Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Editor’s Letter
As a number of our filmmaker readers wrap up classes and prepare to head into their senior year, whether high school or college, the question of film school arises. What’s the utility of film school in a time in which the very notion of film — or, perhaps, work within the film industry — is changing so much? This issue, Filmmaker brings you a suite of articles looking at a number of issues facing film schools — and, by extension, their students — today. Calum Marsh considers a number of broad trends affecting schools in this time of disruption, from […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 16, 2017 -
Pedagogical Praxis
George Bernard Shaw’s famous adage, “Those who do do, those who can’t, teach. He can do, does. He who cannot, teaches,” fails when it comes to film schools. Scratch the surface of most film school faculty lists, and you’ll find filmmakers who not only do but are also doing. Developing scripts, raising financing and shooting while on sabbatical, university-ensconced independent filmmakers have one foot in the ivory tower and one foot in the shape-shifting world that is today’s independent film production. Inevitably, then, they bring their hard-fought wisdom into the classroom, which means they must also grapple with one tough […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 16, 2017 -
All Day and a Night: Josh and Benny Safdie on Good Time
I’m in the Safdie brothers’ office in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, looking at a giant Japanese King of New York poster, and we’re talking about fired FBI director James Comey, whose awkward dinner with Donald Trump has just hit the news. “The guy is 6 foot, 8 inches,” Benny says. Or maybe it’s Josh. My tape recorder isn’t turned on yet, and the two talk rapid-fire, trading sentence fragments and out-exclaiming each other. “And he refused to play basketball with Obama! The one president who played basketball, Comey would be the tallest guy on the court, and he didn’t want […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 16, 2017 -
Eleven Recommended Titles at BAMCinemafest 2017
BAMcinemafest, the Brooklyn presenting organization’s annual festival of top new American independent films, kicked off last night with Aaron Katz’s stylish L.A. murder mystery Gemini and runs through the 24th, with Alex Ross Perry’s Golden Exits as closing night film. The festival, which gains stature and momentum every year, mixes a fair swatch of local NYC auteurs with out-of-towners whose work strikes allied notes of idiosyncratic auteurism. Below, from myself and Vadim Rizov, are a series of picks and capsule reviews for recommended films in this year’s edition. Princess Cyd. Stephen Cone’s fifth feature is his first not grounded in […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 15, 2017 -
Making Rent in Bed-Stuy at the Metrograph
Brandon Harris — whose insightful, politically sagacious and ruefully funny blend of memoir and criticism has graced the pages of the New Yorker, n+1 and Filmmaker, where you’ll recognize him as a Contributing Editor — has just released his debut book, Making Rent in Bed-Stuy, a cultural memoir on neighborhoods, race, millennial culture and filmmaking. Appropriately, he has also programmed a series of relevant films this weekend at New York’s Metrograph Theater. Running through the 12th, the films include Spike Lee’s Crooklyn (next to Do the Right Thing my favorite 40 Acres joint, actually), Jay-Z: Fade to Black, and Sebastián Silva’s […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 9, 2017 -
Watch: All of David Lynch’s Bizarre and Beautiful TV Commercials
With his new Twin Peaks: The Return scrambling our minds every Sunday, we at Filmmaker are experiencing a collective case of the feels for David Lynch these days. Giving us our fix until Episode Six streams this weekend is this video of Lynch’s television commercials compiled by Jeff Keeling. As with many directors, Lynch directed many of his best short TV spots for overseas brands, so look for work here like a Twin Peaks tie-in spot for Japan’s Georgia coffee that I, at least, have never seen before. A complete list of commercials included is below. (I venture to say […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 9, 2017 -
Explosive Memories: Five Questions for Dawson City: Frozen Time Director Bill Morrison
The poetics of decomposition are the haunting, thrilling and, in the case of his latest feature, Dawson City: Frozen Time, historically revelatory stuff of the cinema of Bill Morrison. In varying degrees and across films like The Miner’s Hymn, The Great Flood and Decasia — the latter dubbed “the best film ever made” by Errol Morris — Morrison has made the excavation of lost cinematic images both an informative and sensory-impactful experience. In the new Dawson City: Frozen Time, Morrison both dramatizes and draws upon the discovery of over 500 silent era films found iced and buried in a swimming […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 9, 2017 -
Watch: Steve James on How and Why Nashville Influenced his Filmmaking
Here’s a great video from Criterion in which documentary filmmaker Steve James (The Keeper, Stevie, Hoop Dreams) discusses how he was influenced by Robert Altman’s Nashville. He begins by noting that your most influential films are the ones you see when you’re young and falling in love with cinema, and he then goes on to say that he wasn’t interested in documentary filmmaking when he encountered Altman’s work. But there were aspects of Nashville that impressed him — including, yes, the zooms! — as well as notions of structure that wound up rippling into films like The Interruptors.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 6, 2017 -
Watch: Shaka King Erases “Racial Glaucoma” in Short Film LaZercism
Newlyweeds writer/director Shaka King, who last appeared on the site with his excellent Sundance short Mulligans, is back with another imaginatively executed, of-the-moment short. LaZercism is his riff on “racial glauccoma,” a disease affecting white people that prevents them from seeing the contributions of — or just seeing at all — people of color. The comedy short, which stars Keith Stanfield (Short Term 12, Atlanta) and Robert Longstreet (I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore), proposes an easy, outpatient procedure to correct the affliction.
by Scott Macaulay on May 31, 2017 -
DP Sean Price Williams on Shooting 2-Perf 35mm for the Cannes Competition Film Good Time
“Hey, it’s me,” said Sean Price Williams as he walked up to me at the after-party for Josh and Benny Safdie’s simply fantastic Good Time in Cannes last week. It did take me a second to recognize Williams — cleanly shaven, in a spiffy tux and strolling around a Dior-sponsored event for a film in the Main Competition of the Cannes Film Festival. If Williams seemed like a bit of a happy anomaly there, it’s because, like Good Time itself, the DP has ascended to cinema’s most revered platform with work that’s wholly of a piece with the raw, street-level […]
by Scott Macaulay on May 30, 2017
