Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Premiering Docs within the New World Order: Thom Powers on DOC NYC 2017
The increasingly robust DOC NYC opens today through November 16, with over 100 documentary features unspooling in three locations in downtown New York and Chelsea. Among the 23 world and 23 U.S. premieres are new films from Barbara Kopple, Sam Pollard and Julia Bacha, whose Naila and the Uprising, about the woman of First Intifada, won the festival’s first pitch competition in 2016. Films unspool across 16 sections, including the new New World Order, focused on pictures with global news importance, and Metropolis, the competitive section featuring films from and about New York City. The DOC NYC Pro section is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 9, 2017 -
Trailer Watch: A Prayer Before Dawn
Director Jean-Stephane Sauvaire, whose 2008 debut feature, Johnny Mad Dog, was a thrillingly immersive journey into the world of African child soldiers, makes his long-awaited return to theaters with another picture — A Prayer Before Dawn — set within a violent community: Thai kickboxers in the country’s infamous Bang Kwang Central Prison. Wrote Guy Lodge at Variety upon the film’s Cannes premiere: Competition is stiff for the title of cinema’s most violently harrowing prison drama, and tougher still for the all-time most pummeling boxing movie. Gutsily, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s A Prayer Before Dawn”comes out fighting for both, landing a number of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 30, 2017 -
Recovering Family Memories through The Polaroid Job
I love this short — The Polaroid Job — now up on the New York Times Op Doc page by producer, director and Sundance shorts programmer Mike Plante. A trip home to visit his parents leads to Plante sifting through stacks of their old Polaroids, photos that not only document family moments but also a family business. For a short time, while Plante was 11, his parents had “the Polaroid job,” a gig that involved taking a large-format Polaroid camera to various events — a store opening, a haunted house, etc. — and taking pictures of attendees posing with various […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 26, 2017 -
Why Old School Blockbuster VHS Video Cover Art Beats Netflix Thumbnails
Those who remember the days of the neighborhood video store — whether that was, for you, Kim’s Video or Blockbuster — may attribute their fondness for ineffably sleazy horror film VHS cover art to simple nostalgia, but, proposes Entertain the Elk, there’s more to it than that. In this short video he argues that the videobox designers of the day were using the AIDA marketing methods to draw movie fans’s eyeballs to images of bloody knives, hair shaped into a noose and monsters emerging from the toilet. Of note are the piece’s final moments, when he decries the Get Out […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 25, 2017 -
Pink Kittens, Aphex Twin and the Moment of Impact: Thinking about Road Safety
Two things the internet loves — kittens and Aphex Twin — combine in this arresting texting-while-driving PSA scored with a sinewy remix of the classic “Windowlicker” track. Over 100 pink kittens appear in this beautifully art-directed spot, but, in the end, only one really matters….
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 25, 2017 -
Trailer Watch: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread
“There is an air of quiet death in this house.” In the 1950s London of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest feature, Phantom Thread, Daniel Day-Lewis is an exacting dress maker and Vicky Krieps is his latest muse. In these two minutes, their relationship is marked by a guarded formality but there’s just enough here to suggest something more than a stately period romance of sorts. We’ll have to wait until Christmas — or the next trailer — to find out more….
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 23, 2017 -
Watch Now for 48 Hours: Short Films from Eastern Oregon Film Festival
For the third year Filmmaker is happy to exclusively host online selections from the currently underway Eastern Oregon Film Festival. These films will stream exclusively here on the site until Sunday morning at 9:00 AM. This year, we’re hosting a work of philosophical science fiction by Blake Salzman, a new drama from festival veteran Frank Mosley, and an inspiring London-set work from Tal Amiran. You can watch all the films embedded below, and check out the rest of the lineup at Eastern Oregon Film Festival. Midwife (dir. Blake Salzman, 2017) Synopsis: In a bleak future where women are dying rapidly, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2017 -
With Four Nominations, Get Out Tops IFP Gotham Awards Announcement
Jordan Peele’s zeitgeist-y horror film Get Out topped the IFP Gotham Awards nominations this morning, scoring nods for Best Picture, Breakthrough Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor. Other multiple nominees include Sean Baker’s The Florida Project, the Safdie Brothers’ Good Time, Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya, : kogonada’s Columbus, Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name, and Dee Rees’s Mudbound, which scored a nomination for actress Mary J. Blige as well as a special ensemble acting jury award. A total of 34 films are cited in today’s release. Said IFP Executive Director Joana Vicente in a press release, “This year offered […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 19, 2017 -
Director Lana Wilson Talks Gaining Trust, Valuing Life and Her Wise, Empathetic Suicide Prevention Doc, The Departure
One of the major discoveries of the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, Lana Wilson’s The Departure is a beautiful, wise and deeply empathetic immersion into one fascinating character’s unique approach to suicide prevention. Ittetsu Nemoto is a former punk rocker turned Buddhist priest who, in quietly wrenching group sessions, counsels the suicidal while facing down his own demons. Working in a small, remote temple in Japan, he constructs spare, philosophical rituals for his patients and then, separately, bonds with them in more personal, emotionally intimate ways. Following Nemoto both within his practice and outside of it, The Departure initially grabs hold […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 13, 2017 -
Watch: Gillian Wallace Horvat’s “Raunchy Feminist Comedy,” Whiskey Fist
As her short Whiskey Fist has made its away across the festival circuit, director Gillian Wallace Horvat has penned a couple of essays for Filmmaker amplifying and riffing off of her shorts’ themes. Specifically, she takes aim at the rise of branded content masquerading as short films, critiquing filmmakers who surrender their “authenticity” by imagining that brand sponsorship isn’t affecting their art. Her SXSW-premiering Whiskey Fist, which Horvat says was provocatively submitted to a whiskey company’s branded film content contest (containing a scene in which a man is anally penetrated by a whiskey bottle, it lost, needless to say), is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 2, 2017
