Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations: Last Train from Gun Hill, There was a crooked man…, Stranger on the Run and In the Line of Fire
Actor Kirk Douglas was at the top of his game when he reunited with producer Hal Wallis, director John Sturges and most of the rest of his Gunfight at the OK Corral team for Last Train from Gun Hill, a dark and absorbing 1959 Western that stands tall as a worthy companion to Douglas’s other great achievements of the era like Lust for Life, Paths of Glory, Strangers When We Meet and Spartacus. As those titles illustrate, this was a period when Douglas used his box office capital to make one interesting and ambitious picture after another, and Last Train […]
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“Can Jupiter Use his Powers and Wisdom to… Rectify Racial Injustice and Inequality?”: Ram Devineni and Yusef Komunyakaa on their Tribeca-Premiering AR Comic Book Jupiter Invincible
Jupiter Invincible, the latest augmented reality comic book from Ram Devineni and his NY-based Rattapallax media house, marks a bit of a departure for the doc filmmaker and technologist. Best known in the AR world for his comic book series Priya’s Shakti — starring India’s first female superhero and rape survivor (and UN Women-designated “gender equality champion”) — Devineni now travels both back to these shores and back in time, all the way to pre-Civil War Maryland. And he brings along an impressive trio of collaborators. Our superhero of this tale, the titular Jupiter, is the invention of the Pulitzer […]
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Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations: My Fair Lady, The President’s Analyst, The Hand
A glorious last gasp of the classical Hollywood studio system gets a reference quality upgrade with Paramount’s 4K disc of My Fair Lady, the best of the gargantuan musicals that would hit their commercial apex with The Sound of Music in 1965 and nearly sink the industry with Doctor Dolittle and Star! just a few years later. Released in 1964, My Fair Lady is an early entry in the cycle and an expertly modulated one thanks to the firm hand of director George Cukor, whose work was always characterized by a harmonious interaction between performance, composition, camera movement and cutting—Cukor […]
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Kino Lorber and Dedza Films Announce Release of Short Film Omnibus Who Will Start Another Fire
Kino Lorber and Dedza Films announced today their first collaborative release, Who Will Start Another Fire, an international short film omnibus featuring the works of nine emerging filmmakers from underrepresented communities around the world. Beginning June 11, the films will be released digitally on KinoMarquee.com, the distributor’s virtual theatrical platform in partnership with arthouse cinemas around the country. The anthology will also be released day and date on VOD on KinoNow.com, and forthcoming will be a limited edition DVD with an introduction by Charles Burnett. In-person screenings will occur across the country at independent cinemas that are open. From the […]
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“I Tell [the Audience] the Truth and Allow Them to Lie to Themselves”: Derek DelGaudio on His Frank Oz-Directed One-Man Show, In and Of Itself
The following piece contains mild spoilers for Derek DelGaudio’s In and Of Itself, the film version of which, directed by Frank Oz, opens today at IFC Center and is currently also streaming on Hulu. For the live viewer of Derek DelGaudio’s In and Of Itself — a theater production which ran in Los Angeles and New York from 2016 to 2018 — the piece began not when the suited, dark-haired performer took the stage but 20 minutes before, in the lobby. As ticket-holders lined up before entering the theater, they were asked to pick a card — not a playing card, but, […]
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Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations: Lady Sings the Blues, Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, The Bureau: The Complete Series
When Motown Records impresario Berry Gordy made his debut as a filmmaker in 1972, the dominant mode in Black cinema was that of Blaxploitation flicks like Shaft and Superfly or gritty indies like Melvin Van Peebles’ politically and formally radical Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. Gordy saw a void to be filled—and an opportunity to showcase his label’s biggest star, Diana Ross—by producing a glossy, old-fashioned Hollywood melodrama with Black performers; the result, the Billie Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues, was a landmark musical that catapulted Ross to an Oscar nomination and instantly created a new standard for leading men […]
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The Gotham Announces 20 Projects and Selected Fellows for the 2021 Documentary and TV Series Labs
The Gotham Film & Media Institute (formerly IFP), Filmmaker’s parent organization, announced today twenty feature and series projects participating across two labs this month: the Gotham Documentary Feature Lab (May 17-21) for debut non-fiction feature films currently in post-production and the Gotham TV Series Lab (running May 24-28), for outstanding projects in development and written/created by first-time series creators. “We are living through a period of remarkable innovation in the independent film industry. This year marks our second virtual lab series which has helped us to provide greater access to The Gotham’s resources so that creatives can expand their network and further develop […]
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Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations: Explorers, Fool for Love, 12 Monkeys
One of director Joe Dante’s most interesting and underrated films gets the Blu-ray treatment it deserves with the Shout Factory release of Explorers, Dante’s 1985 follow-up to Gremlins that walks a similarly unconventional line between Spielbergian sentiment and Tashlinesque pop satire, with an undercurrent of unsettling melancholy thrown in for good measure. There’s genuine warmth and wonder to spare in the first half of the film as friends Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix, and Jason Presson build their own spaceship; when they actually manage to rendezvous with the aliens who have been communicating with them, the movie shifts gears to become […]
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“A Dream of Education”: Reel Works Celebrates its 20th Anniversary
When Maya Velazquez’s teacher told her class about Reel Works, the ninth-grader at Park Slope Collegiate had no idea what story she wanted to tell, only that filmmaking was something she wanted to try. Cultivating that spark of interest is what Reel Works, a New York-based nonprofit organization that teaches filmmaking to students, has done for the past two decades. Reel Works now celebrates its 20th anniversary and will host a 20th Anniversary Gala on May 26. And while the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the global film business in 2020, Reel Works actually had its most successful year yet, serving an […]
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Wagner Moments: DP Manuel Alberto Claro on Melancholia at Ten Years, Lars Von Trier and Depression
Melancholia premiered in Cannes ten years ago this month and was immediately overshadowed by the infamous press conference in which its provocative Danish director, Lars Von Trier, said “I am a Nazi.” Yet, as the film rolled out across the world, its visceral and moving portrayal of depression found its way into audiences’ hearts. It stands the test of time as a rare example of a beautiful film about mental illness. The equivocation of a realistic depiction of depression in Part One as it engulfs Justine (Kirsten Dunst) on her wedding day with the science-fiction concept of the world ending […]
