Authors — Sarah Salovaara
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SXSW Announces Midnighters and Shorts Lineups
Coming off the heels of last week’s announcement, SXSW rounds out their lineup with the Midnighters and Shorts sections. As was the case with the bulk of the festival’s Features, there’s not a huge carry over from Sundance, beyond Adam Wingard’s The Guest and Jonathan’s Chest, Person to Person, Notes on Blindness, Funnel, Dig, Verbatim and Marilyn Myller in the Shorts section. Also of note are 25 New Faces Mohammad Gorjestani and ornana’s Danny Madden, who will screen Refuge and Confusion Through Sand, respectively. Check out the full list of Midnighters; Narrative, Documentary, Animated, Midnight, Texas and Texas High School Shorts; and Music Videos below. MIDNIGHTERS Scary, funny, sexy, controversial – […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 5, 2014 -
January 24, 2014 Captured by 100 iPhones Around the World
Jake Scott, filmmaker and son of a man named Ridley, directed this 30th Anniversary spot for Apple, showcasing the cinematographic capabilities of an iPhone 5S. Shot on 100 smartphones around the world, “1.24.14” depicts a day in the life of Mac products and their users, that is equal parts horrifying and awe-inspiring given the Macintosh’s ubiquity. Culled from more than 70 hours of footage, the ad was cut by 21 editors under the guide of regular David Fincher collaborator, Angus Wall.
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 4, 2014 -
The Paragon of Audience Outreach? Robbie Bryan Talks Black Hat
Any panel, roundtable or seminar that concerns technological advancements in film is bound to hit upon the issue of audience engagement. How we can best make use of the embarrassment of riches the internet affords us in finding the right people to watch our film. Filmmaker Robbie Bryan has managed to collect (at the time of this writing) 235,427 Facebook likes for his upcoming film Black Hat, that’s still only in the development stage. He’s leveraged his fan base into an ambitious Seed & Spark campaign, interacting with them along the way and soliciting their input in the shaping of his […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 4, 2014 -
HBO Launches HBOAccess, A Short-Form Program for Diverse Filmmakers
HBO has launched a four-week program designed to provide project development, master classes and mentoring for diverse, emerging filmmakers, who identify as Asian Pacific American, Sub-Continent Asian American, African American, Hispanic American, Native American, or as a woman. Dubbed “HBOAccess,” the program will invite four finalists to Los Angeles (though housing and travel are not included) for the month of June to craft a budget and blueprint for short-form content – either a webisode or a 10-15 minute film. Upon completion of the program, HBO will consider each proposal for production and an eventual airing spot on HBO platforms including HBO […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 3, 2014 -
Rest in Peace, Philip Seymour Hoffman
I spent most of yesterday caught in a self-centered malaise upon hearing that one of my favorite actors had passed away. An outpouring of eulogies — each distinct and personal, though unanimously carrying that sorrowful, grateful conclusion — drifted onto the internet, while I reflected in the only way I knew how: by watching his work. It takes more than a few hours or a days to wind your way through Philip Seymour Hoffman’s filmography, as he was not just blessed with great talent, but also, great taste. Nelson Carvajal of Press Play and Fandor has put together a nice […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Feb 3, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy Starring Jake Gyllenhaal
The cover story of our current issue, Enemy is Denis Villeneuve’s brooding adaptation of José Saramago’s The Double, his second collaboration with Jake Gyllenhaal following last year’s Prisoners. Today, the busy bees over at A24 debuted a trailer in advance of the film’s March 14th release that also showcases an impressive supporting cast in Isabella Rosselini, Melanie Laurent and recent Cronenberg favorite, Sarah Gadon. The film, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, is another entry in cinema’s long-running fascination with doppelgängers, and apparently, a rather successful one at that. Prior to interviewing Villeneuve for the Winter issue, Brandon Harris raved the film in his […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 31, 2014 -
The Davey Foundation’s Short Film Grant
Created in honor of actor David Ross Fetzer, The Davey Foundation strives to promote emerging artists under the age of 35 in both theater and film. Submissions recently opened for the Foundation’s Short Film Grant, which awards a U.S. filmmaker $3500 for the production of a short-length script. Dustin Guy Defa, a board member of the Davey Foundation and a frequent collaborator of the late Mr. Fetzer (who AD-ed Bad Fever), generously shed some light on the inaugural competition: “We’ve elected to support the short format as opposed to the feature because of the Foundation’s intent to support new voices in […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 31, 2014 -
Natalia Leite and Alexandra Roxo on VICE’s Every Woman
More often than not, filmmakers undertake the odd job to get by — not unlike, as Natalia Leite and Alexandra Roxo argue in their VICE series Every Woman, the storied “second sex.” “We started thinking about the most stigmatized, mysterious and hardest jobs women do,” Roxo narrates in the opening sequence. And so, the Brooklyn filmmaking team trekked across the country to slip inside the well-worn shoes (lucite heels) of a truckstop stripper, as captured in the New Mexico-set pilot of Every Woman. Filmmaker spoke with Leite and Roxo about the series, the dangers of overstepping exploitative bounds and the foibles of simultaneously acting […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 31, 2014 -
SXSW Releases 2014 Features Lineup
Here we go. Unlike many other major festivals who favor an incremental approach, South by Southwest unloads 115 films from their extensive lineup (barring the midnight and shorts selections) in one fell swoop, so there’s plenty to parse through here. 68 of the featured films are directorial debuts, a number of which can be found in the Visions section, which housed my favorite discovery from last year’s festival: Petra Costa’s Elena. That’s not to say there aren’t a few familiar faces: Lawrence Michael Levine’s Wild Canaries will premiere in the Narrative Competition, while Festival Favorites boasts Sundance selections from a bevy of […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 30, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin Starring Scarlett Johansson
If you’ve been wondering where on God’s green earth Jonathan Glazer has been for the last decade, then April should be a very fine month for you. Come the 4th, A24 will release Under The Skin, the Englishman’s long-awaited follow-up to 2004’s Birth. As transparently plotted as that Nicole Kidman-starrer was, Glazer (with significant assistance from Harris Savides) demonstrated a clean handle on its foreboding mood, a trait that has apparently carried over to his latest. In this teaser, cut by Glazer himself, we can barely glimpse Scarlett Johansson’s extraterrestrial stalker for more than a second a piece, but the atmosphere pulses […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Jan 30, 2014
