Filmmaker Videos
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The Arbalest, TOWER Win Top Prizes at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival
While screenings continue throughout the week, 2016 SXSW Film Festival had its official awards ceremony last night, with director and comedian Mike Birbiglia — whose Don’t Think Twice was well received at the festival — hosting. Awards went to features about a famous mass shooting, a misfit romance and the KKK while, as always, the festival gave prizes as well to shorts, music videos and poster designs. In addition, Austin favorite Lee Daniels, well known for his work with Rick Linklater, received a special cinematography award for his lensing of Laura Dunn’s The Seer. Our friends at Keyframe have assembled […]
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Olivia Wilde Directed This Music Video on an iPhone 6S Plus
When actress-turned-director Olivia Wilde signed on to direct No Love Like Yours, the latest video from Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, she knew she wanted to shoot the project on an iPhone for both financial and stylistic reasons. But her DP, Reed Morano (who directed Wilde in last year’s Meadowland), a self-described film snob, initially resisted, fearing the quality would be sub-par. But eventually, Morano came around to the idea of shooting on an iPhone 6S Plus along with a makeshift camera rig and the Filmic Pro app, the anamorphic adapter which was used to shoot Tangerine. In the resulting 6-minute video, lead singer Alex […]
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Trailer Watch: Hany Abu-Assad’s The Idol
Two-time Academy Award nominated director Hany Abu-Assad follows up Paradise Now and Omar with The Idol, which now has a U.S. trailer. Inspired by the true story of Palestinian Mohammad Assaf, who was crowned Arab Idol champion in 2013, the film focuses on Assaf’s childhood in Gaza where he dreams of a successful musical career. The Idol, which premiered at TIFF 2015, was partially filmed on location in Gaza, the first feature to be shot there in decades. Adopt Films will release the film in New York on May 6 and nationwide on May 13.
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Watch: Nicholas Winding Refn’s Hypnotic Hennessy Ad
Via Nowness comes this 1:44 second Hennessy advertising from Drive director Nicholas Winding Refn. In no less than seven chapters (!), its fragmented narrative is burnished with the hyper-sensuous glow found in the director’s underrated Only God Forgives. From Nowness: For their most daring campaign to date, Hennessy gave carte blanche to filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn to explore the layered experience of tasting the brand’s classic drink, the Hennessy X.O. “We were given the keys to the kingdom,” says the Only God Forgives director. “It was extremely brave of Hennessy to trust me with so much: For me this is […]
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Join Alien, James Bond, Scarface, Kurtz and Jennifer Beals in a Return Visit to Hell’s Club
Hell’s Club, the mind-boggling mash-up of pop culture mise en scene, has spawned a sequel: Hell’s Club, Part Two: Another Night. Director and editor Antonio Maria da Silva has summoned a follow-up that’s even trippier than the original, if possible. Once more, icons from our cinematic imagination boogie down (and shoot each other up) in a red-lit disco. The music oscillates between dance-floor thump and lyrical balladry, and the range of characters has grown to include Captain Kurtz, Ridley Scott’s Alien, three different James Bonds, a flashdancing Jennifer Beals, Jack Nicholson’s frustrated Shining author, Jack Torrance, and, of course, Tony […]
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Watch: Martha Colburn’s Donald Trump Animation, Drumpf and Bass
In this very short video, experimental filmmaker Martha Colburn processes the madness of our current presidential election by vivisecting the applause lines of the current Republican frontrunner and setting them to a skeezy electro beat. Oh, and there are toads — “probably from the Middle East!”
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Watch: :kogonada on the Way of Ozu
Filmmaker and video essayist :kogonada — one of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces of 2014 — has a new piece up that revisits one of his continuing inspirations: Yasujiro Ozu. As has been the case in previous pieces, Kogonada employs split screen to identify formal patterns and correspondences across Ozu’s work as well as to create a new work softly pulsing with allied rhythms and gentle background audio. By the way, Kogonada has a Tiny Letter — “Notes, inquiries, conversations, and projects in pursuit of Ozu, the aftertaste of time, the cinema of mu, and the somethingness of nothingness in this […]
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Watch: Unmappable, by Diane Hodson and Jasmine Luoma
Premiering online on Vimeo is Unmappable, a short documentary by Diane Hodson and Jasmine Luoma that presents a complicated portrait of an artist and sex offender. Here’s Whitney Mallett writing about the film previously for Filmmaker at the Atlanta Film Festival. The short documentary Unmappable is a portrait of Denis Wood, whose poetic mapmaking challenges the distinction between art and cartography. He also had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy — a friend of his son’s who began living with the family — for which he spent 26 months in prison. Both the story and tone directors Diane Hodson […]
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Trailer Watch: K8 Hardy’s Outfitumentary
K8 Hardy does not want you to watch her debut feature, Outfitumentary. Or, at least, that’s her position expressed in the trailer above. If you choose to ignore her advice, the film has one more screening as part of MoMA’s Doc Fortnight series this Sunday. Also, check out Taylor Hess’s interview with Hardy here at Filmmaker.
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Watch: Tony Zhou on the Coen Brothers’ Use of Shot/Reverse Shot
Tony Zhou covers a lot of ground in his latest video essay, which examines the Coen brothers’ use of shot/reverse shot. Noting that they prefer to film conversations from the middle rather than over the shoulder with a long lens, he finds an appropriate video interview with Roger Deakins that discusses his lens preference. Then it’s on to framing, how the characters are defined by their environments, and the emotional effect of these shot choices: both uncomfortable and funny, Zhou concludes.
