Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Another Screen Launches Streaming Series “For a Free Palestine: Films by Palestinian Women”
Another Screen, the streaming arm of feminist film journal Another Gaze, launched today “For a Free Palestine: Films by Palestinian Women.” The films all stream for free worldwide, and donations are encouraged that will go towards “facilitating medical, legal, and infrastructure aid on the ground. Secondary donations go to as supporting filmmaking in Gaza; restoration projects of older Palestinian films; cultural centers for refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and more.” Already on the site are films by Jumana Manna, Basma Alsharif, Rosalind Nashashibi, Razan AlSalah, Mahasen Nasser-Eldin, and Larissa Sansour, and to be posted in the next few days […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 18, 2021 -
“The Term ‘No-Budget Can Be Tricky… It’s More Important as an Attitude or Ethos…” Kentucker Audley on NoBudge’s New Streaming Platform
NoBudge, the website devoted to ultra-low-budget and truly independent short films, recently launched a major new expansion of the organization’s mission and business: a subscription-based streaming platform that combines films from its collection with new shorts, features and music videos uploaded daily, many of which are exclusive to NoBudge. With Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, iOS and Android apps, NoBudge costs $5.99 a month, and 60% of revenues flow back to filmmakers. One of the most remarkable elements of the NoBudge story is that over its history founder Kentucker Audley — selected for Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces series in […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 11, 2021 -
Sundance Institute Announces the 20 Fellows Selected for the 2021 Native, Directors and Screenwriters Labs
The Sundance Institute announced today the first 20 fellows participating in Sundance’s summer Labs. Beginning with the Native Lab (May 10 – 21) and running through the Directors Lab (June 1 – July 2) and Screenwriters Lab (July 6 – 9), the programs will offer selected filmmakers a variety of development and learning opportunities and will connect them with advisors and the larger creative community. Sundance’s online learning platform, Sundance Collab, will host some parts of the labs. From the press release: These Labs are organized under the aegis of Feature Film Program Founding Director Michelle Satter, FFP Deputy Director […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 10, 2021 -
Watch: David Lynch’s Donovan Video, “I Am the Shaman”
David Lynch directs as well as plays on a new video from Scottish songwriter and performer Donovan. The director is credited with “unique Modal Guitar Textures and effects” on the track, which, in a statement posted to Facebook by Donovan, came together quickly: It was all impromptu. I visited the studio and David said … “Sit at the mics with your guitar Don.” David in same room behind control desk with my Linda. He had asked me to only bring in a song just emerging, not anywhere near finished. We would see what happens. It happened! I composed extempore … […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 10, 2021 -
“Everything You’re Feeling or Seeing in the Moment Comes Into the Story”: Director Iva Radivojevic on Her Borgesian Tale of Wanderlust and Connection, Aleph
“One September day,” begins the title card at the head of the New Directors/New Films-premiering Aleph, “I met Rodrigo near 23rd Street for lunch. He talked about microcosms, labyrinths, connectness and Borges…” And with those deceptively casual opening lines, filmmaker Iva Radivojevic takes us on a globetrotting (10 countries on five continents!) journey through the porous borderlands of documentary and fiction that’s as much philosophical as it is observational. Traversing both map and territory, Aleph draws its inspiration from the Jorge Luis Borges short story of the same name, a brief tale that literalizes the Hamlet quote (“O God! I […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 7, 2021 -
Trailer Watch: Nicole Riegel’s Holler
The first trailer just dropped for Nicole Riegel’s Holler, a flinty, tremendously assured debut drama with a powerful lead performance by Jessica Barden. When I interviewed Riegel last fall when her film played in Toronto’s market, she spoke of its development and financing process, during which some financiers asked her if she could make the lead male. “I wanted to tell my story, and I only knew to tell that if it was about a young woman in a very harsh, muscular environment,” Riegel told me. “And then I wanted to tell about how hard it is for young women […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 5, 2021 -
12 Feature Recommendations from the 2021 New Directors/New Films Festival
New Directors/New Films, the venerable Spring festival presented by MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, returns with a 50th anniversary edition that celebrates not only the fest’s longevity but a return to live moviegoing. The festival begins today and runs in its virtual cinema through May 8, while in-person screenings extend until May 14. The Lincoln Center screenings are limited capacity, and while there are sell-outs, tickets remain for many films, particularly the second screenings towards the end of the festival. Below are 12 recommendations from Vadim Rizov, Nelson Kim and myself (with assists from Natalia Keogan, Abby […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2021 -
Watch: Iva Radivojević’s Stunning and Eerie Arctic-Shot Short, UTUQAQ
Premiering online timed to Earth Day from Field of Vision is a stunning and poetic Arctic-shot short, UTUQAQ, directed by Iva Radivojević. Acting as her own cinematographer, Radivojević counterpoints elegant and abstract patterns across sweeping planes of ice with more human-scale documentation of the work of four researchers drilling ice cores in the region’s freezing temperatures. The narration — in Kalaallisut (West Greenlandic) by Aviaja Lyberth — is from the point of the view of the ice itself, evoking the earth’s geological memory as it confronts efforts of the researchers working in the moment to learn about what is being lost […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 22, 2021 -
Trailer Watch: Leos Carax’s Annette (Plus Cannes 2021 News)
The long-awaited trailer for Leos Carax’s musical Annette — his follow-up to Holy Motors, one of best films of the last decade — has just been posted online. Concurrent with a communique from French President Emmanuel Macron that seems designed to assure anxious international industry about the viability of the upcoming ’21 edition of the Cannes Film Festival, where Annette will be opening night, it’s a particularly impressive publicity drop. The film’s synopsis, from the press release: Los Angeles, today. Henry (Adam Driver) is a stand-up comedian with a fierce sense of humor who falls in love with Ann (Marion […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 19, 2021 -
“She Can Only Function in the Dark”: Writer/Director Corinna Faith On Her Female-Led, ’70s-Set Ghost Story, The Power
Set during London’s so-called “Three-Day Week” period — just over two months in 1974 when Conservatives in Britain rationed electricity as part of a dispute with the coal miners whose output supplied most of the country’s energy — Corinna Faith’s The Power is an impressively accomplished debut feature that yokes a classic ghost story to the dynamics of the contemporary #MeToo movement. Val is an apprentice nurse working her first night shift in an aging East London hospital. There are plenty of shadows as lights go out in unused areas, and gas lanterns are the most frequent source of illumination. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 15, 2021
