Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Trailer Watch: Small Town Universe, Director Katie Dellamaggiore’s Astronomy Documentary
In advance of its premiere April 7 at the Cleveland International Film Festival (and, the next day, North America’s solar eclipse), the filmmakers have shared a trailer for Katie Dellamaggiore’s documentary, Small Town Universe. The documentary explores Green Bank, West Virginia, home to the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope. While the telescope explores the universe for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, the town’s residents communicate in more traditional ways; in order for the telescope to function, wi-fi and cell phones are banned in the town. “Within the telescope’s orbit, Green Bank residents experience defining moments of life and loss and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 1, 2024 -
“If There are Esoteric Titles in the List, the Unfortunate Thing is That They are Esoteric at All”: Sean Price Williams on 1000 Movies
The debut release from Metrograph Editions, Sean Price Williams‘s 1000 Movies is just that — a list of 1,000 movies seen and appreciated in some way by the director/cinematographer, listed chronologically across its 6″ x 4.25″ pages. There is much white space. Not included is any kind of foreword, such as a personal essay explaining the project’s genesis. (For that, you’ll have to look to interviews such as this one, or Matt Folden’s on the Metrograph site.) There are no Letterboxd-style ratings, no film stills, and not even an author bio; there’s just Lizzie Harper’s drawing up front of an […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 21, 2024 -
Watch Now: Short Films from the 2024 Filmfort Film Festival
Filmmaker is proud to continue our annual partnership with the Filmfort Film Festival by exclusively hosting six short films from this year’s lineup, which will be available to view on our site through Saturday. The three day festival—which occurs during the Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho—highlights an array of emerging independent cinema. Alongside robust film programming, Filmfort also features DIY panels and filmmaker Q&As in the heart of the city’s downtown area. Check out this year’s selection of films below. Broken Flight dir. Erika Valenciana, Mitchell Wenkus 2023, USA, 18 mins Synopsis: At the Willowbrook Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, Annette […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 21, 2024 -
Trailer Watch: Furiosa: A Max Max Saga (Trailer #2)
After the mixed reception given to the first trailer for George Miller’s forthcoming, Cannes-anticipated Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, where Anya Taylor-Joy plays a younger version of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa from Max Max: Fury Road, Warner Bros. has dropped a new trailer today that reveals a lot more of the film’s action, chronological sweep (different actors play Furiosa here) and overall look. Scored, to my ears at least, to an orchestral version of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World,” the trailer is found above.
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 19, 2024 -
Credits Where Credits Are Due
Tyler Perry believes that generative AI could soon drastically reduce location filmmaking. He recently announced plans to pause an $800 million expansion of his Atlanta-based studio complex, telling The Hollywood Reporter, “I no longer would have to travel to locations. If I wanted to be in the snow in Colorado, it’s text…. If I wanted to have two people in the living room in the mountains, I don’t have to build a set in the mountains.” But state legislatures and film offices haven’t gotten that memo. As we take our annual look at film tax incentives around the country, the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2024 -
Las Cruces Days: Making Sundance Grand Prize-Winner In the Summers Using New Mexico Tax Credits
Alessandra Lacorazza’s In the Summers is a film of moments spread across years—moments quiet and seemingly insignificant, as well as larger events whose significance is downplayed at the time only to be properly understood years later. It’s the story of two teenage girls who, each summer, are sent by their mom to spend a few weeks with their charismatic yet irresponsible father, whose ability to love and be a parent is continually undermined by his addictions to drugs and alcohol. Winner of the Grand Jury U.S. Dramatic Competition prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, In the Summers finds a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2024 -
Martini Shots
Lithuania-born filmmaker Robertas Nevecka was making short animated pictures and working as an assistant director when, on a location shoot, he began to draw. It was 2019 and “It was really hard,” Nevecka remembers. “We were shooting in a small village, living in trucks, and, during the off time, I started drawing stuff about the things that happened during the day. That was the start.” Five years later, Nevecka’s film-shoot pastime has grown into a much larger endeavor, a small business that finds his witty visual accounts of set life on t-shirts, playing cards and, most recently, collected in a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2024 -
Editor’s Letter
A red flag when speaking with a first-time director of an independent film, I feel, is an overconcern with the market. There are directors who want to tell their stories and be uncompromising, but they worry the film won’t be market-friendly enough and won’t sell, and that their future career may be compromised. So, they make the changes preemptively: There’s the film the director really wanted to make, and maybe that will be the next film, but meanwhile they begin writing their debut under a cloud of internalized self-censorship. You know the outcome: The indie, not-too-bold, “market-friendly” film, trying as […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 18, 2024 -
“When I Started Putting the Talking Head [Interviews] In, It Didn’t Feel as Beautiful”: Director Antony Crook on His SXSW-Premiering Mogwai Doc, If the Stars Had a Sound
On X recently, a poster asked for song titles named after movie directors. One of the few that came to mind was from the Glasgow-based band, Mogwai — “Stanley Kubrick,” from their 1999 EP. It’s a vintage Mogwai track, bass and drums in mid tempo as a reflective melody rises and falls over seesawing organ chords. The song’s connection to the great director is left up to the listener, the way of virtually all of Mogwai’s imaginatively titled, mostly instrumental songs, which over a 25-year-career have captured fans with their mixture of gentle beauty and then, in bursts, beautiful noise. Few […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 15, 2024 -
“On Our First day It Was 100°, and It Basically Went Up From There”: Writer/Director Shannon Triplett On Her SXSW-Premiering Psychological Thriller, Desert Road
A woman, a car, a gas station and a factory — from this minimalist set of locations Shannon Triplett has crafted a surprising work of supernatural suspense in her writing and directing debut, Desert Road, which premiered this weekend at the SXSW Film Festival. Kristine Froseth is the woman, a 20-something would-be professional photographer on a solo trip. When her car’s tire blows out on the ribbon-like highway, she’s momentarily dazed before coming to and walking back to that gas station to call for help. In a chilling and quickly rendered series of events, she realizes that help is not […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 11, 2024
