Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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DP Mackenzie Mathis on Slamdance World Premiere Chemical Cut
A cinematographer on nearly a dozen shorts since 2008, Mackenzie Mathis makes his debut as a feature film DP with Chemical Cut. The film, written and directed by America’s Next Top Model contestant Marjorie Conrad, held its world premiere at Slamdance 2016. In this interview, Mathis discusses his influences and technique as a DP. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Mathis: I was introduced to Marjorie Conrad through our producer Barret Hacia, for whom I’d shot a short film some years back. Marjorie […]
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“Like Illustrations from a Children’s Book”: DP Kuba Kijowski on Sundance Entry The Lure
Jakub “Kuba” Kijowski has served as cinematographer on two feature-length films: 2013’s Floating Skyscrapers and The Lure, aWorld Cinema Dramatic Competition selection at Sundance 2016. Kijowski has also acted as a camera operator on a number of short films, including the Oscar-nominated In Darkness. Below, he discusses the fairy tale and musical-like aesthetic he sought to achieve for Agnieszka Smoczynska’s The Lure. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Kijowski: I actually didn’t know the director, Agnieszka Smoczynska very well. We […]
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“Rough and Spontaneous”: DP Eric Yue on the Wyatt Cenac-Starring Jacqueline (Argentine)
Jacqueline (Argentine) marks the debut feature film from both director Bernardo Britto and DP Eric Yue. Starring former Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac, the film unfolds as an playful blend of mockumentary and political thriller. Below, Filmmaker speaks with Yue about what he calls the film’s “documentary/stylized” aesthetic. The film premiered in the NEXT program at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job? Yue: I was approached by Bernardo and the producers who are friends of mine from college. […]
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“Your Job as a Programmer is to Look on Behalf of the Audience”: Charlotte Cook on She Does Podcast
Charlotte Cook is a documentary film programmer, curator, producer and co-founder of Field of Vision. Cook was the Director of Programming at Hot Docs film festival for four years before she left in May of 2015 to start Field of Vision, a visual journalism film unit that aims to commission 40 to 50 original episodic and individual short non-fiction films each year. Cook co-founded Field of Vision with Academy Award-winning director of CITIZENFOUR, Laura Poitras, and filmmaker and founder of Cinema Eye Honors, A.J. Schnack. In this episode of the She Does podcast, we talk about Cook’s journey to programming […]
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Breakthroughs in Storytelling
Photo credit Freedom, created by Josh Kline for the 2015 New Museum Triennial.
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Video Artist Kalup Linzy on His Sundance Installation Queen Rose Family (da Stories)
Video and performance artist Kalup Linzy returns to Sundance in 2016 with Queen Rose Family (da Stories), an installation within the New Frontier program of the festival. The exhibit features prominent musicians such as Michael Stipe and Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio and was was shot, directed, edited and scored by Linzy himself. Hailing from New York, Linzy has had pieces at The Met, The MoMA and The Whitney, among other museums. In this interview for Queen Rose Family (da Stories), Linzy talks shop about how he captured the distinctly campy aesthetic of his latest installation. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being […]
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Director/DP Andrea Marini on Prank Maestro Joey Skaggs and the Slamdance Doc Art of the Prank
Art of the Prank documents the latest elaborate hoax from Joey Skaggs, an infamous culture-jammer who’s been pranking the media since the 1960s. The film marks the feature debut of writer, director and co-cinematographer Andrea Marini. Art of the Prank blends new footage of a prank-in-progress – his latest target: film festivals – with decades of archival material. In the interview below, Marini speaks about the style and structure of the film. Art of the Prank was selected to screen as part of the 2016 Slamdance Film Festival. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that […]
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DPs Gregg de Domenico and André Döbert on the Howard Brookner Doc, Uncle Howard
Gregg de Domenico has more than 10 years of industry experience as a cinematographer, camera operator and second AC. At Sundance 2016, de Domenico served as co-cinematographer for Uncle Howard, a documentary on filmmaker Howard Brookner and the search for his archival remains of his debut documentary, Burroughs. de Domenico lensed the film with first-time DP André Döbert. In this interview, de Domenico and Döbert discuss the film’s blend of archival and new footage along with other visual challenges. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your […]
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Structuring Uncle Howard in Production and Post using William Burroughs’s The Western Lands and Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru
One of the earliest challenges in making Uncle Howard was figuring out how to tell a story around a main character who is essentially absent. My uncle, Howard Brookner, was a fairly obscure director, whose work went missing to varying degrees, and who had died some 25 years ago. Yet, to me and others around him, he left a very strong memory and spirit. How to show this? For inspiration, my producer, Paula Vaccaro, and I turned to Howard’s friend and former film subject, William S. Burroughs (Burroughs: The Movie, 1983), whose book, The Western Lands, was the last he wrote before dedicating himself […]
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Park City Critic’s Notebook: Suicide Watch
Sundance went into a frenzy over the weekend over flatulent corpses and new corporate money. While the rash of walkouts that greeted the world premiere of Swiss Army Man, in which the remains of Harry Potter pass gas and gets a boner for a significant amount of the running time, was the festival’s peak viral moment thus far, on the business end of things Amazon Studios and Netflix are proving to be the most muscular and hungry distributors at the festival. Amazon acquired well received new films from indie film veterans Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester By the Sea, of which early notices have made […]
