“There’s an ambition that comes with wanting to work for Harvey Weinstein. Every day that I worked for The Weinstein Company I woke up with fear. You rationalize it as normal, that this is the dream we all want to be a part of; thinking you have to act a certain way, even though it’s an outdated way, an old way of doing business, but still how TWC operated. You begin to feel that hopeless, dreamless Hollywood factory. The culture was just so toxic. Everyone was scared, nervous, anxious, and now we’re confronting not only the sexual violence but the […]

“Making movies is really me feeling like I shouldn’t be writing something on Facebook,” Jim Cummings says. “It’s taking that energy and making a short film that can be a timeless thing.” When Topic commissioned the writer, producer, director, actor to make a short film series for the website’s inaugural launch in July, Cummings knew exactly the ideas he wanted to pitch — all subjects dealing with epidemics happening in America that were “going kind of unnoticed.” Within five weeks after meeting Topic Studio’s Nick Borenstein at his SXSW screening of The Robbery, Cummings had not only sculpted his ideas […]

When she was growing up in Virginia Beach, Gabriella Moses was often confused for her best friend. Brown-skinned with glasses, both girls stuck out at their predominately white Catholic school, but Moses didn’t think she looked anything like her Filipina friend. When she distinguished herself as half-Guyanese, her peers hadn’t heard of the small South American country. She didn’t quite fit in at hair salons with her Dominican mom either since she didn’t speak the language. These days in New York, she’s sometimes greeted in Spanish. Others guess she’s African American. Some say bi-racial. “People want so hard to classify,” […]

In Weiner, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg’s documentary about Anthony Weiner’s attempted political comeback running for New York mayor, there’s a scene of Weiner shoveling a drippy deli wrap with a side of crispy fries in the back seat of his car. Between bites, Weiner chews through his hopes of a rebounding campaign after having sabotaged it by, once again, sexting on Twitter. He gazes out the car window, jaw muscles flexing, trails off mid-sentence, and dumps the plastic to-go container’s final fistful of french fries directly into his mouth. The masticating sounds of Weiner lunching were produced at Alchemy […]

Nakom is the first ever feature film in the Kusaal language and the first Ghanaian narrative film to have screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. Following the world premiere in Berlin, the film made its U.S. debut at the New Directors/New Films festival in New York. Last month, Nakom was nominated for the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award for films budgeted less than $500,000. On the eve of their Berlin premiere, co-directors Kelly Daniela Norris and T.W. (Trav) Pittman said they were most excited to screen in Nakom, the rural village in northern Ghana where they lived for four […]

Described as the most daring section of the Berlinale, Forum aims to straddle art and cinema. Launched in the late ’60s to diversify the festival, Forum still showcases perhaps the most progressive and experimental films of the 400 total that are slated in Berlin’s beast of a festival. There were 44 titles selected for Berlinale’s Forum program this year, and of the 34 world premieres and 9 international premieres, several played at Berlin’s arthouse Arsenal cinema in the festival’s wake. Though this year’s program was focused on the Arab region, Forum is known for its dissidence and commitment to presenting unpredictable and unconventional lineups. This year, the […]

Drama teachers will command their students to roll around studio floors in all black outfits to loosen their bodies. Training for an emerging actor is often technical, involving a long and difficult process of deconstructing what it is to be human. It’s this concentrated discipline that’s the backdrop for Alison Maclean’s newest feature, The Rehearsal, which recently played the Main Slate of the 54th New York Film Festival. “It’s ironic that I wanted to make a film about the acting process because that’s the aspect of filmmaking I’ve always found the most challenging,” said Maclean. “I’ve wanted to go deeper […]

After winning the Silver Bear for Best Director earlier this year at her world premiere in Berlin’s 66th International Film Festival, Mia Hansen-Løve brings her latest picture, Things to Come, to the New York Film Festival’s main competition slate on October 14th. Starring Isabelle Huppert in an arresting performance as Nathalie, a Parisian philosophy professor, Hansen-Løve’s film follows Nathalie as she picks up the pieces of her life even as it is disassembling. While her mother is sick, her job is compromised, and her husband is leaving her, Nathalie forges ahead, carving a new, albeit unfamiliar course for her future. In […]

“It was important for me to spend time in Coney Island. It’s a beautiful place, very Fellini,” said Alice Rohrwacher in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater at Lincoln Center. The Italian filmmaker spent the last month in New York because she was selected as the 2016 Filmmaker in Residence, a program co-founded by Film Society of Lincoln Center and Jaeger-LeCoultre to support filmmakers in early development. Previous filmmakers selected for the program include American Honey’s Andrea Arnold and Chevalier’s Athina Rachel Tsangari. Besides participating in a New York Film Festival talk about her career and working on the screenplay […]

Is virtual reality beginning to be embraced by the mainstream? The question was raised last weekend at IFP Film Week’s Cinema in the Age of VR panel. Roughly 50 people had gathered at the Made in NY Media Center by IFP in Dumbo to hear from four pioneers working at the forefront of VR. Every year at Film Week, IFP programs The Screen Forward Conference, a six-day event that dissects the current state of independent film. Located this year in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood for the first time, the event features panels that serve as micro think tanks for the film […]