Continuity is Not a Category, Is It?”: Script Supervisor Steve Gehrke on Tenet
In the world of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, people from the future have figured out how to reverse the entropy of people and objects, making them “time inverted.” Effect precedes cause for inverted objects and people. Inverted bullets return from bullet holes and swirl back into the barrel of the guns that fired them, a fight between an inverted soldier and a soldier operating on regular time looks like a freak-puppet show, and reverse speech sounds like the dream speak from the Red Room in Twin Peaks. All someone has to do to swap their inversion status is enter a turnstile […]
by A.E. Hunt on Jan 5, 2021
