Winner of the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, Waves ’98 is the debut film from writer/director/animator Ely Dagher. The film is set in Beirut – Dagher’s hometown – and concerns a young man who becomes isolated from reality. Filmmaker spoke with Dagher about the film’s blend of video footage, still photography and animation. The Sundance Film Festival presented Waves ’98 in 2016 as part of its Animation Spotlight shorts program. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being […]

Veteran  DP Robert Richman has shot more than 60 documentary films since 1985, including such heavyweights as An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for ‘Superman’ and Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. His latest work is Suited, an HBO documentary produced by Lena Dunham. The film profiles Bindle & Keep, a tailoring company in Brooklyn that caters to an LGBTQ community. Richman speaks below about direct cinema, the Maysles brothers and why “pure verite films” are his favorite kind to shoot. Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being […]

When I meet Tippi Hedren in Vienna, we’re with a handful of other journalists for nearly an hour-long roundtable interview. There are less than ten of us, but after a series of interruptions, digressions, poking, and prodding, the pack feels more like an encroaching swarm. But Hedren is no stranger to this kind of journalistic interrogation. The recent Viennale programmed a tribute to her and invited Hedren from her home on the Shambala Preserve in California for her first visit to the capital of Austria. The animal rights activist also worked with both Alfred Hitchcock and Charlie Chaplin, so Hedren’s presence at […]

“I can’t keep beating around the bush because I’ll eventually run out of bushes to beat around,” sighs Mya Taylor. We’ve just spent 90 minutes together in her hotel room at the 59th London Film Festival. In that time, I don’t speak much, but when I do, I’m drawing parallels between Taylor and Marlon Brando. To be fair, I’d just seen Stevan Riley’s Listen to Me Marlon, so referencing some uncovered Brando philosophy from the documentary during my conversation with Taylor felt pertinent at the time. Mya Taylor is a black trans-woman born in 1991, so in retrospect, the comparison is pretty ridiculous. […]

With Celia Rowlson-Hall’s bold and original MA opening today in New York at the IFC Center, with wider digital distribution next month, we’re reposting Taylor Hess’s interview with the writer/director/star and her collaborators out of Venice. Check the IFC site for screenings and Q&A moderators, who include, tonight at 8:30 PM, Lena Dunham. Barefoot on a sandy shore of the Mediterranean coast, I’m only mildly bothered by the luxury cruise ships obstructing the horizon. It’s an otherwise picturesque pre-dusk afternoon in Venice, and I’m focused mostly on keeping up with Celia Rowlson-Hall, who sets an intimidating pace as we walk […]

Filmmaker‘s Taylor Hess recently attended and reported on the U.S. in Progress series at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival. While there, she spoke to a number of female directors, producers and actresses. Below, her conversation with Hannah Gross and Deragh Campbell, who both appear in Nathan Silver’s Stinking Heaven. Filmmaker: I Used To be Darker was your first film together, and Deragh, your first time acting? Campbell: Right, I’m not trained. My college degree is in writing and my background is publishing and writing. In a lot of ways I look at acting as another way of interacting with material and […]

Actor Michael Murphy is perhaps best-known for his collaborations with Robert Altman, which practically spanned the director’s entire career. But, for a brief moment, he wasn’t known primarily for his turn as a political organizer in Nashville or other Altman roles, but for playing an adulterer. In two consecutive films — An Unmarried Woman and Manhattan — Murphy was the archetypal heel of the moment. That time has passed; Murphy is now often called upon to playspoliticians, judges and ambassadors, parts which take advantage of his patrician/WASP-esque appearance: he looks like someone to the establishment manor born. Woman‘s place in […]

Salma Hayek rarely picks up her cell phone when the number is unlisted. But one day she did so while driving around Los Angeles, and the man on the other end was Italian director Matteo Garrone. Having been introduced to modern Italian cinema by her friend Valeria Golina, Hayek was flabbergasted. Garrone’s films Gomorrah and Reality were two of her favorite recent pictures. Not only that, but Garrone was offering her the role in a period film bringing to life the tales of 17th century Neapolitan scribe Giambattista Basile. She would play the role of a Spanish queen, the film would […]

He’s played a troubled youth in the Paris ghettos in La Haine, a vengeful husband in Irreversible, and an abusive ballet company director in Black Swan. One pattern is clear with French actor Vincent Cassel: he works with directors of a special breed who can’t be boxed up neatly within a genre. His latest Cannes film is no exception. Cassel partnered with Italian director Matteo Garrone to play the role of a casanova Medieval king who’s always on the search for his next sexual conquest in Tale of Tales. Based upon the stories of Giambattista Basile, Europe’s original fairytale scribe, […]