Filmmaker Videos
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Trailer Watch: Josh and Benny Safdie’s Heaven Knows What
Timed to the SXSW debut of Josh and Benny Safdie’s Heaven Knows What is the film’s latest trailer from Radius. With stark, declarative titles attesting to the authenticity of the film’s storyline — Heaven Knows What is based on a memoir by the film’s star, Arielle Holmes, detailing her life on the streets while addicted to heroin — the trailer is a bold edit capturing the movie’s beguiling blend of underground romance and urban nightmare. Heaven Knows What opens later this Spring.
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Exclusive SXSW Clip: Ben Powell’s Barge
World premiering in SXSW’s Visions section on Saturday is Ben Powell’s Barge, a project featured in IFP’s Spotlight on Documentaries Project Forum back in 2012. Aboard a towboat bound for New Orleans, Powell introduces us to the hands on deck, one of whom, Larry, is depicted in the exclusive clip below. Said Powell of his subject, “I wanted a well-rounded documentation of the crew and every position on the boat. On the last shoot I met a cook named Larry. He happened to be new to the kitchen after working as a deckhand for years. It seemed appropriate thematically to include […]
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Watch: Shane Hurlbut on Sculpting Background Hard Light
We’ve spoken to d.p. Shane Hurlbut about camera tests and other matters before. In this video, you can see him in action: with a model in the foreground, he sets about messing with c-stands, toppers, and other tools to systematically create the illusion of a latticed window shadow behind her. Light is systematically managed and reduced for detail when Hurlbut decides he doesn’t want it to spill onto the floor, which is exactly what thoughtful light manipulation (with an equipment budget) is all about.
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Watch: Eric Rohmer’s Uncertain Perspectives
I post my fair share of video essays, but arguably the most useful ones are the most specific, breaking down a filmmaker’s craft into a more ‘teachable’ method. Kevin B. Lee’s essay on the blocking, editing and camera perspectives at work in Eric Rohmer’s A Summer’s Tale is a prime example of the aforementioned. Lee clearly demonstrates how Rohmer crafts a world of uncertainty through reverse shots and eyelines, just as easily as he can lead the audience to side with a different character from one shot to the next via his cinematography.
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Exclusive Clip: Dennis Hopper in The Last Film Festival, His Final Movie
A few years ago, director Linda Yellen met her hero, Dennis Hopper, at the Sundance Film Festival. As she writes on the Kickstarter page for The Last Film Festival, “Sundance is simply one of the best film festivals in the world, and I wondered what the worst would be like? Dennis turned to me and said ‘That’s a great idea kid, you write the script and I’ll do it.’ And he did!” From the page: The Last Film Festival is a feature length comedy starring Dennis Hopper, written by Michael Leeds and me. Dennis plays Nick Twain, a big-time Hollywood Producer […]
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Exclusive Clip: Adrien Brody and Kevin Ford’s SXSW-Premiering Stone Barn Castle
One of the more intriguing documentaries scheduled to premiere at SXSW is Stone Barn Castle, which depicts Academy Award-winner Adrien Brody’s restoration of a damaged stoned barn in upstate New York — “reminiscent of a European castle” — over the course of a seven-year period. As the short clip above details, the documentary appears to be as much about community, physical work and personal achievement as it is about design. The official blurb is below: In 2007, Academy Award winning actor Adrien Brody fell in love with a partially burned stone barn, reminiscent of an old European castle, hidden in […]
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Watch: Albert Maysles on The Beales
Last Friday, a day after Albert Maysles’ passing, Grey Gardens opened for a 40th Anniversary run at New York’s Film Forum. The new 2K digital restoration of the 1976 documentary, courtesy of Janus Films, will roll out in limited cities over the next couple of months, and the Criterion Collection has released a brief interview with Maysles on his working relationship with the Beales, in which he speaks about the women’s setbacks and their fascinating — not to be confused with abnormal — qualities. For reminiscences on Maysles and his work, I’d recommend this piece by Richard Brody, which speaks to the undying […]
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Watch: The Creation of “Tondoscope,” a New Aspect Ratio
Scanning the Tribeca slate, it’s hard not to wonder what exactly “Tondoscope” is. The capsule for Gust Van den Berghe’s Lucifer claims this is an aspect ratio of his own devising, and this video provides some clarity on what that mean. You can watch a trailer here, but the basic idea is that Tondoscope is a circle. In this nine-minute video, Van den Berghe explains the origins of his idea, and his DP and assorted representatives of the University of Brussels make it happen. From carving the lens to sound mixing (tricky when characters restricted to a circle move not […]
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Trailer Watch: Anja Marquardt’s She’s Lost Control
Opening March 20th at the Media Center in Dumbo is Anja Marquardt’s atmospheric debut, She’s Lost Control. Recently nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards, including Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay, the film stars Brooke Bloom as a graduate student/sex surrogate who emotionally abandons herself to one of her more violent patients. At SXSW last year, where the drama had its North American premiere, I wrote that “Marquardt uses the untraditional avenue of sex surrogacy to explore the contradiction at the crux of her character study,” in portraying a woman who has trouble practicing the very intimacy she preaches.
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Watch: The Subterranean Stadium, A New Errol Morris Short Film
For his next semi-unlikely move, Errol Morris is making six shorts for ESPN Films. This first installment, The Subterranean Stadium, delves into the world of electric football. With guidance from “commissioner” John “Larue” DiCarlo, Morris uses his typically on-point interview skills (and offscreen, typically astonished-sounded questions) to guide us through a game whose players claim, plausibly, is as complex as chess.
