Today Ian Clark posted to Vimeo his wonderful (longish) short Searching for Yellow, which last year got Clark selected for our “25 New Faces” list. We’re working on the 2013 list right now, but this film is still very strong in my memory, a lyrical, poignant piece of filmmaking that features Clark’s gorgeous cinematography. Here’s what I wrote about Searching for Yellow last year in my profile of Clark for the 25: Clark’s gift for image-making is most fully demonstrated in his latest work, the 25-minute short Searching for Yellow. Looking for a modern-day equivalent of the romantic notion of […]
Filmmaker — and occasional Filmmaker contributor — Alix Lambert (The Mark of Cain, Bayou Blue) recently directed three dreamy, color-drenched music videos for the band KVB. Using a similar approach to performance footage but layering different imagery for each track, the three songs — “Captives,” “Hands” and “Shadows” form a loose trilogy. From the InCase/Room 205 site: While on a recent tour of the Western United States, London-based The KVB moved heaven and earth to make this wonderfully meditative 3-part episode possible. Working with award-winning documentary filmmaker Alix Lambert (The Mark of Cain), cinematographer Conor Simpson, engineer Griffin Rodriguez and […]
Filmmaker selected director Brent Bonacorso for our 2011 25 New Faces list on the basis of his absolutely stunning short, West of the Moon. After playing the festival circuit, it recently premiered on Vimeo, where it became a Staff Pick and quickly scored over 65,000 views — “WAY more views than in the festivals,” Bonacorso notes with amusement in an email. The film is above, and below is Eric Kohn’s write-up on the director from the Summer, 2011 print issue. — SM When asked to cite their influences, many filmmakers reference icons. Brent Bonacorso avoids that tendency. True to his […]
I must admit I wasn’t previously aware of Robin Frohardt’s work, but her ingenious re-envisioning of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo in cardboard certainly has piqued my interest. From her website, it seems that previously she has operated as an artist and puppeteer, but on the basis of Fitzcardboardaldo I certainly hope she makes more films. Oh, and — of course! — there’s also a “making of” doc featuring a cardboard rendering of Herzog, Corrugation of Dreams, which you can view here.
Though We Always Lie to Strangers — his excellent, SXSW award-winning portrait of the music town of Branson, Missouri co-directed with David Wilson — only hit the fest circuit a few months ago, AJ Schnack already has another film playing the circuit. Caucus, which world premiered at HotDocs just over a month ago, depicts a full field of Republican hopefuls jockeying for early position in the 2012 presidential race as they descend on Iowa, aiming for supremacy in the bellwether state’s inaugural primary. The film doesn’t have distribution as yet, but look out for it at a film festival near you.
The trailer for Destin Cretton SXSW-winning Short Term 12 dropped today, and it does a fine job of reminding me that this is one of the films I really must catch up with. For all New Yorkers, you can see the film this month at BAMcinemaFest, and next month at Rooftop, prior to its August theatrical release through Cinedigm. Here’s what Scott wrote on the film in his SXSW wrap: Winning SXSW’s Narrative Grand Jury Prize was Destin Cretton’s Short Term 12, the feature expansion of his excellent 2008 short about counselors and youth at a residential facility for at-risk […]
One of the most brilliantly out-there shorts of recent years, Jillian Mayer and Lucas Leyva’s Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke has finally made it online, and you’d be a fool not to check it out. It’s the film that put the pair on the map when it played at the festival circuit in 2012, and then later justified their inclusion our “25 New Faces” list last year. Calling the film “both very smart and gleefully nuts,” this is what Scott wrote on Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke in his profile of Mayer and Leyva for the […]
“When a group of people get together and decide to do something, strange and mysterious things can happen,” said writer and actress Brit Marling as she delivered the 2013 Georgetown University Senior Convocation speech. The Georgetown alum reflected on her years at Georgetown and the friends and future directors she met there — Mike Cahill and Zal Batmanglij. She describes moving to L.A. with them and not becoming successful until the three decided to stop trying to “break in” and just make work. “If I can tell you anything of value, it’s that the most important thing you do from […]
Debuting today is the first trailer for David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, which premiered at Sundance, is currently in Cannes, and will be out through IFC on August 16. Though I’ve already seen the film twice, this trailer beautifully captures the gorgeous lyricism of Lowery’s 1970s-set tale of outlaw lovers and makes me right away want to revisit it once more.
Earlier today Scott wrote about Jodorowsky’s Dune, the Cannes doc about the legendary mystical auteur’s famous failed attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel for the big screen, so now is a perfect time to post the trailer for the director’s new film, which is also having its world premiere on the French Riviera. The Dance of Reality is Jodorowsky’s first film since 1990, but the 23-year layoff does not seem to have dulled the director’s visual flair, sense of the bizarre or, well, general weirdness. This trailer has French rather than English subtitles, but the images more than speak for […]