In work like her narrative feature MS Slavic 7 (titled after a library call number) and nonfiction short Veslemoy’s Song, Toronto-based filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz has dived into archives, examining their possibilities as a path to various revelations and/or frustrations. Both are encountered in this short film, in which Bohdanowicz adapts Dan Sallitt’s essay “The Hardest Work Cat in Show Biz,” expanding the text with illustrations of feline actor Orangey in action across his career. It begins with Sallitt and his cat Jasper at home before diving into the main line of argument, connecting many dots along the way while finding an entirely […]

It’s hard not to touch your face — something I, and many of you, have undoubtedly learned in recent weeks. As much as I now better understand epidemiological chains of transmission, I still sometimes slip up. So, I’m going to try to keep this punk earworm by the Lunachick’s Gina Volpe — here visualized in a brashly impactful video by Leah Shore, a 2013 25 New Face — in my head as I (only very occasionally and necessarily) venture out into the world.

The American Cinematheque has shared a rare 2008 Agnès Varda. A brisk five minutes with lots of nice Los Angeles footage, The Little Story of Gwen from French Brittany gives a biographical sketch of Gwen Deglise, now the American Cinematheque’s head programer. Varda tells her story, with stops along the way to remember Jacques Demy, Chris Marker and Patricia Mazuy’s early LA days.

Filmmaker has two points of intersection with crime drama #FreeRayshawn, one of the first releases on Quibi and scheduled to drop on April 15. Director and executive producer Seith Mann was on Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces list in 2003. And creator, writer and executive producer Marc Maurino has been a regular contributor for several years. In 2010 he was a blogger out of IFP’s Independent Film Week, which he attended with his debut script, Into the Machine. Several posts ensued, and then one of our great evergreen pieces: “‘It’s Just a General’: How To Take a General Meeting.’” His follow-up […]

Here’s a lovely one-minute animation by Robertas Nevecka that captures the confusing anxiety felt by those of used to working on film sets but who are now stuck at home. Nevecka is a Lithuanian assistant director whose film set drawings can be found on Instagram. Related at Filmmaker: “What Everyone Does on a Film Set.”    

To mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11, a German-American filmmaker is commissioned by German TV to make an experimental short film based on his uncle’s famous photograph of young Brooklynites lounging riverside as the Twin Towers burn. With wit and formal precision, filmmaker Ricky D’Ambrose (Notes from an Appearance) methodically works through the political implications of this scenario in a work that mixes film-set comedy with commentary on the slippery ways in which differing types of media ingest and adapt scenarios of historical trauma. The film screened last Fall at the New York Film Festival and is appearing here online […]