Authors — Natalia Keogan
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“The Stories I Tell Are Just a Way To Get To Know My True Self”: J. Sean Smith on Her Student Short Film Showcase Winner #Whitina
Issues of identity and immigration take Instagram by storm in #Whitina, director J. Sean Smith’s short film, originally helmed as her thesis for the University of Southern California’s Film & Television Production MFA program. The film’s title references the conflict between protagonist Genesis’s (Inde Navarrette) Latinx heritage and her mannerisms and interests, which more closely reflect those of her white classmates. This disconnect has caused a palpable resentment among her culturally rigid Latinx peers, who write off Genesis as a white girl wannabe and an assimilationist snob. However, this tune quickly changes when Genesis helps her former friend (and current […]
by Natalia Keogan on Aug 15, 2022 -
“I Believe That Filmmaking Is a Dream Capturing Machine”: Jorge G. Camarena on His Student Short Film Showcase Winner Spaceship
Fusing harsh realities with otherworldly wonders, Jorge G. Camarena’s short film Spaceship is an adept blend of melancholy and magical realism. An MFA graduate of the AFI Conservatory’s directing program, Camarena had a robust career in music video and commercial work before pursuing his postgraduate studies. The visual slickness of his commissioned work coupled with a desire to tell stories of people living on the margins (or as he describes, “hidden in plain sight”) makes for a final product that is both sharply focused and totally vulnerable. This description also feels apt for Spaceship’s protagonist, a trans woman and single […]
by Natalia Keogan on Aug 15, 2022 -
“Film Can Be a Powerful Medium for Disrupting Assumptions About What Is Normal”: Evan Bode on His Student Short Film Showcase Winner Thine Own Self
Currently a candidate for an MFA in Syracuse University’s film program, Evan Bode recently pursued a cinematic undertaking that is staggeringly bold in its sheer gumption. Though he had never formally dabbled in helming animated films, Bode decided to use the newfound creative freedom of film school to make Thine Own Self, a 5-minute, dialogue-free animated film that utilizes desk drawer clay, green poster paper and the filmmaker’s own hands as its principal storytelling devices. The film begins by introducing the viewer to a sect of colorful entities that exist in whimsical tranquility, floating above the horizon without qualm. That […]
by Natalia Keogan on Aug 15, 2022 -
“To Be a Good Director Is To Be a Good Listener”: Jun Hee Han on His Student Short Film Showcase Winner Uncle
The shattered illusions of childhood innocence are comedically contrasted with a run-down Seoul porn theater in Jun Hee Han’s short film Uncle. A graduate from UCLA’s MFA program in film directing, Han had an unlikely catalyst for his filmmaking career. After studying philosophy as an undergraduate at Rice University in Houston, Texas, Han was tapped for mandatory military conscription in his birthplace of South Korea. Feeling disconnected from his heritage while growing up in the U.S., his time in the army ignited a passion to tell stories connected to his home country—an artistic pursuit that directly resulted in Uncle, which […]
by Natalia Keogan on Aug 15, 2022 -
“I Think the Funniest Things Are Truthful”: Akanksha Cruczynski on Her Student Short Film Showcase Winner Close Ties to Home Country
The downtown digs of a wealthy couple become a source of luxury and languish for a displaced dog sitter in Akanksha Cruczynski’s Close Ties to Home Country. The Columbia College Chicago MFA grad stars as a version of herself in the short, which allows her to reflect on many of her own anxieties about her overarching place in the world. Born in India and raised in Saudi Arabia, the filmmaker has grown accustomed to ignorant remarks ever since relocating to Chicago to pursue higher education. Many of these comments have been repeated and parodied in Close Ties to Home Country, […]
by Natalia Keogan on Aug 15, 2022 -
Read Interviews With The 2021-22 Student Short Film Showcase Winners, a Collaborative Award From The Gotham, JetBlue and Focus Features
The winners of the third annual Student Short Film Showcase, a collaborative award bestowed by The Gotham, JetBlue and Focus Features, are currently available to stream here at Filmmaker, on Focus Features’s YouTube channel and in the air as part of JetBlue’s in-flight entertainment selection. More than 20 graduate film schools submitted works to be considered for the Student Short Film Showcase, and the winners selected for the 2021-22 slate hail from diverse backgrounds and schools across the country. Columbia College Chicago grad Akanksha Cruczynski creates an amusing yet melancholy work of autofiction with Close Ties to Home Country, which […]
by Natalia Keogan on Aug 15, 2022 -
“By No Means a Film Against Boys”: Alli Haapasalo on Girl Picture
Girl Picture, the sophomore feature from Finnish director Alli Haapasalo, ditches hokey coming of age conventions while preserving the crushing emotional weight inherent to being a teenage girl. The film’s protagonists—best friends Mimmi (Aamu Milonoff) and Rönkkö (Eleonoora Kauhanen), alongside Mimmi’s lover Emma (Linnea Leino)—navigate the threshold of impending adulthood, oscillating wildly between manic self-centeredness and graceful altruism, encapsulating the disparate emotional poles one must traverse to arrive at self-actualized adulthood. What truly sets Girl Picture apart from the otherwise cloyingly twee coming of age landscape is its depiction of teenage sexual awakenings as something that can be natural, pleasurable […]
by Natalia Keogan on Aug 12, 2022 -
Trailer Watch: Juan Pablo González’s Dos Estaciones
The trailer has been released for Juan Pablo González’s sophomore feature Dos Estaciones, a naturalistic gem that details the daily minutiae (and unusually gorgeous monotony) integral to the operations of a struggling tequila ranch. The film focuses on the ranch’s stony owner Maria (Teresa Sánchez), a pillar of her community who can’t always deliver paychecks but consistently finds the time to attend employee family gatherings. The film premiered earlier this year at Sundance, where Sánchez won the Special Jury Award Acting Prize. González was one of Fiilmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of Film back in 2015, and Vadim Rizov interviewed the […]
by Natalia Keogan on Aug 12, 2022 -
NYC’s Metrograph Theater Highlights Indie Cinema Innovators in Series “The Process: A Tribute to Robert and Irwin Young”
New York’s Metrograph Theater will pay homage to the “unsung” innovators of New York City’s independent film landscape in their repertory series The Process: A Tribute to Robert and Irwin Young. Running from August 12 through 21, the series highlights the directorial work of Robert M. Young as well as a slew of renowned titles that were processed at the now-defunct DuArt Film Laboratories, where his brother Irwin Young acted as owner and chairman until his death earlier this year at the age of 94. Series curator Nellie Killian was originally approached by Caught screenwriter Edward Pomerantz to program that […]
by Natalia Keogan on Aug 12, 2022 -
“It Came Out of Me Almost Fully Born”: Writer/Director Lena Dunham on Her New Feature, Sharp Stick
It’s been 13 years since Lena Dunham emerged: first with 2009’s web series, Delusional Downtown Divas and the feature Creative Nonfiction, then, a year later, with breakthrough Tiny Furniture, an intensely personal, incredibly low-budget film that follows a recent college grad named Aura (Dunham) struggling to find her place in her hometown of New York City post-Oberlin. Supported by a cast of Dunham’s real-life friends and family, Tiny Furniture was a critical success that directly sprouted the quintessential Girls, the HBO series that depicts millennial mania, malaise and, at times, loathsome mediocrity. Five years after Girls’s final season, Dunham’s work is less focused on self-reflection […]
by Natalia Keogan on Jul 29, 2022
