Authors — Sarah Salovaara
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IFP Announces Fall and Winter Slate for the Theatrical Screen Forward Series
IFP has announced the complete lineup for the Fall and Winter season of their Screen Forward series. The four films, Field Niggas, Funny Bunny, Cronies and Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party, will each receive a weeklong theatrical run at the Made in New York Media Center by IFP in Dumbo. Read up on the films below. October 16 – October 22 FIELD NIGGAS, directed by Khalik Allah A wise-cracking, probing urban flaneur, Khalik Allah paints an impressionistic portrait of the loiterers and denizens in and around 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Field Niggas. Beneath the bright lights of a corner convenience store, Allah […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Oct 5, 2015 -
NYFF ’15: In The Shadow of Women and No Home Movie
Slotting a festival schedule is one of those tasks that falls subject to a number of outside variables, namely, filmmaker and celebrity availability. One would figure that less thought goes into structuring a press and industry schedule, where 10 AM screenings are decidedly void of glamour, and yet the occasional revelatory double feature presents itself, in which two disparate filmmakers appear in dialogue. Case in point: back-to-back screenings of Philippe Garrel’s In the Shadow of Women and Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie proved a joint exercise in obstruction, fostering a shifting interplay between objects and protagonists, despite their very different surroundings. Garrel […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Oct 2, 2015 -
NYFF ’15: Right Now, Wrong Then and Maggie’s Plan
About three-quarters of the way into Hong Sang-soo’s deja vu diptych Right Now, Wrong Then, the camera zooms in on a pair of women alternately shielding their eyes and ogling a drunken man as he strips before their dinner table. It’s a classic instance of attraction/repulsion, a train wreck one can’t quite turn away from despite knowing exactly where it’s headed. The same could be said for Hong’s latest outing, which is certainly no train wreck, but nevertheless employs a structure that redoubles the film’s first hour from a slightly skewed angle, pushing the reinvention conceit of In Another Country into subtler, more challenging territory, which ultimately begets two variations […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Oct 1, 2015 -
NYFF ’15: Laura Poitras, AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook Talk Field of Vision
Ahead of the official launch of Field of Vision at 1 pm today, co-creators Laura Poitras, AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook gave an NYFF free talk last night on the brand new documentary unit of The Intercept. The trio spoke at length about their aims within the realm of episodic and short form nonfiction, and how the filmmaker-driven platform will function at the nexus of journalism and documentary. Below are a few highlights. Poitras was inspired to create Field of Vision after working with both The New York Times and Julian Assange. While working on the feature films that constitute her post-9/11 trilogy, Poitras […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 29, 2015 -
Watch: Shading and Cutting in Cassavetes’ Shadows
Amid all of the internet’s Kubrick/Anderson/Fincher devotees, few video essayists turn their scalpel toward Cassavetes, perhaps in part because his directing prowess is not so easily distilled. Kevin B. Lee has thus chosen to focus on the opening 14 shots of Cassavetes’ debut Shadows, and how he uses incisive editing and lighting to convey the shifting sentiments in a series of scenes between the two lovers Leila and Tony. Check it out above.
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 28, 2015 -
Trailer Watch: Jacques Rivette’s Out 1: Noli Me Tangere
To celebrate the November 18 Blu-Ray and DVD release of Jacques Rivette’s opus Out 1: Noli Me Tangere, the French label Carlotta Films has put out a 2 minute trailer for the 775 minute film. For those of us who don’t own a region agnostic Blu-Ray or DVD player (but live in the New York area), it’s worth trying to catch the film at BAM, showing in four parts from November 4 – 19.
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 25, 2015 -
Blurred Lines: Content Intersections at the IFP Screen Forward Conference
As the IFP Screen Forward Conference comes to a close this afternoon with a series of talks on VR, I’ve collated a handful of takeaways from the week’s panels that point towards an ever thinning gap between episodics and film, festivals and an official release, marketing and distribution, and, hopefully, creator and audience. With the abundance of tools at her finger tips, today’s filmmaker must function like a Swiss army knife, ready and willing to carry her project every step of the way from inception to distribution. Here are a few tips on how to do just that. Know your serials before pitching your film. During […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 24, 2015 -
IFP Screen Forward: Five Questions for Producer Mike S. Ryan
Ahead of his conversation at tomorrow’s Screen Forward conference, Mike S. Ryan fielded five questions about his career and recent Filmmaker piece “TV is Not the New Film.” A producer on such films as Meek’s Cutoff, The Comedy and Palindromes, Ryan explains how transmedia represents an loss of faith in the filmic medium, why True Detective is an exception to the rule of the TV writer as auteur, and what he looks for in a script. Filmmaker: In your “TV is Not the New Film” piece, you mention that the move to transmedia shows a “[loss] of faith in the medium,” while many others seem to argue that transmedia is […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 22, 2015 -
An Unpredictable Release: Four Surprising Facts about It Follows’ Road to Success
During the second day of IFP’s Screen Forward conference, Indiewire’s Eric Kohn moderated a discussion between Animal Kingdom producers Joshua Astrachan and David Kaplan, and former Radius-TWC CEO Tom Quinn on the breakout success of David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows. An indie juggernaut, It Follows grossed 15 times its $1.3 million budget at the box office, in large part due to Radius’s last minute decision to stall VOD and expand to a wide release two weeks after its limited theatrical opening on March 13, riding the wave of word of mouth rather than costly P&A. Below are four major takeaways on the film’s unusual […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 21, 2015 -
TIFF 2015: Five Questions for Lace Crater Director Harrison Atkins
A world premiere in the Vanguard section at TIFF, Harrison Atkins’ Lace Crater traffics at the intersection of supernatural horror and that lo-fi millennial genre proliferated by its producer, Joe Swanberg. During a weekend trip to the Hamptons with friends, Ruth (Lindsay Burdge) has an unexpected dalliance with a burlap wrapped ghost, resulting in a strange STI that no doctor can diagnose. Ahead of Lace Crater‘s TIFF premiere tonight, Filmmaker spoke to Atkins about his interest in sci-fi tinged love stories, and his collaboration with Swanberg. Filmmaker: The geography of the house in the Hamptons is central to establishing the dynamics between your characters. Did you write […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 15, 2015
