Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Virtual and Actual Realities: The Narrative VR and New Media Works in the Sundance 2021 New Frontier Section
A Remote Festival The Sundance Film Festival, which ended February 3, succeeded remarkably well despite the pandemic, and nowhere was that more obvious than in the New Frontier lineup of virtual/augmented reality and other new media. In fact, as has been commented throughout 2020, in many ways virtual reality was made for this moment. With VR headsets reaching ever further into the consumer population it was feasible for this year’s New Frontier lineup, including several 2D browser-based works, to be shown remotely with essentially no loss in quality, especially when compared with feature films being screened on a laptop or […]
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“This Writing Really Calls To Me. It’s Huge in My Life. It Also Just Repels Me.”: Bill Irwin On His Irish Rep Virtual Theater Piece, On Beckett / In Screen
Bill Irwin premiered On Beckett at the Irish Repertory Theatre in 2018. In the piece he explored Samuel Beckett’s writing by performing selections and offering commentary about the impact the Irish author has had on his life. When the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered theaters, the Irish Rep turned to the internet to stream productions online. Recently the Irish Rep repeated its 2020 season in the Theatre @ Home Winter Festival, which is now streaming and extended through March 7, 2021. For the festival, Irwin and his collaborators, including co-director M. Florian Staab and cameraman Brian Petchers, rethought the piece, which is […]
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The New Nostalgia of Touch: The Best Adult Erotic Filmmakers to Watch in 2021
The relentless slog of this pandemic has, undeniably, left a lot of us bereft of human physical contact. What seemed manageable to handle for a month or two — no hugging outside of your household pod, no new dates without rigorous measures — is starting to feel like a real and permanent loss. As an adult erotic filmmaker myself, I’m painfully aware that the adult film industry has of course been terribly hard-hit by the ban on physical contact. In-person shooting of couples and groups has, by necessity, slowed to a sanitary trickle. I feel very lucky that I finished […]
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Upload Prohibited: Amazon Prime Video Direct Locks Out Docs and Shorts
Amazon’s Prime Video Direct (PVD) service has a message for independent documentary and shorts filmmakers: You need not apply. Last week, Amazon’s PVD self-publishing program issued a change in policy: “At this time, we’re no longer accepting unsolicited licensing submissions via Prime Video Direct for non-fiction and short form content. We’ll notify you if these categories become available for consideration.” Suddenly, one of the largest streaming platforms in the world was out of reach for vast numbers of companies and content creators. Filmmakers across the world have used PVD, while established indie distributors such as Samuel Goldwyn Films, Kino Lorber, […]
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“So Many Movies Are Disingenuous About [Death] and it Pisses Me Off”: Filmmaker Jack Dunphy on His Slamdance-Premiering Short, Revelations
Filmmaker Jack Dunphy makes personal films. His shorts Serenity, Chekhov and now Revelations, tell stories from his life with a dash of fiction. He uses construction paper as a base material for his animated films and seemingly does detail work with whatever bachelor-pad rubbish he has on hand. These stop-motion worlds are grubby and handmade; there’s no handsome veneer getting between us and Jack’s emotions, though they’re beautiful in their own right. In Revelations, now streaming as part of the Slamdance Film Festival, he combines animation with video footage and photos from his past to tell the story of his high […]
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Judas and the Black Messiah, Vigilante and Rituals: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
One of the best American films of recent years drops on HBOMax (and on big screens where theatres are open) today with the release of director Shaka King’s mesmerizing Judas and the Black Messiah, a film about slain Black Panther leader Fred Hampton that skillfully avoids bio-pic cliches with its sophisticated dual narrative and arresting ’70s crime flick style. Daniel Kaluuya is the best he’s ever been in a performance that forcefully conveys Hampton’s iconic power and humanizes him at the same time; costar Lakeith Stanfield is equally strong as William O’Neal, an FBI informant who sells out Hampton and […]
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Bebia, à mon seul désir, The Year Before the War and Friends and Strangers: The 2021 International Film Festival Rotterdam
Chiaroscuro is as good as a drug in Bebia, à mon seul désir, the striking debut feature from Russian-born, London-based writer-director Juja Dobrachkous, which premiered at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) last week, in the Tiger competition. The impressionistic drama feels as if conjured out of smoke, dead leaves and rain clouds. Perhaps more to the point, its camera relishes the contrast between the pale skin of teenage model Ariadna (Anastasia Davidson), strutting the catwalk in London, and the Stygian hue of the mourning dresses worn by the women who loudly lament before her grandmother’s casket, back in rural […]
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The Filmic Equivalent of a Haiku: Erick Oh on his Sundance VR Film Namoo
One of the most understated pieces at Sundance’s New Frontier this year was Namoo, an animated short by Baobab Studios and director Erick Oh. Baobab has been pushing the boundaries of top-tier animated virtual reality since its founding in 2015, with its short immersive films growing in depth, length, and complexity and leading to a slew of awards and spun-off properties including feature films and series. Erick Oh is an award-winning director and animator from South Korea and based in California who’s worked at Pixar and with Tonko House and whose work has shown at Annecy, Anima Mundi, and other festivals. […]
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Wings of the Hawk, The Parallax View, Smooth Talk: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Director Budd Boetticher made dozens of movies ranging from romantic comedies and noirs to science fiction and prison pictures, but he’s long been known primarily for the seven Westerns he made with Randolph Scott between 1956 and 1960. While those films are all terrific and worthy of the praise bestowed upon them by the likes of Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, and Quentin Tarantino, their canonization has kept many other worthwhile Boetticher works from discovery. I’ve always been partial to the movies he made as a contract director at Universal in 1952 and 1953, a period during which he made a […]
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DIY Lives? #LIKE‘s Distribution Journey, Part Two: The End of the Beginning
On January 26th 2021 my film, LIKE, a feminist noir thriller, debuted on Apple TV, Amazon Prime and others. It has been a long and winding road just to get to the end of the beginning. Part 1 of my article, published in July, details my voyage into the opaque world of film distribution and the ever-evolving influence of streaming, which had for years been diminishing independent film theatrical box office. But then, of course, live audiences were near-obliterated when COVID-19 lockdowns shuttered theaters. In other words, the theatrical exhibition experience was all but gone until who knows when. I […]
