Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Documentary Selections Announced for the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival
Sixteen films, including new works by Steve James, Raoul Peck, Fischer Stevens and Leonardo DiCaprio, as well as a first-time feature by documentary director and producer Erin Heidenreich, were announced for the Toronto International Film Festival’s doc program today. Commented TIFF Docs Programmer Thom Powers in a press release, “Revelations abound in this year’s crop of documentaries. We gain fresh perspectives on high profile figures such as James Baldwin, Amanda Knox and The Beatles; and we meet compelling figures from the worlds of activism, music, sports and, not to be forgotten, classic burlesque.” Among the films listed above, Steve James, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 9, 2016 -
Short Film Teaser: Frank Mosley’s Spider Veins
“Loosely inspired by Ibsen’s A Doll’s House,” Frank Moseley’s ominous new short film, Spider Veins premieres this month at the Sidewalk Film Festival. Here’s the description: 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 closer to the edge of truth. Loosely inspired by Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Spider Veins is a mercurial investigation into varying levels of everyday artifice. Starring Katey Parker, Danielle Pickard, and Jennifer Mazza-Nguyen, the film will have its world premiere this August 26-28th at […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 6, 2016 -
(Not Doing) Drugs, Schools and Higher Consciousness: A David Lynch Commencement Address
Summer’s still upon us, so it’s not too late to post this improvised commencement speech given by director David Lynch this past June at the Maharishi University of Management. Presented with a Doctor of World Peace honoris causa degree, Lynch, a proponent of Transcendental Meditation, gives a typically anodyne set of answers to students wanting to balance the practicalities demanded by the job market with the searcher for a higher consciousness. Time, Inc’s Motto provides a complete transcription of the talk. Here is Lynch answering a question about his own school years. From Motto: I was very lucky. I was […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 6, 2016 -
Watch: Beemus, It’ll End in Tears, from Lauren Wolkstein and Frances Bodomo
collective: unconscious, the anthology film in which independent filmmakers interpret each other’s dreams, is being released this coming Tuesday, for free, via BitTorrent. Today, producer Dan Schoenbrun — who, by the way, has just launched a regular column here at Filmmaker — has posted one episode of the film (a teaser, if you will). It’s Lauren Wolkstein’s adaptation of Frances Bodomo’s dream. (And, hey, another Filmmaker aside: both directors are veterans of our 25 New Faces series.) Here’s the one-line for Bodomo’s dream given to Wolkstein: My PE class and I are stuck in a volcano and we’re being made […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 4, 2016 -
Watch: I, Destini by 25 New Face Filmmakers Nicholas Pilarski and Destini Riley
Filmmakers Nicholas Pilarski and Destini Riley landed on this year’s 25 New Faces list on the basis of I, Destini, their haunting animation dealing with familial loss and the criminal justice system. The short has just gone online at the New York Times as part of its OpDocs series, and the two have penned an essay about the piece’s subject matter and collaboration at the Times. From the piece: We first met each other in 2014 after one of these meetings, in which community members discussed how we could pressure the police into providing better ethics training. Destini’s brother had […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 3, 2016 -
IFP Announces No Borders, Spotlight on Docs Feature Films for IFP Film Week
IFP, Filmmaker‘s parent organization, announced today the 120 feature film projects that will take place in its annual IFP Film Week, taking place September 17 – 22 for the first time in DUMBO, Brooklyn. Announced for the first time are the screenplays comprising the No Borders program, for projects seeking financing, and the doc works-in-progress seeking completion funds in Spotlight on Docs. They join the previously announced features in post-production from the IFP’s Narrative and Documentary Labs. Particularly noteworthy this year are the roster’s gender diversity states: 40% of the narrative directors and 60 % of the documentary directors are […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 27, 2016 -
Locking Gaze: Kirsten Johnson on the Images of Her Thrilling Documentary, Cameraperson
Both memoir and essay film, Kirsten Johnson’s Cameraperson is an astonishing work of cinematic analysis and alchemy. Comprised of material shot by Johnson for 24 different documentaries over a span of 25 years, it’s a movie made up of fragments, globetrotting scenes that tumble one after the other, announced by title cards listing the location and year of the footage but not the director. Included, too, in the footage is personal material, some for film projects of Johnson’s that have yet to be realized and some home movies shot of her mother in the months before she died of Alzheimer’s. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 25, 2016 -
Editor’s Letter
Filmmaker is heading, next issue, into our 24th year, and it struck me that if you strung together our interviews with Ira Sachs, who has appeared in this magazine since his first feature, The Delta, in 1996, you’d have a pretty good micro-history of the American independent film movement. Sachs is deeply ruminative about his own process, and he’s enormously self-aware about his own place in the broader moviemaking apparatus. I always look forward to reading the transcripts of his interviews, and there’s usually an answer or to that gets me thinking — or, in the case of his talk […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 25, 2016 -
Five Questions for Stephen Elliott about The Rumpus Lo-Fi Film Festival
The debut edition of The Rumpus Lo-Fi Film Festival unspools this coming Saturday, July 30, at the Brewery Arts Complex in Los Angeles. Encompassing four features and two panels, the one-day event is, according to author, filmmaker and The Rumpus founder Stephen Elliott, an extension of the literary site’s personality and ethos into the film festival world as well as a kind of a DIY battle cry. Frustrated by the festival rejection notices he was receiving for his third feature, After Adderall, Elliot surveyed other filmmakers about their festival submission experiences. He published the results in a much-debated blog post […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 24, 2016 -
Points North Institute Announces New Shortform Editing Residency to Take Place During Camden International Film Festival
As the photo above indicates, Camden, Maine in the fall is a pretty idyllic place to get one’s head out of an urban edit room and gain perspective on one’s project. Apropos of that, the newly formed Points North Institute — a year-round organization that will produce the Camden International Film Festival as well as other events in Maine — has made its first major announcement: a new shortform editing residency. The week-long residency takes place during the Camden International Film Festival (September 15 – 18) and brings four selected filmmakers and/or journalists to Maine to work on their doc […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 22, 2016
