Director Interviews

Lee Toland Krieger, The Vicious Kind

Opening with a blistering, misogynistic monologue by Caleb (a terrific Adam Scott), a newly unemployed construction worker who’s recent breakup has left him with an unquenchable hate for all things feminine, The Vicious Kind seems to announce its intentions very quickly: dramatizing the bitterness of a young, damaged man and the toll his misanthropy exacts on his small, middle class New England family over one long holiday weekend as his virginal brother (Peter Frost) and his gothy, bright eyed girlfriend (Brittany Snow) also return for Thanksgiving. However, as it slowly unwinds, The Vicious Kind reveals a family torn apart by […]

By Brandon Harris on Dec 9, 2009 Director Interviews
John Maringouin, Big River Man

Interview by Alicia Van Couvering Filmmaker selected John Maringouin as one of our “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2006 after seeing Running Stumbled, the filmmaker’s hilarious and disturbing film documenting his own reconciliation with his estranged father. This year he brought his remarkable film Big River Man to Sundance, a film several years in the making that documents the Amazon River expedition of Slovenian endurance swimmer Martin Strel. Strel’s stated mission is to bring environmental awareness to the rivers he swims, which have included some of the most polluted on Earth. Maringouin sets out to follow Strel’s expedition […]

By Scott Macaulay on Nov 30, 2009 Director Interviews
David Siegel And Scott McGehee, Uncertainty

If one had only a single adjective with which to describe the body of work that directing team David Siegel and Scott McGehee have crafted over the past decade and a half, cerebral immediately jumps to mind. Since their debut film Suture (1993), an austere, black and white thriller starring Dennis Haysbert that took Toronto and Sundance by storm, they have often found it difficult to get their peculiar brand of thoughtful, idea driven filmmaking off the ground. Even if it was far from experimental hijinks of a Hollis Frampton or Kenneth Anger, the fact that the original Suture VHS […]

By Brandon Harris on Nov 11, 2009 Director Interviews
Chris Smith, Collapse

Ex-LAPD Detective, investigative journalist, 9/11 truther, foreteller of the coming apocalypse — these are just some of the roles Michael C. Ruppert has inhabited in his fascinating life, one that versatile filmmaker Chris Smith (American Movie, The Yes Men) has chosen to examine in his newest film Collapse. It is a return to documentary films for Smith, who has oscillated between disparate narrative and documentary work with a rare deftness. His most recent film The Pool (2007), a naturalistic narrative which Smith photographed himself, tracks a rural teenager working in a Panjim hotel to support his family who becomes obsessed […]

By Brandon Harris on Nov 4, 2009 Director Interviews
Ti West, The House Of The Devil

As a genre that’s all about keeping the audience on its toes, the horror movie naturally needs a regular injection of fresh talent, and writer-director Ti West is the latest to give it a shot in the arm. Born in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1980, West spent his adolescence watching as many movies as he could catch on TV or rent from his local video store. Though he made stop motion movies with his G.I. Joe action figures, he didn’t give much serious thought to filmmaking until he decided to make a short film to indicate to colleges that he had […]

By Nick Dawson on Oct 30, 2009 Director Interviews
Peter Greenway, Rembrandt’s J’Accuse

It is not uncommon to describe filmmakers as “true artists,” however in the case of Peter Greenaway it is literally the case that he brings an artist’s sensibility to work on the big screen. Born in Newport, Wales, in 1942, Greenaway grew up in London and studied to be a painter at the city’s Walthamstow College of Art. In the late 60s, Greenaway began to explore his fascination with cinema, embarking on a series of documentary short films which he continued throughout the 1970s that set out to capture the peculiarities of the world (or the world from a peculiar […]

By Nick Dawson on Oct 21, 2009 Director Interviews
Sebastian Silva, The Maid

CATALINA SAAVEDRA IN DIRECTOR SEBASTIAN SILVA’S THE MAID. COURTESY ELEPHANT EYE FILMS. Sebastián Silva could seemingly make a career out of a variety of creative pursuits, however at the moment it is on filmmaking that he is focusing all his attention. Silva was born in Santiago, the capital of Chile, in 1979, and grew up attending a Catholic school in the city. Though from a young age it was clear that he had a talent for art, after finishing high school he went to study film at the Escuela de Cine in Santiago. After a year, however, he quit to […]

By Nick Dawson on Oct 16, 2009 Director Interviews
Nicolas Winding Refn, Bronson

TOM HARDY AS THE EPONYMOUS LEAD IN WRITER_DIRECTOR NICOLAS WINDING REFN’S BRONSON. COURTESY MAGNOLIA PICTURES. At a time when Danish cinema boasts a large number of first rate directors, Nicolas Winding Refn stands out among his peers for his raw talent and ambition. The son of filmmaker Anders Refn, Refn was born in Copenhagen in 1970 but spent much of his teenage years living in New York, which had a great impact on his cinematic sensibility. He started film school at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, but was expelled for throwing a desk at a wall, one of a […]

By Nick Dawson on Oct 9, 2009 Director Interviews
Antonio Campos, Afterschool

EZRA MILLER IN WRITER-DIRECTOR ANTONIO CAMPOS’ AFTERSCHOOL. COURTESY IFC FILMS. To call Antonio Campos a precocious talent would be to understate his abilities. Amazingly, the 26-year-old writer director, a native of New York City, has already spent half of his young life making films. Campos directed his debut short, Puberty (1997), at the age of 13 as part of a New York Film Academy program, and over the course of his teens made numerous shorts – both fiction and documentary – including First Kiss (2001), Pandora (2002) and Who’s Your Daddy? (2004). At 21, he had his short film […]

By Nick Dawson on Oct 2, 2009 Director Interviews
Michael Almereyda, Paradise

A STILL FROM DIRECTOR MICHAEL ALMEREYDA’S PARADISE. COURTESY POST FACTORY FILMS. As he himself puts it, writer-director Michael Almereyda loves to make movies like a fighter likes to brawl, and over the course of his directorial career he has sought out an intriguing variety of creative challenges. Born in 1959 in Overland Park, Kansas, Almereyda spent his formative years in the Los Angeles area, where he discovered cinema and became a voracious moviegoer. Almereyda attended Harvard as an art history student, but dropped out in order to pursue his film career. He made his debut with the short film A […]

By Nick Dawson on Sep 24, 2009 Director Interviews

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