Director Interviews
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Prairie Song: Felix Van Groeningen on The Broken Circle Breakdown
The Broken Circle Breakdown spares you no sentiment at all. It’s willfully melodramatic and all the better for it. A broad, decade-spanning tale, set in an almost unthinkably weird but remarkably compelling European subculture. Belgian filmmaker Felix Van Groeningen’s newest film, a double prize-winner at Tribeca this year, leaps into loss and love and faith amidst the story of a Dutch couple, bluegrass musicians of all things, who confront, in vastly different ways, the untimely death of their young child. Set largely in the Flemish countryside, the movie goes back and forth in time, dancing from the start of the couple’s […]
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The Subject as Auteur: Jonathan Demme on Enzo Avitabile Music Life
Italian jazz saxophonist and composer Enzo Avitabile might not be a household name in the States, but in the annals of world music he’s quite a fixture. In his native Naples he is so famous that when he visits the neighborhood of his youth, folks bustle into the streets and onto rooftops and balconies to lay eyes on him. A scholar of jazz, he can hold court on the evolution of the form as long as you’d like him to, although as Academy Award-winning director Jonathan Demme discovers in his newest concert film, Enzo Avitabile Music Life, that may not […]
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Six Quick Doc Tips: Blitz Wisdom with Call Me Kuchu Director Malika Zouhali-Worrall
The IFP Independent Filmmaker Conference’s “Blitz Wisdom” panels are quick, TED-like talks from filmmakers discussing their projects and/or offering tips and pointers. Here are a few highlights from Malika Zouhali-Worrall’s Blitz Wisdom on the making of the documentary Call Me Kuchu and how they created this successful and highly provocative documentary about the first openly gay man in Uganda: — When researching a topic for your film, find a cause that is topical and personal to you and research, research, research. While the filmmakers had no direct connection to the LGBT situation in Uganda, they had learned a great deal […]
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Five Questions with Some Girl(s) Director Daisy von Scherler Mayer and Producer Patty West
This article was orginally published in March 2013 to coincide with the film’s premiere at SXSW. Some Girl(s) opens theatrically today in NYC and LA, it’s also now available worldwide on Vimeo On Demand. In the battle of the sexes, there has been perhaps no more controversial warrior than the playwright, screenwriter and director Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men). Since the mid-90s, LaBute has made a name for himself by writing movies that are truly, madly, deeply cynical. Adapted by LaBute from his own stage play and directed by Party Girl helmer Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Some Girl(s) stars […]
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Remembering Jamaa Fanaka
Jamaa Fanaka, the eclectic and kind-hearted film director, the most commercially minded of the Los Angeles School of Black Filmmakers and perhaps the most prolific student filmmaker of all time (all three of the features he made as a grad student found distribution), died one year ago today. Although word leaked out about his death a short time after he passed away, likely from complications of diabetes, I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t hear of it until several weeks later, when his obituary finally appeared in the New York Times. Ashamed because in the intervening year since I […]
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Five Questions with Kelly + Victor Director Kieran Evans
The primarily documentary director Keiran Evans was fortunate enough to know writer Niall Griffiths before he wrote Kelly + Victor, which Evans has adapted into a feature film. Evans’ relationship and familiarity with Griffiths and his work facilitated him to adapt the cinematic novel into the screenplay of Kelly + Victor. The gritty drama about a young couple finding themselves in love in Liverpool makes its North American premiere tomorrow at SXSW, after a world premiere at the London Film Festival in October. While Kelly + Victor is Evans’ first narrative film, he approached the movie’s subjects as he would a documentary — as […]
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Eytan Fox, Yossi
Ten years ago, Israeli filmmaker Eytan Fox made an unexpected splash with Yossi & Jagger, a 67-minute wartime romance about two Israeli soldiers, the titular Yossi (Ohad Knoller) and Jagger (Yehuda Levi), who struggled to conceal their love during mandatory service at the Israel-Lebanon border. The film struck a chord with a great wealth of viewers, won Knoller an acting prize at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival, and announced Fox as a formidable directorial talent. As Fox tells it, it also allowed him to take part in a cultural revolution that’s unfolded in Israel—and beyond—throughout the last decade, giving him […]
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Five Questions with Pit Stop Director Yen Tan
It’s been five years since Yen Tan’s mournful, romantic drama debut Ciao, and the Texas-based filmmaker now returns with Pit Stop. If the early buzz surrounding the film is any indication, Pit Stop shares the emotional intimacy of its predecessor, this time tracking the relationship of two gay men in a blue collar small Texas town. The film premieres today in the Sundance Film Festival’s NEXT section. Filmmaker: Where did the inspiration for Pit Stop come from? Can you speak a bit about Gabe and Ernesto’s characters, and how you developed each? Tan: Pit Stop came about during my road trips between the […]
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Five Questions with The Rambler Director Calvin Lee Reeder
Over the past half-decade, Calvin Reeder has carved out a filmmaking niche all his own. His debut feature, The Oregonian (which premiered at Sundance two years ago), as well as his much-praised early short films, are a strange mix of psychological horror, high-minded surrealism, camp, and a soundtrack and filmic texture that hint at both nostalgia and discomfort. His second feature, The Rambler, is an adaptation of his 2008 short film of the same name, and follows a man (Dermot Mulroney) recently released from jail who embarks on a journey to reconnect with his long-lost brother. It premieres today in […]
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Five Questions with A Teacher Director Hannah Fidell
A Teacher, filmmaker Hannah Fidell’s feature debut, focuses on the increasingly unstable Diana (Lindsay Burge), a young teacher carrying on an affair with her underage student. But the film is not too concerned with the shocking or tawdry details of this central relationship. Instead, Fidell turns her focus inwards towards Diana’s subtly crumbling mental state, treating her gradual self-destruction as the focal point of tension. It’s a subtle and precise work, and surely one of the most unnerving selections of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: Like your short The Gathering Squall, which was based on a Joyce Carol Oates […]
