Authors — Scott Macaulay
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Tribeca 2016: Five Questions for The Ticket Director Ido Fluk
The Ticket, premiering today at the Tribeca Film Festival, is Israeli filmmaker Ido Fluk’s first American film, dubbed a “morality fable” exploring all the various behaviors that manifest in a blind man who mysteriously, one day, gains his vision. Dan Stevens plays the suddenly social-climbing, newly-sighted man, and Malin Akerman is the old-model wife who may no longer be enough for him. Writer/director Oren Moverman is one of the film’s producers, and, below, Fluk talks about how that collaboration came to be and how he visualized a movie about a man new to vision. Filmmaker: What inspired this story of a blind […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 17, 2016 -
15 Films to Anticipate at the 15th Tribeca Film Festival
“How to make sense of the Tribeca Film Festival” was the altogether appropriate headline of the New York Times preview of the Tribeca Film Festival. Even as the festival is only a third of the size of most larger festivals — statistic courtesy of Festival Director Genna Terranova at yesterday’s Robert DeNiro and Jane Rosenthal-hosted press lunch — it still unveils itself with a dizzying shock and awe. There are films, but also talks with people you don’t want to miss, from Patti Smith to Emmanuel Lubezki, as well as master classes by filmmakers like Catherine Hardwick. As with most […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 14, 2016 -
Watch: Living Los Sures‘ Short Film, Division Avenue
The second of three short films from UnionDocs Living Los Sures project we’re screening here at Filmmaker, Division Avenue is an experimental film referencing one of the most traveled thoroughfares in New York, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Opening with a jaw-dropping quote from the BQE’s chief architect, Robert Moses, the film, directed by Anne-Katrine Hansen and Janna Kyllastinen, uses an aggressive cello score by Stanza Vaubel and a series of harshly poetic images to capture the violence of this borough-slicing roadway. Here’s the description of the film from its Vimeo page: Division Avenue (2014) is an experimental short film about one […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 14, 2016 -
Watch: iPhone-Shot Film about Skateboard Sean Malto
Ghost Digital Cinema has just released Malto, a short about pro skateboarder Sean Malto and the year he’s spent recovering from a massive injury in order to skate again. Directed by Ty Evans, the short was shot entirely on an iPhone using a slew of pro gear, including cinema lenses and a $9.99 app, Filmic Pro. Particularly interesting for those into iPhone cinematography is the short behind-the-scenes video, posted below, that shows the lenses, gimbal, use of the iPhone screen as viewfinder and more.
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 11, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: LoveTrue, by Alma Har’el
Very high on my list of anticipated works at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival is LoveTrue, Alma Har’el’s follow-up to her stunning documentary, Bombay Beach. For her new hybrid doc, Har’el — a Filmmaker 25 New Face — has followed three very different couples whose behaviors challenge our expectations of what constitutes a love story. She’s also employed actors, who play her real-life subjects past and future selves. Har’el’s work is always provocative, soulful, and rich with stunning images and gorgeous music. Last year, I watched a short work-in-progress cut of this project, and interviewed Har’el. Here she is answering […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 11, 2016 -
Trailer Watch: Amanda Marsalis’s Echo Park
Opening April 15 at the IFC Center and L.A.’s Independent Downtown is Echo Park, the directorial debut of celebrity photographer Amanda Marsalis. A relationship drama starring Mamie Gummer (The Good Wife, Cake) and Anthony Okungbawa (Mother of George), the film is based on a number of incidents occurring in Okungbawa’s life. The actor is a resident of the titular neighborhood — a diverse, pedestrian-friendly swatch of L.A. that forms a microcosm of sorts for this film’s characters-in-transition. The script was written by AFI Grad Catalina Aguilar Mastretta. Check out the trailer above. Echo Park is released by ARRAY Releasing.
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 10, 2016 -
A New Sound, a New Feeling: Writer/Director Joachim Trier on Louder than Bombs
In Joachim Trier’s Louder than Bombs, Isabelle Huppert plays Isabelle Reed, a celebrated war photographer who, three years before the movie begins, has died, not while on assignment but in a car crash just miles from her home in upstate New York. Her absence in the family is very much a presence in the film. She’s seen repeatedly in flashback, and her death — a suicide, the fact of which has kept from her youngest son, Conrad, a withdrawn player of online roleplaying games essayed with compelling sullenness by Devin Druid — is the fulcrum by which the other actors […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 9, 2016 -
Watch: Álvaro, from UnionDocs Living Los Sures Project
Inspired by Diego Echeverria’s 1984 documentary, Los Sures, Living Los Sures is an expansive documentary produced over five years by 60 artists at Brooklyn’s UnionDocs Center for Documentary Art. Premiering online today here at Filmmaker is Álvaro, directed by Alexandra Lazarowich, Elizabeth Dealaune Warren, Daniel J Wilson & Chloe Zimmerman, a short doc about the daily ritual of longtime Southside, Brooklyn resident Álvaro Brandon. Timed to the restoration and Metrograph screening of Echeverria’s cinema verite work, about the largely Puerto Rican and Dominican community of the Southside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Living Los Sures consists of 40 short films, the interactive […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 7, 2016 -
Watch: Stanley Kubrick, Across the Color Spectrum
In 2014 we posted Rishi Kaneria’s supercut on Stanley Kubrick’s love of the color red. Now, inspired by that video, Marc Anthony Figueras has created his own video, this time surveying the director’s use of color all across the color spectrum. Films referenced: 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, Eyes Wide Shut. And, for those who’d like to simply skip to their favorite hue, here are the chapter markings: Red- 0:07 Blue- 1:30 Yellow- 2:12 Purple- 2:42 Pink- 2:51 Orange- 2:59 Green- 3:15 Black & White- 3:45
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 6, 2016 -
IFP Film Week Moves to Brooklyn
IFP Film Week, the Independent Filmmaker Project’s signature event, is moving to from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Brooklyn for its 2016 edition. The event, which has morphed and shifted emphasis over its 37 years, is now, says the IFP, “the only international co-production market for film – and now television, web-based, and VR projects – in the United States, with over 150 projects from over 22 countries curated and presented as scripts and works-in-progress each year. ” The event runs from September 17 – 22, 2016. IFP Film Week joins the IFP itself, which moved to the DUMBO […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 30, 2016
