Authors — Scott Macaulay
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“There is a Particular Way Young People from the Caribbean Diaspora Speak to Their Parents and Interact with Family…”: Mandy Marcus on Her Student Short Film Showcase Short, Cousins
A Brooklyn teen and her Guyanaese cousin, who has traveled to New York for an uncle’s funeral, spend a day together before the wake, an afternoon that arcs from a gentle hang to a more complex articulation of vulnerability and friendship. Mandy Marcus’s incredibly assured and beautifully directed short, Cousins, is confident in its clear-eyed realism. It allows its story to unfold as we observe the girls’ subtly redefine their relationship, with moods and textures shifting as the day moves from afternoon to night and the excellent soundtrack pulses with cues from Sudan Archives and Carlton and the Shoes, among […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 4, 2021 -
“…The Character Comes Home from Work and Smokes a Bowl in the Bath”: Edward Hancox on His Student Short Film Showcase Short, Things That Happen in the Bathroom
Love, lust, heartbreak and solitude — Edward Hancox’s clever relationship drama, Things That Happen in the Bathroom mines a home’s most private space for the full spectrum of feelings that can occur there. For Jak, a lonely young queer man, the bathroom is his place for contemplation and introspection, and Hancox’s short explores the charged interactions that occur when Jak invites a new hookup into the space. True to its title, the short stays within the bathroom’s four walls, but the space itself transforms continually as the shifting sun throws different shadows through the windows and, later, when Jak outfits […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 4, 2021 -
“I Like to Remind Myself that Creativity is Cyclical”: Molly Sorensen on Her Student Short Film Showcase Pic, Mud and Honey
The sensations of summer — the heat, the mild ennui, but also the complicated feelings when teenage friendship and romance blur during those carefree months — are beautifully captured in Temple graduate Molly Sorensen’s short film, Mud and Honey. Maeve, a bit of a loner, seems sure of her sexuality but unsure if the object of her affection, Delilah, is sincere in her reciprocation. The popular Delilah, on the other hand, enjoys her languid afternoons with Maeve but could also easily spend them with a group of local boys. The tension between the two simmers in a film in which […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 3, 2021 -
Cannes Film Festival Announces 2021 Official Selection with Pictures by Sean Baker, Sean Penn, Kogonada, Mia Hansen-Løve and More
A larger-than-usual Competition — 24 films — for its 2021 edition was announced today by the Cannes Film Festival, along with the Out of Competition, Un Certain Regard and other titles that comprise (for now) its official selection. Delayed from its usual dates in mid-May to July 6-17, the festival opens with the long-awaited Leos Carax Sparks-scored musical Annette and contains new features by Asghar Farhadi, Mia Hansen-Løve, Jacques Audiard and Nanni Moretti. Cannes also adds this year a new section, Cannes Premieres, containing films by festival veterans such as Oliver Stone, Kornél Mundruczo and Andrea Arnold. Among the American […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 3, 2021 -
“A Cautionary Tale, Born of My Own Fears of Making an Impossible Choice…”: Kristi Hoi on Her Student Short Film Showcase Short, No Law, No Heaven
Poignant and with astonishing visual style, No Law, No Heaven is a decades-spanning drama about love and regret set within Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City by University of California, Los Angeles graduate film student Kristi Hoi. It’s one of five winners of the 2020-21 Student Short Film Showcase, a collaborative program from The Gotham, Focus Features, Jet Blue and the Westridge Foundation, currently available for viewing via Focus Features’s YouTube channel as well as in the air, on Jet Blue’s in-flight entertainment system. Consisting of three sequences, No Law, No Heaven features the same character as he ages from being […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 1, 2021 -
The Gotham, Focus Features, Jet Blue and Westridge Foundation Premiere Student Shorts Online and In the Air
Four winners of the 2020-21 Student Short Film Showcase award, a collaboration between The Gotham, Focus Features, Jet Blue and the Westridge Foundation, are now streaming on Focus Features’s digital platforms as well as in the air on JetBlue’s inflight entertainment systems. The films were chosen from the submissions of 16 film schools and represent a real diversity of subject matter and storytelling styles. In Edward Hancox’s (University of Texas, Austin) cleverly conceived and sharply acted Things That Happen in the Bathroom, a bathroom, typically a place of privacy and solitude, becomes the site of complicated relationship dynamics between a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 1, 2021 -
“I Tell [the Audience] the Truth and Allow Them to Lie to Themselves”: Derek DelGaudio on His Frank Oz-Directed One-Man Show, In and Of Itself
The following piece contains mild spoilers for Derek DelGaudio’s In and Of Itself, the film version of which, directed by Frank Oz, opens today at IFC Center and is currently also streaming on Hulu. For the live viewer of Derek DelGaudio’s In and Of Itself — a theater production which ran in Los Angeles and New York from 2016 to 2018 — the piece began not when the suited, dark-haired performer took the stage but 20 minutes before, in the lobby. As ticket-holders lined up before entering the theater, they were asked to pick a card — not a playing card, but, […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 28, 2021 -
Watch: Leah Shore’s Music Video for The Malpractice, Get Father on the Phone
Filmmaker Leah Shore — a 25 New Face who contributed an illustration to Joanne McNeil’s Speculations column last issue — has directed a music video for the band The Malpractice. With pink curtains, green shag wallpaper and cardboard broccoli, the video features Sarah Ellen Stephens, who stars in Shore’s recent short film, Puss, and film critic and programmer Aaron Hillis in a playfully menacing infantilism scenario that Shore shot entirely in her own apartment. Check it out above.
by Scott Macaulay on May 26, 2021 -
Trailer Watch: Somos., James Schamus’s First Television Series, Soon Premiering on Netflix
Producer, screenwriter and director James Schamus has created a six-episode series, Somos., for Netflix that will premiere June 30. The first trailer has dropped along with a statement by Schamus on the Netflix site. Based on a ProPublica oral history of a cartel massacre in Allende, Mexico, crimes that journalist Ginger Thompson writes were triggered by actions by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the series has two goals, says Schamus: In telling the story, we have two core objectives: to make visible the people our culture often works to erase from our perceptions and memories, and to affirm our co-existence […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 26, 2021 -
First Titles Announces for the 2021 Fantasia Film Festival
The Fantasia Film Festival has just announced the first titles from its upcoming 25th anniversary edition, which will take place as a virtual event from August 5 – 21. Films will be accessible to Canadian audiences via a platform created by Festival Scope and Shift72. The festival organizers will be listening to the advice of local health authorities and may add a limited number of in-person events closer to the festival date. The titles and descriptions, from the fest’s high-spirited press release, are below. THE LAST THING MARY SAW. Brace yourself for THE LAST THING MARY SAW, a breathtaking period occult […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 19, 2021
