Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Dean Fleischer-Camp & Jenny Slate
Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate came up with the idea for their utterly charming and unexpectedly poignant lo-fi animation, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, while at a friend’s wedding. Slate remembers, “We were in a hotel sleeping six to a room because most of us were really broke, and I was beginning to feel really small. I had been doing this little voice over the weekend, so I started talking like Marcel: [in a squeaky, slightly forlorn voice] ‘I’m just feeling really squished here.’” “We were both feeling unfulfilled in our jobs,” Fleischer-Camp adds. “We were coming from a […]
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Alma Har’el
L.A.-based Alma Har’el was making a Beirut music video with the band’s Zach Condon at the Coachella festival when she decided to find a less distracting location. A friend told her about Bombay Beach, the spare, sun-blasted community in California’s Salton Sea, so she hopped in a car with a $600 Canon Vixia camera and shot footage that made it into the video. Rather than return to L.A., she stayed by herself in the economically-distressed, end-of-the-world-seeming town, using her DV camera to go a level deeper into not only the lives but the imaginations of the people she met there. […]
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Joe Nicolosi
Most short filmmakers have a hard time getting people to watch their work. Joe Nicolosi has had the opposite problem. His filmmaking career recently took off because of the playfully inventive and technically accomplished bumpers he wrote and directed for the SXSW Film Festival. Because they play in front of every film, his shorts were guaranteed audiences as they screened again… and again… and again. “There is a certain responsibility in making something that people will watch as many as 30 times,” Nicolosi admits. “So I try to cram these pieces full of details so there will always be new […]
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Alrick Brown
Asked when he realized he wanted to become a filmmaker, moments quickly came to Alrick Brown’s mind. The first time was while taking a summer course in college on Hitchcock. Another was when, while substitute teaching at a middle school in his hometown of Plainfield, N.J., he realized the only thing his kids paid attention to were movies and music videos. But the defining moment came in the early 2000s during his time in the Peace Corps when he was brought to the slave castles in Ghana. Setting foot in these atrocious landmarks, Brown realized what his calling was. “I […]
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Miranda July @IFC Center and On the Beach
“Some people look more like themselves with the photo filters on,” wrote one person on my Instagram. Snapped last night in back of the IFC Center, where I moderated Miranda July’s talk on the early short films of Jane Campion. And, at this link, July dancing on the beach in front of Sam Taylor-Wood’s camera. (Unfortunately, this New York Times video is not embeddable.) It’s a funny clip when you see the photo of Miranda on the cover of this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. July’s new feature, The Future, opens in two weeks at the IFC Center, and it […]
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JASON BYRNE COVERS SOUTHERN SUDAN INDEPENDENCE
A 2010 25 New Face, filmmaker Jason Byrne has been based in Tanzania, where he’s an Audio-Visual Archivist for the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. He recently sent an email to his list about a new project, and, with permission, I’m reposting it here. Over the weekend, I was in Southern Sudan to witness the country’s independence. I made a film within the celebration, which included two actors. One actor plays the “North” and one actor plays the “South.” The history of the two countries will be captured through the telling of the characters experiences. Here are some images […]
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KICKSTARTER: MATT PORTERFIELD’S “I USED TO BE DARKER”
What do you do when your first Kickstarter campaign, which included a heartfelt personal direct-address video, has been cited as one of the best, and most successful, indie film ventures on the crowdfunding site? Well, you mix it up a bit for the next one. Putty Hill director Matt Porterfield is raising money for the production of his new feature, I Used to be Darker, which is shooting in three weeks. It’s a drama about marriage and divorce, and it’s set within the Baltimore music industry. Here’s the synopsis: When Taryn, a Northern Irish runaway, finds herself pregnant in Ocean […]
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SCHAMUS, ZIZEK (AND ADORNO) IN RAMALLAH
James Schamus — screenwriter, professor and Focus Features CEO — travelled to Ramallah last month with philosopher Slavoj Zizek to give a series of talks to young filmmakers and students, including those from the Jenin Freedom Theater. At Guernica, Schamus writes about the event, including his use of Adorno as a teaching tool and a visit to a rehearsal of the Freedom Theater’s upcoming open-air production of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Here’s Schamus’s opening for the piece, titled “How I Spent My Summer Vacation, or Adorno in Ramallah.” A Friday afternoon in the village of Bil’in is quite an experience, […]
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ECONOMIST FILM PROJECT LAUNCHES WEBSITE
The Economist Film Project, which I wrote about previously in this interview with editorial director Gideon Lichfeld, has just launched its website. At the site, viewers can watch the short documentary excerpts that appear via the project on the PBS News Hour. For example, embedded below is the debut offering, Dawn Sinclair Shapiro’s The Edge of Joy, about maternal healthcare in Nigeria. Also up on the site now are excerpts from Robin Hessman’s My Perestroika, N.C. Heikin’s Kimjongilia, and Adam Wakeling’s Up in Smoke. The website follows a Variety article on The Economist Film Project, which states that it’s now […]
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Convento — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Convento world premiered at the 2011 SXSW Film Festival. It has its New York City premiere on Saturday, July 16, 2011, as part of Rooftop Films. Visit the film’s official Tumblr page to learn more.) Built to house an abbot and 12 monks 400 years ago, the Portuguese monastery Sao Francisco had deteriorated into an unlivable state. But when the Zwanikken family relocated from Holland in 1980 to restore the beautiful but troubled structure, their hard work and dedication turned that once religious house into a happy home. Though their husband and father Kees is no longer with them, the […]
