Authors — Sarah Salovaara
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The Truth, The Horror: Eliza Hittman on It Felt Like Love
“If you happen to know a brave fifteen-year-old, that’s not too embarrassed to act in an emotional teenage role, that deals with things teenagers deal with — please have her contact me. Most of the kids I’ve been seeing can only handle a part that’s an idealized version of how they want to be perceived. It’s kind of incredible that parents would let their children perform in some totally exploitative slasher movie, but tense up at the opportunity to be a part of a fictional yet emotionally truthful coming-of-age film.” * * * Eliza Hittman posted the aforementioned on the […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 17, 2014 -
ornana’s Jim Cummings On How To Combat The Digital Recession and Lessons To Learn From “South Park”
“Our degrees cost us about $90,000 a piece, and in the last five years of making movies, the three of us together have made about $5,000 from our work.” That’s ornana producer Jim Cummings speaking at his Future 15s New Media talk at SXSW last Sunday. Drawing from his article series over at Ted Hope’s Truly Free Film, Cummings gave a micro-keynote on what he calls “The Digital Recession,” the supersaturation of content and what can be done to effectively combat the glut. Cummings made the common observation that nowadays, any old person is encouraged by “camera companies, film festivals, and arts […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 14, 2014 -
Sarasota Film Festival Announces 2014 Lineup
The 2014 Sarasota Film Festival lineup looks — as ever — to be a nice mix of Sundance, SXSW and international titles, with a few discoveries to be had as well. The 16th edition is set to open with Rory Kennedy’s Last Days in Vietnam, and close with Charlie McDowell’s The One I Love. John Slattery’s God’s Pocket and John Rossi’s Ivory Tower mark the Centerpiece films. Other Sundance standouts are Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter; Frank; Rich Hill; Wetlands; Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart and Blue Ruin, which has seemingly made every imaginable stop on the major festival circuit. Major auteurs — Tsai Ming-Liang, Corneliu Porumboiu, Pawel Pawlikowski — dot the lineup alongside […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 12, 2014 -
SXSW Dispatch: She’s Lost Control, Wetlands, Frank
“I thought I was really onto something,” smiled director Anja Marquardt during the Q&A for She’s Lost Control. “I’d never even heard of The Sessions.” Peculiar profession aside, Marquardt can rest easy: the two films have little to nothing in common. Much more than a narrative quirk, Marquardt uses the untraditional avenue of sex surrogacy to explore the contradiction at the crux of her character study. Our subject here is not John Hawkes in an iron lung, but Ronah, a woman, a graduate student and a sex surrogate on the verge, played with disquieting charisma by high-waisted pant aficionado Brooke Bloom. More alone than […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 12, 2014 -
Five Questions With Evaporating Borders Director Iva Radivojevic
In recent years, the island of Cyprus has become something of an unforgiving melting pot. The often life-threatening emigration of Iranians and Syrians to the once predominately Greco-Turkish enclave presents a tense social fabric that is poetically probed in Iva Radivojevic’s debut documentary Evaporating Borders. Radivojevic adopts an aesthetically meandering and unique approach to the film, which is almost paradoxically structured into character-based chapters. Filmmaker spoke with the Yugoslavian-born Radivojevic about her personal connection to Cyprus, the process of voicing the film’s narrator and other traditionally fiction form elements at work in the film. Evaporating Borders premieres today in the Visions section at […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 11, 2014 -
Lena Dunham’s Strong SXSW Keynote Indirectly Highlights Competition’s Homogeny
Shortly after 11 o’clock this morning, Lena Dunham offered the Austin Convention Center’s Vimeo Theater a holistic timeline of her rise from hostess-who-lived-with-her-parents to independent cinema’s most overanalyzed success story. Fresh from SNL and somehow running on fumes with the utmost effervescence (she claimed to have written her speech at 3 am), Dunham recounted her days as an aspiring filmmaker with candor and self-effacement. Even if, on the set of Tiny Furniture precursor “Delusional Downtown Divas,” she was “struggling how to turn on the camera,” it’s clear her preternatural drive has always been intact. A tireless maker and unabashed experimenter, Dunham consistently stressed the importance of […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 10, 2014 -
Five Questions With Fort Tilden Directors Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers
A comedy of errors through the borough of Brooklyn, Fort Tilden follows the aimlessly entitled Allie (Clare McNulty) and Harper (Bridey Elliott) on their quest for a day at the beach. What begins as a seemingly superfluous mission soon crumbles into a dismantling force on both the girls’ psyches and their relationship. Co-written and directed by feature first timers Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers, Fort Tilden premieres today in the Narrative Competition at SXSW. Filmmaker: This was your first time working together as co-writer/directors. How did that come about and what was it like sharing a brain for X months/years? We’re you […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 8, 2014 -
Five Questions with Evolution of a Criminal Director Darius Clark Monroe
A pastiche of confessional interviews, recreations and decade-spanning raw footage, Darius Clark Monroe’s Evolution of a Criminal examines the director’s transition from a 16 year-old Texas honor student to incarcerated bank robber. Not so much a malicious jaunt as an impulsive act of financially strapped naiveté, Monroe revisits his victims, family members, teachers and friends as he tries to piece together the puzzle behind this life-altering moment. Below, Monroe speaks about why his film is not just for the convicted, his reasoning for recreations and how the camera elicits honesty. Evolution of a Criminal premieres tomorrow in the Visions section at SXSW. Filmmaker: While […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 7, 2014 -
Tribeca Film Festival Announces Spotlight, Midnight, Storyscapes and Special Screenings Sections
The 2014 Tribeca Film Festival is rounding out its features line-up with the Spotlight, Midnight, Storyscapes and Special Screenings selections. Heavy hitters in the Spotlight category include Roman Polanski, Kelly Reichardt, Ira Sachs, Jon Favreau and Paul Haggis, with script ventures from Nicole Holofcener and Joss Whedon, as well as Chris Messina and Courtney Cox’s directorial debuts. Among the Special Screenings are new works from Tsai Ming Liang and Remote Area Medical directors Jeff Reichart and Farihah Zaman. Add in the transmedia Storyscapes and the chupacabra-featuring Midnights, and it’s shaping up to be a solid slate. The full synopses are below. SPOTLIGHT […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 6, 2014 -
Andrea Arnold’s D.P. Robbie Ryan on Why He Still Shoots Shorts and Getting The Shot Off Set
Best known as Andrea Arnold’s right-hand man, Robbie Ryan has a surprisingly large number of short film credits for a cinematographer of his standing. While the majority of d.p.s graduate to the feature format and stay put, Ryan has shot a whopping 14 shorts since his breakthrough lensing on Fish Tank. Beyond a steadier flow of income, short films afford Ryan a sort of trial period with directors. Speaking in an in-depth interview with Barry Ackroyd (d.p. of Captain Phillips, The Hurt Locker) at the 28:25 minute mark, Ryan puts it plainly: “I think the reason I do short films […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Mar 5, 2014
