Authors — Scott Macaulay
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New Expressions in Horror: Relic’s Natalie Erika James and Deep Tissue’s Meredith Alloway on Career Beginnings and the Power of the Short Film
Launching a career with a strong short is a hallmark of the independent film scene. The best shorts of the year commonly attract attention from festival programmers, managers, producers, agents. And in addition to generating recognition and industry interest, many shorts do more — they establish not only a voice but also subject matter their makers go on to explore with even more depth, nuance and subtlety in future works. Currently in release from IFC Midnight and attracting much-deserved attention is Natalie Erika James’s Relic, which artfully lodges an exploration of dementia and elder care within a genuinely scary haunted-house […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 31, 2020 -
Watch: Exquisite Shorts, 19 Filmmakers Participating in Collaborative Filmmaking Game
In a project led by series producer and editor Ben Fee, 19 filmmakers have turned the old Surrealist “exquisite corpse” creation method into a “collaborative filmmaking game,” Exquisite Shorts, that you can watch above. Previously used throughout the 20th century to create poetry and artwork, the method lends itself beautifully to collaborative filmmaking, particularly when the creators are as inventive as the ones in this group. (Names involved who are familiar to Filmmaker readers include Travis Stevens as well as Courtney and Hillary Andujar, who appeared on last year’s 25 New Faces list.) In the 12-minute piece they mix short visual […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 28, 2020 -
Pamela Cohn’s Lucid Dreaming Podcast Debuts with Documentary Filmmaker Penny Lane
Critic and programmer Pamela Cohn recently published her first book, Lucid Dreaming, a collection of extremely thoughtful and probing interviews with boundary-pushing non-fiction filmmakers. (Read an excerpt of the book’s conversation with Donal Foreman here.) And now an extension of the book, the Lucid Dreaming podcast, has just launched. The first guest is Penny Lane, well-known to Filmmaker readers for films like Our Nixon and Hail, Satan?, as well as for her occasional Notes on Real Life column. You can listen to Lane’s interview and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes here.
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 23, 2020 -
“I’m Not Even Sure Satire Exists Anymore”: Writer/Director Tom Gilroy Talks with Jim McKay About His Dystopic — and Timely — Short, #WaynesvilleStrong
With the rallying cry of its hashtagged title, Tom Gilroy’s #WaynesvilleStrong is a darkly comic and scarily plausible vision of a very near future in which low-wage work, enforced patriotism and the panoptic powers of the internet combine to create a pandemic hellscape that one laid-off meatpacking worker must delicately navigate, one videocall prompt at a time. The short was made quickly, in May and during quarantine, with everyone appropriately socially distanced, and to its great credit that what was political satire just two months ago is now turning into, with the current battles over “reopening,” political reality. The short […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 21, 2020 -
“Reopen, Rejoice, Rebuild!”: Watch Tom Gilroy’s Quarantine-Themed Short, #WaynesvilleStrong
Premiering today here at Filmmaker is #WaynesvilleStrong, a short film by Tom Gilroy (The Cold Lands, Spring Forward) starring Nick Sandow (Orange is the New Black) that, with dystopic wit, speaks directly to today’s arguments around workplace reopening during the pandemic. Set in a distressingly-possible near future, Sandow is a quarantined worker who has fallen afoul of the government’s official “reopen, rejoice and rebuild” policy. Stuck in a videochat hellhole of automated prompts, Sandow’s worker becomes increasingly agitated as the contours of a new, neoliberal form of pandemic-fueled social control becomes apparent. Gilroy describes the film as “a kind of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 21, 2020 -
Reflections from Quarantine and Beyond, Part Two: Six Cinematographers on Their Lives During Lockdown
Following his previous check-in with some of the world’s leading cinematographers about their lives during quarantine, Daniel Eagan returns with six more reports from directors of photography about how their lives and work are being affected by this moment of coronavirus and social change. Below are accounts of work done during quarantine — from continued prep on postponed shoots to home improvement to painting — as well as thoughts on how the film business is changing. Following are responses from Jarin Blaschke, Laura Merians-Gonçalves, Benoit Delhomme, Ellen Kuras, Ed Lachman and Toby Oliver. “It’ll Be as Accurate as a Viking Movie […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 14, 2020 -
Spring 2020 SFFILM Rainin Grant Winners Announced
SFFILM announced today the seven narrative feature films that will receive a total of $195,000 in funding in the Spring, 2020 round of its SFFILM Rainin grants. Awarded twice annually, the funds support films in the “next stage of their creative process,” which can range from screenwriting to post-production, and which “will have significant economic or professional impact on the Bay Area filmmaking community and/or meaningfully explore pressing social issues.” The panelists who reviewed the finalists’ submissions are Sofia Alicastro, SFFILM Artist Development Manager: Filmmaker Programs; Sophie Gunther, SFFILM Artist Development Manager: Film Funds; Anne Lai, SFFILM Executive Director; Angela […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 14, 2020 -
Filmmaker’s Summer 2020 Issue is Online and Available for Purchase
As previously announced, Filmmaker‘s Summer 2020 issue is being published as a PDF, and it’s now online and available for single-issue purchase. It’s our largest page-count ever (244 pages!), and our designers, Caspar Newbolt and Charlotte Gosch, tweaked the whole design to make it a beautiful and comfortable experience on both a tablet and a laptop in either portrait or landscape view. For the first time, we’ve also enabled the issue to be purchased individually as a PDF for $5.95, and you can do that by clicking here or on the button below using PayPal or your credit card. On […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 9, 2020 -
The Pandemic Diaries: Filmmakers on Art, Life, Filmmaking and Politics in the Age of Coronavirus
In April, as we began to put together the Summer, 2020 issue of Filmmaker, we asked directors, cinematographers, editors and other film workers to send us their thoughts on the quarantine and their own creative lives. The responses printed here were collected from April through mid-June — personal statements that speak variously to individual filmmaking practices, films halted mid-production, politics, art and life. “At Present, Many of Us are Living in the Conditions of My Speculative Fiction…”: Alison Nguyen on Her Isolated, Computer-Simulated Woman, “Andra8” “… Every Night I Dream That I am Shooting a Film”: DP Benoit Delhomme on Life […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 8, 2020 -
Different Ways of Learning
Across U.S. film schools this spring, a similar scene played out. The novel coronavirus went from faraway topic to urgent local threat. As rolling stay-at-home orders were issued, administrators shut down campuses, students scrambled for transport home and film departments quickly improvised online teaching methods that would allow instruction to continue even as students couldn’t attend classes and screenings in theaters or crew each other’s shoots in person. Three months later, we know much more about the coronavirus: its asymptomatic transmission, resistance to warm weather and ability to target multiple organ systems in the body. And with early, erratically applied […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 7, 2020
