Last year, to celebrate POV’s 25th anniversary, Filmmaker organized a series of conversations between documentary directors whose work had been featured on the PBS non-fiction showcase. Last month we continued this series with a discussion between filmmakers Stephen Maing and Lixin Fan. This week we are featuring a conversation between Adam Larsen, whose first feature length documentary film Neurotypical is currently streaming on the POV website, and Josh Aronson, director of Oscar nominated documentary on deafness Sound and Fury. Here the two consider their work helps to define different cultures. Click here to watch Larsen’s Neurotypical, an exploration into living with autism and how it reflects on what it […]
Last year, to celebrate POV’s 25th anniversary, Filmmaker organized a series of conversations between documentary directors whose work had been featured on the PBS non-fiction showcase. Last month we continued this series with a discussion between filmmakers Stephen Maing and Lixin Fan. This week we are featuring a conversation between Adam Larsen, whose first feature-length documentary, Neurotypical, is currently streaming on the POV website, and Josh Aronson, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary on deafness, Sound and Fury. Here the two discuss how they went about searching for a story. Click here to watch Larsen’s Neurotypical, an exploration into living with autism and how it reflects on what it means […]
I’m flying to Tacoma, Wa. tomorrow for the annual 25 New Faces event at the Grand Cinema, but before I depart I’m posting here a quick, video-driven guide to the talented people I’ll be hanging out with over the coming days. (Thanks to Nathan Jones and Dante Pilkington for helping to put this post together.) There’s a lot to dig into below, so enjoy. Anahita Ghazvinizadeh Below is the trailer for Ghazvinizadeh’s most recent Cannes-winning short, Needle, and you can watch her 2011 short When the Kid was a Kid here. Rodrigo Reyes Here’s the trailer for Purgatorio; you can […]
An exploration of two couples — one black and gay, the other white and hetero — Rodney Evans’ The Happy Sad suggests with a light, deft touch the increasingly commonplace sexual fluidity that millennials are embracing as normative sexual categories fall away. Of course, there are difficulties. Partner swapping, open relationships, explorative homosexuality are nothing new, but even in the swingin’ hipster’d Brooklyn from which Evans tells his tale, complications arise, feelings are hurt, egos are shattered, these feelings only heightened by the ever present realities of race and class. A timely meditation on all of these things, the movie […]
In just a few years, Bradford Young has emerged as one of the most auspicious and distinctive cinematographers in American independent film. First noticed in 2011 for his work on Andrew Dosunmu’s Restless City and Dee Rees’ Pariah, he was profiled by the New York Times the following year for his subtle, carefully framed cinematography on Ava DuVernay’s Middle of Nowhere. In just the past year, Young confirmed his early promise with two sumptuous and yet highly disparate visions: for David Lowery’s Texas-set period film Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (opening this week) and Dosunmu’s Brooklyn-based contemporary drama Mother of George […]
David Lowery made waves last year in the independent film world with the news that Ain’t Them Bodies Saints — the follow-up to his $12,000 feature film St Nick (2009) — had attracted the stellar cast of Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck and Ben Foster. It quickly became one of the year’s most anticipated independent films, premiering at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Critic’s Week, and set to open in the US on August 16. The contemporary Western about a young couple torn asunder by a robbery gone wrong features shootouts and other elements of an action movie, but […]
Of all the transformations cinema has undergone since the rise of affordable home viewing in the 1970s, perhaps the most ephemeral, difficult to quantify is this strange result: the difficulty of falsely remembering movies. Whether it was mixing up and remembering out of order a series of shots, or conflating scenes from different movies that happened to star the same actor, or simply forgetting portions of a film, it was difficult to recall a film correctly, accurately. Which isn’t the same thing as not recalling a film truthfully. This became apparent after watching Only God Forgives recently on the big […]
Co-writer/directors Ian Hendrie and Jyson McLean were recently at the Sundance Creative Producing Summit with Mercy Road, a feature based on real-life events that “traces the spiritual odyssey of a small town housewife and mother, as she becomes willing to commit violence and murder in the name of God.” The following is what the pair wrote about their experiences at the summit. We are making our third and final climb up “The Mountain.” As the shuttle from the airport snakes up the winding forest-crested road, we anticipate spending a few last days in this special place. There’s a feeling of coming […]
In 2011, I spent three months in Afghanistan making the documentary The Network. The film is set behind the scenes at the first, largest and most successful television station in Kabul, Tolo TV. I thought it would be surprising, timely and somewhat subversive to make a positive film about Afghanistan in the face of the impending withdrawal of foreign troops. One of the things I discovered while making The Network is it’s difficult to make a positive film about Afghanistan. While the achievements of Tolo are extraordinary as is the massive, unprecedented social change media has brought to the country […]
Yesterday I attended a Blackmagic Design event in NYC at the New Yorker Hotel and got to check out all three of their new cameras. I can officially report that the rumors of their existence are more credible than those of the Sasquatch. My initial response to the cameras was that in theory they’re the perfect post-DSLR choices. I say, “in theory,” because I didn’t actually shoot anything with them — and until that happens, I can’t offer an opinion of any greater authority. All three cameras (the Cinema Camera, Production Camera and Pocket Camera) were set up in a […]