Authors — Filmmaker Staff
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“We Used Chaos to Clarify Our Senses and Capture True Harmony and Beauty”: Gabo Arora | Zikr: A Sufi Revival
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? There is always chaos at the heart of any creative endeavor, and when I left for Tunisia last year with a team of experiential visionaries to capture Sufi rituals, we needed to fully embrace it. We landed with only a rough idea of what we wanted to accomplish, along with a Tunisian fixer I randomly met […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2018 -
“The First Assembly Had Two Major Editing Flaws”: Editors Greg Finton & Poppy Das on Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind
Perhaps best known for her biographical documentaries (including two on Roman Polanski and one on Richard Pryor), Marina Zenovich’s latest film Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind is an intimate look at the late comic and actor. Set to air later this year on HBO, the film draws upon a vast assembly of archival materials, many previously unknown to the public, to cover Williams’s extensive career. Editors Greg Finton and Poppy Das discuss the challenges of crafting a portrait that focused on the comedy rather than the tragedy of Williams’s life. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2018 -
“As the World Around Me Fell Apart this Year… I Shifted My Focus Beyond Our Earth to the Darkest Edges of the Universe”: Eliza McNitt | SPHERES: Songs of Spacetime
As you made your film during the increasingly chaotic backdrop of the last year, how did you as a filmmaker control, ignore, give in to or, conversely, perhaps creatively exploit the wild and unpredictable? What roles did chaos and order play in your films? Both in life on Earth — and the birth of black holes from the violent death of supermassive stars — order appears out of chaos. SPHERES: Songs of Spacetime is an interactive VR experience where you dive into the heart of a black hole to uncover the hidden songs of the cosmos. Space is not silent. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2018 -
“The Solution Was to Re-edit the Scene Like a Hundred Times”: Editor Rikard Strømsodd on Lords of Chaos
Jonas Åkerlund (still possibly best known for his “Smack My Bitch Up” video, whose feature directorial debut was Spun) dives into the pioneering Norwegian black metal scene of the ’80s and ’90s. Anchored by Euronymous (Rory Culkin) and the infamous Varg Vikarnes (Emory Cohen), Åkerlund taps into a scene whose music resonates — even as Vikarnes is now known as a murderer who still produces music from prison. The story was well-told in Audrey Ewell and the late Aaron Aites’ documentary Until the Light Takes Us; here, editor Rikard Strømsodd discusses the challenges of taking on this dramatized version. Filmmaker: How and why did you […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2018 -
“Filming a Period Piece in London is Difficult”: DP John Conroy on Yardie
For Idris Elba’s feature directorial debut Yardie, cinematographer John Conroy was tasked with recreating a period environment in both England and Jamaica. Opening with a raucous party scene, Yardie travels through a world of Jamaican drug gangs over the ’70s and ’80s. DP John Conroy spoke with Filmmaker briefly about the challenges of filming this period piece. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Conroy: I had shot the last two series (3+4) of Luther with Idris and had developed a great working relationship […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2018 -
“The Edit Room Became a Kind of Experimental Laboratory”: Editor Nyneve Laura Minnear on 306 Hollywood
As Scott Macaulay wrote in our 25 New Faces profile of 306 Hollywood directors Elan and Jonathan Bogarin last year, “In 2001, the pair — who together run the production house El Tigre Productions — began shooting their grandmother, Annette Ontell, in the Hillside, New Jersey house she resided in for 71 years. When she died in 2011, the Bogaríns decided, says Jonathan, ‘to keep the house and transform everything there into a film.’ The result is the beautifully strange 306 Hollywood, ‘a kooky, imaginative film,’ he says, that uses ‘a maximalist language of fiction film, art, dance and myth in […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2018 -
Big Ears Festival Announces 2018 Film Line-Up
For the third year now, Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival will offer a number of film-related screenings in conjunction with The Public Cinema, the organization co-founded by writer Darren Hughes and filmmaker Paul Harrill (Something, Anything). Filmmaker Blake Williams, whose experimental work is 3D-based, attended last year (subscribers can read his enthusiastic write-up here) and has programmed one of this year’s big series. From the press release: A survey of 3D cinema — experimental and mainstream, short and feature-length, contemporary and historical — “Stereo Visions” will encompass and demonstrate the full visual and affective capacities of our favorite on-again/off-again format. From […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Feb 1, 2018 -
SXSW Film Festival Announces 2018 Lineup
The lineup for this year’s SXSW Film Festival (March 9-18), and there’s a lot to dig through. Some quickly noted highlights among the world premieres: The Last O.G., Jordan Peele’s less-than-a-year-later follow-up to Get Out, with Tracy Morgan and Tiffany Haddish; Jinn, the feature debut from last year’s 25 New Face Nijla Mu’min; Jim Cummings’ feature-length adaptation of his Sundance-winning short Thunder Road (he documented his festival experience in a series of video diaries starting here); Wild Nights with Emily, a comedy starring Molly Shannon as Emily Dickinson from Madeline Olnek (The Foxy Merkins). The full line-up is below; the opening night film is John […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2018 -
“Getting Five Different Looks From One Room”: DP Yamit Shimonovitz on Half the Picture
Amy Adion’s documentary debut is on a topical subject: what’s to account for the grossly small percentage of female film directors? DP Yamit Shimonovitz was one of two DPs working to capture insights from figures including Penelope Spheeris, Brave co-director Brenda Chapman, Gina Prince-Blythewood and many others. Below, she discusses the challenges of balancing intimacy when entering subjects’ spaces with practical lighting considerations. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Shiminovitz: I was introduced to Amy Adrion through a mutual friend. […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2018 -
“Poetry Sometimes Obscures the Narrative Arc”: Editor Keiko Deguchi on We The Animals
Though Jeremiah Zagar has been directing shorts and documentaries since 2004, We The Animals marks his first feature narrative film. Adapted from Justin Torres’s novel, Animals gives a name to the source text’s unnamed narrator: Jonah (Evan Rosado), a young boy growing up in ’80s upstate NYC against the background of his parents’ unstable marriage and growing awareness of his own queerness. Editor Keiko Deguchi spoke to Filmmaker about her work on the film, which split the NEXT Innovator Award (chosen by a single juror, RuPaul) with Jordana Spiro’s Night Comes On. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 31, 2018
