Filmmaker Videos
-
Watch: “Cats Die Funny, Dogs Die Sad”
When a dog dies on screen it is universally portrayed as upsetting. The demise of a cat, meanwhile, is often used as a gag. Over at Fandor Keyframe, Jacob T. Swinney takes a look at the discrepancy in emotional response when an animal dies on screen.
-
Trailer Watch: Natalie Portman’s A Tale of Love and Darkness
Natalie Portman optioned the rights to Amos Oz’s bestselling memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness more than eight years ago. The Israeli-born actress reportedly met with the writer before adapting the screenplay herself. Now the film, written, directed, and starring Portman, gets a trailer (above). Shot by veteran Polish DP Slawomir Idzia, the Hebrew-language film tells the story of a troubled young mother, Fania Oz (Portman), as she raises young Amos (Amir Tessler) during the turbulent early days of the state of Israel. Focus World will release the film, which premiered at Cannes last year, in theaters on August […]
-
Watch: Director Jack Pettibone Riccobono on The Seventh Fire, Having a Subject in Jail and Presenting a Film at the White House
In The Seventh Fire, first-time director Jack Pettibone Riccobono follows the relationship between Rob, a gang leader on a Native American reservation, and his 17-year-old protégé, Kevin. Their connection becomes increasingly complicated when Rob heads to his fifth stint in jail. The film boasts an impressive set of executive producers in Terrence Malick, Natalie Portman and Chris Eyre. The Seventh Fire opens at the Metrograph in New York on July 22, and at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles on July 29. I talked to Riccobono about the difficulties of having a subject sentenced to jail time while shooting, presenting the […]
-
Watch: “The Coen Brothers: Green”
In his latest video essay, Jacob T. Swinney goes the extra mile to highlight the Coen brothers’ use of green in their films by desaturating everything that isn’t green to black and white (or at least as close as possible).
-
Watch: Jim Cummings’s Springsteen-Fueled Sundance Grand Prize-Winning Short, Thunder Road
Following a heartfelt public campaign to convince Bruce Springsteen — or, perhaps, his battery of lawyers, publishers and master owners — to let him affordably release his short film, Thunder Road, director Jim Cummings prevailed. The result is that this excellent short, fully deserving of Sundance’s Best Short prize, is now screening online, for free. Cummings himself stars as a young man who decides to evoke The Boss while eulogizing his mom at her funeral, and the short is an example of a game-changing work that can make a career. (Cummings is on every agent’s radar now as an actor […]
-
Watch: Adam Savage Goes on a Walking Tour of the Stanley Kubrick Exhibition
For those of us who can’t make it out to the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, Adam Savage of Mythbusters gives us a brief tour of their Stanley Kubrick exhibition and reveals himself to be quite the Kubrick fan. Listen and watch as he views cameras from Barry Lyndon, costumes from 2001 and more.
-
Trailer Watch: collective:unconscious
For the film collective:unconscious, producer Dan Schoenbrun brought together five directors to film each others dreams. Lily Baldwin, Frances Bodomo, Daniel Patrick Carbone, Josephine Decker and Lauren Wolkstein contributed the short films making up this unusual feature, which premiered earlier this year at SXSW. collective:unconscious will be released online for free in partnership with BitTorrent Now on August 9. Concurrently, the film will open for a weeklong theatrical run at Brooklyn’s Made in NY Media Center by IFP starting Friday, August 5. Check out the wild trailer in the meantime.
-
Watch: Martin Scorsese Remembers Abbas Kiarostami
At New York’s School for the Visual Arts last Friday, Martin Scorsese spoke in remembrance of the late Abbas Kiarostami. He’d known him for some 14 years, and in this speech recalls both the last time they met — when they spoke about collaborating on a project next year — and the first, when they were both serving as Cinefondation honorary presidents at Cannes in 2002. Of Close-Up, he recalls how the film helped him “see the world again.”
-
Watch: “The Original Ghostbusters Is Pretty Sexist”
The new Ghostbusters is set to release after months of trolling over its all-female cast. In his newest video essay at Fandor Keyframe, Kevin B. Lee takes a look at the six most prominent female roles in the 1984 version.
-
Watch: Michael Mann’s Blackhat and “The Ghost in the Circuit”
Despite a divisive critical reception and box office numbers, Michael Mann’s Blackhat has spawned a number of video essays since its release in early 2015. In his essay, Federico Palmerini examines the spectral nature of the Internet and its relationship to the film.
