Filmmaker Videos
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“I’m Scared of Everything”: Alfred Hitchcock’s BBC Interview About Psycho, 1960
In this fairly typical Hitchcock interview from 1960, the director adjusts his tie and sits down for a brisk promotional session for Psycho, describing the plot with typical drollery and running through some of his greatest soundbite hits: the oft-told story about how he was imprisoned briefly as a child at his father’s request, qualifying his statement that actors should be treated like cattle (“You mean you want to make them larger cattle than they are?”), and whether he’s ever wanted to be an actor himself (“Nothing so low as that”).
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Trailer Watch: Kathleen Collins’ 1982 Milestone in Black Film, Losing Ground
Lincoln Center’s vital series “Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968-1986” kicks off today, including a week-long debut theatrical run of Kathleen Collins’ 1982 Losing Ground. Believed to be the first African-American woman to direct a feature film (1980’s The Cruz Brothers and Mrs. Molloy), Collins’ 1982 second and final feature has never received a regular theatrical run until now. The story of a philosophy professor (Sereh Scott) and her landscape painter husband (Ganja and Hess director Bill Gunn) in the middle of a transformative vacation in upstate New York, the film is described as a […]
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Film Emulation: Behind the Scenes of the Short Old/New
Red Giant has released a new short from Seth Worley called Old/New. Over the past few years Worley has produced a number of imaginative short films on a limited budget that tell a great story and also – somehow – manage to demonstrate the use of Red Giant’s software. Cue the announcement of new software from Red Giant. Red Giant has also released Magic Bullet Suite 12, their collection of color correction and finishing tools. This release brings new features to the applications that make up the suite, as well as a new product: Magic Bullet Film. One of the focuses of this […]
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Watch: Who Deserves to Win the Oscar for Best Director?
Kevin B. Lee has been churning out a series of visual supplements to oscar punditry over at Fandor that weigh politics against actual evidence, even if it is still subjective. His latest video, Who Should Win the Oscar for Best Director?, considers which of the filmmakers behind The Imitation Game, Foxcatcher, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Boyhood and Birdman, displays the most sensitive, contextually sound technique. He’s spot on in his assessments of three of the five, but I’d argue that The Grand Budapest Hotel finds a renewed cause for Anderson’s seemingly premeditated aesthetic, while Iñárritu ultimately limits himself to the very air of spectacle he […]
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“I Argue that Cinema is Either Dying or Dead”: Peter Greenaway on Making Eisenstein in Guanajuato
“I argue that cinema is either dying or dead — it’s certainly changing very rapidly — so maybe now is the time to make a film about the greatest cinematic practitioner.” Peter Greenaway’s Eisenstein In Guanajuato — focusing on 10 days out of the 14 months Sergei Eisenstein spent in Mexico shooting what would eventually be edited into ¡Que viva México! — is one of the more keenly anticipated titles premiering at this year’s Berlinale. Above is the first of a three-part documentary on the film’s production from Mexico’s IMCINE (the national film financing/production agency). There are two brief bits in Spanish; the […]
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Trailer Watch: Magic Mike XXL Looks Very Soderbergh-y
Magic Mike XXL is not directed by Steven Soderbergh, who has retired from feature filmmaking. But what’s in a name? Magic Mike XXL is directed by Gregory Jacobs, Soderbergh’s regular 1st AD since 1993’s King of the Hill, is crewed by Soderbergh regulars (production designer Howard Cummings and set director Eric R. Johnson have been onhand since Contagion), and was shot and edited by the man himself. The trailer’s color palette — muted and dark, with strong golds and shadows — is accordingly exactly what you’d get from a Soderbergh film, and it even opens with the same ’70s WB Saul Bass-designed logo that […]
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How to Hack Google Cardboard VR into a DSLR or Phone Lens
Google Cardboard was a hot piece of Sundance sort-of-swag at Sundance this year. (“Can you get me Google Cardboard,” several friends emailed me during the fest.) I happened to check out one of the pieces designed for Cardboard, Chris Milk’s Evolution of Verse, a beautifully disorienting lakeside mountain-scape with an enveloping, 2001-ish finale. But, if you’re like Slamdance co-founder Dan Mirvish, and “the whole virtual reality thing gives you an aneurysm,” you can hack Google Cardboard into a rather arty-in-a-low-fi way 35mm lens. Check it out above.
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Trailer Watch: Ryan Gosling’s Lost River
Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut Lost River was torn limb from limb by critics at Cannes, followed by the news that it would be a straight to VOD release. The latter appears to have been an overreaction, as Warner Brothers quickly confirmed it’s set to receive a day and date limited spring run, but in any event, it’s a significant demotion for someone of Gosling’s pedigree at the hands of a major studio. The first trailer is now out, and I’m getting definite shades of Malick, Lynch and Tarkovsky, with Benoît Debie’s colorful lensing recalling his work on Irreversible, Enter the Void and Spring Breakers, in particular. There’s […]
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Trailer Watch: High Maintenance, Season Two
The back half of the second season of our favorite web comedy series about weed delivery, High Maintenance, drops on Thursday, and the trailer is above. If you’re a regular Filmmaker reader you’ll know creators Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair from their inclusion on our 25 New Faces list in 2013. They landed on the list based on the first episodes of High Maintenance, which has since taken off (check out the list of plaudits at the head of this trailer). For the second season, Blichfeld and Sinclair have added production polish by virtue of a deal with Vimeo, and […]
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“I Ripped Up Millions of Sprocket Holes”: George Lucas at Sundance on Building His Empire
“Why should we use all this equipment and all this stuff when we can make it better?” In this excerpt from a recent Sundance panel on “The Power of Story,” George Lucas once again attempts to explain how his loathing for the Hollywood apparatus led to the creation of a special effects empire that enabled a whole new super-strain of Hollywood blockbusters. In his narrative, Lucas had to create a special effects house because none existed, and he had to get into the toy licensing business to prolong the life of his movies inn the market place, and he had to create […]
