Filmmaker Videos
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Watch: A Clip from Mark Jackson’s Slamdance Closing Night Film, This Teacher
25 New Face filmmaker and Spirit Award-winning director Mark Jackson’s latest film, This Teacher, is tonight’s closing night film at this 25th anniversary of the Slamdance Film Festival. Previously, the film won the Grand Jury Prize at last year’s final edition of the Los Angeles Film Festival. From the Slamdance guide: This Teacher follows a French Muslim woman (Cesar-winner Hafsia Herzi) as she travels to New York City to visit her childhood best friend from the rough neighborhoods outside of Paris. When the reunion proves disastrous, Hafsia steals her friend’s credit card and identity, and disappears to a remote cabin […]
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Trailer Watch: Isabelle Huppert in Neil Jordan’s Greta
Isabelle Huppert may well be the hardest working person in movies, with six films released in the past year. Next on the docket is Neil Jordan’s Greta, which premiered a couple months back at TIFF, and looks to lean heavy on the camp. Huppert stars as the titular Manhattanite who lures a younger woman, played by Chloë Grace Moretz, into an insidious game of cat and mouse. Focus Features will release the film stateside in March.
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Short Film: Caroline, Directed by Celine Held and Logan George
The Oscar short lists were announced earlier this week and one of the ten titles to make the cut in the Live-Action Short category was Caroline. Written and directed by Celine Held and Logan George — two of 2017’s 25 New Faces — the film follows a frenetic afternoon in the life of single mother who leaves her three children behind to go on a job interview. Watch it above.
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Trailer Watch: Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book
The trailer for Jean-Luc Godard’s latest cine-essay, The Image Book, has arrived. Winner of a special Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, the film revisits, reworks and reflects upon excerpts from cinema history. Blake Williams, in his dispatch from Cannes, described it as a “densely layered work of montage,” in line with much of Godard’s late period. Kino Lorber will release The Image Book in New York on January 26, and in Los Angeles on February 15.
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Watch: Alfonso Cuarón’s Quartet for the End of Time (1983)
Now that Roma is available for all on Netflix, it’s as good a time as any to revisit the earliest work of Alfonso Cuarón. Made in 1983, when he was a 22 year-old film student in Mexico City, Quartet for the End of Time bares a strong semblance to the to the classics of the French New Wave. Named after the featured chamber music by Olivier Messiaen, the film explores the solitary life of a young man in and around his apartment. It was Cuarón’s last credited short before his 1991 feature length debut, Solo Con Tu Pareja.
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Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K: Is it Worth It?
A $1300 4K RAW camera that comes with DaVinci Resolve and produces stunning, detailed images as those featured in the above camera test seems like a no-brainer. But as Blackmagic begins shipping their latest Pocket Cinema Camera, reports are rolling in of faulty battery life and other hang-ups. More than one reviewer noted that the battery has a tendency to jump from 70% to 0% in a second flat. Another suggests remedying the issue by purchasing a handful of Canon LP-E6Ns for back-up, effectively tacking an extra couple hundred dollars onto the baseline price tag. He also warns that the audio jacks can […]
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Trailer Watch: Jobe’z World
Following its world premiere at last month’s IndieMemphis, Factory25 has released the first trailer for Jobe’z World, Michael M. Bilandic’s follow-up to his 2013’s art world satire Hellaware. This film looks to borrow from the After Hours formula of a New York City night gone wrong, as roller-blading, drug dealing Jobe (Jason Grisell) bares witness to the death of a celebrity client (Theodore Bouloukos). Featuring a robust ensemble and cinematography by Sean Price Williams, Jobe’z World is set for release on January 11.
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Watch: Blocking as Foreshadowing in Ridley Scott’s Alien
Although this video essay by Sareesh Sudhakaran is called “How Ridley Scott Covers a Dialogue Scene,” it more accurately investigates the ways in which Scott uses blocking and perspective to foreshadow the more sinister events of his 1979 mega-hit Alien. In breaking down the three scenes set inside the Nostromo’s dining area, Sudhakaran also draws attention to the more tradition applications of blocking, via its reinforcement of the shifting power dynamics amongst the crew. Check it out above.
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Trailer Watch: Alexandre Nahon’s Burning Shadow
French-born, LA-living filmmaker Alexandre Nahon premieres his directorial debut, Burning Shadow, tonight at the Miami Beach Cinematheque as part of its Art Basel screening series. The film, which has been described as having a Lynch or Cronenbergian vibe, is a take on one of my favorite storylines — the doppelganger tale, this time set in a City of Angels neo-noir universe. Filmmaker readers will recognize Nahon from his roles in Julie Delpy’s 2 Days films. Following the premiere, there will be the opening at the same venue of Nahon’s 3D 35mm photo show, “I Will Take You Out of Here,” […]
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Watch: Lauren Minnerath’s Short, The Morning After
In The Morning After an interracial lesbian couple wake up the day after the 2016 general election to find their world changed. They drag their tired bodies out of bed to have brunch with one of the women’s fathers, who presents a charming, welcoming veneer despite his soon-to-be revealed political leanings. Written and directed by Lauren Minnerath, and starring Taylor Hess (a Filmmaker contributing editor) and Adenike Thomas, the short film methodically dissects an already tense instance of “meet the parents,” made all the more trying by the present circumstance. Check it out above.
