Authors — Natalia Keogan
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Overlook Film Festival 2023: Catholic Guilt and Satanic Panic (Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism, Late Night with the Devil, Evil Dead Rise)
The air became almost oppressively heavy with humidity on my second proper morning of Overlook. Walking to a relatively cheap brunch outpost called Toast, my boyfriend and I became drenched in sweat from the weight of cotton pants and button-up shirts after a 10-minute walk in 9 AM sunlight. The news of a 20-minute wait for a table didn’t bother us: it meant we had exactly enough time to head back to the hotel and change into full-blown summer garments before being seated. The sudden immersion into a solstice-temperate climate didn’t trouble me (or my skin, which cleared considerably from […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 14, 2023 -
“I’m Very Comfortable With Repeating Ideas Until They Are Perfected”: Kristoffer Borgli on Sick of Myself
One of John Waters’s favorite movies of 2022, Sick of Myself possesses a distinctly American outlook despite being the creation of Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli. Indeed, the ego-driven, crime-ladden pursuit for fame and recognition are as present in Sick of Myself as they are in many of American trash ambassador Waters’s films. “No, it’s not Female Trouble,” wrote Waters in his Artforum blurb of the film, “but it’s just as nuts,” and the film’s overtly American satirical edge has everything to do with his decision to relocate to Los Angeles several years ago. Sick of Myself follows Signe (Kristine Thorp), a […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 12, 2023 -
Overlook Film Festival 2023: Vampires and Ventriloquist Demons (Renfield, Only Lovers Left Alive, Talk To Me)
After a four-hour flight delay (owed to a malfunctioning back-up system accessory, subsequent plane evacuation and a lengthy re-fueling process), I arrived in New Orleans exhausted but still, miraculously, eager to spend much more time sitting in a shifting rotation of seats. Even if I wanted to, I wasn’t entitled to complain much. I’d been invited to cover the annual genre-themed Overlook Film Festival, now in its seventh year, and was genuinely thrilled by the opportunity. As a relatively green (not to mention newly full-time) magazine staffer, longtime horror obsessive and someone who’d yet to visit New Orleans, Overlook presented […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 12, 2023 -
BAVC Media Announces 2023 MediaMaker Fellows
Today, BAVC Media (formerly Bay Area Video Coalition) announces their 2023 MediaMaker Fellowship cohort, comprised of emerging and mid-career artists embarking on social documentary projects. All seven participants will receive $10,000 in unrestricted funding as well as mentorship, feedback sessions and workshops during a nine-month period. The fellows are Paige Bethmann (Remaining Native), Aurora Brachman (Dear You), ilana coleman (The Inventory, also a 25 New Faces of Film from 2017 and co-writer of fellow 25 New Face Juan Pablo González‘s 2021 film Dos Estaciones), Tommy Franklin (You Don’t Know My Name), Cyrus Moussavi (Somebody’s Gone), Hannah Myers (Daddy) and tashi […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 10, 2023 -
“Self-Aware Doesn’t Work for Us”: Joe Dante on The Movie Orgy, Matinee at 30 and William Castle’s The Tingler
All of Joe Dante‘s films revolve around distinctly American paranoias—consumerism, threats to the nuclear family, suburban NIMBY sensibilities—but none feel more entrenched in a tangible era of American anxiety than Matinee. Now 30 years old, the film takes place during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, centering B-movie shlock jockey Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman, riffing big time on William Castle), who lands in a panicked Key West, Florida for a promotional screening of his radioactive new horror film Mant (half-man, half-ant, all monster!) Both enraptured and horrified by the real-world implications Woolsey’s film hints at (nuclear disfigurement, neighborhoods-turned-warzones, the […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 10, 2023 -
“A Fear of the Freedom That You Thought You Wanted”: Saim Sadiq on Joyland
Winner of the Queer Palm at Cannes last year, writer-director Saim Sadiq’s feature debut Joyland depicts a blooming love between closeted married man Haider (Ali Junejo) and Biba (Alina Khan), a trans erotic performer who employs Haider as one of her (heretofore untrained) back-up dancers. The film chronicles the ever-shifting dynamics between Biba, Haider, his wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq) and their intensely patriarchal immediate family. A ban on the film in Sadiq’s native Pakistan occurred due to Joyland‘s queer explorations. In a public statement, a right-wing government pundit stated that the film was “against Pakistani values,” adding that “glamorizing transgenders […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 6, 2023 -
“Sex and Sexuality Have Been Central to All of My Movies”: Gregg Araki on Restoring The Doom Generation
The tongue-in-cheek title card for The Doom Generation—“a heterosexual movie by Gregg Araki”—isn’t merely an enduring “fuck you” to homophobes. Amid a sexless and puritanical American film landscape, coupled with an equally regressive online discourse on whether sex scenes in films are ever truly necessary, the emphasis on a sexual movie by Gregg Araki, regardless of orientation, transmits a much-needed erotic jolt. Newly restored in a 4K director’s cut, with grisly moments previously nixed for an Araki-unapproved R-rated cut now restored, The Doom Generation follows a trio of heartthrobs on a road trip from hell. After a night out clubbing, teen […]
by Natalia Keogan on Apr 3, 2023 -
Even/Odd Partners with the Kiarostami Foundation on an Ongoing Product Collection
Creative studio and production company Even/Odd has partnered with the Kiarostami Foundation on a special product collection that celebrates the legendary Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami. The collection currently features three items: a 40-page graphic novel and activity book that reimagines Kairostami’s 1987 film Where Is the Friend’s House?, a small-batch mulberry jam inspired by his 1997 film Taste of Cherry and reprints of original posters designed by the filmmaker for Friend’s House, Certified Copy (2010) and A Wedding Suit (1976). These products are the first of many that the California-based company (founded by Mohammad Gorjestani, a 25 New Faces of […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 27, 2023 -
Watch Now: Short Films from the 2023 Filmfort Film Festival
Filmmaker is happy to partner once again with the Filmfort Film Festival by exclusively hosting four short films from this year’s lineup, which will be available to view on our site through Sunday. The three day festival—which occurs during the Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho—highlights an array of emerging independent cinema. Alongside robust film programming, Filmfort also features DIY panels and filmmaker Q&As in the heart of the city’s downtown area. The four short films we’ve teamed up to share include an experimental documentary with music by Phillip Glass, a time-loop narrative spurred by insomnia and grief, the story […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 23, 2023 -
Trailer Watch: Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings
After premiering at Sundance earlier this year, a trailer and release date have arrived for Nicole Holofcener‘s latest, You Hurt My Feelings. The film stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who previously starred with James Gandolfini in Holofcener’s 2013 effort Enough Said) as a struggling author and instructor at the New School in Manhattan who receives unexpected negative feedback about her forthcoming book. Also starring are Tobias Menzies, Owen Teague, Michaela Watkins, Arian Moayed and Jeannie Berlin. In my review out of Sundance, I wrote: The real crux of the film’s story involves Beth overhearing her therapist husband Don (Tobias Menzies) voicing his […]
by Natalia Keogan on Mar 21, 2023
