Shiro and Wachuka are two Nairobi women who attempt to transform the McMillan Memorial Library, a whites-only library until 1958, into a modern and vibrant cultural hub. Their attempts to navigate local politics and Kenya’s colonial history is tracked in How to Build a Library, husband-and-wife duo Christopher King and Maia Lekow’s follow-up to The Letter. King, besides co-directing, also served as the film’s cinematographer. Below, he explains the importance of capturing a Kenyan point of view and why working as a two-person crew helps build trust with their subjects. See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here. Filmmaker: How and […]
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? One unforgettable day was following our subjects into the basement of the decaying McMillan Library and witnessing them unearth from a pile of junk a miniature photograph of the first hanging in Kenya, in 1907, conducted by the Imperial British East Africa Company. We all got chills and, in this tiny photograph, found a […]
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? There are so many memorable and important days throughout the process that I hold near and dear to my heart, but I think the wildest one was within our first week of filming. Because of the nature of our filming schedule, we had a light first week and then an extremely heavy three weeks […]
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? My favorite part of making SALLY was getting to know Tam O’Shaughessy, and the most memorable day of shooting was a grueling 12-hour interview day which now serves as the primary narration for our film. National heroes like Sally Ride inspire us, give us hope, and show us just how far we can go. […]
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? The day when we shot two big party scenes for the film at two iconic Copenhagen clubs was a very memorable day for me. More than 300 people showed up to show support and attended to make the scenes feel as real and energetic as possible. Afterwards I was filled with so much pride […]
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? We filmed in Accra, Ghana for Track 16. Reflection Eternal, which is about W.E.B Du Bois in his later years. It was late November when we arrived, and the humid air was thick with the season’s slow, deliberate pulse. We stayed through the turn of the year, marking the holidays in West Africa, far from […]
Khartoum is a poetic documentary that retraces the stories of five Sudanese refugees during the coup and outbreak of the civil war. The film, directed by Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, Tomeea Mohamed Ahmed and Phil Cox, is part of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition. Editor Yousef Jubeh was tasked with compiling archival material, documentary footage from Sudan and green screen studio material. Below, he talks inspiringly of Sudanese culture and history and describes a sequence in the film that, in its description, evokes Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike. See all responses to our annual Sundance […]
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? Isaac Mizrahi in the tub, chatting with his mother on the phone as if the cameras weren’t there. No problem being filmed mid-soak. Nudity wasn’t a thing for him—or for me, really. When you’re around supermodels like Linda, Naomi, Kate and Cindy, modesty isn’t exactly part of the gig. Clothes came off as quickly […]
Films are made over many days, but some days are more memorable, and important, than others. Imagine yourself in ten years looking back on this production. What day from your film’s development, production or post do you think you’ll view as the most significant and why? One of my favorite memories from production was the night we filmed the flash mob. After four long days of rehearsing and three nights of filming, we needed a boost of adrenaline, and boy did choreographer Malia Baker deliver! I remember emerging from a production meeting and walking outside to the backyard to see […]
Reflecting in 1983 on her early years at a literary agency, novelist Isabel Colegate ruefully recalled writing reader reports that involved ”mostly explaining in detail why the typescripts concerned were quite unpublishable, falling as they did so very far below the standards set by the world’s greatest literature, which in my ignorance of there being any other standards I was applying to them. My reports must have been deeply disheartening.” There are two tones at work here: one a rueful regret at her past self’s lack of charity, the other a reminder that if we’re not striving for greatness on […]