Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Watch for 48 Hours: Spider Veins and Hearts of Palm from the East Oregon Film Festival
With the East Oregon Film Festival underway this weekend in La Grande, Oregon, Filmmaker is happy to once again host the festival online selections here at the site. Starting now, for 48 hours, you can watch Monica Peña’s haunting and haunted relationship mystery, Hearts of Palm, preceded by a short, Frank Mosley’s multi-layered psychological drama Spider Veins. From the filmmakers, here are their two short synopses: Spider Veins: Two women reunite in a quiet neighborhood before a party begins. But by turns mysterious and shocking, the film’s narrative begins to unravel even as the women’s relationship teeters on the edge of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 21, 2016 -
Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight Top Nominations for 26th Annual Gotham Awards
The Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP, and Filmmaker‘s publisher) announced today the nominees for its 26th annual Gotham Awards. Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea tops the list with four nominations, including Best Feature and, for Casey Affleck, Best Actor. Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight also placed highly, scoring a Best Feature nomination as well as Best Screenplay, Breakthrough Actor for Lucas Hedges and a special Gotham Jury Award for its acting ensemble (actors Mahershala Ali, Naomie Harris, Alex Hibbert, André Holland, Jharrel Jerome, Janelle Monáe, Jaden Piner, Trevante Rhodes, and Ashton Sanders). This is the second year the Gotham Awards have included […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2016 -
Playing the Long Game: Producers on Sustaining a Career in Independent Film
When legendary producer and studio executive Robert Evans penned his autobiography — later adapted into a documentary — he picked a telling title: The Kid Stays in the Picture. You would think that after producing films like Chinatown and Urban Cowboy, Evans could happily rest on his laurels, but his book’s title, with its defiant use of the present tense, speaks to the ambitions and anxieties affecting every filmmaker with producer DNA. These, of course, are issues of continuing relevance and professional durability — or, to use the independent film parlance of the moment, sustainability. Contrary to the imagination of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2016 -
Parting Shot: Johnny Ma
“I didn’t want to make a poverty porn,” says Shanghai-born, Vancouver-residing filmmaker Johnny Ma about his first feature, Old Stone, released this fall by Zeitgeist. “I felt if I can’t bring myself to really understand what it is like to live in this town and environment, then I don’t deserve to make this film.” That extra degree of empathy and social insight was especially needed for Old Stone, which thrusts viewers into a contemporary China where motorists are faced with a stunning dilemma. Drivers who strike pedestrians are forced to shoulder these pedestrians’ related lifetime medical expenses. If the pedestrian […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2016 -
A Woman Above Everything Else
The camera pushes tight in on Natalie Portman’s distressed face, a layer of 16mm grain putting a slight filter on her perfect features. From the very beginning, we’re too close; the customary distance from an iconic first lady is gone. Also missing are biographical flashbacks, or early happy moments, or pretty montages locating Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy within the tapestry of her husband’s life and administration. No, Pablo Larraín’s Jackie, which follows the first lady in the days following John F. Kennedy’s assassination, begins in a kind of emotional media res, a heightened state accentuated by the dark chords of Mica […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2016 -
Editor’s Letter
Two nights ago I stopped by a party following a screening of Barry Jenkins’s superlative new Moonlight at the New York Film Festival. Jenkins was there, along with producer Adele Romanski, actress Janelle Monáe, and there was a mood of excitement as well as appreciation. Let’s face it: we in independent film need things to be excited about, and it’s great when those things are actually movies made by great people who we can unabashedly champion. Jenkins made our 2008 25 New Faces list and then, in 2009, our cover with his debut picture, Medicine for Melancholy, and it’s been […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 20, 2016 -
Short Film Premiere: Iva Gocheva’s Sunday
Receiving its online premiere today here at Filmmaker is Iva Gocheva‘s haunting short film, Sunday, an impressionistic portrait of a young Bulgarian woman living in New York who is grappling with all the various impacts — emotional and existential — of her expired visa. It’s the second short from Gocheva, who has been seen most recently on screen, as a lead, in Claire Carre’s sleeper hit, Embers. Here, the Bulgaria-born, New York-based Gocheva writes about her impetus to make the film: I feel this story started from the idea of home and what it means or feels to each of […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 19, 2016 -
Recommended on a Friday: Little Sister, Christine, Tower, Certain Women and More
If you look at the long list of movies opening every weekend, not just in theaters but on digital platforms too, you probably feel like you can’t keep up. We feel the same way here at Filmmaker, with usually more films entering the marketplace then we’re able to devote meaningful editorial to. Invariably, some films slip through the cracks, while others may have been covered by us at their festival premieres months ago, with our coverage now buried in the depths of our CMS. So, we’re starting this “Recommended on a Friday” series of picks designed to help you navigate […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 14, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: Pablo Larraín’s Jackie
Revealing enough but not too much is this first teaser trailer for Pablo Larraín’s Jackie, for me, one of the best films of the year. Natalie Portman stars as the widowed First Lady, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, in the days following her husband’s assassination. In addition to being a bold psychological portrait, it’s also a clear-eyed dissection of the Camelot myth, referenced here, ironically, through Richard Harris’ singing.
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 5, 2016 -
Five Questions for Closet Monster Writer/Director Stephen Dunn
A surreal and entirely original coming-of-age tale, Closet Monster tells the story of Oscar, a gay, cinephilic high school senior who has been grappling with the implications of his parents’ divorce — and a witnessed act of gay bashing — by, among other things, conversing with his “spirit animal”: Buffy, a pet hamster voiced by Isabella Rossellini. The feature debut of Canadian writer/director Stephen Dunn, the film has drawn comparisons to the work of countrymen David Cronenberg and Xavier Dolan, but it pulses to its own unexpectedly sincere wavelength. Below, we asked Dunn about that Cronenberg connection, star Connor Jessup […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 23, 2016
