Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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“Just Say No to Poverty Porn”: Maggie Steber on She Does Podcast
Maggie Steber is a prolific documentary photographer who has worked in 65 countries around the world focusing on humanitarian, cultural, and social stories. For over three decades, Maggie has worked in Haiti, an experience that has impacted her emotionally and personally and led to her book “Dancing on Fire.” She has received the Leica Medal of Excellence, and recognition from World Press Photo Foundation, the Overseas Press Club, Pictures of the Year, and the Medal of Honor for Distinguished Service to Journalism from the University of Missouri. Her work has been featured in National Geographic Magazine, The New York Times […]
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Mining for Gold: Discovering the Lost Jules Feiffer Script Bernard and Huey
As one of the pillars of the Golden Age of the ’70s, Mike Nichols’ film Carnal Knowledge was a big influence on my own last movie, Between Us. So during post-production on Between Us, I happened upon a biography of Carnal Knowledge screenwriter Jules Feiffer that mentioned that he had several unproduced screenplays. Hmm, I thought: Feiffer had won a Pulitzer Prize for his cartoon strip in the Village Voice, he’d won a couple of Obies for his plays, and as a screenwriter, he’d written Popeye for Robert Altman, Little Murders, that Alan Arkin had directed, and won a Best […]
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Nasty Baby Editor Sofia Subercaseaux at The Champs-Élysées Film Festival
Filmmaker‘s Taylor Hess recently attended and reported on the U.S. in Progress series at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival. While there, she spoke to a number of female directors, producers, actresses and, below, an editor. Here is her conversation with Sofia Subercaseaux, who edited Sebastian Silva’s Nasty Baby. Filmmaker: How did you start working in film? Subercaseaux: I went to film school in Chile. It was a random decision because I had no idea what I wanted to do, but the course description just seemed right. Afterwards, I worked in production. It was really fun and I learned a lot, but […]
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Stinking Heaven Actors Hannah Gross and Deragh Campbell
Filmmaker‘s Taylor Hess recently attended and reported on the U.S. in Progress series at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival. While there, she spoke to a number of female directors, producers and actresses. Below, her conversation with Hannah Gross and Deragh Campbell, who both appear in Nathan Silver’s Stinking Heaven. Filmmaker: I Used To be Darker was your first film together, and Deragh, your first time acting? Campbell: Right, I’m not trained. My college degree is in writing and my background is publishing and writing. In a lot of ways I look at acting as another way of interacting with material and […]
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Applesauce Producer Melodie Sisk
Filmmaker‘s Taylor Hess recently attended and reported on the U.S. in Progress series at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival. While there, she spoke to a number of female directors and producers. Below, her conversation with Applesauce producer Melodie Sisk. Filmmaker: What was your timeline on Applesauce? Sisk: Applesauce moved so fast! We essentially had no real pre-production and had to jump right in. This made our schedule erratic, we’d shoot a few days at a time, jumping around between holidays, and then, just like that, we premiered at Tribeca exactly five months to the date of our first day of shooting. It […]
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A Matter of Semitics: A Borrowed Identity
What’s in a name? Labeling is a risky proposition. Meant to attract, summarize, or simplify, sometimes all three, a tag’s position front-and-center makes it bait for bashing. Pigeonholing can repel as easily as it entices, or just may harmlessly connote something other than what was intended. In the cultural arena, a title can be artwork-specific and subject-appropriate, only to be slammed, censored, and overruled by the poison of protocol or more overt political and commercial censorship. In theory merely a signifier, it frequently serves as a convenient synecdoche for larger issues under hypocritical attack. Which brings us to Dancing Arabs, […]
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Jerzy Rose and Samy Burch on Casting Neighborhood Food Drive
Chicago filmmakers Jerzy Rose and Halle Butler are currently fundraising for their feature length satire Neighborhood Food Drive, about two egomaniacal restauranteurs and their unpaid intern as they throw a series of lavish and disastrous fundraisers. Below, Rose interviews his casting director Samy Burch about the process of pulling together both professional actors and otherwise for a cast headed up by Bruce Bundy and Lyra Hill.–SS Jerzy Rose: I have a vague memory of you telling me, after you’d seen Crimes Against Humanity, that you’d love to help me cast my next movie. I followed up one year later. I think I simply asked “How […]
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Finding Soul at U.S. in Progress at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival
Bonjouring my way down the Champs-Élysées, I arrive at Ladurée, a Parisian bakery nearly as iconic as the Arc de Triomphe. I sit among film distributors and we are presented with food almost too pretty to eat. We are in Paris for U.S. in Progress, a joint program between Black Rabbit Film and the Champs-Élysées Film Festival. The purpose is to expose U.S. indie films in post-production to European buyers and distributors and introduce the American filmmakers to the European market. The three-day event is organized bi-annually, first during the Champs-Élysées Film Festival and again during the American Film Festival […]
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Exclusive: Sam Fleischner and Iva Gocheva’s Porcupine
Straight from BAMcinemaFest where it preceded Krisha last Friday is Sam Fleischner and Iva Gocheva‘s short film, Porcupine. A far cry from the subterranean world of Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, Porcupine features Gocheva as a woman holed up in her sun-drenched Brooklyn apartment, trying and failing to reconnect with her partner through a series of unanswered phone calls. Strung together, her voicemails intimate a relationship — and several household items — lost. Check it out above.
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Kevin Smith, Branding and the Pressures of Independent Filmmaking: Rodrigo Reyes on the IFP Narrative Labs
I spent mid-June of this year within the folds of the IFP Narrative Labs, keeping an eye open for an endearing moment, an anecdote or an auspicious situation that could somehow encapsulate the intensity of the experience. After months of review, late nights grinding through hundreds of rough cuts, careful readings of submission materials and vigorous debates, the selection committee had whittled down their picks to a slate of 10 films from all over the country, all amazing and in varying stages of post-production. They brought us together in a theater in the heart of DUMBO for a week of […]
