Filmmaker Videos
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Watch: Which Movies Have the Greatest Cinematography?
Over at Fandor Keyframe, Scout Tafoya muses about what makes a great cinematographer. “None of us seems to quite have the same definition of great photography,” he intones. “It seems that none of us agree what a cinematographer is supposed to do, what their relationship is with the image, the camera itself.” He asked dozens of critics to select ten films that feature their version of ideal photography in order to see if there was any common ground among them. He then created a video essay (above) analyzing the films that received the most votes, including The Tree of Life, The […]
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Watch: Francis Ford Coppola on “Live Cinema” and His Career at Tribeca
One of the highlights of this year’s on-stage conversations at the Tribeca Film Festival was this sit-down between Francis Ford Coppola and his unlikely interrogator Jay McInerney. For years now, Coppola has been kicking around the concept of a “live cinema,” which is tricky to define, but he gets down to brass tacks in this conversation, which lasts just under an hour.
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Watch: The Best Sci-Fi Movies of the Century So Far
Zach Prewitt rounds up his 20 best sci-fi movies of the century so far in this video essay. For more context (or just to see the list), click here for his accompanying essay (which also includes an explanation of why seemingly obvious contenders Gravity and Interstellar were excluded). Needless to say, if you want to go into these films totally blind, perhaps this is one to avoid.
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Watch: Weiner, Set to Kick Off Rooftop Films Summer 2016 Series
New York’s Rooftop Films will kick off its 20th annual summer series on May 18 with a screening of Weiner, the winner of the Sundance Film Festival’s 2016 US documentary grand jury prize. Directed by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg, Weiner will open in theaters May 20 and hit VOD on May 26 via Sundance Selects. As the trailer (above) shows, the documentary follows the now infamous former New York congressman on the 2013 mayoral campaign trail following a sexting scandal. In addition to Weiner, Rooftop Films will present the documentaries Don Juan and Life, Animated, as well as narrative titles Hunt for the Wilderpeople and White Girl. […]
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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. […]
