Filmmaking
Filmmaking
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Social Studies
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 22, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Brandon Harris interviewed The Class co-writer-director Laurent Cantet for our Fall ’08 issue. The Class is nominated for Best Foreign Film. Starting with 1999’s Human Resources, Laurent Cantet has quickly built an international reputation as France’s most socially engaged narrative filmmaker, crafting films that highlight the ever lingering issues of race and class in both France and, as in the case of his 2006 film Heading South, its former colony of […]
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Eye of the Storm
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 22, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Howard Feinstein interviewed Trouble The Water directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal for our Summer ’08 issue as well as the film’s subjects, Kim and Scott Rivers, in a sidebar to the piece. Trouble The Water is nominated for Best Documentary. Brooklynites Tia Lessin and Carl Deal had the near-perfect recipe for what I consider the near-perfect documentary: a unique situation, inimitable subjects, a strong but non-didactic political thrust and that […]
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Werner Herzog, Encounters at the End of the World
WERNER HERZOG AND D.P. PETER ZEITLINGER CAPTURE ANTARCTICA IN ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD. COURTESY THINKFILM. Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 22, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed Encounters at the End of the World director Werner Herzog for our Director Interviews section of the Website. Encounters at the End of the World is nominated for Best Documentary. For more than 40 years, Werner Herzog has been redrawing the map, both cinematically and geographically. He started making short […]
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Dancing in the Clouds: Director James Marsh on Man on Wire
James Marsh has wrestled before with subjects — both fictional and real life — whose obsessions have fueled eccentric and, at times, even extreme behavior. In The Burger and the King (1996), based on David Adler‘s book, he chronicled Elvis Presley‘s lifelong habit of compulsive eating. Wisconsin Death Trip (2000), based on the nonfiction book by Michael Lesy, traced the origins of a bizarre strain of murders, suicides and odd happenstances in a small Wisconsin community of the 1890s. And in his debut feature, The King (2005), which Marsh scripted with Milo Addica, he dramatized a story of misguided faith […]
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ELLEN KURAS, THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON) By Nick Dawson
THAVISOUK PHRASAVATH AND ORADY PHRASAVATH IN DIRECTOR ELLEN KURAS’ THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON). COURTESY CINEMA GUILD. Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed The Betrayal director Ellen Kuras for our Director Interviews section of the Website. The Betrayal is nominated for Best Documentary. Since she first came to prominence almost twenty years ago, Ellen Kuras has established herself as one of the most talented directors of photography working today. Film was not Kuras’ primary focus when […]
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Director Ellen Kuras on The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed The Betrayal director Ellen Kuras for our Director Interviews section of the Website. The Betrayal is nominated for Best Documentary. THAVISOUK PHRASAVATH AND ORADY PHRASAVATH IN DIRECTOR ELLEN KURAS’ THE BETRAYAL (NERAKHOON). COURTESY CINEMA GUILD. Since she first came to prominence almost twenty years ago, Ellen Kuras has established herself as one of the most talented directors of photography working today. Film was not Kuras’ primary focus when […]
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Performance Driven
Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 22, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. James Ponsoldt interviewed Rachel Getting Married director Jonathan Demme, as well as other principals from the film, to dissect the creation of the title character for our Fall ’08 issue. Rachel Getting Married is nominated for Best Actress (Anne Hathaway). Jonathan Demme has made a career out of revealing the humanity in oddballs, eccentrics, zealots and rock stars. As a storyteller, Demme doesn’t judge. He trusts that if you listen to […]
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IFC ANNOUNCES SXSW PREMIERE/ON DEMAND PROGRAM
At a Sundance press breakfast this morning IFC Films announced a partnership with SXSW in which five films screening at the festival will be available simultaneously on IFC’s on-demand platform. The films include Joe Swanberg’s premiering Alexander the Last as well as our Filmmaker mag cover film Medicine for Melancholy, which will return to the festival for a special screening. Attending the event was Steven Soderbergh, who spoke about independent filmmakers’ need to “let go of the fantasy” that their film will receive a conventional theatrical release in this tough climate. He also quipped that the Festival Direct program appealed […]
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ROCK ‘EM, SOCK ‘EM SAG
While some in the industry are at Sundance and others are preparing for the inauguration, the folks at SAG, according to a post on the Digital Media Law blog, are engaged in knock down cage fight. Check the account of the proceedings at the link.
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THE TEXTUAL INSTABILITY OF BROOKLYN’S FINEST
In the first major deal of the festival, Antoine Fuqua’s cop drama Brooklyn’s Finest was sold to Senator, reports Gregg Goldstein at MovieCityNews, in a “low-to-mid seven-figure pact” with a “$10 million P&A commitment.” Senator President Mark Urman has always been good for a quote, and that’s no exception here. After noting to Mike Jones at Variety his personal connection to the material — “Being from Brooklyn, this film is important to me” — he muses on the film’s poorly-received, Hamlet-like ending with the kind of postmodernist flair I’d expect to hear in a discussion of the David Foster Wallace […]
