Authors — Scott Macaulay
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“It Ended Up Being Therapeutic for Everyone”: Eric Hynes, Jeff Reichert and Damon Smith on the Now-Streaming Room H.264: Quarantine
Do any of us remember a time when the film industry was not in crisis? At the time of Wim Wenders’s 1982 documentary, Room 666, the on-screen directors who considered his prompt (“Is cinema becoming a dead language, an art which is already in the process of decline?”) grappled with the kinds of issues (film vs. TV, the rise of blockbusters, the struggles of art cinema) that would go on to preoccupy filmmakers and film critics for many years — up to and through the production of Jeff Reichert, Damon Smith and Eric Hynes’s 2018 Brooklyn-set reply to Wenders, Room […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 30, 2020 -
Reflections from Quarantine: Six Cinematographers on Their Lives During Lockdown
Over the last several weeks, since the middle of March, Daniel Eagan reached out to a number of cinematographers all over the world to check in on their personal responses to the novel coronavirus pandemic and the resulting quarantine. From Los Angeles to Hong Kong, Copenhagen to a Poland lakeside, they respond with reactions encompassing their own personal coping strategies, their current professional activities (or lack of them) and the thoughts the lockdown has stimulated about not only their profession but filmmaking in general. Find the links below, and stay tuned for future roundups of more cinematographers as well as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 29, 2020 -
Watch: Michael Reich’s She’s Allergic to Cats Trailer and Short Film Quarantine Dog Good Boy
Filmmaker Michael Reich has a thing for both household pets (and vermin) as well as bleeding VHS-damaged color schemes. The former dog groomer’s debut feature She’s Allergic to Cats, which premiered in ’16 at Fantasia Fest but is only now seeing a digital release via Gigantic Pictures, is about, natch, a socially awkward dog groomer (Michael Pinkney) attempting to deal with a rat infestation in his apartment while making an all-cats remake of Carrie. Sonja Kinski is the love interest whose cat may be the answer to the rodent issue. As the trailer above attests, Reich is fond of distressed […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2020 -
Five Questions for Writer/Director Kerem Sanga about His Tribeca Competition Drama, The Violent Heart
Played with a compelling mixture of sensitivity and suppressed rage by Joven Adepo (The Leftovers, Sorry for Your Loss) Daniel, the young auto mechanic and ex-con at the center of Kerem Sanga’s The Violent Heart, is a man imprinted by the past. We meet him first in flashback when, as a young boy, he crouches in dark woods, watching a horrible crime unfold. And while the exact events of that evening remain a mystery for much of the story, the powerlessness Daniel feels that night, and the aftermath of guilt, are all we need to understand the complicated shadings of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 28, 2020 -
Day 5 of 25: Tayarisha Poe, Lauren McBride, Jomo Fray on Selah and the Spades
“She found no joy in fully formed things, she sought those times of the year, those people, who were discovering their potential. Selah loved potential.” Quoted in Filmmaker’s Winter, 2015 print issue, in our now-defunct Super 8 column, those are the words of the narrator of the first iteration of Tayarisha Poe’s wickedly beguiling, sociologically astute teen crime drama, Selah and the Spades. At that time, “transmedia” was a bit more the rage, and Poe’s hybrid website/webseries/photography/literary site had a smart, sprawling appeal. By the time we caught up with Poe again, selecting her for our Summer, 2015 issues’ 25 […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 24, 2020 -
Amazon Prime Video, SXSW Announce “SXSW 2020 Film Festival Collection”; No U.S. Narratives Among Seven Feature Titles
After announcing on April 2 that the two companies would partner to bring selections from the cancelled 2020 SXSW Film Festival to home viewers, Amazon Prime Video and SXSW announced today the titles that will comprise the free-to-view “2020 SXSW Film Festival Collection.” A total of 39 works — features, shorts, music videos and episodic titles — opted into the program. Of the 39, only seven are features — five percent of the festival’s feature selection — and the four narrative films are all international titles. For producers and filmmakers, the Amazon/SXSW collaboration was immediately controversial upon announcement, with several […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 21, 2020 -
From the Filmmaker Newsletter: When Do We All Go Back to Work?
Each Friday, Filmmaker sends out a free newsletter containing an original Editor’s Letter as well as news of film openings, events, etc. (the latter mostly streaming and online, these days). The Editor’s Letters usually aren’t posted online, but here’s the April 17 edition, which links to a Deadline piece and considers the question everyone in film production is asking at the moment. If you’d like to receive the Filmmaker newsletter, you can subscribe for free here. — SM When do we all go back to work? While provisional answers to this question are suggested every day in the newspapers and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 20, 2020 -
Announcing Rathaus ESCAPES, an Online Film Series, “Presented with Love” from Filmmaker
The production company Rathaus is partnering with a Filmmaker for a free three-night screening series, April 14 – 16, of its new and recent work, both features and shorts. The films include 2020 Sundance selection The Mountains are a Dream that Call to Me and 2019 BAMcinemafest title De Lo Mio. Says Rathaus producer and partner Alexandra Byer, “Our ESCAPES series comes from wanting to give people a night off to feign normalcy and just go to the movies in these weird times. Amongst all the chaos, we feel we have an opportunity to let people, even if just for […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 11, 2020 -
New York State Film Tax Incentive Renewed But Trimmed; Many Lower-Budget NYC Independent Films No Longer Eligible
The New York State film tax credit was reduced from 30% to 25% and qualification requirements made tougher in budget legislation signed last week by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Alarmingly for filmmakers shooting low-budget in New York City, new rules make pictures budgeted in the six figures ineligible for any New York tax credit at all. Projects that shoot a majority of their days in the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, Rockland, Nassau, or Suffolk counties will be subject to a new minimum spend requirement of $1 million, and projects that shoot the majority of their days in any […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 9, 2020 -
Almodovar’s Lockdown, J.G. Ballard’s World, Aphex Twin, Hal Willner and Spin-Off Podcasts: 4/8/2020 Links
Are you looking for a trusted, socially-distanced source to provide you with semi-regular cultural recommendation links during this time of pandemic? Okay, well, I’m not really either. My inbox too is full of check-ins and missives from journalists and curators seeking to maintain a digital relationship by supplying Netflix watchlists and the like during this awful interregnum. So consider these posts as much an activity for me as you as I revive this column by highlighting a few things that may provide some degree of interest, empathy or wisdom. Some things to shift your attention away from the cable news […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 8, 2020
