Authors — Scott Macaulay
-
Five Questions with Monsieur Le President Director Victoria Campbell
World premiering tonight at DOC NYC is Monsieur Le President, the sophomore feature documentary from New York-based visual artist and filmmaker Victoria Campbell. In 2010, Campbell and a friend travelled to Haiti to volunteer after that country’s devastating earthquake. There she met Gaston Jean Edy, a voodoo priest, and returned over three years to film a doc that tracks both his efforts to start a local medical clinic as well as her own complicated friendship with her subject. Below, Campbell and I talk about the complications of that relationship, filming in disaster zones and one shared favorite movie. Filmmaker: Tell […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 14, 2014 -
Five Questions for Sex and Broadcasting Director Tim K. Smith
The title Sex and Broadcasting may be a grabber, but I doubt any listener of WFMU — and, over the years, there have undoubtedly been millions — needs the hint of salaciousness to tune in to a documentary about the country’s preeminent long-running free form radio station. Indeed, the URL of the film’s website — WFMUtheMovie — might just suffice. In a landscape of Clear Channel-produced corporate playlists, WFMU’s rambunctious, highly personal and often deeply weird deejays continue to offer not just a palette for the ears but an inspiring and enduring vision of independent media. Longtime documentary editor Tim […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 14, 2014 -
Finding Inspiration and Motivation from Within: Kickstarter Sci-Fi Shakespeare Project, Ambition’s Debt
Writer/director Devin E. Haqq is currently on Kickstarter raising funds for his ambitious indie Shakespeare adaptation, Ambition’s Debt. Read his essay below on deciding to crowdfund, and consider supporting his project. Night after night, I lose sleep, wracking my brain over this mad dash to reach an unbelievable goal on Kickstarter. With everything involved in this crowdfunding campaign for my feature project, Ambition’s Debt, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, I find myself asking the same question; “What the hell was I thinking?” People say it’s a full-time job and it’s so intense, but you can never really know […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 8, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Vanessa McDonnell’s John’s of 12th Street
Conversation, heaping plates and lots of red sauce — all should be found in Vanessa McDonnell’s documentary on the people behind East Village Italian landmark John’s. The film opens next Wednesday, November 12, at Brooklyn’s Spectacle for five screenings. Here’s the description: JOHN’S OF 12TH STREET is a portrait of a century-old Italian-American restaurant in New York City, one of the last of its kind in a rapidly changing East Village. This observational documentary loosely follows the rhythm of the restaurant’s day, which swings between boredom and frenzy as the old rooms empty and fill. No one who works at […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 7, 2014 -
Seven Impressions of Viggo, a Short Film by Alix Lambert
In October, timed to the New York Film Festival U.S. premiere of his film, Jauja, Lisandro Alonso was the second director in residence at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The Film Society invited Filmmaker to report on Alonso’s various events — lectures, Q&As and sessions with students in both New York and Boston — and we asked filmmaker and contributor Alix Lambert. Jauja is produced by and stars Viggo Mortenson, who shares a tie with Lambert. He and David Cronenberg watched her The Mark of Cain film while researching Russian tattoos for Eastern Promises, and Mortensen’s Perceval Press published […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 6, 2014 -
Five Questions for Drone Boning Drone Porn Creators Brandon LaGanke and John Carlucci
Drones. Porn. Directors Brandon LaGanke and John Carlucci of Ghost Cow Films have taken what might have been a cynical, viral video SEO-mashup and delivered something deeply weird and oddly hypnotic. While Drone Boning features couples having sex (so, yes, it’s adults-only and NSFW), the eerie glide of the drone and the camera’s distance from these writhing lovers make them more like elements in a video art piece than reflections of desire. Filmmaker previously featured the work of Ghost Cow when we curated LaGanke’s short film, Play House, for the Northside Film Festival. When he sent me this latest out-there […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 5, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: DOC NYC Premiere Monsieur Le President, by Victoria Campbell
Premiering at DOC NYC is Monsieur Le President,” a film by New York-based visual artist, photographer and filmmaker Victoria Campbell. Check out the trailer above and the DOC NYC description below: Volunteering in Haiti in the immediate aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake, Victoria Campbell encounters Gaston, a charming voodoo priest who shows leadership during the emergency, and later manages to open a small, much-needed medical clinic with the support of a foreign funder. He becomes a local hero, a symbol of ingenuity in defiance of the failure of conventional relief efforts. Over three years, he also becomes the filmmaker’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2014 -
Five Chicago Doc Production Companies Launch The School Project
The School Project is a series of six, 10-minute documentary video pieces about the Chicago Public School system following the closure of 49 schools. It’s also an unprecedented collaboration between five of the city’s top documentary production companies. The first episode premiered today, and it can be watched above. Below is the statement from the five companies — Free Spirit Media, Media Process Group, Kartemquin Films, Kindling Group. and Siskel/Jacobs Productions — about their reasons for this collaboration. Statement on The School Project Collaboration The School Project is an unprecedented, collaborative, multiplatform documentary series on public education in Chicago. The […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 28, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Here’s a high recommendation: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the debut feature from 2014 25 New Face Ana Lily Amirpour. “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is an astonishing debut feature that contains the dark beauty of old-school vampire films, the cool rigor of the Iranian New Wave, and the culturally aware wit of someone with killer taste in music and movies,” is what I wrote in my profile of Amirpour this summer. Now, the film is set for release next month via VICE and Kino Lorber. And Amirpour has been nominated for the 2014 IFP Gotham […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 27, 2014 -
“You May Have Made the Most Amazing Film in the World, But You Have Zero Followers on Twitter”: VHX’s Jamie Wilkinson on Building Film Communities
Jamie Wilkinson, CEO of the direct-to-fan online video platform VHX, had some words to filmmakers on Peter Katz’s Hollywood 2.0 podcast. Specifically: amp up your social media game. In the conversation, which also discusses some of the platform’s early successes, the role of filters and gatekeepers, and VHX’s partnerships with distributors, he preaches the virtues of building an audience online. “How do we get people promoting each other’s works?” he asks. “You may have made the most amazing film in the world, but you have zero followers on Twitter. How are you going to get the word out? In the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 26, 2014
