Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Jennifer Phang, Nicole Beckwith and Stewart Thorndike Receive Inaugural SFFS Women Filmmaker Fellowships
The San Francisco Film Society announces today three women filmmakers as recipients of its SFFS Women Filmmaker Fellowships, a program supporting women making their second or third features in the genres of science fiction, comedy, action, thriller and horror — areas in which women are traditionally under-represented. Supported by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the fellowships are run by Filmmaker360, the Film Society’s filmmaker services department, and they include financial support, programs and events, mentorship services and more. “We’re thrilled to be kicking off this new initiative with such talented individuals, and to help bridge the support gap we have seen […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 20, 2015 -
Five Questions for Applesauce Writer/Director Onur Tukel
Onur Tukel’s Summer of Blood was a hit of the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, a work that saw the Brooklyn filmmaker venture from the relationship comedy drama of his previous pictures towards a sly, anarchic genre tale — in this case, a vampire story. Far from a generic riff on the genre, it contained all of Tukel’s typical emotional queasiness and edgy humor while adding quite a bit of the red stuff. With Applesauce, his latest, Dylan Baker plays the role of a man coaxed into recounting a story from his past on a radio show one day. He probably […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 20, 2015 -
Alma Har’el on her Work-in-Progress LoveTrue at the Tribeca Film Festival
Alma Har’el’s 2011 Bombay Beach is one of the most striking feature debuts of any sort, fiction or doc, in recent years. In writing about the film and Har’el for our 25 New Faces of 2011, I called it “not only a loving, deeply empathetic portrait of the diverse characters who make up the town” (a small burg in the Salton Sea) “but also a beautifully poetic cinematic essay on the power — and necessity — of play and self-invention.” Bombay Beach, shot largely by Har’el herself on a handheld, $600 Canon consumer video camera, had style to burn, and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 17, 2015 -
The Power of Story: Previewing the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival
Story. Storytelling. Experience. Community. Story, story, story! Talk to the heads of the Tribeca Film Festival and its programmers, and you’ll soon pick up on the event’s messaging this year. A festival that, as Robert DeNiro said at yesterday’s press lunch, was originally intended to be a “one-time thing” is now something of a New York institution. But it continues to evolve. At a sit down earlier in the week, Festival Director Geoff Gilmore, Tribeca Enterprises Executive V.P. Paula Weinstein and senior programmer Cara Cusamano spoke of today’s film viewing and festival landscape — how we are in, as Tribeca […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 16, 2015 -
Trailer Watch: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
I love this movie and just finished editing a great conversation with director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and screenwriter Jesse Andrews for the next print issue of Filmmaker. It won Sundance, you probably heard, and, if you’re a Brian Eno fan, well, it’s got a lot of his best songs in it. (And two in the trailer!) For now, I’m not going to say much more than that, but check it out.
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 8, 2015 -
How Stanley Kubrick Shot Barry Lyndon Using Natural Light
Earlier this week we posted this video with Joe Dunton discussing the lenses used by Stanley Kubrick in his films. (Note: unfortunately, that previous video has been removed by the uploader.) Here’s the next in a Kubrick cinematography playlist: various cinematographers on his use of the BNC camera and Zeiss f/0.7 lenses to shoot Barry Lyndon in natural light. (As a reader below notes, this is an excerpt from Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures, which is recommended viewing.) Previously at Filmmaker, Jim Hemphill sat down with three of the film’s actors for a discussion of the making of that […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 3, 2015 -
Five Questions for The Girl is Trouble Director Julius Onah
One of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces, Julius Onah sees his first feature, a twisty neo-noir set in the immigrant cultures of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, reach theaters today via eOne. The Girl is Trouble stars Columbus Short (Scandal, and pictured above) along with Wilmer Valderrama, Jesse Spencer and, as the femme fatale, Alicja Bachleda. Spike Lee executive produced this tale involving an innocent DJ drawn into intrigue connecting a missing drug deal to the high-finance world of Wall Street. Below, I ask Onah about working with Spike, the film’s noir references, and a few of the things we talked about […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 3, 2015 -
Trailer Watch: Julius Onah’s The Girl is Trouble
Executive producer Spike Lee’s name is all over this trailer, but I’m excited to finally see The Girl is Trouble because of its writer/director, Julius Onah, who I selected as one of our 25 New Faces way back in 2010. At the time of his selection, Onah was prepping this movie, and since its shooting, he became attached to a David Koepp-scripted thriller starring Jared Leto. The trailer seems a bit of a standard issue “guns and a girl” thriller, but I read the original script, which married a film noir storyline with a smart take on the Lower East […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 29, 2015 -
Short Film: Run the Jewels/A.G. Rojas Collaboration, “Close Your Eyes (And Count to F*ck)”
A.G. Rojas, who two years ago we put in our 25 New Faces list, directs this provocative video from Run the Jewels depicting a prolonged, punch-drunk, balletic street fight between a cop (Shea Whigham) and a young black man (Keith Stanfield). Without dialogue, and just through the subtleties of their choreographed movement, the piece moves away from realism and towards a theatrical space, adding new levels of complex meaning to the track’s outraged aggression. If you start watching, then make sure to watch until the end. From The Skinny: Explaining the clip, Rojas said: “When Run The Jewels sent me […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 26, 2015 -
“Getting Funded is Only Part of the Story”: Kickstarter Embraces Timeline Film Pages with Spotlight
Kickstarter has rolled out today Spotlight, a very clever new design option for their project pages. On first glance it seems simple — sort of like Facebook’s Timeline, Spotlight turns your Kickstarter page into a reverse chronological story of your project’s inception, development, successful funding (you hope) and afterlife. By organizing your updates and milestones in the form of a clean narrative scroll, it encourages you to continue that story long after your campaign ends — making Kickstarter a stickier site. (More traffic for Kickstarter!) To make it worthwhile to filmmakers, as the video below shows, you’re given a prominently […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 25, 2015
