Filmmaker Videos
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Watch: New York in 1993 in HD
A piece of HD footage shot in 1993 as test footage for the Japanese market has resurfaced on the internet. The effect is a little head-spinning: a recognizably of-another-time New York City, captured with the HD clarity of the present.
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Watch: Connecting the Dots Between David Lynch and Maya Deren
“As many viewers of Maya Deren‘s Meshes of the Afternoon and David Lynch‘s Mulholland Drive have recognized, there are many similarities between these two filmmakers,” writes Joel Bocko over at Fandor Keyframe. “An ordinary key is charged with dangerous supernatural power; characters multiply, bending space and time; an Angeleno atmosphere in which daydream becomes nightmare — these are just a few of Meshes‘ and Lynch’s common touchstones.” This video finds the visual connections between Lynch’s work from Twin Peaks onwards and Deren’s best-known short.
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Watch: 100 Years/100 Shots, Official Selection of Tribeca 2016
Jacob T. Swinney’s latest supercut 100 Years/100 Shots, a compilation of the most iconic shots from some of the most memorable films of the past 100 years, screened as part of Tribeca N.O.W. at the Tribeca Film Festival. “While many of these shots are the most recognizable in film history, others are equally iconic in their own right,” Swinney explains in the video’s description on Vimeo. “For example, some shots pioneered a style or defined a genre, while others tested the boundaries of censorship and filmgoer expectations. If anything, I want this video to be a reminder as to why we all love cinema so […]
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Watch: Rihanna’s (NSFW) “Needed Me” Music Video, Directed by Harmony Korine
“Happy 420, look out for Needed Me TODAY at NOON EST,” Rihanna announced on Twitter. The video, as it happens, is directed by Harmony Korine, and follows up on “Bitch Better Have My Money”‘s appetite for controversy. There will be blunts and cultural conversation-ready problematic images. Watch now, enjoy the thinkpieces later. No surprise: this is a little NSFW.
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Watch: Living Los Sures‘ Short, Eric, Winter to Spring
The third and final short from UnionDocs’ Living Los Sures project premiering here at Filmmaker is Danya Abt’s Eric, Winter to Spring. UnionDocs describes the project like this: After losing his brother two years ago, cab driver Eric Martine quit using drugs and began a new chapter in his life. Although he still visits some of the same punk-rock haunts and friends, Eric is re-mapping his life onto the city he knows by turning his experiences into prose poems and trying to draw meaning from an extreme past. (2014) The short won Best Short Documentary at the 2015 Brooklyn Film […]
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Trailer Watch: Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation
Though it won’t hit theaters for nearly six months, The Birth of a Nation got its first trailer today — and it’s a stunner. The film — written, directed, produced and starring Nate Parker — wowed critics and audiences at Sundance earlier this year, where it won both the Audience Award and Jury Award and sold to Fox Searchlight for a record $17.5 million, making it the biggest Sundance deal of all time. Set to Nina Simone’s cover of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” the trailer artfully presents snippets of the story, which follows Parker’s Nat Turner as becomes the leader of the 1831 slave rebellion. […]
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Trailer Watch: Nicholas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon
On the heels of the announcement that Nicholas Winding Refn’s new film The Neon Demon — his Elle-Fanning-in-LA horror movie — will be premiering at Cannes, we have a trailer. The tone is somewhere between Lynchian and The Canyons. This is one of five (!) Amazon Studios projects showing at Cannes this year.
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Watch: Living Los Sures‘ Short Film, Division Avenue
The second of three short films from UnionDocs Living Los Sures project we’re screening here at Filmmaker, Division Avenue is an experimental film referencing one of the most traveled thoroughfares in New York, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Opening with a jaw-dropping quote from the BQE’s chief architect, Robert Moses, the film, directed by Anne-Katrine Hansen and Janna Kyllastinen, uses an aggressive cello score by Stanza Vaubel and a series of harshly poetic images to capture the violence of this borough-slicing roadway. Here’s the description of the film from its Vimeo page: Division Avenue (2014) is an experimental short film about one […]
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Watch: Haskell Wexler and Others in Other People’s Footage: Copyright & Fair Use
Robert Johnson, Jr. and Diane Carson’s Other People’s Footage: Copyright & Fair Use is a documentary about exactly what its title says it’s about. Per the film’s website, the doc features “illustrative examples from nonfiction, fiction, and experimental films that use pre-existing footage, music and sound from other individuals’ creations,” while drawing upon a solid roster of lawyers, archival producers and other specialists in this often-muddy field. In this clip, the late Haskell Wexler discusses his strategy in using a Coors commercial in his documentary Who Needs Sleep?, followed by some interesting insights on the strategies used by 20 Feet from Stardom and Bowling for Columbine. […]
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Watch: Steven Soderbergh’s Music Video for DCTV’s “Histoire seule”
Steven Soderbergh continues being productive in new and unexpected directions with what’s technically (unless we’re blanking on something) his first short-form music video. (At the start of his career, he was nominated for a Grammy for Best Long-form Music Video for his work on the Yes concert video 9012 Live, some of which you can watch here.) The band is DCTV, headed by James Greer, a guitarist from one of the classic early lineups of Guided by Voices; recall that one of Soderbergh’s long-discussed, never-realized projects was Cleo!, a rock musical about Cleopatra with music by GBV mastermind Robert Pollard.
