Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Vivian Kubrick, Stanley’s Daughter, Posts Photos of Her Young Life on the Set
As detailed at Dangerous Minds — and originally in this Reddit thread — Stanley Kubrick’s reclusive and estranged daughter Vivian has posted via Twitter a series of photos detailing her childhood in and around her father’s films. As Paul Gallagher at Dangerous Minds speculates, “The pictures may be viewed as a possible attempt at some form of reconciliation as Vivian has been allegedly out of touch with her family since joining the Church of Scientology in 1999.” Gallagher links to a Raw Story article, which has more: In fact, some knowledgeable folks have theorized that some of the pain that […]
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Five Questions With Evaporating Borders Director Iva Radivojevic
In recent years, the island of Cyprus has become something of an unforgiving melting pot. The often life-threatening emigration of Iranians and Syrians to the once predominately Greco-Turkish enclave presents a tense social fabric that is poetically probed in Iva Radivojevic’s debut documentary Evaporating Borders. Radivojevic adopts an aesthetically meandering and unique approach to the film, which is almost paradoxically structured into character-based chapters. Filmmaker spoke with the Yugoslavian-born Radivojevic about her personal connection to Cyprus, the process of voicing the film’s narrator and other traditionally fiction form elements at work in the film. Evaporating Borders premieres today in the Visions section at […]
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It Came From Inside the House: Community, Criticism and The Act of Killing
For much of the past decade, one constant gripe within the world of documentary has been a need for more writing and better criticism about the craft of the filmmaking (as opposed to summaries of the plot or lionizations of the subject). So why have two recent, very critical op-ed pieces about The Act of Killing drawn such heat? The answer lies in both the source of the criticism and the method. It’s certainly not uncommon for there to be debate about documentaries, and often that debate is most animated amongst members of the oft-mentioned documentary community: an alternately loose […]
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The Women of SXSW: Home Executive Producer Gina Resnick
Following “The Women of Sundance” article in our print and online additions, Danielle Lurie continues her coverage of female filmmakers with a series of pieces highlighting women directors at SXSW. In this email interview, she talks with the executive producer of the Midnighter selection, Home. Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Resnick: I had long been interested in working on an intelligent genre film that pushed the boundaries and elevates the genre especially one with a fundamentally all female leading cast. I also had a relationship with the producer/financier and wanted to do […]
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POV and The New York Times Launch New Documentary Film Initiative
Yesterday the PBS documentary series POV and The New York Times announced a collaborative effort to simultaneously show documentary films on the organizations’ individual websites. Later today the first film, Dan Barry and Kassie Bracken’s half-hour The Men of Atalissa, which was produced by the Times, kicks off the effort, with a full series of films following throughout the year. Along with the film, which is about a group of mentally disabled men who endured decades of abuse in the bunkhouse they lived in in Atalissa, Iowa, the Times will run an article about the men by Barry and the POV […]
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Five Questions With The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz Director Brian Knappenberger
In a time of endlessly self-spawning bio-docs about the rich and prominent, Brian Knappenberger’s The Internet’s Own Boy carries a legitimate current-day charge. The film is both a dogged investigation in the tradition of Errol Morris or Josh Fox, and a hugely emotional oral history of Swartz’s life — which ended when the activist committed suicide in January 2013. Swartz was facing a federal investigation after he downloaded a cache of academic journals (including, but by no means limited to, JSTOR) from the main computer network at MIT, with a possible penalty of up to 35 years in prison. Indicted […]
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Five Questions With Fort Tilden Directors Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers
A comedy of errors through the borough of Brooklyn, Fort Tilden follows the aimlessly entitled Allie (Clare McNulty) and Harper (Bridey Elliott) on their quest for a day at the beach. What begins as a seemingly superfluous mission soon crumbles into a dismantling force on both the girls’ psyches and their relationship. Co-written and directed by feature first timers Sarah-Violet Bliss and Charles Rogers, Fort Tilden premieres today in the Narrative Competition at SXSW. Filmmaker: This was your first time working together as co-writer/directors. How did that come about and what was it like sharing a brain for X months/years? We’re you […]
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The Women of SXSW: Wicker Kittens Director Amy C. Elliott
Following her “The Women of Sundance” article in our print and online additions, Danielle Lurie continues her coverage of female filmmakers with a series of pieces highlighting women directors at SXSW. In this interview, she talks with Amy C. Elliott, the director and also d.p. of Wicker Kittens, screening in the Documentary Spotlight section. Filmmaker: Why this movie? Why did you decide to do it? Elliott: When I first heard there was such a thing as competitive jigsaw puzzling, I just wanted to know more. And in particular, I wanted to know more about the specifics — how many […]
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Five Questions with Evolution of a Criminal Director Darius Clark Monroe
A pastiche of confessional interviews, recreations and decade-spanning raw footage, Darius Clark Monroe’s Evolution of a Criminal examines the director’s transition from a 16 year-old Texas honor student to incarcerated bank robber. Not so much a malicious jaunt as an impulsive act of financially strapped naiveté, Monroe revisits his victims, family members, teachers and friends as he tries to piece together the puzzle behind this life-altering moment. Below, Monroe speaks about why his film is not just for the convicted, his reasoning for recreations and how the camera elicits honesty. Evolution of a Criminal premieres tomorrow in the Visions section at SXSW. Filmmaker: While […]
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Lost in Translation: Public Hearing
If you want to make a movie, you need a good script. Or, at least that’s what they tell you. A script gets the talent, which gets the financing (the two are really synonymous). The other thing you’ll need, of course, is luck. First-time filmmaker James N. Kienitz Wilkins can thank Google for both (not the money part though). While cruising the Internet in 2007, Wilkins came across a transcript of a public hearing on a town hall website. It described in detail a well-attended public hearing in Allegany, New York, population 8,000. At issue was a proposal to replace […]
