Via Nowness comes this 1:44 second Hennessy advertising from Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn. In no less than seven chapters (!), its fragmented narrative is burnished with the hyper-sensuous glow found in the director’s underrated Only God Forgives. From Nowness: For their most daring campaign to date, Hennessy gave carte blanche to filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn to explore the layered experience of tasting the brand’s classic drink, the Hennessy X.O. “We were given the keys to the kingdom,” says the Only God Forgives director. “It was extremely brave of Hennessy to trust me with so much: For me this is […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 10, 2016With over 30 assorted producing credits ranging from Martha Marcy May Marlene to An Oversimplification of Her Beauty to The Benefactor, Andrew Corkin is a constant figure in New York’s independent film scene. Uncorked, the production company he runs with partner Bryan Reisberg, has a filmography encompassing shorts, features, television and web, and the material ranges from auteur independent drama to so-called “elevated genre” pictures like Emelie, in theaters and on VOD platforms now from Dark Sky Films. Corkin’s most recent production, The Alchemist Cookbook, world premieres next week at SXSW. Last year I sat down Corkin for a public […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 9, 2016Pamela Romanowsky’s adaptation of Stephen Elliott’s meta-memoir, The Adderall Diaries, gets a pulse-pounding trailer from A24. The film tells the story of a writer, Elliott, navigating writer’s block while reporting on a murder trial taking place within San Francisco’s SM community. James Franco, who originally optioned Elliott’s book, plays the writer; Amber Heard is the journalist who gains his access to the case; and Ed Harris plays Elliott’s father, whose rageful relationship with his son provides the film’s emotional throughline. The film premieres on DirectTV on March 10 and in theaters April 15.
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 8, 2016Filmmaker Maris Curran, who we talked with about her Toronto premiere, Five Nights in Maine, last Fall, forwarded this interview she did with a director she admires, Mira Nair. Nair (Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding, The Reluctant Fundamentalist) is one of the most articulate directors out there when it comes down to unpacking the process of being a director. Curran, whose own feature should reach theaters this Fall, asks Nair direct questions about the job of the director, ambition, budgets, and knowing when a project is the right one to develop years of one’s life on. “Never do anything as a […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 7, 2016Hell’s Club, the mind-boggling mash-up of pop culture mise en scene, has spawned a sequel: Hell’s Club, Part Two: Another Night. Director and editor Antonio Maria da Silva has summoned a follow-up that’s even trippier than the original, if possible. Once more, icons from our cinematic imagination boogie down (and shoot each other up) in a red-lit disco. The music oscillates between dance-floor thump and lyrical balladry, and the range of characters has grown to include Captain Kurtz, Ridley Scott’s Alien, three different James Bonds, a flashdancing Jennifer Beals, Jack Nicholson’s frustrated Shining author, Jack Torrance, and, of course, Tony […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 7, 2016In this very short video, experimental filmmaker Martha Colburn processes the madness of our current presidential election by vivisecting the applause lines of the current Republican frontrunner and setting them to a skeezy electro beat. Oh, and there are toads — “probably from the Middle East!”
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 4, 2016The MacArthur Foundation, which has supported over 300 documentary films since the mid-1980s, is ceasing grant support for individual documentary film projects. In a change announced on its website, MacArthur writes that it will actually increase its overall support for the documentary field but will do so by supporting partner organizations, many of whom have individual granting programs. Indeed, the announcement redirects filmmakers to POV, Firelight Media, ITVS, Sundance Documentary Fund and Tribeca Film Institute. In the post, MacArthur cites the more expansive work done by these partner organizations, which includes mentorship, editorial advice and audience engagement. From the site: […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 4, 2016The Tribeca Film Festival announced today its first wave of selections, including its newly created U.S. and International Narrative Competitions. Encompassing 18 films between them, the sections feature works by several Filmmaker 25 New Faces (Sophia Takal, Ian Olds, Ingrid Jungermann, Cecilia Aldarondo, and Alma Har’el) as well as new work by Demitri Martin and Tracy Droz Dragos, director (with Andrew Droz Tragos) of the Sundance winner Rich Hill. Each section will have an Opening Night film. The U.S. Narrative Competition unspools with Justin Tipping’s San Francisco-set youth crime drama, Kicks. The International Narrative Competition opens with Madly, an anthology […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 2, 2016Filmmaker and video essayist :kogonada — one of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of 2014 — has a new piece up that revisits one of his continuing inspirations: Yasujiro Ozu. As has been the case in previous pieces, Kogonada employs split screen to identify formal patterns and correspondences across Ozu’s work as well as to create a new work softly pulsing with allied rhythms and gentle background audio. By the way, Kogonada has a Tiny Letter — “Notes, inquiries, conversations, and projects in pursuit of Ozu, the aftertaste of time, the cinema of mu, and the somethingness of nothingness in this […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 2, 2016Premiering online on Vimeo is Unmappable, a short documentary by Diane Hodson and Jasmine Luoma that presents a complicated portrait of an artist and sex offender. Here’s Whitney Mallett writing about the film previously for Filmmaker at the Atlanta Film Festival. The short documentary Unmappable is a portrait of Denis Wood, whose poetic mapmaking challenges the distinction between art and cartography. He also had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy — a friend of his son’s who began living with the family — for which he spent 26 months in prison. Both the story and tone directors Diane Hodson […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 1, 2016