Nancy Savoca — who wrote the excellent guest blog entry “Waves of Rebel Visions” earlier this week — today releases her insightful latest feature Union Square. The following interview was originally published on the eve of the film’s Toronto Film Festival premiere. Nancy Savoca’s True Love was an early high-water mark in the modern independent film movement. In fact, its storyline, newcomer casting and loose style is now the template for much current indie drama. So, it’s great to report that over 20 years later Savoca is back with another intimate drama realized on a low budget and entirely outside […]
The Los Angeles Film Festival is something of an oddity, not least because of its relative obscurity: for a 11-day-long cinematic event a stone’s throw away from the heart of the American film industry, it hardly registers on the local radar. As a reasonably cinema-savvy Angeleno, I don’t personally know anyone who gets more excited for it than they do for AFI Fest – my usual screening buddies either skipped LAFF entirely or only showed up for a handful of films this time around – though perhaps the comparison isn’t entirely valid. Where this is a “traditional” fest, with programming […]
It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 15 years since filmmaker Chris Eyre burst onto the indie scene with 1998’s Smoke Signals, based on a short story by fellow Native American Sherman Alexie, who also wrote the screenplay, and starring Native Canadian Gary Farmer (probably best known for Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man). Since then the Portland homeboy has seamlessly shifted from the big screen, to PBS fare, to franchise TV and back again, most recently with Hide Away, an existential drama featuring Josh Lucas and James Cromwell. Earlier this year, Chris was tapped for an entirely different gig, chairing the […]
(Family Portrait in Black and White is being distributed by First Pond Entertainment and opens theatrically at the AMC Empire 25 in New York City on July 13, 2012. It world premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) The mere fact that I’m writing these words about Julia Ivanova’s Family Portrait in Black and White means something has gone right. That is to say, on the occasion of its theatrical release, no longer is this film one of those special little treats that bounced around the American festival circuit for over a […]
In 2009, I interviewed Antonio Campos about his debut feature, After School, which was then about to be released. At the time, he had dropped out of NYU just before graduating, was doing promo content for Bloomingdales, and faced something of an uncertain future as a filmmaker. Three years on, Campos and his partners at Borderline Films, Josh Mond and Sean Durkin, are riding high; below they talk to actor/comedian Chris Gethard about their road to success.
Christian Marclay’s The Clock returns to New York beginning tomorrow, July 13, through August 1 at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. For details click here, and note that on the weekends the installation will run 24 hours. At special Twitter account, @LCClock, will post wait times. The following piece appeared in our Fall, 2011 issue. Christian Marclay’s The Clock video installation is many things. Structurally it is a 24-hour video installation in which film clips from across the history of cinema are meticulously edited together so that the fictional time inside each clip matches exactly the time at […]
The Sony NEX-FS700 has been in the hands of a lucky few for the past month, but now it’s starting to arrive at U.S. stores and dealers. Quantities are constrained, but if you ordered one when it was first announced, you should have it in your hands soon. I got to see one in the flesh for the first time this week at Rule Boston Camera, where Sony Sales Support Engineer Tom Cubby gave a presentation and demonstration on the new cameras capabilities. I arrived late to the presentation, just as they were demoing the Super Slow-Mo feature, so I […]
Right now on Kentucker Audley’s No Budge website, it’s Frank V. Ross week. If that name elicits a blank response, it’s not an uncommon reaction. Though Chicago-based Ross is one of the original class of mumblecore directors, he never received the attention that was given to so many of his DIY peers, such as Andrew Bujalski, the Duplass brothers or Joe Swanberg (a fellow Chicagoan with whom Ross has collaborated numerous times). Nevertheless, his recent films Present Company (2008) and Audrey the Trainwreck (2010) have gained him a number of champions within the indie community, and those two films have […]
Yorgos Lanthimos attained “one to watch” status as soon as his disturbing, divisive, and hilariously funny Dogtooth premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. That film — which went on to win the Prix Un Certain Regard and score an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film — has something of a companion piece in Alps, which opens this Friday at Cinema Village in New York City. Concerning a group of grief surrogates who help the bereaved by impersonating their recently-departed loved ones, the film is similar to its predecessor in its off-kilter tone and refusal to fit into any one genre or […]
He is a strong adapter, whether he takes a film project from a paper-thin and easily deconstructed source, or from one more profound and multi-layered. He is a master of transposition, revising—shall we say renewing?—for example, foreign, century-old material more compatible with the mores of a later era and its audiences. He would be prolific British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom, one of the few directors inspired by texts and visual arts created by others who can reshape them to fit into credible film universes that feel as if all had originated with him. The themes and ideological positions to which he […]