Authors — David Barker
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“I Try to Expose Myself to Unknown Territory”: Pablo Larraín on Ema
Ema is Pablo Larraín’s eighth feature film but has the energy of a new beginning. When I saw it at Sundance 2020, this boldly experimental narrative seemed like a new approach from the established director who had put Chilean fiction filmmaking on the international map in a new way with a rapid-fire series of films that included the Academy-nominated No (2012), Berlin Silver Bear winner The Club (2015) and Neruda (2016), as well as US projects Jackie (2016) and the recently released HBO series Lisey’s Story. A month after the festival, images from the film lingered in my mind, in […]
by David Barker on Aug 16, 2021 -
“I Still Have the Illusion of Community”: Director Dominga Sotomayor on Her Second Feature, Too Late to Die Young, and the New Santiago Coworking Space CCC
The possibility and impossibility of community lies at the heart of Chilean Dominga Sotomayor’s second feature film, Too Late To Die Young, which follows a group of young people living in a community being formed by their parents on the outskirts of Santiago. While the country is undergoing its own transition to democracy from the 17-year dictatorship of General Pinochet and their parents try to build a society that reflects their own values, the teenagers, particularly Sofía (Demian Hernández), seek to find their place in the world, all the while watched by a younger generation of children looking to emulate […]
by David Barker on May 31, 2019 -
“I Have a Problem with that Whole Narrative of Coming from Someplace Bad and Getting Out of It”: Micah Magee on Her Debut Feature, Petting Zoo
Favorably compared by Variety to fellow Texas filmmakers Terrence Malick and Rick Linklater, San Antonio-raised Micah Magee has been based in Europe for over a decade. But despite having made several shorts there, when it came time to direct her first feature her heart returned to the Lone Star state. Petting Zoo, shot in San Antonio and cast primarily with locals with little acting experience, is a deeply felt coming-of-age story that captures what its like to be young in Texas as perhaps no film has before. Based on Magee’s own experiences of teenage pregnancy, Petting Zoo follows Layla (in […]
by David Barker on Feb 22, 2017 -
“I Always Try to Find Something Better”: Nuri Bilge Ceylan on Winter Sleep
Over the course of his seven feature films – the last five of which have won prizes at Cannes – the Turkish filmmaker and photographer Nuri Bilge Ceylan has moved from a dramaturgy primarily based in photography (in films such as 2002’s Distant) to one based firmly in screenwriting, as in the elegant structure and dialogues of 2011’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. This development as a screenwriter has been accomplished in tandem with his wife, Ebru Ceylan, with whom he has co-written the last three films. Nuri Bilge Ceylan was trained first as a chemical and then electrical […]
by David Barker on Dec 17, 2014 -
“Only At the End You Can See the Origin of Tragedy…. So I Used a Small Camera”: Claire Denis on Bastards
Over 25 years of directing films, Claire Denis has explored the silent rhythms of men and women as they move through spaces of romance and violence, attraction and solitude in stories that range from the love affairs of cannibals (Trouble Every Day), to the exercises of the French Foreign legion (Beau Travail), to the every day spaces of domesticity (35 Shots of Rum). A filmmaker who prefers monologue to dialogue, and silence to any speech at all, her intimate spaces, impressionistic photography, and oblique scenarios can divide audiences, but provide untold riches for those willing to forgo plot devices and […]
by David Barker on Oct 23, 2013 -
David Lowery on Editing Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
David Lowery made waves last year in the independent film world with the news that Ain’t Them Bodies Saints — the follow-up to his $12,000 feature film St Nick (2009) — had attracted the stellar cast of Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck and Ben Foster. It quickly became one of the year’s most anticipated independent films, premiering at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Critic’s Week, and set to open in the US on August 16. The contemporary Western about a young couple torn asunder by a robbery gone wrong features shootouts and other elements of an action movie, but […]
by David Barker on Aug 13, 2013 -
Outlaw Country
David Lowery made waves last year in the independent film world with the news that Ain’t Them Bodies Saints — the follow-up to his little-seen $12,000 feature film St. Nick (2009) — had attracted the stellar cast of Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck and Ben Foster. It quickly became one of the year’s most anticipated independent films, premiering at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Critic’s Week. The film begins with a robbery and shootout, and a young couple torn apart. Bob Muldoon (Affleck) is sent to prison, leaving his pregnant girlfriend Ruth Guthrie (Mara) to raise their daughter alone […]
by David Barker on Jul 18, 2013 -
Walter Murch on Editing and His Translations of Curzio Malaparte
While editing The Unbearable Lightness of Being in France, Academy Award-winning film editor and sound designer Walter Murch came across a reference to Italian writer Curzio Malaparte’s description of horses being suddenly flash frozen in Lake Ladoga during the siege of Leningrad. He became intrigued by the startling image, and tracked down Malaparte’s 1944 novel Kaputt, the book the image came from. Over time Murch, best known for his work on films such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, read all of the obscure Italian writer’s translated writings, then brushed up on his Italian to read untranslated work. He eventually […]
by David Barker on Jun 3, 2013 -
“I’ve Never Understood a Traditional Screenplay:” Carlos Reygadas on Post Tenebras Lux
Born in Mexico City, Carlos Reygadas was a lawyer specializing in armed-conflict resolution in Brussels when he decided to try his hand at making films at the age of 30. He quickly became a unique voice in cinema with his first feature, Japón (2001), which received a special mention for the Camera d’Or at Cannes that year. In his three films since, Reygadas has developed his cinematic language and abilities, as well as his reputation for making aesthetically uncompromising and provocative films. If his second film, Battle in Heaven (2005), cemented his reputation as a provocateur, his following Silent Light […]
by David Barker on May 1, 2013
