Authors — Scott Macaulay
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“I Come From the One-Woman-Band Show of Visual Journalism…”: Emily Kassie on Producing Sugarcane
Tackling a timely but under-discussed contemporary issue in both the United States and Canada, journalists Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie investigate a string of abuses and missing persons cases at an indigenous residential school in Sugarcane. Below, Kassie, who in addition to directing the film with NoiseCat produced it alongside Kellen Quinn. Below, she recounts her debut experience as a producer and how she made a transition from the world of visual journalism. Filmmaker: Tell us about the professional path that led you to produce this film, your first? What jobs within and outside of the film industry did […]
by Scott Macaulay on Feb 1, 2024 -
In Full Frame: Director Rose Troche and Sundance Institute’s John Nein on Restoring the Lesbian Classic Go Fish
“It’s very much like having a kid out there in the world doing its own thing,” said writer/director Rose Troche last month as she was finishing the restoration of her debut feature Go Fish, which screened as part of Sundance’s 40th Edition programming this week, three decades after its original premiere at the festival. “It’s one of those films that has never gone out of the conversation, this funky movie made for $17,000 that launched these careers.” Troche is right —while many films from Sundance in the ’90s never made the leap to digital distribution, the lesbian drama Go Fish […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 27, 2024 -
“I Could See Myself So Clearly in Her Fear”: Writer/Director Ben Petrie on His Rotterdam-Premiering, Dog-Loving Relationship Comedy, The Heirloom
“A squirmy treatise on sexual insecurity and relationship oneupmanship” is how I described Ben Petrie’s fifth short film Her Friend Adam when profiling the Canadian writer-director-actor for Filmmaker‘s 2016 25 New Faces list. That film starred Petrie and real-life partner Grace Glowicki as a couple whose relationship is unexpectedly destabilized when he spies a suggestive text message on her phone. He admitted at the time that the short was inspired by a “private lash of jealousy” he experienced in a similar moment with Glowicki, and our profile concluded with him working on a screenplay for this forthcoming first feature. You […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 25, 2024 -
“I’m Constantly Creating Things and Questioning If the World Even Needs More Movies”: Pete Ohs on His Slamdance-Premiering Love and Work
Pete Ohs, a 2013 Filmmaker 25 New Face, describes his Slamdance-premiering comedy/drama Love and Work as “a film about an imaginary past as a way to figure out where we went wrong in the present.” A minimalist, slightly absurdist romantic comedy, the picture represents both a continuation of the pared-down production model Ohs described to Filmmaker upon the release of his previous Jethica as well as a dramatic departure. Instead of the Jethica‘s lo-fi naturalism, Ohs here goes for a clipped rhythms and a more deadpan affect as his two potential workmate lovers who meet in a shoe factory navigate […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 24, 2024 -
“This Isn’t Just Any AI”: Director Pete Sillen on Bina48 and His Sundance Documentary, Love Machina
By the time in 2010 Martine Rothblatt completed the first iteration of Bina48, the “social robot” modeled after her real-life partner, Bina Aspen (now Bina Rothblatt), she had already trailblazed an extraordinary career across multiple industries. A lawyer and entrepreneur, she cofounded Sirius Satellite Radio as well as biotech company United Therapeutics, the latter an outgrowth of her work developing a medication that saved her daughter Jenesis’s life, along with over 40,000 others suffering from pulmonary arterial hypertension. So when Rothblatt, a transgender rights activist, who, at one point, was declared the world’s highest paid female CEO, and her wife […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 20, 2024 -
Eugene Hernandez and Kim Yutani Talk Sundance 2024 Along with 20 Films We’re Anticipating at the Festival
With its 2024 edition kicking off today, Sundance turns 40. In the words of festival director Eugene Hernandez and director of programming Kim Yutani, this anniversary edition will be a mixture of the old and new—with the heaviest emphasis, of course, on the new. “We sincerely thought it would best honor and celebrate the history and the legacy of the festival by nodding to it and certainly digging into it in a few key spots, but really it’s the looking ahead and discovery that is what Sundance is all about,” said Sundance Festival Director Eugene Hernandez to Filmmaker in an […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 18, 2024 -
Exclusive Clip: Scott Cummings’s Sundance-Bound Realm of Satan
Never have the words “in collaboration with” carried such a potent charge as they do in Scott Cummings’s Sundance-bound documentary, Realm of Satan. Working with members of the Church of Satan, Cummings hypnotizes viewers into the landscapes, physical spaces and ultimately mindsets of this misunderstood group as they, in the words of the Sundance programmers, “fight to preserve their lifestyle: magic, mystery, and misanthropy.” Writing about his previous film, Buffalo Juggalos, Cummings, a Filmmaker 25 New Face, said, “The Juggalos were not my subjects, they were participants, and every choice I made honored that participation.” There’s a similar ethos at […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2024 -
Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash Named Favorite All-Time Sundance Film
Over 500 members of Sundance’s filmmaking community took part in a poll that named Damien Chazelle’s jazz drummer drama Whiplash as their favorite film of the festival’s 40 years. World premiering at the 2014 festival, the film won Sundance’s Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic and Grand Jury Prize; U.S. Dramatic. Of note is that the film was based on a proof-of-concept short that itself won the top prize at Sundance only the year before. The other nine selections are similarly well-known pictures by directors who have gone on to stellar careers. It’s a list that includes the first features by the […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 16, 2024 -
“I Think of My Work as Functioning Like a Virus in the Sense That It Gets Inside Your System”: Michelle Handelman on Her New Installation, DELIRIUM PART ONE: DEATH (The Breakdown)
“Make space to think about that which has died,” begins Lydia Lunch at the start of DELIRIUM PART ONE: DEATH (The Breakdown), a new multi-media installation by filmmaker and artist Michelle Handelman up through January 20 at New York’s signs and symbols gallery. On three projections spanning the viewer’s peripheral vision are performances by Lunch as well as the choreographic duo FlucT and dancers; the score, by Jack Dangers and Pharmakon, blends electronic drones, pulses and rhythmic stabs with breath and guttural sounds — “the cacophony of grief,” says Lunch. Together, the work is both a departure for Handelman and […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 11, 2024 -
Watch: David Ehrlich’s 25 Best Films of 2023 Video Countdown
Indiewire critic David Ehrlich returns at the top of the year with his characteristically excellent supercut of the past year’s best films. This 2023 edition clocks in at over 18 minutes and includes such films as Past Lives, The Taste of Things, Oppenheimer, The Zone of Interest and, well, 21 others. Music includes cuts from Pet Shop Boys, Radiohead and Bonnie Tyler. If you haven’t seen any of these titles, the overall exuberance of Ehrlich’s presentation will send you to the theaters or their streaming platforms. Every year Ehrlich pairs the supercut with a charity. This year’s, he writes, “is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Jan 8, 2024
