Authors — Scott Macaulay
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The Social Dilemma, High Art, Born into Brothels Added to the 2020 Sundance Film Festival
A new documentary world premiere — the latest from Jeff Orlowski, dealing with the social controls and neuroprogramming aspects of technology platforms and social networks — and two restored works from the Sundance Collection were announced today. Orlowski’s film, The Social Dilemma, will screen next month in Park City as will two distinguished works that are favorites here at the magazine: Lisa Cholodenko’s High Art and Zana Briski and Ross Kaufman’s Born into Brothels. From the press release: Archival screenings are made possible by the Sundance Institute Collection at UCLA, and give audiences the opportunity to discover and rediscover the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 18, 2019 -
Sundance Announces 2020 Festival New Frontier Selection
Thirty-two independent experimental and independent media projects comprising the 2020 Sundance Film Festival New Frontier program were announced today by the Sundance Institute. Included in what is often Sundance’s most surprising section are an art/journalism project riffing on the newsreel format by artist and Lemonade collaborator Khalil Joseph; an “under construction” AI based on the thoughts of linguist and critic Noam Chomsky; and a 35mm short consisting of 16,000 cuts. Also included are new works that are the latest installments in the lifelong practices of artist and filmmakers (and Sundance veterans) Lynn Hershman Leeson and Narcissister. Of note too is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 12, 2019 -
Trailer Watch: Tom Quinn’s Colewell, Starring Karen Allen
Tom Quinn’s Spirit Award-nominated Colewell receives a limited theatrical as well as digital release beginning this Friday, December 13. The theatrical starts with a run at Facets Theater in Chicago, with other cities to be announced. On the occasion of its premiere earlier this year at the SFFILM Festival, I wrote, “Colewell is a gentle, melancholic film, one inflected by bursts of real anger and sorrow, that is both character study as well as meditation on loneliness and community in a time of both technological and political change.” The trailer just dropped, which gives a good look at lead Karen […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 11, 2019 -
Sonic Menace: Composer Mark Korven on Scoring Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse
Thunderous farts and the roiling sea, booming foghorns and the menacing squawks of predatory seagulls—the Melvillian world of Robert Eggers’s supernatural-tinged film The Lighthouse offers a composer many sources of sonic inspiration. Mark Korven, who reunited with Eggers following their collaboration on the director’s 2015 feature, The Witch, admits that the environment of the film dominated their early conversations. “We did discuss nature a lot,” he says, “and also the world the characters inhabited. There might be a rusty old cornet lying around the lighthouse or maybe a bashed-up accordion. Rob felt strongly about a brass score because there was […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2019 -
Start Your Engines: The Sound Team of James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari on the Thrill of the Race
Supervising sound editor Donald Sylvester was working on James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari before shooting even started. “They had mocked up some of the races with visual effects and pre-viz,” Sylvester says, “proving that you can see the right scene, but if you don’t feel the cars, it’s hard to visualize.” The sound journey of Ford v Ferrari, from those early pre-visualizations to the Dolby Atmos-mixed period feature currently exciting audiences in theaters, is one involving the sound team’s intense collaboration with Mangold, careful consideration of POV and the interplay between internal and external space and perspicacious car collector detective […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2019 -
Sundance Film Festival Announces 2020 Indie Episodic, Shorts and Special Events
Eighth episodic works, 74 short films and nine special events were announced today as part of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. The shorts were selected from 10,397 submissions hailing from 27 countries. In the press release, Kim Yutani, the Festival’s Director of Programming, said, “Authenticity and independent voices resonate across formats – and that’s evident across the full spectrum of this year’s Indie Episodic and Special Events slates. Defined by distinctive voices and enlightening viewpoints, these are riveting projects that find inspiration in the urgent stories and extraordinary individuals of our times.” Mike Plante, Senior Programmer, Shorts, said, “With an […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2019 -
Parlays and Teasers
I first learned of Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems—a comedy/drama built around the self-delusions, self-destructions and unbridled compulsions of a midtown Manhattan diamond dealer—back in 2011. The brothers had just completed their first feature as a directing duo, Daddy Longlegs (Josh previously directed 2008’s The Pleasure of Being Robbed), and shared a 161-page early draft. Much of the ingenious plotting of their new film was missing, but the character of that dealer, Howard Ratner, screamed out. Indelibly portrayed by Adam Sandler eight years later, Howard is a perpetual motion machine of mishap, whose schemes spiral more and more painfully […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2019 -
Editor’s Letter
Welcome to Filmmaker’s final issue of 2019, which continues something of a new tradition: our Sound and Visionaries section, where we spotlight six below-the-line artists in the awards conversation whose work particularly impressed us. And, accompanying these profiles are three short essays, all by writers new to the print magazine—Mark Asch, Tim Grierson and Beatrice Loayza—that look at 2019 in film through the psychic currents and generational anxieties it mined. There’s a lot elsewhere. On the cover is Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems, a wild adrenaline rush of a movie whose major-league ambition is especially exciting for me as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 10, 2019 -
“Something Seismic was Shifting in This Country”: Five Questions for The Wolf Hour Writer/Director Alistair Banks Griffin
With Alistair Banks Griffin’s recommended second feature, The Wolf Hour, containing one of Naomi Watts’s best performances, in theaters, we’re running again our interview with Griffin following the film’s Sundance premiere. — Editor “I can’t get out but I look out the attic window and watch the world go by. I feel like an outsider. I am on a different wave length then everybody else….” — David Berkowitz In one of the Sundance Film Festival’s real discoveries, Alistair Banks Griffins’s 1977-set The Wolf Hour, Naomi Watts plays June, a novelist and cultural critic existing somewhere in the intellectual shadow of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 7, 2019 -
Sundance 2020 Announces 118 Feature Films
For independent filmmakers the most eagerly awaited announcement of the year is here: the 118 feature films selected for the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. The films hail from 27 countries and were chosen from a dizzying record high of 3,853 features. And the 2020 edition is the final one for outgoing Festival Director John Cooper, who says, “The program this year, my last as Director, is a celebration: of art and artists, yes, but also of the community that makes the annual pilgrimage to Park City to see the most exciting new work being made today. Watching this group expand […]
by Scott Macaulay on Dec 4, 2019
