Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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“I Was Trying to Illustrate What It Was Like to Lose My Mind”: Elizabeth Sankey on Her Tribeca-Premiering Essay Doc Witches
Witches, the sophomore feature from English filmmaker Elizabeth Sankey, poses an interesting hypothesis concerning the link between the English witch trials and maternal mental health. Sankey illustrates this correlation by utilizing filmic portrayals of sorceresses (from Häxan to The Craft) and “psychotic women” (from Rosemary’s Baby to Unsane), their historical accuracy and cultural relevance buttressed by insight from doctors, historians and those who’ve been diagnosed with postpartum mental illnesses. Sankey is perfectly poised to tackle the topic given that she spent several months in a mother and baby psychiatric unit after experiencing severe postpartum anxiety and depression that made her […]
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“The Fact That It’s Thermal Imagery, It Hits Memory in a Different Way”: EDGLRD Creative Director Joao Rosa on Harmony Korine’s Visionary AggroDr1ft
Harmony Korine’s AggroDr1ft unfurls through sheets of kaleidoscopic color — neon shades of gold, aqua and red — that ripple and pulse, achieving almost an intelligence of their own as they add expressionistic textures to the film’s Miami-set tale of a melancholy hitman out for a demonic Final Boss. And while the narrative recalls, at times, Robert E. Howard, Michael Mann and Grand Theft Auto, the film’s genuinely unique method of production allows its hallucinatory vibe — aided by an insidious AraabMuzik score — to reign supreme. Working with his team at new production outfit EDGLRD, including creative director Joao […]
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MEMORY Announces Summer Theatrical and Digital Release Dates for Microbudget Pandemic Comedy New Strains
MEMORY, the L.A.-based production and now distribution company featured in Filmmaker‘s 2016 25 New Faces list announced today the release plans for New Strains, a microbudget, camcorder-shot pandemic comedy from a pair of filmmakers, Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan, also featured on our list. The film will screen at the Roxy Cinema in New York (June 13), Nitehawk Cinema Williamsburg (June 15 & 16), and Los Angeles’ Now Instant Image Hall (June 21 & 22), with a North American digital release to follow on Friday, July 19. In New Strains, a pandemic — not necessarily COVID-19 — strands a couple, Kallia […]
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“It’s About the Energy You Bring to the Life of Your Movie, Not Just About the Movie Itself”: Al Warren on Dogleg’s Six-Year Journey
“I love the feeling of the room in a packed house watching a good movie,” says writer, director and actor Al Warren on the phone from Los Angeles. “I want to model my career on that. It’s become a priority for how I approach my work. How will it be shown to an audience in-person? When I see a friend who has put their soul into the making and completion of their movie and then they don’t really have any plans on how they want to show it, I am confused.” At this moment, when the future of independent film […]
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Sundance Institute Announces Fellows for the 2024 Directors, Screenwriters, and Native Labs
The Sundance Institute announced today the the fellows selected for its 2024 Directors, Screenwriters, and Native Labs. The Native Lab in New Mexico will support four fellows and two artists in residence, and the Directors Lab in Colorado will support the development of eight projects with nine fellows, with an additional three fellows also joining for the online Screenwriters Lab held immediately after. For the first time the Directors Lab will be held at the Stanley Hotel in Estes, Colorado — Stephen King’s inspiration for The Shining — while the Native Lab will be returning to Santa Fe, New Mexico, […]
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“We Wanted To Show a Teacher with All His Weaknesses, Who Doesn’t Know Everything, Who Sometimes Makes Big Mistakes…”: Laurent Cantet on The Class
French director Laurent Cantet, whose films include Human Resources, Heading South, The Workshop and his Palme d’Or-winning The Class, died today at the age of 63. With this sad news we are reposting Brandon Harris’s interview with Cantet about The Class from our Spring, 2008 print edition. — Editor Starting with 1999’s Human Resources, Laurent Cantet has quickly built an international reputation as France’s most socially engaged narrative filmmaker, crafting films that highlight the ever lingering issues of race and class in both France and, as in the case of his 2006 film Heading South, its former colony of Haiti. With […]
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Represent Justice Announces New Speakers Bureau, Strategic Plan and Impact Campaign Around Clemency for Women Impacted by Mandatory Minimum Sentences
Represent Justice, the organization that began as an impact campaign for Destin Daniel Cretton’s wrongful-conviction drama, Just Mercy, announced today via press release a three-year strategic plan, “a roadmap for building narrative power and infrastructure around people impacted by incarceration and creating a justice system that is focused on healing, rather than punishment.” New this year is the Speakers Bureau, which will represent “the extraordinary ecosystem of system-impacted movement leaders, exonerees, artists, campaign leaders, filmmakers, and film participants who work in partnership with Represent Justice to transform the legal system. The Represent Justice Speakers Bureau will be a full-service bureau […]
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Bodiless Entities, Body Politics and Bodily Functions: CPH:DOX Inter:Active 2024
Expertly curated (under the direction of Londoner Mark Atkin, who also serves as Head of Studies of the CPH:LAB), this year’s edition of the Inter:Active exhibition at CPH:DOX (March 13-24) featured the provocative theme “Who Do You Think You Are: The Body Reexamined.” As the title might suggest, the 17 XR works were wide-ranging and eclectic, both in form (VR yes, but also mixed reality and AI chatbots) and substance (perhaps unsurprising coming from a group of creators with myriad intersectional identities). Indeed, quite a number of the works I experienced on the top floor of the invitingly designed (palace […]
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“If There are Esoteric Titles in the List, the Unfortunate Thing is That They are Esoteric at All”: Sean Price Williams on 1000 Movies
The debut release from Metrograph Editions, Sean Price Williams‘s 1000 Movies is just that — a list of 1,000 movies seen and appreciated in some way by the director/cinematographer, listed chronologically across its 6″ x 4.25″ pages. There is much white space. Not included is any kind of foreword, such as a personal essay explaining the project’s genesis. (For that, you’ll have to look to interviews such as this one, or Matt Folden’s on the Metrograph site.) There are no Letterboxd-style ratings, no film stills, and not even an author bio; there’s just Lizzie Harper’s drawing up front of an […]
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Las Cruces Days: Making Sundance Grand Prize-Winner In the Summers Using New Mexico Tax Credits
Alessandra Lacorazza’s In the Summers is a film of moments spread across years—moments quiet and seemingly insignificant, as well as larger events whose significance is downplayed at the time only to be properly understood years later. It’s the story of two teenage girls who, each summer, are sent by their mom to spend a few weeks with their charismatic yet irresponsible father, whose ability to love and be a parent is continually undermined by his addictions to drugs and alcohol. Winner of the Grand Jury U.S. Dramatic Competition prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, In the Summers finds a […]
