Filmmaker Videos
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Watch: Jessica Dimmock’s Doc on Senior Transgender Women, The Convention
The Convention is filmmaker Jessica Dimmock’s short documentary about a convention comprised of transgender senior women. She writes: The film explores the annual Esprit gathering, where transgender women in their senior years who have been closeted their whole lives gather for a week of shared experience and understanding in a logging town in Northern Washington. For the attendees, many of whom are not out to their wives or children, this may be the only week of the year that they are not in hiding. I traveled to this event many times over the past years while Christopher LaMarca and I […]
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Watch: Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn’s New Music Video
Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn (L for Leisure, 25 New Faces of Film) are at work on their next film, Two Plains & a Fancy. This music video for Aa is a taste of what’s to come. Per Kalman and Horn: This viddy was shot when we were on-location for our upcoming feature Two Plains & a Fancy. It’s the first thing we edited when we got back, and Aa is led by our composer John Atkinson, so this was a working out of the vibes we’re corralling in the feature. The footage is a mix of out-takes, B-Roll, and shots […]
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Watch: Mark Rappaport’s “The Empty Screen” (Mildly NSFW)
Director Mark Rappaport produced this video essay for The Talkhouse, meditating on the different functions the movie screen serves within movies. Titles considered include The Purple Rose of Cairo, Saboteur and, of course, multiple Godard films. It’s mildly NSFW in terms of having ~3 seconds of female rear nudity.
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Trailer Watch: Trey Edward Shults’ It Comes at Night
When I interviewed Trey Edward Shults for our 25 New Faces list in 2015, he spoke of his new project: For his next film, Shults is again drawing on a family story — his father’s death. “It’s not a straight drama about a guy passing from cancer,” Shults says. “I’m trying to take those feelings and emotions and put them into something bigger. And, yeah, it’s like my version of a horror movie. People ask, ‘Wasn’t Krisha that?’ But it’ll be even more intense than Krisha.” I don’t know how much those intentions of Shults’s have shapeshifted since our interview, […]
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Watch: “Roger Deakins Can’t Get a Break”
Roger Deakins has been nominated for an Oscar for his exceptional work as a DP 13 times — and won precisely zero. Daniel Mcilwraith’s video essay compares and contrasts the films Deakins was nominated for with the films he was beaten out by.
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Watch: “Not Another Camelot [How We Got from Jackie to Melania]”
Kevin B. Lee’s latest video essay is a desktop documentary taking a look at media perceptions of first ladies from Jackie Kennedy onwards. The short was commissioned by this year’s Rotterdam International Film Festival to show prior to screenings of Jackie. It ends, as it must, with Melania Trump.
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Trailer Watch: Kristen Stewart in Olivier Assayas’s Personal Shopper
No film has stayed and resonated with me from Cannes this past year as much as Olivier Assayas’s Personal Shopper, an eerie ghost story/character study laced with dark forebodings entirely entwined with our current political moment. IFC has just dropped a new trailer which focuses aptly on Kristen Stewart’s riveting performance as a buyer and stylist to a Davos-set celebrity socialite. Intrigued with the paranormal in all its historical dimensions, Stewart’s character is grieving her recently deceased brother while exploring the possibilities of communication in an age in boundaries are increasingly blurred. IFC releases the film on March 10. (And […]
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Watch: Martin Scorsese’s Romance with New York City
This new video essay by Leigh Singer from the BFI posits, not so controversially, that director Martin Scorsese and the location of New York City are one of cinema’s great screen couples: This video essay focuses exclusively on Scorsese’s features and argues that, in his hands, the physical place transforms into psychological space: an X-ray not just of a city’s psyche, but of a nation’s soul. It makes for often brutal viewing, rarely indulging the aspirational side of the American Dream (does the Statue of Liberty feature even once in a Scorsese film?); but few can deny its authenticity. And […]
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SXSW Announces Full 2017 Lineup
Yesterday SXSW unveiled the full slate for this year’s film festival. Hihglights include the world premiere of the first feature from 25 New Face Anthony Onah, the world premieres of new features from Edgar Wright, Terrence Malick and Joe Swanberg, and a boatload of popular titles from this year’s Sundance. This year’s SXSW runs March 10 to 19. Narrative Feature Competition A Bad Idea Gone Wrong (World Premiere) Director/Screenwriter: Jason Headley Two would-be thieves forge a surprising relationship with with an unexpected housesitter when they accidentally trap themselves in a house they just broke into. Cast: Matt Jones, Eleanore Pienta, Will […]
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Watch the Sundance Awards Live
Jessica Williams, star of the Sundance film The Incredible Jessica James, is hosting tonight’s award ceremony, which you can watch live here at Filmmaker. Check back after the show for the complete list of awards.
