Festivals & Events
Festivals & Events
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“Simulating the Flight of the Butterfly”: Alejandro Mejia on Son of Monarchs
Alexis Gambis’ Son of Monarchs moves between New York City and Michoacán, Mexico as biologist Mendel (Tenoch Mejía) returns to his hometown to attend his grandmother’s funeral. Michoacán is where Mendel first became obsessed with monarch butterflies, which he would later devote his life to studying, but is also where his and his older brother Simon’s parents died in a flood. DP Alejandro Mejia details how he bound the film’s two central locations through camerawork. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? Mejia: I entered this project because the director had talked to me […]
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“Reverse the Imagery That We Normally Are Presented Within Adult Film”: DP Sophie Winqvist Loggins on Pleasure
Ninja Thyberg’s Pleasure is an unforgiving exploration of the adult entertainment industry in Los Angeles. After arriving to California from Sweden, young Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel) has many expectations of what working in porn will be like. Pleasure pulls no punches in showing just how brutal of a world it can be. DP Sophie Winqvist Loggins discusses the importance of color in the movie, whether it be in lighting or how natural Bella’s skin looks. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for […]
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“Softness to Achieve an Ethereal Image”: DP André Chemetoff on The World to Come
Director Mona Fastvold’s second feature film The World to Come is an adaptation of a Jim Shepard short story of the same name. The film follows Abigail (Katherine Waterston), a well-read 19th century wife living in upstate New York who has grown frustrated with the humdrum of provincial life. She soon begins a love affair with her new neighbor Tallie (Vanessa Kirby). Cinematographer André Chemetoff discusses the unique challenge of portraying winter scenes in summer, ballerinas, and achieving ethereality on film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes […]
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“The Overall Emotional Responsibility of the Film Was a Daunting Task at Times”: DP Adam Crosby on Violation
Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli’s domestic horror debut Violation follows Miriam (played by Sims-Fewer), a fraught woman on the verge of divorce, returns home to visit her sister and her husband at their lake home. The trip takes a dark turn when Dylan assaults Miriam, sending her on a violent arc of revenge. DP Adam Crosby tells us how he captured the film’s lurid takes and how they fostered an environment to explore sensitive topics. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired […]
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“The Film Takes Place in Two Different Worlds”: DP Klemens Hufnagl on Human Factors
Ronny Trocker’s Human Factors follows a family whisked away to their seaside vacation home in an attempt to escape work. During their stay, burglars break into the house, which drives a wedge between parents Nina and Jan. DP Klemens Hufnagl explores differentiating the worlds of Hamburg and the Belgian coast. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Hufnagl: As Ronny Trocker’s first feature The Eremites was a co-production with Austria, he was looking for an Austrian DP. It was […]
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“It Was Just Me and the Characters in a Vacuum”: Editor Marion Hill on Ma Belle, My Beauty
Marion Hill tackles uncharted territory with her polyamorous drama Ma Belle, My Beauty. After moving to rural France, Bertie (Idella Johnson) runs into her ex Lane (Hannah Pepper-Cunningham) who she was previously in a three person relationship with alongside Bertie’s husband Fred (Lucien Guignard). Hill, also the editor of the film, reveals the personal journey that went into editing the film. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the editor of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Hill: I am also the writer, director and one of three producers […]
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“America’s Most Incarcerated City”: Directors Ted Passon, Yoni Brook and Nicole Salazar | Philly D.A.
How did events of 2020—any of them—change your film, either in the way you approached it, produced it, post-produced it, or are now thinking about it? When we began producing this docuseries in 2017, the national conversation around the role of systemic racism in the justice system was in a different place. Back then the city of Philadelphia, where we live, was immersed in a reckoning with its position as America’s most incarcerated big city. After a shocking election, Larry Krasner, an outsider committed to ending mass incarceration, took over the prosecutor’s office responsible for sending people to prison. We […]
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Sundance 2021 Critic’s Notebook 3 (Abby Sun): El Planeta, Try Harder!, At the Ready
The mother-daughter duo in Amalia Ulman’s debut feature-length film El Planeta don’t live in the shabby glamour or reclusive dependency of Grey Gardens’ Beales, but they’re no less compelling in their affection for each other and occasional squabbles. I do find it strange my mind went to Grey Gardens, given this film represents almost its complete opposite. It’s pretty clearly fictional and scripted, though Ulman plays the main character, Leonor (or Leo for short), her real life mother Ale Ulman takes on the role of María, Leonor’s mother, and Leo has to cope with the same physical injury Ulman and […]
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Sundance 2021 Critic’s Notebook 4 (Vadim Rizov): Users, At the Ready
On its website, XTR describes itself as “a premium nonfiction film and television studio serving the booming documentary film space.” The company is attached to eight feature titles at this year’s Sundance, all but one of which (Faya Dayi) credit the late Tony Hsieh’s name as an executive producer. The Zappos CEO died in November, nearly two months after investing $17.5 million in XTR; his name unites Ailey, At the Ready, Bring Your Own Brigade, Homeroom, Try Harder!, Rebel Hearts and Natalia Almada’s Users—the last sporting an end credits dedication in Hsieh’s memory. I haven’t seen Almada’s previous work, so can’t speak to how Users’s often enjoyably giganticist […]
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“Complicity Comes in Many Forms”: Jay Rosenblatt on His Sundance Short About Bullying, When We Were Bullies
Jay Rosenblatt’s latest inventive short When We Were Bullies, world premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, originated with a stranger than fiction coincidence surrounding a guy named Richard and the making of Rosenblatt’s 1994 short The Smell of Burning Ants — which itself had been influenced by another Richard, who is likewise the spark for this film. Fifty years ago the director and the former Richard, fifth-grade classmates, had been on the bullying side of a bizarre incident involving the latter Richard — a moment in time subsequently frozen in both their minds in similar, yet distinctly different, ways. So to get at […]
