Authors — Brandon Harris
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SIMON RUMLEY, “RED WHITE & BLUE”
Lurking about the less reputable precincts of Texas’ capital, Erica (a terrific Amanda Fuller) at first seems like another aimless, sexually adventurous young woman who in the city that embraced mumblecore would find herself in a pedestrian drama of mid twenties malaise. Living for free in a dusty co-op, she trolls the seedy side of Austin, scoring a new suitor every night for a bout of casual, unprotected sex. Clad in denim cut-offs and white cowboy boots, she drifts through days and nights with an anomie that is only enhanced by the arty, elliptical rhythms of Veteran UK helmer Simon […]
by Brandon Harris on Oct 6, 2010 -
Rob Epstein And Jeffrey Friedman, Howl
How do you make a narrative film about a long, difficult poem? Jean Cocteau’s legendary Blood of the Poet gives it a go I suppose, but its style departs from the conventions of narrative very early on for something more willfully avant-garde. Poetry just doesn’t lend itself to shot reverse shot and one hundred and eighty degree director’s lines. This clearly difficult task didn’t daunt veteran documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, however; they took up the challenge as they made the jump to narrative in Howl, a thoughtful meditation on the early life and seminal work of Allen Ginsberg. […]
by Brandon Harris on Sep 22, 2010 -
CLAUDIA LLOSA, “THE MILK OF SORROW”
For Claudia Llosa, director of the Berlinale-winning and Academy Award-nominated Peruvian film The Milk of Sorrow, magical realism isn’t a literary genre or filmic device, it’s an element of national identity and consciousness. Her film, easily the most critically-lauded film to emerge from Peru, is set in the rough-hewn mountain settlements on the outskirts of Lima. It concerns a young Peruvian woman (the captivating Magaly Solier) who, having contracted a mysterious disease that is passed on via breast milk to the daughters of rape victims taken by soliders serving Peru’s deposed terrorist regime, sets out to bury her newly deceased […]
by Brandon Harris on Aug 25, 2010 -
The New Year Writer/Director Brett Haley
A young woman works at the shoe counter at a Pensacola, Florida bowling alley. Having abandoned the ambitions of her youth, she takes care of her ailing father, who painfully struggles with cancer. With the return of a rival from high school into her long-standing social circle, the stillness that has taken over her existence breaks, leaving her to consider the possibility of a new direction, one which seems tantalizingly close and yet ever elusive. This is subject matter than might seem too comfortably within American independent cinema’s wheelhouse, but in thoughtful hands, even the most seemingly pedestrian yarns can […]
by Brandon Harris on Jul 28, 2010 -
The Trip: Gaspar Noe’s Enter the Void
Beginning with the dying moments of a young drug dealer in Tokyo, Gaspar Noé travels deep into our subconscious to explore what happens after we Enter the Void.
by Brandon Harris on Jul 20, 2010 -
Sultan Sharrief
Made piecemeal over four years, Sultan Sharrief’s Bilal’s Stand is a brazenly autobiographical, starless, penny-pinching production from Detroit about one black Muslim teen’s decision to go to the University of Michigan despite the naysayers in his family as well as in the diverse, suburban high school he treks to instead of the more toxic Detroit public high school nearby. Rough around the edges, it’s told with enough freewheeling inventiveness and first-person verve that it transcends its obvious financial limitations and offers a glimpse of utterly authentic working-class black life in the industrial Midwest. In the world of cinema, studio or […]
by Brandon Harris on Jul 17, 2010 -
Rashaad Ernesto Green
Possessor of a sneaky sort of charm that hides his utter tenaciousness, Rashaad Ernesto Green, a promising directorial talent from the Bronx, makes movies that get under your skin with what, upon reflection, seems like relative ease. His pictures, a trio of shorts and a forthcoming feature, openly seek to reveal the humanity within the taboos and faux pas of people of color. Green is clearly out to surprise us with his unusual depictions of equally unusual milieus, and he isn’t much for asking permission. “I was in a black box theater in St. Louis, reading The Seven Habits of […]
by Brandon Harris on Jul 17, 2010 -
BRANDON HARRIS’S SEMINAL INDIES
Yesterday on the blog we asked what films inspired young viewers (in their 20s or below) to identify with the independent film movement. Here are responses from filmmaker, critic and Filmmaker Contributing Editor Brandon Harris. Short Cuts (1993) – Saw it on cable TV sometime in 1994. I was too young to understand its significance at the time, but I believe it was the first American Independent film I ever saw. The fact that I watched it all at that age probably explains alot about me. Clerks (1994) & Chasing Amy (1997) – Saw both of these during winter break, […]
by Brandon Harris on Jul 7, 2010 -
FOREVER CONTRABAND: WENDELL B. HARRIS JR.’S “CHAMELEON STREET”
Perhaps it goes without saying that the world of independent film missed the boat on Wendell B. Harris Jr. No one, especially this author with the same surname as the now fifty-six year old Michigan native, wants to play the woulda, shoulda, coulda game. Yet whenever I think about the career I would have liked to have seen Mr. Harris have, it’s hard not to turn a bit melancholy. I guess being in the right place in the right time with the right people and a large enough sum of money counts for something, but if being at the podium […]
by Brandon Harris on Jul 6, 2010 -
Angela Ismailos, Great Directors
A curious celebration of cinema and the mix of craft, history and ideology that goes into its making, Angela Ismailos’ Great Directors provides a chance to travel into the minds of ten of the world’s most celebrated film directors. In conversations with Bernardo Bertolucci, David Lynch, Stephen Frears, Agnes Varda, Ken Loach, Liliana Cavani, Todd Haynes, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater and John Sayles, Ismailos probes these directors for the secrets of their success while recounting much of the history of post-War world cinema via archival footage, occasionally ponderous black-and-white B-roll of the filmmakers, and mostly insightful voice over commentary. Detailed and […]
by Brandon Harris on Jun 30, 2010
