Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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“Is Evil Outside of Us, Or Does It Come from Within?”: D.P. Fred Murphy on Shooting Evil, Wide-Angle Lenses and Working with Wim Wenders
Evil was one of the best new television series of the 2019-2020 season, a thoughtful consideration of a vast array of moral, spiritual and sociopolitical issues in the guise of a supernatural procedural. The show follows Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers), a clinical psychologist with a complicated family life who teams up with David Acosta (Mike Colter), a haunted ex-journalist who works for the Catholic Church as an assessor; he investigates – then confirms or debunks – incidents involving miracles, demonic possessions, and the like. Series creators Robert and Michelle King (the husband and wife team responsible for The Good Wife […]
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Sukiyaki Western Django, Django and Dream Demon: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Japanese horror and action master Takashi Miike is one of those directors who’s so prolific that it’s easy to take him for granted; ever since he caught American cinephiles’ attention in 1999 with Audition and Dead or Alive, he’s been cranking out something close to a half-dozen movies each year, releasing his kinetically supercharged orgies of style and violence faster than some viewers can keep up with them. While I wouldn’t try to make the case that all 100-plus Miike productions are masterpieces, when he’s firing on all cylinders – as with Audition, or last year’s First Love – he’s […]
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Tokyo Olympiad, Blood on the Moon and When the Daltons Rode: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
Ever since the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, the International Olympic Committee has commissioned films of the games to be produced in collaboration with their host countries; though many of them are relatively traditional sports documentaries, there are a handful – such as the experimental anthology film Visions of Eight, which chronicles the 1972 Summer Olympics via segments by Arthur Penn, Milos Forman, John Schlesinger, and other major directors – that are cinematically significant even for viewers who couldn’t care less about anything athletic. The best of the Olympic films that I’ve seen is Kon Ichikawa’s 1965 masterpiece Tokyo Olympiad, a […]
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Aviva Kempner and Ben West on Fighting the Dehumanization of Native American Mascoting in Imagining the Indian
In the past few days trademarks and brands like Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s and Eskimo Pie have been discontinued or altered in a long overdue reevaluation of racist stereotypes and iconography in American consumer culture. And the broader groundswell of change that finally got these brands removed — along with numerous other changes in everything from Congressional legislation on police reform to NASCAR banning the Confederate battle flag — seems poised to challenge one of the most infamous cases of corporate use of derogatory imagery, the Washington Redskins. Activists have long protested the use of a racial slur as an […]
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Teaching a Production Class During a Pandemic
Just before Spring break, I took one of the production classes I teach at the New School’s Screen Studies department on a field trip to a New York post-production house, Goldcrest Post. The date was March 11th, and while there were mounting fears about the novel coronavirus, only a handfull of cases had been confirmed in New York City. As my class walked the four avenues from The New School to Goldcrest’s West Village facility, we chatted. Despite the budding trees and pleasant disposition of the day, there was a palpable tremor of uncertainty in the air as the students […]
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Gandhi, Gladiator and Narrow Margin: Jim Hemphill’s Home Viewing Picks
To borrow a turn of phrase from Mark Twain, the rumors of physical media’s death have been greatly exaggerated, at least if the first half of 2020 is any indication – this year has been a bonanza for cinephiles who collect 4K and Blu-ray upgrades of important films. Independent labels like Indicator, Shout Factory, Kino Lorber and Criterion continue to release a steady stream of special editions, and recently the major studios == particularly Paramount and Warner Bros. — have become more aggressive than ever about capitalizing on their catalogs. The most impressive recent package that I’ve come across in […]
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Working in Silence: An Inside Look from a Parking Coordinator
Jon Johnson, Sr. has worked over three decades as a New York City parking coordinator on studio films like The Avengers, television shows like Sex and the City, and independents such as Happiness and Big Night. Below, in an letter submitted to Filmmaker, he discusses the job of the parking PA, that position’s often estrangement from the rest of production, and systemic racism within the film production community. The letter is also published at Johnson’s site, “Working in Silence No More,” where he plans to aggregate responses and other statements from those working in the film industry. — Editor The […]
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Why I Will Not Put My Film Online: A Filmmaker’s Response to Covid-19
Back in the days when I used to distribute avant-garde cinema on home video, I asked my friend George Kuchar about releasing Hold Me While I’m Naked and a few other of his classic films on DVD. “I can’t let you do that, Noel!” he explained. “You see, my films are legendary because nobody can see them. If someone could just go out and rent one, they’d find out they stink. I’ve got to maintain the legend!” George was sort of joking. But there was a kernel of truth in his statement. Kuchar might have been wrong that his films […]
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The Imperative to Hire Black and POC Filmmakers within the Documentary Community: A Conversation with Brown Girls Doc Mafia Founder Iyabo Boyd
Alongside the current Black Lives Matter protests following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and others has come renewed acknowledgement that in the documentary and media worlds Black and POC voices and points of view have been historically underrepresented — a lack that has resulted often in skewed, racially biased or simply misinformed coverage. So, as media outlets, mainstream and alternative, cover the protests and their political and social impact, it’s critical that these voices are included behind the camera, in the form of directors, cinematographers, producers, reporters and in decision making roles as executives, funders and […]
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An Unmarried Woman, Urban Cowboy and Pretty in Pink: Jim Hemphill’s Home Video Recommendations
The best films of writer-director Paul Mazursky feel like small miracles, movies that are carefully crafted yet give the impression of life caught on the fly; they have the enthusiasm and audacity of Mazursky’s idol Fellini, but their subjects are almost entirely, gloriously American and their harsh truths are presented in a warm comic voice that is as accessible to mainstream audiences as it is sophisticated. His 1978 dramedy An Unmarried Woman is a case in point, a picture that was a box office smash (after being turned down by financiers all over Hollywood) yet still manages to deliver the […]
