Authors — Scott Macaulay
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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 -
Editor’s Letter
Welcome to the summer 2020 issue of Filmmaker. We began working on this issue shortly after shipping our spring edition, with Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always on the cover. I finished my editorial work on it from Berlin, where I attended the festival, stayed for a few days to see friends and the city, then returned home. Shortly thereafter, stay-at-home orders were issued. About that spring issue: Many copies didn’t even make it to bookstores and newsstands, which shuttered just as it was due to arrive. We decided to share a PDF of the issue, so that’s how many […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 7, 2020 -
The Next Day: Writer/Director Amy Seimetz and Actress Kate Sheil on the Eerie, Darkly Comic Anxiety Dream of She Dies Tomorrow
“It’s so great that you own a house,” biologist Jane (Jane Adams) says to sister Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil) by phone early in Amy Seimetz’s trippy drama of psychological contagion, She Dies Tomorrow. “This is the best thing you could have done.” Amy has only just moved in, boxes are everywhere, but a new L.A. mortgage hasn’t quelled whatever demons have pushed her to a tremulous and despairing state—Jane can hear it in her voice. “I’ll come over,” Jane says. “Don’t do anything you might regret. Go for a walk. Or why don’t you try watching a movie?” “A movie’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 7, 2020
