Authors — Filmmaker Staff
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“It Was an Interesting Challenge to Take a Real Place and Mold It” | Josh Margolin, Thelma
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? We shot a portion of the movie in my real grandma Thelma’s condo. That space is incredibly meaningful to me. Growing up, it always felt like a second home. I wanted to utilize it for the movie because it feels so connected to […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2024 -
“It’s Surprisingly Difficult to Find a Closet That is Spacious Enough” | Caroline Lindy, Your Monster
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? For Your Monster, a magical and spooky love story between a young woman and the monster in her closet, finding the right closet was critical to the mission of the film. It’s surprisingly difficult to find a closet that is spacious enough to […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2024 -
“Each Day Was a White-Knuckle Ride”: DP Ryan Kernaghan on Kneecap
In Kneecap, Rich Peppiatt depicts the rise of the eponymous Belfast-based rap trio, who have become unlikely leaders of a movement to save the Irish language. The 2024 Sundance premiere is the festival’s first ever Irish language film, as well as the first film from outside the United States to screen in the NEXT section. Below, cinematographer Rich Kernaghan explains how he found a visual language for the film and how the crew managed such an ambitious location shoot on such a tight schedule. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2024 -
“We Imagined the Queer London of Our Dreams” | Amrou Al-Kadhi, Layla
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Layla is a film of imagined space. Though set and filmed in East London, home to a vibrant queer scene and history, LGBTQ+ spaces in cities around the globe are currently victim to rapid gentrification. London is no exception. The majority of the […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2024 -
Trailer Watch: “Never Look Away: Serge Daney’s Radical 1970s,” Film at Lincoln Center’s Forthcoming Series
A seminal French film critic, for too long Serge Daney’s work has been difficult to find in English. Recently published, Footlights is a newly translated (by the formidable Nicholas Elliott) edition of Daney’s important early essays, first published as a collection in French in 1983. Now, Film at Lincoln Center is holding a retrospective from January 26 to February 4 of films discussed in the book. Watch the trailer above, and click here to learn more about the series.
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2024 -
“I Knew Right Then the Filmmaking Gods Were Looking Down on Us” | Rich Peppiatt, Kneecap
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Belfast is more than just a setting of my film Kneecap—it is almost a character itself. It is a city that wears its heart both on its sleeve and on its walls. Colorful graffiti, often politically charged, is everywhere. And for a […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2024 -
The 2024 Sundance Question: What Place Tells Its Own Story About Your Film?
Each year, Filmmaker asks all the incoming feature directors at Sundance one question. (To see last year’s question and responses, click here.) We also send out cinematographer, editor and first-time producer questionnaires. This year’s question: Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively? Below, find links to each director’s individual response […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2024 -
“Victim Cinema is for People that are Convinced”: Felipe Gálvez on The Settlers
The Settlers simulates several different types of Westerns without committing to one mode. The set-up of Felipe Gálvez’s first feature is classic: Scottish soldier MacLennan (Mark Stanley), American mercenary Bill (Benjamin Westfall) and their Chilean mestizo guide Segundo (Camilo Arancibia), who’s been pressed into service from a chain gang, are sent on a mission by landowner José Menéndez (Alfredo Castro). Making their way on horseback across the Chilean landscape, the three are captured in long zooms and accompanied by the booming tympani of Harry Allouche’s orchestral score. If that music places The Settlers somewhere in the realm of ’50s westerns, […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 11, 2024 -
SXSW Announces 2024 Competition Selections, Opening Night 3 Body Problem TV Premiere and More
The SXSW Film Festival has announced its competition selection, opening night TV premiere and other titles for its 2024 edition, which takes place March 8 – 16. From the press release, the titles announced today follow. Opening Night TV Premiere The 2024 SXSW Film & TV Festival’s Opening Night TV Premiere is the highly anticipated Netflix series 3 Body Problem created, executive produced and written by Emmy Award winners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss and Emmy Award nominee Alexander Woo. In this must-watch adaptation of the internationally celebrated bestseller, a young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 10, 2024 -
Trailer Watch: The Peasants
DK and Hugh Welchman are the directors of 2017’s Loving Vincent, a Vincent Van Gogh biopic created entirely from individually painted images. Now they return with the similarly ambitious The Peasants, for which you can watch the trailer above. As the filmmakers write in the press kit of the film’s making: While The Peasants incorporates the same painting animation technique made popular with our previous film Loving Vincent, our approach to the painting animation for The Peasants varied significantly from Vincent. […] The over 100 painting animators who worked on the film did so on specially designed PAWS units (Painting Animation […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 4, 2024
