Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Jessica Oreck Explains the Uplifting Origins of the Bra
Filmmaker Jessica Oreck (Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga) has created a new series for TED-Ed, “In a Moment of Vision,” dubbed “an all-new, all-fun animated micro-series about the history of common objects.” The first episode tells the story of the invention of the bra, which you may be surprised wasn’t invented until the early 1900s.
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 13, 2016 -
Les Cowboys Writer/Director Thomas Bidegain on Contemporary Westerns, His Journey to Directing, and the Importance of the “B-Book”
In theaters now from Cohen Media, Les Cowboys is the directorial debut of acclaimed French screenwriter Thomas Bidegain, best known in recent years for his collaborations with French director Jacques Audiard. (He has co-scripted all of Audiard’s films following The Beat My Heart Skipped.) In an age when the value of the cinematic medium is being challenged, Bidegain has made a haunting and bold first feature that is both intimate as well as epic in scope. It’s a film steeped in the history of cinema, drawing both visual and narrative inspiration from classic American westerns. At the same time, Les […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 5, 2016 -
Cinema Great Abbas Kiarostami Dies at 76
One of cinema’s great masters, Abbas Kiarostami, whose pictures could be intimate and human-scaled while also self-reflexive and bracingly political, died today in Paris. The Palme D’Or winner — for Taste of Cherry in 1997 — passed away following treatment for gasto-intestinal cancer. Speaking to The Guardian, director Asghar Farhadi said, “He wasn’t just a film-maker, he was a modern mystic, both in his cinema and his private life. He definitely paved ways for others and influenced a great deal of people. It’s not just the world of cinema that has lost a great man; the whole world has lost […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jul 4, 2016 -
Watch: Aphex Twin’s New Music Video Directed by 12-Year-Old Ryan Wyer
It’s been over a decade since Richard James released a storied string of Aphex Twin music videos, including the fiendish hip-hop musical extravaganza Windowlicker (directed by Chris Cunningham and embedded below). But, today, a surprise new video dropped from James’ upcoming EP, Cheetah, and it revisits several classic Aphex Twin tropes — namely, kids and disconcerting James’ masks. In fact, the director is a kid — 12-year-old Ryan Wyer of Rush County, Dublin. Check out “CIRKLON3 [Колхозная mix]” above.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 21, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: Andrea Arnold’s American Honey
A24 has just released this trailer for Andrea Arnold’s Cannes prize-winning American Honey, starring Shia LaBeouf and riveting newcomer Sasha Lane. She’s the new recruit, he’s the troubled showboater and Riley Keough is the bikini-clad capitalist who has cultishly transformed a motley collection of street youth into a band of traveling grifters. Arnold, along with her regular DP, Robbie Ryan, creates an exuberant and kaleidoscopic vision of contemporary America in a film that creates its own entirely compelling rhythm.
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 21, 2016 -
Watch: The Lion City, 2, a Mind-Blowing, Multi-Year Time-Lapse Video
Australian filmmaker Keith Loutit, a pioneer in tilt-shift photography, has just raised the bar in time-lapse photography with his latest video, The Lion City, 2. A portrait of a changing Singapore, the video features time-lapse shooting that took place in multiple locations over years. Writes Loutit: When we pass by landscapes they appear fixed in time, but they change around us constantly. The idea behind this film is to reveal this change by returning to the same camera positions over the years. In the comments, Loutit reveals that he shot the video over three years, and while his ability to […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 11, 2016 -
Pressing Pause: Elaine Sheldon and Sarah Ginsburg Take a She Does Podcast Break
One of the best podcasts to launch last year was She Does, a series of audio portraits of women creators across film, music, new media, journalism and more. It was created by two filmmakers, Elaine McMillion Sheldon and Sarah Ginsburg, who previously collaborated on Sheldon’s award-winning interactive documentary Hollow. Using data visualization and web storytelling techniques to examine the economic and social history of one rural West Virginia town, Hollow landed Sheldon on Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list and announced her as a documentarian committed to exploring all the new forms non-fiction storytelling can take in a digital world. Hence, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 10, 2016 -
Watch: Three Minutes of the Most Incredible Cinematic Drone Footage
I juried the New York City Drone Film Festival last year, so I’m even more impressed with this amazing compilation reel of this year’s winners. Drone cinematography has come a long way in just a year, with some knock-out moments on this reel that move drone filming away from landscape shots and sports coverage. Don’t get me wrong — sports are big here, and some of these aerial shots of soaring snowboarders are amazing. But check out the narrative winner, The Smallest Empire, from Corridor Digital, which adds a tilt-shift technique to depict the blossoming of an entire civilization. (The […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 9, 2016 -
Sundance Labs Announce 25 Film and Theater Projects and New “Multi-Lab” Setting
The Sundance Institute today announced the anticipated rosters for its Screenwriters Lab, Documentary Edit and Story Lab and new Theatre-Makers Residency as well as a major now presentation change. For the first time, these labs will run concurrently in a “multi-Lab” format at the Sundance Resort in Utah. But the format is not just an alteration of the calendar. Individual Lab Fellows will participate in portions of the other labs, giving these Sundance programs an interdisciplinary flavor. Said Keri Putnam, Sundance Executive Director, in a statement, “The unique gathering of independent voices, for the first time in a multi-Lab setting, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 8, 2016 -
Five Questions for The View from Tall Directors Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss
Hailing from the Chicago theater community is A View from Tall, a debut independent feature telling a story of teen sexuality and its collision with institutional power dynamics. Directed by Caitlin Parrish and Erica Weiss, and based on Parrish’s play, the film deals with a loner teen, Justine, who is ostracized from her peers because of a sexual relationship with a teacher that became public. She bonds with her therapist, a disabled man with issues of his own. Since writing The View from Tall, playwright Parrish has become a successful television writer, working on shows like Supergirl and Under the Dome. […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jun 6, 2016
