Filmmaker Videos
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Trailer Watch: DOC NYC Premiere Monsieur Le President, by Victoria Campbell
Premiering at DOC NYC is Monsieur Le President,” a film by New York-based visual artist, photographer and filmmaker Victoria Campbell. Check out the trailer above and the DOC NYC description below: Volunteering in Haiti in the immediate aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake, Victoria Campbell encounters Gaston, a charming voodoo priest who shows leadership during the emergency, and later manages to open a small, much-needed medical clinic with the support of a foreign funder. He becomes a local hero, a symbol of ingenuity in defiance of the failure of conventional relief efforts. Over three years, he also becomes the filmmaker’s […]
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Watch: Antony and the Johnsons Perform in the Concert Documentary Turning
Charles Atlas’ documentary Turning captures Antony and the Johnsons on tour in Europe in 2006, when the band was only part of the visual equation. Opposite Antony, 13 different women took the stage, revolving and acting out counterpoint emotions with their bodies. In this clip we have performance artist Johanna Constantine, an old friend of Antony’s since his first year at university. Turning hits DVD, CD and digital release on November 11 from Secretly Canadian.
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Five Chicago Doc Production Companies Launch The School Project
The School Project is a series of six, 10-minute documentary video pieces about the Chicago Public School system following the closure of 49 schools. It’s also an unprecedented collaboration between five of the city’s top documentary production companies. The first episode premiered today, and it can be watched above. Below is the statement from the five companies — Free Spirit Media, Media Process Group, Kartemquin Films, Kindling Group. and Siskel/Jacobs Productions — about their reasons for this collaboration. Statement on The School Project Collaboration The School Project is an unprecedented, collaborative, multiplatform documentary series on public education in Chicago. The […]
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Trailer Watch: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Here’s a high recommendation: A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the debut feature from 2014 25 New Face Ana Lily Amirpour. “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is an astonishing debut feature that contains the dark beauty of old-school vampire films, the cool rigor of the Iranian New Wave, and the culturally aware wit of someone with killer taste in music and movies,” is what I wrote in my profile of Amirpour this summer. Now, the film is set for release next month via VICE and Kino Lorber. And Amirpour has been nominated for the 2014 IFP Gotham […]
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James Schamus on Why Money is not “Money”
Producer and screenwriter James Schamus hardly needs another skill set to add to his CV, but let’s go ahead anyway and add “economic commentator” following the premiere of his engaging, witty and nicely analytical two-part, “That Film About Money,” for the 20-episode We the Economy series. Premiering this week online, We the Economy is a collaboration between Paul Allen’s Vulcan Productions and Morgan Spurlock’s Cinelan. (Disclosure: I’m on the Advisory Board of Cinelan.) The series features filmmakers — both documentarians and fiction directors — tackling, in bite-size form, questions surrounding the workings of our global economy and financial markets. For […]
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Watch: Brando, Directed by Gisèle Vienne, Music by Scott Walker and Sunn O)))
Accompanying the first track of the anticipated collaboration, Soused, between avant-garde crooner Scott Walker and sludgy noisemeisters Sunn O))) is an arresting short film by French director and choreographer Gisèle Vienne. Walker’s music — with or without Sunn O))) — is the stuff of waking nightmares, and Vienne’s dream-like film matches it fuzzed-out chord by fuzzed-out chord. A house in the mountains, a blonde-tressed woman moving in slow-motion epilepsy; a teenage boy (her son?) locked in tremulous horror; a car crash?; and a sudden appearance by French novelist, theater artist and dominatrix Catherine Robbe-Grillet… it’s eerie, disquieting, and, with its […]
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Watch: Cinematography in the Films of Martin Scorsese
There’s no particular point of inquiry in this tribute to Martin Scorsese from Alexandre Gasulla, but it nonetheless does a bang-up job of emphasizing what makes the director a master manipulator of camera movements. From his sweeping booms and tracking shots to jarring static lensing, few filmmakers convey the cinematographic agency that Scorsese gets across in a mere handful of moments. Check out the comprehensive tribute above.
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Watch: Creating a Bullet Time Effect with 35mm
There are a lot of videos that offer how-tos and hacks for creating a relatively affordable bullet time effect by marshaling a little technological ingenuity. This one from last year is probably more elaborate an effort than most people will care to make: in a bit over five minutes, you can watch the condensed six month process, which comes with a recipe-like ingredient list up front: 40 tin cans, 10.8 kilograms of sawdust, using 60 meters of 35mm film and so on.
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Short Film: Gooses, Directed by Shawn Sullivan and Joe Peeler
You know the best way to fall in love again with your city? Invite a friend to visit and see it anew through their eyes. Despite the truth of that statement, however, I can’t say that’s exactly what happens in Gooses, a lovely short film by directors Shawn Sullivan and Joe Peeler. Lucinella visits her “spirit animal” (actually, her sister Lore) in Los Angeles, and her trip is both an impressionistic journey through the sights of L.A. as well as a more nuanced tale of sibling rediscovery. Gooses, which premiered on NoBudge and stars Zena Gray and Katy Knowlton, is […]
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Short Film: Bag Man, Directed by Jonathan & Josh Baker
The tropes of American independent filmmaking — in this cast, the tale of a latchkey child wandering the city — are a deceptive red herring in the surprising and rewarding short film Bag Man, by commercial directors Jonathan and Josh Baker. Currently making the online rounds, the film blends a sensitive, character-based tale of a Harlem youth left on his own with… well, I won’t spoil the surprise. The directors were interviewed over at Short of the Week: BAG MAN feels like it takes a narrative-first approach to filmmaking, serving up its audience an intriguing and well-considered storyline, how did […]
