Authors — Sarah Salovaara
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Watch: Martin Scorsese on The Films of Rossellini, Cassavetes, Minnelli and More
More than any other American director working today, Martin Scorsese retains perhaps the most encyclopedic set of knowledge when it comes to his cinematic forbearers. Two years ago, Fast Company distilled 85 references made throughout the course of a four hour interview on Hugo, and dubbed it “Martin Scorsese’s Film School.” Flavorpill went ahead and paired the majority of those titles with pre-existing commentary from the filmmaker’s documentaries, A Personal Journey Through American Movies and My Voyage to Italy, to create a comprehensive video essay. Watch above for Scorsese’s insight into everything from Two Weeks in Another Town to Faces, Italian Neo-Realism (Rossellini) to pre-noir gangster films (Walsh), and much more.
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 20, 2014 -
NYFF Announces Spotlight on Documentary Selections: Films From Maysles, Blank, Scorsese
The New York Film Festival took some haranguing after announcing the inclusion of only one documentary in their Main Slate a week ago. Rectifying matters is their Spotlight on Documentary lineup, which features new works from Albert Maysles, Les Blank, Frederick Wiseman, Martin Scorsese and assorted filmmaking giants. I will, of course, also be looking forward to the New York premiere of Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing follow-up, The Look of Silence, which is said to be an exemplary companion piece, and Arthur Jafa’s Dreams Are Colder Than Death, which is perhaps more topical than ever. Check out the full list of films […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 19, 2014 -
Watch: The Evolution of Title Sequences
Title sequences just aren’t what they used to be. Nowadays, if they aren’t entirely absent, opening credits are relegated to the corner of the frame, an afterthought accessory to a film’s first scenes. This video from Nora Thös and Damian Pérez entitled “The Film Before The Film,” examines the history of credit sequences from the first Edison films to the age of pioneering designers like Saul Bass and Maurice Bender, through the advent of AfterEffects in the 1990s. Ironically, with all the more tools now at filmmakers’ disposal, titles have recessed into something of a lost art outside of Bond films and other (relatively) aesthetically high-brow big-budgets. “The […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 19, 2014 -
Watch: Breaking Down the Essay Film
With the Chris Marker series underway at BAM this week, it seems like a topical time to share this 2013 rumination on the essay film from Kevin B. Lee. Lee purports that the essay diverges from the rest of cinema in how it “[explores] its subject and at the same time [explores] how it sees its subject.” Words, images and sound interact and inform one another, producing a commentary that is often relegated to the external, or the conscience of the viewer. In his visual discussion of the three pillars of an essay film, Lee draws on Marker’s own Sans Soleil, Godard […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 18, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: David Wnendt’s Wetlands
Perhaps I’m being contrarian, jaded and/or anti-clickbait, but David Wnendt’s Wetlands isn’t as wildly gross out as it’s cracked up to be. I have a harder time digesting, say, Pink Flamingos. There’s substance behind the film’s good humored gags, coalescing as they do around the liberated but fundamentally unhappy protagonist, Helen. Which brings me to another bargaining chip amongst all its provocations: one of the most enjoyable performances of late, courtesy of the emotionally acrobatic Carla Juri. Brandon Harris and I at least agreed on that in our respective takes from Treefort and SXSW. In any event, Strand Releasing has the film slated for a September 5 release […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 15, 2014 -
IndieCollect, a Film Preservation Initiative, Receives $200,000 Challenge Grant from Ford Foundation
IndieCollect, a film documentation and preservation initiative, has received a $200,000 challenge grant from the Ford Foundation to set them on their goal of archiving 6,000 films in the next three years. With digital as the new standard, many filmmakers are leaving their prints to rust, but IndieCollect aims to foster preservation threefold by, “creating a comprehensive, searchable, IndieCollect Index of American independent film, video and digital titles; developing an IndieCollect Encyclopedia for scholars, programmers and cinephiles; and doing outreach to hundreds of filmmakers and film advocacy organizations to Identify and Collect the works that need archival repositories.” From the press […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 14, 2014 -
Watch: David Lynch and Mark Frost’s On the Air
Following the warm reception of Twin Peaks (1990-1991), ABC commissioned a little seen follow-up from Lynch/Frost Productions in 1992 called On the Air. The series was a characteristically off-kilter sitcom about a ’50s television network struggling to rejuvenate their variety spot, The Lester Guy Show. What sounds like a quixotic collision of Network and 30 Rock instead turned out to be an unmitigated disaster: ABC put the ax on On the Air after only three episodes. Still, as cult followings are want to do, the series attracted a cluster of devotees when it screened in its entirety in the UK and Australia. The first (and only) season is now available on YouTube, […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 14, 2014 -
BuzzFeed: The Next Netflix?
The New York Times broke the news this Sunday that BuzzFeed received $50 million in funding for their Los Angeles-based Motion Pictures arm. Recognizing the massive revenue generated by the company’s video content, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti hired Ze Frank, “web video pioneer,” to produce a “rapid-fire” stream of everything from “six second clips made for social media to more traditional 22-minute shows” under the new banner. Eventually, the company will look to produce feature-length films and TV series, not unlike Netflix. Another thing BuzzFeed Motion Pictures has in common with the online streaming paradigm is an unsurprising affinity for data science. In […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 13, 2014 -
Watch: Cassavetes Between Takes of Love Streams
“If our films are supposed to be something like life is…then how can you determine what’s going to happen tomorrow?” That’s John Cassavetes from the set of Love Streams on the importance of surrendering to the unpredictability of filmmaking. Excerpted from the film’s on-set documentary I’m Almost Not Crazy…–John Cassavetes: The Man and His Work, this short clip provides a glimpse of Cassavetes’ ethic between takes. The full behind-the-scenes exposé is available in Criterion’s just released edition of Love Streams, and you can read Dennis Lim’s supplemental essay over at the site, which examines the film as a brilliant collision of Cassavetes’ (and Rowlands’ and […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 12, 2014 -
Ranking Crowdfunding Sites: Kickstarter, Seed&Spark, Rockethub and More
Crowdsunite, a website that specializes in crowdfunding reviews like only a millennial startup could, recently compiled a list of the industry’s top 10 platforms based on user reviews. Weighing the funding success rate, customer support and user friendliness, Crowdsunite concluded that the niche hybrid Seed&Spark ranked higher than Kickstarter, while the likes of IndieGogo and GoFundMe didn’t even make the cut. A plausible reason for this is that the survey considered platforms that cater across several industries (publishing, medical), but the reasons behind their viability are nonetheless worth considering for your next campaign. While users have frequently taken issue with Kickstarter’s “all […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Aug 11, 2014
