Filmmaker Videos
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Trailer Watch: Ava DuVernay’s 13th
Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th, will have its world premiere as the Opening Night selection of the 54th New York Film Festival. The first-ever nonfiction work to open the festival, 13th will debut on Netflix and open in a limited theatrical run on October 7. You can check out its first trailer above. The title of the film refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” The film chronicles the history of racial inequality and examines how the U.S. has produced […]
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Trailer Watch: TOWER
With campus shootings occurring at a frightening frequency, TOWER, the new documentary about the 1966 campus shooting at the University of Texas, is, sadly, timelier than ever. The SXSW Grand Jury and Audience Award winner combines archival footage with rotoscope animation of first-person testimonials to retell the tragedy where a sniper took the lives of 16 people. Directed by Keith Maitland and executive produced by Meredith Vieira and Luke Wilson, TOWER will get a limited theatrical release in October via Kino Lorber. Check out the film’s new trailer above and read an interview with Maitland out of SXSW here.
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Trailer Watch: Shrihari Sathe’s 1000 Rupee Note
Producer Shrihari Sathe makes his directorial debut with 1000 Rupee Note, premiering this weekend in New York at the Village East. Sathe, whose credits include Dukhtar, Buffalo Juggalos, It Felt Like Love (and, full disclosure, A Woman a Part, in partnership with me), developed this story based on a short by Shrikant Bojewar, the resident editor of Maharashtra Times, one of India’s major newspapers. Here’s a description: Budhi, a widow, lives in a small village in Maharashtra, India — and her only son has committed suicide. Though poor and left alone in the world, she leads a cheerful life and […]
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Trailer Watch: Mifune: The Last Samurai
“Mifune’s performance is layered, complex. He studied the movement of lions. He’s like a caged animal,” says Martin Scorsese in the (above) trailer for Mifune: The Last Samurai, the new documentary about Toshiro Mifune, the greatest actor from the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema. Directed by Academy Award-nominated director Steve Okazaki and narrated by Keanu Reeves, Mifune: The Last Samurai features rare archival footage and interviews with Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Koji Yakusho as well as Mifune co-stars Kyoto Kagawa, Haruo Nakajima and Yoshio Tsuchiya. Mifune appeared in nearly 170 films, including Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, and Red Bear. The film […]
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Watch: How the Coen Brothers Storyboarded Blood Simple
In advance of the release of Criterion’s 4K restoration of Blood Simple, photographer Grant Delin created a video essay which compares scenes from the finished film to the original storyboards. With commentary by the Coens, cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, and actor Frances McDormand, this glimpse into their creative process highlights the meticulous planning and elaborate storyboards behind the film’s signature aesthetic. The restored version of the Coens’ 1984 debut feature will be available in both Blu-ray and DVD editions beginning on September 20. Find out more here. You can also watch the Coen Brothers’ pitch trailer for the low-budget classic here.
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Trailer Watch: Tom Ford’s Nocturnal Animals with Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal
For his first film since his directorial debut A Single Man in 2009, Tom Ford has adapted Austin Wright’s 1993 novel “Tony and Susan.” The resulting thriller, Nocturnal Animals stars Amy Adams as Susan, an L.A. art-gallery owner whose ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) writes a violent novel (called “Nocturnal Animals”) based on their former relationship. “I did something horrible to him,” Susan confesses in the (above) trailer for the film, which also stars Armie Hammer, Michael Shannon, Isla Fisher, Laura Linney, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. After winning the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Venice Film Festival, and screening recently at the Toronto Film […]
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Watch: Michel Gondry Directs The White Stripes’ City Lights Video
Filmmaker Michel Gondry recently surprised The White Stripes with the simple, but mesmerizing (above) video for “City Lights.” “On his own and without anyone’s knowledge, the legendary filmmaker shot a video for ‘City Lights,’ which he sent them the other night,” according to Third Man Records. The video marks Gondry’s fifth visual collaboration with The White Stripes.
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Watch: Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog, Nine Cinematographers, One Vision
In honor of Janus Films’ new restoration of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Dekalog, now playing in limited release, Fandor Keyframe shared this video essay about the ten hour-long films bound together by the Ten Commandments. Originally made for Polish television in 1988, the ten films focus on the residents of a housing complex in late-Communist Warsaw, Poland. Their lives intertwine as they face moral, ethical, and emotional dilemmas. Though the series was shot by nine different cinematographers, as the above essay shows, the overall vision was unified.
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Watch: How the French New Wave Changed Cinema
The above video essay provides an excellent introduction to the French New Wave, which helped re-invigorate French cinema post-WWII. Spawned by Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and other Cahiers du cinéma critics-turned-filmmakers, the film movement introduced the notion of the director as auteur. A collaboration by Press Play and No Film School, this video essay is the second in a series on film movements, their histories and their enduring influence. You can watch the first film in the series, on German Expressionism, here.
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Watch: Andrew Bujalski on Chantal Akerman and Je, Tu, Il, Elle
This is fun: Andrew Bujalski, who was a student of Chantal Akerman’s at Harvard, speaks before an Austin Film Society screening of Je, Tu, Il, Elle, recalling his initial, intimidating encounters with her and noting Jim Jarmusch’s debt to this film in particular.
