Authors — Alix Lambert
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Daniel Zelman on Netflix’s Bloodline and Darkness on Television
Recently on a day when I was not feeling particularly well I watched the entire first season of Bloodline, the Netflix drama created by Daniel Zelman and Todd and Glenn Kessler. The show feels quite different from their previous collaboration, Damages. I love the slower pace and, additionally, Bloodline appeals to my fascination with families — the relationships between siblings and parents, and the impossibility of breaking from one’s familial role. Opening with family members convening for a celebration, Bloodline is set in the Florida Keys, and it has an impressive cast that includes Kyle Chandler, Sissy Spacek, Sam Shephard […]
by Alix Lambert on May 4, 2015 -
“Can You Get to the Truth of Something?” Mike Finkel on True Story
I first met Mike Finkel around two decades ago through a mutual friend. He was planning to write a piece for Sports Illustrated on the log-rolling championship to be held in Wisconsin, and I was going to go with him to take photographs. It was a fun, strange day. It felt surreal, but it was nothing compared to the kind of surreal that Mike’s future held for him. Mike and I kept in touch. He continued his career as a journalist writing for prestigious publications including The New York Times. He was ultimately fired from the Times for compositing three […]
by Alix Lambert on Apr 20, 2015 -
Lost in a Dream
“I don’t think humans communicate well.” —Lisandro Alonso I agree with the Argentine director. In our present age — when everyone has to be “connected” all the time, doing more than one thing — the chatter, the noise, can be maddening. Encountering the work of Lisandro Alonso makes me recall the feeling of lying on the floor and listening to a record as a teenager: not texting or talking or answering emails, simply listening. Alonso’s films let the viewer pay attention and dream simultaneously. Spare in dialogue, attentive to landscapes, meditative in pacing, they allow one to get lost in […]
by Alix Lambert on Jan 21, 2015 -
Damon Locks on New Projects Involving Animation, Prison Art and the Music of Sun Ra
Damon Locks is a visual artist and musician based out of Chicago. Throughout his career he has consistently found exciting and original ways in which to incorporate both visual and audio elements into his work, to collaborate, and to find a range of communities and venues within which to work. In two recent projects, New Moons for the Experimental Sound Studio and Freedom/Time, Locks uses animation to address unheard music from the Sun Ra archive and to work with inmates at Stateville Correctional Center, respectively. I sat down with Locks to talk about both projects. Filmmaker: I want to talk […]
by Alix Lambert on Dec 1, 2014 -
A Roof over Their Heads: Jesse Moss on The Overnighters
When Jesse Moss headed to North Dakota to make The Overnighters, it was truly a one-man endeavor. He took no crew with him. He was on his way to meet Pastor Jay Reinke, who had been giving shelter to the many men who uprooted themselves and made their way to Williston, N. D., in hopes of finding work in the town’s booming oil industry. With so many desperate souls appearing in Williston, resources to feed and house them were quickly drying up. Soon, the offices, floor space and pews of Reinke’s church were filled with itinerant workers, and town residents […]
by Alix Lambert on Oct 20, 2014 -
Co-Present Film Festival Connects Solitary Viewers through Twitter
Held once a month on a Saturday and lasting the whole day, CPFF is an online film festival with both public and private viewing capabilities. Conceived by Sherri Wasserman, “a citizen of the realm of timezone independence,” the idea is that viewers watching solo from their homes or private spaces can connect with other viewers watching the same film at the same time. The theme of the festival, born out of this concept of the solitary viewer, is “Prisons Real & Imagined.” Wasserman explains the ideas behind the festival: We, as a group of watchers, are (mostly) in physical isolation. […]
by Alix Lambert on Jan 24, 2014 -
Fruitvale Station D.P. Rachel Morrison
“She was an incredible collaborator,” says Ryan Coogler of his Fruitvale Station d.p., Rachel Morrison, in Ava DuVernay’s cover story on the writer/director this issue. “She’s very tough,” he continues. “On your first glance of her, you know she has edge. You know she’s somebody who will bust her butt to get the shot. But as you get to really know her and some of the things she’s been through in her life, she’s just this big ball of emotion on the inside. Once she’s set on fire by a story there’s just no stopping her.” Selected after a recommendation […]
by Alix Lambert on Jul 29, 2013 -
Director Tony Pemberton Talks Russia, Film and Devo
I first got to know Tony Pemberton when his production company Go East Productions co-produced my documentary The Mark of Cain. Tony was living in Moscow at the time and I could not have navigated Russia without him. He directed his own Film Beyond The Ocean (2000) in Russia and he knew the ins and outs of filmmaking there. No matter how insane my requests were, he never considered anything impossible. Pemberton is currently in Germany shooting his feature film Buddha’s Little Finger. He is in Berlin, which is standing in for Moscow in the ’90s. Additionally, Pemberton is in […]
by Alix Lambert on Dec 12, 2012 -
Samein Priester, 1st &4Ever
I met the documentary filmmaker Samein Priester last spring while I was at The MacDowell Colony. He screened his documentary short 1st &4Ever, which elicited an emotional response from all of us who saw it, and it launched my friendship with Priester. We talked about film and life and he showed me footage from other projects. There is a quality to Priester that is also evident in his work: you want to listen to him. 1st&4Ever addresses the absence of the father figure and how one can learn to be an effective father if one has never had an example […]
by Alix Lambert on Aug 21, 2012 -
Animator Nick Criscuolo and Laika
The story of Laika, the Soviet dog sent to space with the knowledge that she would not return alive, is one of adventure and sorrow. She was simultaneously the first animal to orbit the earth and the first to die in orbit. One can’t help but anthropomorphize her and everything she must have experienced. Animator Nick Criscuolo has illustrated Laika’s journey in the music video he made for the song “I Can’t Breathe,” by Sharon Van Etten. He explains his own attraction to the Laika tale: “It’s a story that’s close to my heart because I love science; it […]
by Alix Lambert on Apr 21, 2012
